Seedy K’s Peerless Preseason Pigskin Prognostications: Final Four

College Sports, Football, ,

Buyer Beware: The following contains spoilers regarding the upcoming 2022 college football season. By reading further, you are accepting the risk of knowing in advance results between Week 0 and the CFP Championship on January 9, 2023. 

As if.

It appears statistically that I am more accurate than even my faux ego would admit. I still miss some. 47-28 for the last regular season. 19-10 for the bowls, with 3 DNPs. But, sigh, I picked Michigan to prevail in the Capital One Bowl semi. Silly moi. And the Sabanites to take yet another title trophy back to B-ham, to hoist on the head table at Dreamland. Got outSmarted on that one.

Still not bad all in all. I trundle ahead, head held high.

So, here we go with some 2022 preseason surmisals.

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Recently I posted conjecture on which athletes would have their faces carved on a Mt. Rushmore for Louisvillians. Three were gimmes. The other a toss up.

Since the CFP hasn’t yet given the green light for its inevitable expansion, the institutions of higher learning for student athletes participating in playdowns for the title remain a quartet.

Need I elucidate whom this campaign’s bloodblood trio are projected to be? No, but I shall, because it’s what I do.

Alabama, Ohio State, Georgia.

Will they make the Final Four? Continue reading Seedy K’s Peerless Preseason Pigskin Prognostications: Final Four →

Monday Morning Mayhem (Kinda, Sorta)

Basketball, College Sports, Fandom, Football, Soccer, Sports Finance, ,
http://csaimages.com/images/istockprofile/csa_vector_dsp.jpg

Before we get started with another rasher of foolishness, some Coming Attractions.

Later this week — like in a day or two — yours truly’s anxiously anticipated, nationally heralded predictioneering about the upcoming college football campaign shall be revealed.

Seedy K’s Peerless Preseason Pigskin Prognostications are but hours away. So too, hopefully, arrival of my brickbat resistant armor from that Bezos fella. Then, because that’s really nothing more than an appetite whetter, next week come my ever prescient Week 0 game predictions.

Wyoming vs. Illinois. Vanderbilt vs. Hawai’i. Nebraska vs. Northwestern, from that hotbed of American football, Dublin, Ireland.  And more, perhaps.

And don’t tell me you won’t be watching. I know better, ready to pounce, should I in the unlikely event prove incorrect.

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Speaking of football across the pond, do you want to hear about yesterday’s West London Derby at Stamford Bridge between my faves, Tottenham Hotspur, and their hated arch-rival Chelsea?

Of course, you don’t.

But what if I told you how as heated events unfolded during and after the action, I was reminded of a specific U of L hoops game against the Cards’ egregiously disliked nemesis from down the road? Continue reading Monday Morning Mayhem (Kinda, Sorta) →

Mt. Rushmore of Louisville Sports

Baseball, Basketball, Boxing, Football

In the wake of Bill Russell’s passing, my current favorite sportswriter Joe Posnanski riffed in a blog about who would be on a Mt. Rushmore of American Sports? He also considered one for the city of Boston.

Russell he observed was a given for both.

Like Top 10/100/Whatever lists, such an endeavor by default always generates disagreements.

It’s why we do them, right? We all need something to disagree on, or so I’d observe.

So, as it happens I’ll steal another’s idea. Because Joe’s conjecture got me to thinking what Louisville sports figure’s faces would be carved on such an elevation? (I guess you could do one for U of L too , but that only came to mind right now as I compose.)

So here goes nothing. Well, something actually. If just to pass the time until the fall sports season kicks off.

I’m so very sure you shall free to disagree with one or some of my selections.

For me, three are No Brainers. Continue reading Mt. Rushmore of Louisville Sports →

Russell & Scully: Two Icons Gone

Announcing, Baseball, Basketball,
Boston Celtics Bill Russell and Oscar Robertson in action. (Photo by Sporting News via Getty Images/Sporting News via Getty Images via Getty Images)

Rare is the occasion when you can consider a person, and can say beyond peradventure, “They are the best ever at what they do.”

