Appalachian State Trashnado: The Second One
Hey there Lugnuts, how the hell you doing? That’s right, Trash Talk is back. Bigger. Better. And more trashy than ever. This ain’t no party. This ain’t no disco. This ain’t no fooling around. There are probably other things this ain’t. But I cannot find David Byrne to tell us. But he obviously would. Cause he would be one of us.
To be honest, there would still be no Trash until the start of the proper NFL season. But for one little thing from Appalachia, i.e. the Mountaineers. And the most glorious September 1, 2007 battle in the Big House where the Mountaineers bathed in the glorious defeat of the hometown Michigan Bo Merlot Wolvereenies. I have been to some outlandishly kick ass monumental college football games, but this one I had to consume by giant TeeVee. Nevertheless, glorious it was. Wiki has an awesome entry on the gig.
And here we are, seven years later, quite nearly to the day. YAY! So, after some concerted badgering by Marcy and Jim, it was unquestionably time to trash the place up. And so we shall.
Before we take a brief look at the weekend’s festivities, let us stop for a second and bow down to Texas A + M. Kevin Sumlin has got something going on down there. And, yeah, I am pretty sure this will draw the Gulf Coast Pirate out of his rum filled Galveston area cove. But truth abides (as does The Dude). Wait. Where was I? Oh yeah, Texas A+M just blew up #5 rated South Carolina, and ‘Ole Ball Coach Steve Spurrier. 55 – 28. Ouch. Wow. Keep your eye on the Aggies and new QB Kenny Hill. Who killed Kenny?? Nobody, Kenny killed Johnny Football. Also on Thursday and Friday, ‘Ole Miss put some hurt on a game Boise State team, ASU held back and still blew out Weber State, and Sparty from that other Michigan School took apart the other Gamecocks, from Jacksonville State. Bad weekend at Black Rock for all things Gamecock it seems.
Okay, yeah, yeah, on Friday night, BYU whipped UConn and Arizona and Rich Rod looks on their way to the same against UNLV. Nevada might be a better match, but UNLV is cannon fodder for the Kitties down here under in teh Old Pueblo.
But Saturday AM brings the Mountaineers back in the Merlot land of Ann Arbor. The scene of such hope and glory past. Can it be the future? Ah, fate has a fickle finger, you never know! Okay, maybe that Emptywheel lady will chafe at all this fond recollection of the glory of 2007, but this is fair and impartial peoples! That’s right, I have an official military man, Col. Morris Davis on my side. (If he flip flops now, he is dead to me!).
So, some other games of interest this weekend include: Ohio State Blecheyes visiting the Navy Midshipmen and their awesome new helmets. Seriously, these Navy helmets are bad ass. After this use, Navy is gonna contribute them to some riot police in a small American hamlet in order to suppress the peoples. Like Ferguson.).
UCLA at Virginia may be a great test for a UCLA team that a few are putting in the National Championship game. I like the Bruins here, but not to get to the big one. The other Mountaineers, of West Virginia, can often hang and play, but Alabama will rock them. Don’t sleep on Rice at Notre Dame. Cause, you know, teh Irish will probably be freaking out obsessed over their fake girlfriends and all. Clemson at Georgia is kind of interesting this early. Both superb programs with a boatload of transition. LSU will take the Badgers from Wisconsin, but it may not be easy. The Seminoles SHOULD take care of the OSU Cowboys. I think. But I also think Jameis Winston is shaky, if not a relentless scofflaw, and who knows? Lastly, the Fresno State Buldogs at USC. I actually think the Trojans win this, but would have no surprise if they did not. USC is a clusterfuck right now, and there is no way around that.
So, have you felt the change around here? It is subtle, but give it a go. In the meantime, get yer ya ya’s out and rip this joint. It is football season once more.
I understand Johnny Football is having trouble with the pros. Seems he cann’t get away with as much shit.
USC: As a resident of LA, I say Go Bruins!
