Posts Tagged ‘Big Dickey’

You hardly have to be a genius to realize that I am a college sports fan.

Whether I qualify as “die hard” is open to interpretation, I suppose. Still, as a VASF donor for more than a decade, season ticket holder for Tennessee Volunteers football, and as an individual who travels over six hours one-way to see each football game in Knoxville, I probably fall into the “dyed-in-the-wool” category placing me in the top tier of college fans when it comes to dedication (or lunacy depending on your perspective).

Either way, at various times in my life, I have contemplated becoming a more avid fan of professional sports. At times I have even been a “real” fan of certain teams by most standards. That being said, no matter what I do, I always seem to lose my interest in professional sports and return to my roots as a college football fan…

… or perhaps professional sports loses interest in me.

No, that last statement is not intended to be a wildly arrogant and self-centered declaration of my importance in the sports world. On the contrary, it is meant to show my complete insignificance — along with the millions of other sports fans out there.

In case you missed it, after forty-one years in the “City Which is Never Dry,” the Seattle Supersonics are pulling up stakes and heading to Oklahoma City to be known as the Oklahoma Clod-kickers, or something along those lines.

The era of the Supersonics is over…

Owing to the fact that I live on the Right-Coast and parted ways with the NBA in the mid-1990s, I was really not tuned into this story until after the final announcement was made. I make no claims to be a Supersonics fan, and can really only think of 2 Supersonics players ever: Shawn Kemp and Xavier McDaniel (mainly because he choked Wes Mathews in the middle of a game which is the sort of thing I tend not to forget). Still, I feel for the Supersonics’ fans, and I assume that there are a fair number of them, whether they be “die hard” or not. While I know that Seattle may potentially get another team some day, as a practical matter they now understand how SMU fans felt when their team got the death penalty for football. The only difference is that, unlike SMU who was finally able to resume play, Seattle’s program is gone for good — gonzo, outta here, dead, kaput, snuffed it …

If I am a Seattle Supersonics fan, that just plain sucks…

That got me to thinking (which is so rarely a good thing). The fact that the Supersonics could up and vanish like a fart in the wind, is the reason why I personally will never be anything more than an occasional fan of professional sports. At so many levels, that disturbs me. It also brings back a few memories.

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Well, as expected, there have been a few surprises in the Tournament so far. I being busy re-modeling my garage have been a bit slow to comment on these (as if anyone cared…). Be that as it may, here are my observations…

• Kentucky Consistency: Despite managing to make something out of nothing, Billy Clyde and the boys in blue have proven in the NCAA Tournament that they still possess the ability down the stretch to demonstrate the quality which helped pave their way to an 11 seed in the NCAA Tournament: the ability to suck the tubes hard when they really have to.

In fairness, however, the Vanderbilt Commodores also proved that — when forced to play on a normally configured basketball floor — they blow.

That’s the last time I take either of them as a longshot in my bracket…

• Pac-10 Power: I don’t claim to keep up with the Pac-10 in anything, but I was under the impression that UCLA, Stanford, and USC were supposed to be simply amazing teams which made their opponents quiver in fear, little children run for their mother, and grown men crap their pants. Apparently, Kansas State didn’t get the memo, and Marquette and Texas A&M all but disregarded it.

News Flash, UCLA is beatable…

• Bulldog Blowout: Despite veritable orgy of wins over the last week leading up to the NCAA Tournament, the Georgia Bulldogs did not achieve the ridiculous and manage to amass more wins in the post-season than they did during the SEC regular season. Nice run, however for the Dawgs, but now the party is over..

So could someone please tell Dennis Felton that Wade Houston called and wants his moustache back?

• The Kevin O’Neill Chronicles: After coaching the Arizona Wildcats all season while Lute Olsen “found” himself (despite the fact that Olsen has to be approaching 70 — or at least looks like it) Kevin O’Neill again gets the shaft as Olsen made it clear that he will now resume his role as head coach. I guess Olsen is done chasing skirt, and can get back to doing his job. I don’t get why Olsen needed a whole season off because of a divorce — Bruce Pearl has actually improved his record during his divorce, and Pat Summitt hasn’t been too shabby during hers either.

Given Tennessee’s experience with O’Neill and his refusal to put up with the Big Dickey’s bullshit (did I say “bullshit?” I meant “bullshit.”), I’d say it’s a safe bet that O’Neill is gonzo, and that right soon. As the only Pre-Pearl / Post-DeVoe coach the BasketVols ever had that was worth a damn, I wish him well. Speaking of which, the SEC schools that are thinking of trading up on their coach could do a lot worse than giving the old “Revco Kicker” a look.

I guess Lute Olsen and the Big Dickey have one thing in common … now O’Neill thinks they are both two-faced jackasses…

• Dookus Go Homeus: Dook took it in the teeth, exactly as I didn’t predict. Oh well, Kentucky, Vanderbilt, and UConn already screwed my bracket enough to make Dook’s loss to the West Virginia Mountaineers a game of little consequence. I just hate it that the Belmont Bruins couldn’t pull it out the night before — I was so hoping that the Bruins would give it to Coach Kryezq?r²gxmzrfeykzwGkeeei the hard way, and lay it on the “regal” ACC. Hats off to West Virginia for finishing the job.

As for the boys of Belmont, I know moral victories are like french-kissing your sister (fun at first, but then just damn nasty) but Belmont obviously has a really hot sister. No shame in taking Dook down to the wire, even if you came up one point short. Thankfully, Joel over at Rocky Top Talk didn’t have a coronary or toss his cookies on his keyboard during the 70-71 loss by Belmont…

… if Joel had quit posting due to death or a broken computer I’d have had one less great resource to plagiarize.

• UConn Sucks: But of course I think everyone already knew that…

• In Case You’re Keeping Score: Finally, just to show — like Eliot Spitzer — I am accountable to the people, my bracket is completely shot to hell.

More to come, on the BasketVols, and on everyone else once the rest of the Sweet 16 are confirmed…

– Go Figure …

Images Courtesy of: Loser With Socks, SportsCrack, Georgia Sports Blog, and WildcatsMania

Due to my preoccupation with adding my new Tennessee Home for the Visually Offensive to Gate 21 this week, I have refrained from writing about all of the chatter about the BasketVols performance against Alabama this past Tuesday night. In particular, numerous folks “in the know” have been going on endlessly about one particularly ill-advised play by JaJuan Smith. If you watched the game, you know exactly which play I’m talking about.

After making a heads-up steal from Bama, JaJuan Smith attempted to feed Tyler Smith with an alley-oop dunk, off of the backboard but instead allowed the ball to be intercepted by the Bammers, who proceeded to dance up the floor and score a quick 3-point basket.

There is no question that it was a bone-headed play. There is no question that JaJuan Smith saw the possibility for a SportsCenter highlight, and wanted to grab a piece of that action for the Vols. There is no question that the play — and its resulting 5-point swing — could have made a difference in the game. That’s not what I am here to debate.

The hub-bub about this play, however, arises not so much from the play itself, but rather from Bruce Pearl’s reaction. Instead of of pulling JaJuan out of the game — and give him some time to think about it on the bench — Coach Pearl left JaJuan on the floor, and merely spoke to him during a break in the action. A lot of folks have criticized Pearl for condoning this “showboat” behavior.

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