We lost two this week.

Bill Russell, the greatest winner in American sports. Not only basketball.

Vin Scully, the greatest broadcaster in American sports. Not only baseball.

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I have a vague memory that I might have seen Bill Russell play in person once.

At some point in the early to mid 60s, if memory serves, there was a preseason NBA doubleheader at Freedom Hall. One of the games featured Philly — either the Warriors or 76ers — because I remember walking up and standing next to Wilt Chamberlain, who was the biggest human being I’d ever seen

Though my memory is shoddy, I believe the Celtics played the other game. Continue reading Russell & Scully: Two Icons Gone →

Hope’s Afoot & Other Media Day Takeaways

College Sports, Football,

On the way out to Cardinal Stadium for the dog and pony show a/k/a Football Media Day, I noted the sky was Grantland Rice blue-gray. Appropriately enough, even though it was a bit muggier than the day which caused college pigskin’s flowery bard of yesteryear to wax poetic about a quartet of Notre Damers in the ’20s.

When I exited, the sun was out.

Which is a good enough way to metamorphize the spin that is always attendant at such annual inaugural rites.

On the elevator up to the press level, a fellow who’d been at as many of these as me and I were riffing on what we’d hear.

“Great to be back.

“Really looking forward go hitting the field.

“Guys have been doing some great work in the weight room, and are bigger and stronger.”

Etc, etc. Or yada, yada, yada if you happen to be a Seinfeld acolyte.

Truth is, of course, there’s not much to learn here. Actual practice hasn’t started. Everybody’s undefeated at the beginning of August.

But the event does herald that the arrival of opening kickoff is not long off. That alone makes it a joyous, if tedious occasion. Continue reading Hope’s Afoot & Other Media Day Takeaways →

Last Friday before Football (Practice)

Basketball, College Sports, Football, , ,

Before we get on to other matters, a moment of silence please for the dearly departed.

In a world that seems to be falling apart before our very eyes, now we have to deal with yet another significant loss.

Flags at half mast please in memoriam of the demise of the Choco Taco.

(Silence.)

Of course this frozen treat wasn’t Graeter’s, or a trip to Polly’s Freeze for a shake or Gelato Gilberto.

But at those times, like 10:30 at night and you need something cool and sweet and the freezer is empty, and those places mentioned above are either closed or too far to drive at that hour, and you don’t want to hassle with a full grocery, there’s always Convenient.

(Whatever those places are called these days, they’ll always be Convenient to me.)

The freezer case is by checkout with the array of drumsticks and Klondike Bars and Fudgesicles. I most always went for the Choco Taco.

Not that it really tasted any better than any of those other mundane choices. But, it was a legit mix of ice cream, chocolate, nuts and soggy taco wrap in appropriate proportions for each bite*. It could be consumed before it melted.

*Grew up with Drumsticks, but after you’ve eaten the top, there’s no nuts or chocolate left to counterbalance the ice cream and cone underneath, a functional flaw. Continue reading Last Friday before Football (Practice) →

Hump Day Hoedown

Basketball, College Sports, ,

Yeah, that’s what I’m talkin’ about.

My throwback.

If you don’t know which former Cardinal it references, you be in the wrong place. Just sayin’.

If you do, eat your heart out.

I throw it up there, because all signs are pointing to the Cardinal men’s hoops returning to where it once belonged.

It’s going to take awhile. So, be patient.

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My man who is periodically at practice reported in last evening.

FYI, he shall henceforth be known as Gym Eyes. Here anyway. Not sure his bride will find it as cute as I do.

Unfortunately, I was sitting in my car outside the grocery when he rang me up. So I didn’t have paper and pencil in hand to take notes. My memory on the wane, I’ll only be able to talk in generalities.

The big takeaway is that everybody on every drill looked markedly if incrementally improved over GE’s last look see a couple of weeks ago.