Yeah. Was wondering whether Kenny Football will convince people that Johnny and the Ducks was more about the program than the QB.
What the fuck. What a three card hustle. Bmaz sayeth nada about the BC vs UMass game today.
Okay, that was bad of me. I’m going to make up for it with a link to Eli Manning’s Reddit Ask Me Anything where he says how dreamy good looking Tom Brady is.
You are forgiven
BSL, be thankful he sayeth nada about the BoSox, too ; )
Phred!!!!
Man have I missed you. I may have a Trash mouth, but talking about the Sawx would have been cruel and unusual.
It’s nice to be back : )
I appreciate your tact regarding the Sawx, my what a painful season to witness, good thing football is here to save the day… Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go put up some green and gold bunting for the occasion ; )
Go Pack Go!
Like Roger Clemens being elected to the Red Sox Hall of Fame.
Oh no, Mr Bill.
They need to reduce ticket prices and move to a new stadium in South Boston. A Stella Artois is still $9.50. I am also sick of Henry…… but we still have the Pats with the two best looking QB’s in the league.
That’ll happen when the lights go up in Wrigley. Oh. Wait…
As for the latter claim regarding the fetching appearance of the local QBs, we will have to agree to disagree on that one. My tastes run more to the lumberjack end of the spectrum than the cleft-chinned Dudley Do-Right pretty boy variety… just sayin’ ; )
Yeah. I’m with Phred. Give me the lumberjack look over that cleft pretty face.
Et tu, EW??? I always thought you had a thing for the pretty boy ; ) Although, now that I think of it, it’s more of a thing for BilBel… Must be his fashion sense ; )
Yup. BillBel, not Brady, though the fact that Brady helped make Lloyd Carr’s Wolvereenies successful when I was at UM is a kicker.
I am just so conflicted. Many here in Gainesville expect 2014 to be as big a dumpster fire as last year. That would be good, since it would undoubtedly send Muschamp on his way out of here, and we could dream about stealing Sumlin. But Kurt Roper did some very interesting stuff at Duke, and the last coach we stole from Duke did pretty well around here with something he termed the Fun n’ Gun. Tonight shouldn’t be too big of a test against the Vandals(!) from Idaho, but with some of the strange performances already, who knows?
Put me squarely in the camp of grifter Manziel being a system product rather than the real thing. Cleveland is doomed to another highly drafted QB flame-out.
And who is this bmaz guy? He seems to have overtaken our dearly departed bmaz1. I really liked that guy, he hardly ever said anything or posted anything. This guy seems to run at the mouth a lot.
Don’t you have some wood to sand somewhere?
By the way, U-M kicked Tebow and the Gators in the teeth at the end of that 2007 season.
I have no idea why they scheduled The Horror II. Perhaps to deliberately give all us fans an arrhythmia?
…and in America’s Pastime (no, not throwing some crappy little country up against the wall to show who’s boss, I refer to baseball) Tom Verducci of SI has confirmed that Mike Trout is the best player since Sid Finch and is real, to boot. This year’s MVP award is, although unfathomably not his third in a row, a lock at this point. Hell, opposing center fielders are so rattled they’ve taken to dropping game winning home runs over the center field fence while trying to create a competitive SportsCenter clip, as Coco Crisp gamely did last night. Angels: best record in baseball. And he’s just plain fun to watch.
And while UCLA may just play in the championship game, it doesn’t really matter because it’s just so damn satisfying to watch USC melt down for any and every reason God can concoct. Gotta admit, though, that Texas A&M coach’s strategy of scoring a whole bunch of points really fast is pretty clever, somebody should write that down.
Mike Trout is a nice player, but he is no Barry Bonds.
You are cosmically right, and nobody ever put a finger on it better than Mr. Bonds himself: “You know what, you’ve got to have some serious talent to have 53,000 people saying you suck.” The second statement — the one with the asterisk — was Chris Rock, interviewed in Ken Burns’ last installment of “Baseball”, who looked right at the interviewer and said “if there was a pill that made you do your job better, you’d take it; I’d take it.”
