Tag Archives: Notre Dame

Sports, TV & the Obsessive Guy

The deities sent a message.

I’m talking the triumvirate of Naismithius, Greek God of Hoops, Bronconagurskius, Greek God of Pigskin, and Ilovelucyia, the Greek Goddess of TV.

The message, as passively aggressively as it was presented:

You are watching too much sports on television. It’s time to get out of the house.

How do I know that’s what they are telling me?

Because . . . there’s an annoying glitch in the signal of the four ESPN stations on my telly. It does not exist on any other channel. An annoyance really.

But one that Ms. Roboanswer couldn’t fix with a reset ting-a-ling, or a power down power up.

Nor could Service Guy #1 remedy the situation on Visit #1. So the unresolved issue has been “escalated.” Or, maybe, it’s “elevated.” Whatever, Service Guy #2 on Visit #2 arrives tomorrow morning. Continue reading Sports, TV & the Obsessive Guy

Louisville CardFile: Samford

joaniecardOne game does not a season make.

Which is my attempt at some literacy, while being cautious, and offering the following.

Hardly any of the many questions extant with the ’15-’16 Cardinals were answered with certainty in U of L’s opening night 86-45 decimation of Samford.

Scott Padgett’s Bulldogs entered the Yum! with tails wagging, left with those tails between their legs.

What we do know is that Louisville should have battered its lesser foe. And did so.

Expectations for the evening were met. It’s not always been so early on in seasons past for the Cards during the Pitino Era.

All well and good. Continue reading Louisville CardFile: Samford

Seedy K’s Rowdy Rants: Irish, Brady, Buckeyes & Other Easy Targets

foot1“I came here to chew bubblegum, and kick ass. And I’m all out of bubblegum.”

To honor the memory of the dearly departed Rowdy Roddy Piper, the only wrestler ever worth anything, the baddest man ever to don a kilt, and the most quotable guy in sports not named Yogi or Schnellenberger, I hereby cut through the muck on some of the more nettlesome issues of the day.

Ever the EmbellIRISHment. In the prologue to the zine’s College Football predictions, the folks at Sports Illustrated admit their boneheaded pre-season rankings from the past. They admit what a false positive, woooo pig sooey in a poke a big bowl game victory can be in assessing a team prior to the following season.

Then those same dunderheads go out and dub the Notre Dame Fighting Irish the 4th best team in the land, a projected participant in Football’s Final Four.

I can just hear my man Rowdy Roddy now: “Your stupidity is something you’re born with.” Continue reading Seedy K’s Rowdy Rants: Irish, Brady, Buckeyes & Other Easy Targets

Throwdown Thursday: Cats Roll, Knights Stymied & Mo’

b-ballOther than his remarkable way with words, I don’t know much about T.S. Eliot.

Except this. He wasn’t a college basketball fan.

Contrary to his famous poesy, March, not April, is the cruelest month.

As the commercial goes, “everybody knows that.”

But, did you know . . .

. . . as with Murray State, whose chances for the Dance were thwarted by a late, late long ball, and whose advancement in the NIT was dispatched by a midcourt miracle, Bellarmine’s season was abruptly terminated last night in the DII national semis by a treybomb with the clock winding down?

Damn it.

In a scintillating basketball game, which met my expectations that it would be the most intriguing and exciting of the evening, top-ranked, top-seeded Florida Southern 79, Bellarmine 76. Continue reading Throwdown Thursday: Cats Roll, Knights Stymied & Mo’

Louisville Card File: Notre Dame

joaniecardIt was as lovely a stretch of basketball as this unsteady edition of the University of Louisville Cardinals have played all season.

Sublime.

As Dick Vitale, who was in the house and shall be again Saturday, would say, “Scintillating! Sensational!”

After a performance before intermission that must be described as desultory, U of L, down 31-42, came out of halftime with the eye of the tiger.

Montrezl Harrell snared a missed Irish trey. Chinanu Onuaku grabbed an offensive board after a Terry Rozier miss. Trez got the second chance deuce in close. 33-42. After another ND misfire, TR tallied two. 35-42.

Rozier followed that with a swipe at midcourt, firing it ahead for a Wayne Blackshear flush. 37-42. After another errant shot by the visitors, Nanu scored on a nifty assist from TR. 39-42.

Timeout Mike Brey.

Coming out of the break, Jerian Grant committed his second giveaway of the half. Quentin Snider swished a lovely trey from the corner.

42 all. Game on!

During the ensuing media timeout, with the score still knotted, and the Yum! buzzin’, I jotted down this query: “Most important segment of the season?”

The answer, alas, is “No.” Continue reading Louisville Card File: Notre Dame

Hoopaholic’s Gazette: Conference Craziness, Cardinals, Curiosness

b-ballIt is the time of the season.

When scenarios morph curioser and curioser in the Big Tent that is College Hoops.

Messrs. K and H assure the public/ Their production will be second to none/ And of course Henry The Horse dances the waltz!

Not the least stunning of which developments is viewing the sport’s preeminent color announcer, the usually straight forward Jay Bilas, showing up to do the Arizona/ Colorado game, wearing a Grateful Dead t-shirt. Sitting alongside smirking Garciaphile Bill Walton, who, deadpan, pretending to be the voice of reason, intones, “Enough foolishness. There’s a game going on here. Let’s get to the action.”

This morning’s USA Today had a catch up article on this year’s doings. Two months into the season, the paper obviously felt compelled to catch us up on what’s been happening. The undercurrent, one supposes, being they thought we couldn’t possibly have been paying attention until the CFP was over and done.

Really? Continue reading Hoopaholic’s Gazette: Conference Craziness, Cardinals, Curiosness

Louisville Card File: Notre Dame

cardfootballOutlined against a rain-filled, blue-gray November sky, the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore they are known as Famine, Pestilence, Destruction and Death. These are only aliases. Their real names are Radcliffe, Dyer, Bonnafon and Parker. They formed the crest of a cyclone howling through South Bend before which a fighting Notre Dame football team was swept over the precipice under the gaze of Touchdown Jesus yesterday afternoon as 80,000 spectators peered down on the bewildering panorama spread on the green plain below.

Crave more? Your wish, my command.

For when the One Great Scorer comes to mark against your name, he writes – Did you win or lose? –not how you played the Game.

Without apology to Grantland Rice, I recognize there are times when prose most purple is appropriate.

Louisville 31, Notre Dame 28 in the schools’ first meeting ever on the gridiron is one of those times. Continue reading Louisville Card File: Notre Dame