The coaching staff is emphasizing conditioning. Drills will be blown dead if players are not going full speed. As happened at least once when Josh Jamieson blew a stop the proceedings of the guys he was working with. I’m advised the team was broken into two groups on Tuesday, the bigs and the perimeters. Continue reading Hump Day Hoedown →

ACCess ACClimation ACCentuation

Basketball, College Sports, Football, , ,

This is the time of year when I should be obsessing about M Cunningham’s durability (while wondering about those $900 kicks he wore the other day), whether Monty Montgomery will be fully back, and will the secondary stabilize?

And beyond those contemplations, how much will really tall Josie Williams add to Jeff Walz’s phalanx of bigs, can KP coach as well as he can win the room, and, of course, will that rising senior from Jersey play for his dad’s coach or his grandpappy’s  teammate? Or shake up the hoops universe and take his talents elsewhere?

But . . .. but . . . but instead of thinking Xs and Os and out of bounds plays, instead of focusing on the guys in pads and cleats and sneakers, about that three game obstacle course to open the gridiron campaign, I’m obsessed with the guys in suits, what they’re conjuring up with their cash flow charts and TV stats.

Oy!!!

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The other day the Professor and I were lamenting the pickle many/most wags seem to believe U of L and its league seem to be in, given the Cards middle of the road stature  and its positioning in regards to the accelerating shift in college sports.

At one point, I began reminiscing about how it was when we were in high school. Continue reading ACCess ACClimation ACCentuation →

Can We Talk Some Pigskin?

College Sports, Football, ,

Yes, it is the apex of summer. More or less.

The Temperature/ Humidity Index — that’s what we called it in the days of my yout as Cousin Vinnie would call them — is going to reach 106 this week. Not exactly outlined against the gray blue sky the Four Horsemen rode again weather.

Still I’m ready to talk about some college football . . .

. . . because I as is my custom annually wended my way out to my purveyor of choice to plunk down an Andy plus a bit of silver for Phil Steele’s ’22 College Football Preview.

It’s 352 pages of everything even the most diehard of diehard pigskin obsessives could possibly want to know about the upcoming campaign. And way too much more.

It is biblical. Even though King Phil updates his yearly, unlike King James I, f/k/a King James VI of Scotland, whose version of his treasured tome has remained relatively unaltered since some time in the mid 1700s. Which predates college pigskin’s first shrine, Franklin Field in Philly, by a century and a half, give or take a 365 or two.

We know for certain of the gridiron annual’s importance thanks to the imprimatur of “The Current Voice of College Football,” Kirk Herbstreit: “The season officially starts every year when I get my copy of Phil Steele’s magazine.”*

*Dispensation has been granted to the former QB at THE, even though, heretic as it may be, he’ll also be calling Thursday night NFL now for Jeff Bezos.

The reality is that Steele’s too much is truly too much. Way more analytics and numbers and breakdowns and team reports and abbreviations (there’s a glossary, also too voluminous) and history and predictions than I can or really wish to consume. Also there’s so much info contained therein, that the print is too small for my aging eyes to read more than a few minutes at a time, and I refuse to use a magnifier. Continue reading Can We Talk Some Pigskin? →

Tuesday Tantrums: On the Court, In the Courthouse

Basketball, College Sports, Sports Finance,

Former future U of L superstar.

That’s the snarky phrase I’ve used time and time again through the years to denote some gotta-have-sure-to-get-but-didn’t recruit destined for Louisville but not as much as the fanbase hoped for recruit.

It may not be as cute terminology as once upon a time. But, hey, it’s tried and true.

Too late to stop now.

So, yes, that’s one of those guys, Fab Melo, you see at the top.

Which is my circuitous way of hinting that I’ll be addressing the whole D.J. Wagner tug o’ war saga in a bit.*

*No need to scroll down for some late breaking inside info. That ain’t happenin’. Just going to offer some perspective.

But, first, let’s head down to the courthouse to see what’s going on?

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Which is, imagine this, another lawsuit emanating from Louisville Cardinal athletics.

Will it never end? Continue reading Tuesday Tantrums: On the Court, In the Courthouse →