The best player I ever saw in my lifetime, and who I personally consider the best all around player (maybe tied with Ruth, but only because Ruth pitched too at one point) was Willie Mays. Yeah I saw him. Best players other than Mays I saw were Barry Bonds and Ken Griffey, Jr. Don’t bleat at me with that Bonds steroid shit. I am talking even well before that. And, no, Trout is NOT better than Bonds and/or Griffey. Trout is Josh Hamilton without the baggage or the failures. Yet. He has a LONG LONG way to go to even be mentioned in the same breath with Bonds and Griffey.
A strong case can be made that Mays, not Ruth, was the best all-around ballplayer ever. I’ll just note that without taking a position on it.
In any event, while Trout is the Hot New Thing, as BMAz noted he has a long, long way to go before he can even get into the HoF discussion. Every season there is a new best-player-evah. Only rarely does it turn out that way. Injuries, slumps, playing on bad teams, bad teammates, bad luck, all can get in the way. We remember the great careers precisely because they are so rare.
Sweetest swing ever is a close race between Griffey, Jr. and Darryl Strawberry. Much to his chagrin, George Steinbrenner wanted nothing more in the free agent market than to sign Griffey away from Seattle and was willing to spend what it took to do it.
Unfortunately, the story goes, the ghost of Billy Martin thwarted that. When Griffey, Jr. was a kid and his dad a Yankee, Junior and some of the other players’ kids used to play tapeball (a ball of athletic tape) in the clubhouse. Martin banned the kids and Junior never forgave the Yankees for that.
Junior might have been as good as Mays or Bonds but, because of the catastrophic injuries he suffered, we’ll never know. They kept him from having a full career. Strawberry could have easily hit 600 HR, but for his demons – coke, drink, appetite for trouble.
Wait, what??? I was with you bmaz right up until your “LSU will take the Badgers” slur. Harumphhh. We shall see…
By the way, I loved the bit about the Navy-soon-to-be-motorcycle-cop helmets. You have a gift for trash ; )
Happy Football Season! Speaking of which, make sure the next Trashnado touches down by Thursday night when you know who will be playing a team with a former BADGER QB. Just sayin’…
Not into college fb so I’ll be on the side lines until the nfl starts, Go 9ers.
Us Domers are so over fake girlfriends. We’re on to academic scandals and other horrors I can’t bring myself to mention.
Takes all the fun out of football.
Ahhh. Trash talk.
I have no irons in this fire this week, as my Stillers are working through the end of the preseason. And their #1 and #2 RBs are looking for a side trip to Lambeau for one of those horse-collar brat-kraut-and-beer-cheese monstrosities to complement the clouds of smoke rolling out the windows of their ride.
While Cleveland management seems to have shown a smidgen of sense in putting Hoyer ahead of Football on the depth chart, hope springs eternal that someone wearing black and gold will take care of turning Johnny Football’s career into a smoking crater with a little debris at the bottom. Maybe Hoyer will suffer a Brady-ACL in the first quarter of Game 1 at Pgh.
And, speaking of Biebs, is Cheatin’ Bill going to a 4 TE offense? He has no WRs worth talking about and he has (by my count) 4 TEs now: Gronk, Hoo-Man (who can spell his name, anyway?), Mulligan, and that guy they got from Tampa in exchange for putting a Mankins-sized hole in their O-line. At least Garoppolo went 22/42 in the last preseason game, signalling the end of the Ryan Mallet Experience.
There was a chill in the air this morning, and that means it’s time to trash.
a) You do have an iron in the fire. James Harrison is officially retired now.
b) In fact, Patsies are only expected to carry 3 TDs, this year, though by all appearances Develin will be a classic Jack of all Whatever BillBel asks.
