Thursday, July 23, 2009

Erin Andrews, The Crawford Dunk, SEC Media Day, The TO Show

"John Kuester took into the equation what players could do and tried to put them in positions where they could be successful" -Chris Jent

"The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds." -JFK

"My role is to really manage the staff, morale, discipline, really determine the direction that we want the ship to go in." -Coach Dabo Sweeney



EA

I dunno where I have been over the last couple days, but the Erin Andrews peep show video just came across my desk. And to be honest, I think it is something we should all be very sad about. I know I am pretty bummed out about it. It kind of ruins everything about her. She had this untouchable mystique about her. This unmatchable beauty that you were never gonna be able to see. I am really bummed out for her. She deserved better. This was a woman who was pitching a perfect game in terms of her mission to remain and become a credible sports journalist. You couldn't find one picture anywhere on the internet that showed anything remotely scandalous.

For many of us, including me, she was #1 on our big boards in terms of celebrity crushes. She was the hottest chick in all the land. She was right there with Megan Fox. Olivia Wilde. Alba and Biel. It's really sad that it came to this. It wasn't time for it to come to this. I dunno where she goes from here. It's gonna be so difficult for her to work now. College football stadiums aren't going to be an ideal working environment. The taunts and jeers by drunk males can now go from fun to terrible. The 250 "Erin will you marry me?" comments she hears each night will turn into much worse. The "Erin will you go to prom with me?" will turn into much worse. People will be terrible to her. And for what?

I will interested to see where it goes from here. She's making her rounds on the news media shows. She's promised to prosecute the guilty party as much as the law will allow her to. There is really no simple solution. I see her taking a couple months off, possibly a leave of absence from ESPN for a couple months. College football season could be up in the air. It depends on how she chooses to handle it. She could try her best to just play through it, but I see that being hard. She has no reason to do it. She is Erin Andrews. She'll have plenty of opportunities. To be continued I guess. But I think fully embracing it and doing Playboy should be in her thought track.


Jordan Crawford

Staying on the topic of internet videos, I caught the Jordan Crawford dunk this morning as well. WOWWWWWWWWWW! Pretty good smash. MONSTERRRRRRR dunk. I was really impressed. That was awesome. But I mean, it was what is was. It was a pickup game where everyone in the game, LeBron and the 9 other zero's on the court were playing at a slow speed. They all were going half go unless they had the ball. And in this case, Crawford got the ball on a baseline out of bounds gotta little rub screen where his guy got hit a little bit, turned the corner ready to get busy and he made that drive count. Strong left leg plant. Huge two hand hammer dunk. LeBron was in a bad spot and got caught. He didn't realize the rate of speed Crawford was coming with. I don't think anyone did. But from the way I saw it, Bron wasn't totally mailing it in. He went up high enough where his hand was over the rim. It looked to me that he went up at 65% go. So he wasn't totally not trying. He got dunked on. Courtney Lee dunking on him in Game 2 the ECF was better, but he got dunked on again nevertheless. But the point is that it really should have never come to this. Bron should have just low keyed it. Made a joke about it. Admitted that Crawford got him. Jordan already created the "I'm so cutthroat that I'll destroy a tape that shows me looking bad on a basketball court" persona. Bron should have laughed and smiled. And he will. It's just 3 weeks late.


SEC Media Day

I DVR'd SEC Media Day on ESPNU the last two days. It is about as entertaining as watching a Tribe game when Cliff Lee isn't pitching, but for a diehard college football fan, it can be valuable to watch. I am not a diehard fan by any stretch, but I enjoy watching and learning how coaches speak and I was curious to learn about what kind of things they would stress with their hour with the media. There was a couple guys that I wanted to hear speak. Namely, Lane Kiffin at Tennessee, Dan Mullen at Mississippi State, Les Miles at LSU, and of course Urban Meyer at Florida and Nick Saban at Alabama. The latter two were the guys that I focused the most on. The Nicktator is a polarizing individual and he lives up to that gloss as a speaker. I love listening to him speak. It's straight out of the Belichick playbook. Simple. Smart. No non-sense. Gives nothing away. He's the boss. Meyer is very similar in his approach, although he is much less hostile than Saban. Here's a couple of Saban quotes:

"It's important that you have a group that is responsible for their own self determination in terms of doing their job. "

"We don't have one individual on our team that can make our team great. But we do have one individual, any one individual, who can destroy the team chemistry and destroy all these things that we're talking about by being a blinking light and making bad choices and decisions. And we had an example of that in our bowl game."

But the thing that I saw up and down the board the last two days is how good of a fit these guys are as SEC coaches. It feels like all these guys came out of their mother's wombs with visors on yelling "you're gon ha to gimme better effort there son, God Almightyyyyy!" They all pass the eye test. They pass the test of "can a deeply southern 71 year old woman get behind and support this coach?" If they weren't coaches they would mayors of southern states. They all pass the test. The only one who doesn't is Urban Meyer.


The TO Show


DVR'd the pilot of The TO Show on VH1. To be honest, it was much better than I thought it would be. The writers and producers did a helluva job making TO seem like a regular person. He seemed like a pretty normal celebrity athlete. There was things that showed how weird he was--hung out with no one except his bodyguard, wearing a hood and sunglasses inside his hotel room. But in my opinion, TO comes out looking pretty normal. Macks it with a couple ladies. Scores an Asian real estate agent. Goes out to South Beach. Not terrible. Expected worse. The real crime is that these idiot (had the c word plural but changed it to idiots) publicists are probably gonna enjoy a boost in their livelihoods because of this show despite being untalented and unbearable. I mean I know that's what the script tells them how to behave, but it's silly. Show way less of them. More of Drew Rosenhaus talking about the world. Much more of the smoking hot white chick that TO hangs out with for seemingly half the season (showed her a lot in the "coming up this season montage), and much much more of TO's ex-fiance, who just seems dynamite in all areas of life. WOW, he really screwed that one up. But I would say this is not worth having in your DVR schedule. It's more of a "just happen to catch it and watch it for 20 minutes" type thing.

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