I suspect Harrison’s retirement was timed as much out of pension plan considerations as because of the Cardinals being too cowardly to let his excellence in their locker room. (I heard they’re shopping for another Leinart-level failure, but that’s for another day. Sanchez remains available….) I don’t know whether he will seek to coach or, if he does, be any good at it, but one would hope he could pass his fire on to a new generation of Stiller LBs.
All I know is, a relative worked in a restaurant he frequented in Pgh and passed along “that he’s the thickest motherfucker any of us have ever seen”. That, and King Roger the Clown will now have to find someone else to use as The whipping boy for his fine policy and practice, in his unending quest to geld football and, especially, defensive football.
If the Patsies only get 3 TDs this year, I expect Giselle will be howling so loudly she’ll be heard all the way to Grand Rapids. If, OTOH, they only carry 3 TEs, that’ll be interesting b/c their WRs all seem undersized – under-height, to be precise – to me.
Oops.
Clearly GOodell is willing to focus on Suh, as well.
Pats are only carrying “three TD’s” this year??
Isn’t Brady supposed to throw for more than that in the first game???
From the Wall Street Journal, of all places, comes this elegant graph entitled “The College Football Grid of Shame” in which each college football team is plotted along two axes. The left-right axis is from “weakling” to “powerhouse” and the up-down axis is from “embarrassing” to “admirable.”
I was stunned to see the Fighting Journalists ranked tops in the “admirable” direction when I read the note explaining this that said “Though regressing on the field, the Wildcats move up because of ex-quarterback Kain Coulter’s principled unionization movement.”
It was the last three words that stunned me. Praise for a unionization movement from the WSJ?
(In the other direction, I was not at all stunned to see Penn State at the bottom of the “embarrassing” end of the scale, just below Florida, Alabama and Oklahoma on the “powerhouse” side of the chart.)
Oh, and just to get this out of the way: the FJs will take down the Berkeley Bears this afternoon.
Now hold on just a minute, there, Padre! That would the Florida STATE Seminoles down on the embarrassing side (you know, rape and crab leg theft by their Heisman guy). The Florida Gators are somehow (inexplicably according to most of the trashies here, I’m sure) in positive territory on the admirable side (with a Heisman guy who prays everywhere).
Looking at the logo, of course you’re right about the schools — but the WSJ labelled it “Florida” and not FSU.
Looking at the inexplicable placement of Teh Gators, you’re right there too..
What?? did they just simply exclude the Urban Meyer years????
Commissioner-ing is hard werk:
“Roger Goodell, commissioner of the National Football League, made $44 million last year. That’s a $15 million increase over 2011-12, when he was paid just $29.5 million.”
gotta love the “just”.
http://www.showbiz411.com/2014/08/20/shocker-exclusive-nfl-commish-roger-goodell-made-44mil-last-year-15mil-increase
I have an opinion on that, and it’s something like ‘ that’s at least 35 million too high’.
By the way, just in case anyone is actually you know, watching football, the Appalachian State Mountaineers appear to be lost on the flatland of the Michigan gridiron:
App St 0 v. Mich 28, 2nd quarter
bmaz is off to a solid start for the year ; P
and while I was typing the Wolvereenies got another 6…
I see what you did there — Owls. Sleeping. Heh.
But seriously, the Domers QB needs to beware of White on Rice, back there in the secondary.
Here is hoping the Owls Hoot (and other excrements) all over that damn Golden Dome.
I’m only making a case for today. Mays, yes. Mantle coulda been, yes. Griffey, came right up to the edge. Ruth, and he pitched, too. Bonds, no amount of steroids makes anyone actually hit the ball that good. Trout — making quite the splash for 23 and actually seems to have a disposition that could carry him, but I certainly agree it’s way to soon to make “all time” suggestions.
Yeah, I understand the hatred of Bonds, I really do. But that guy had all time level greatness plastered all over him to start with. And, yes, the fact that such is lost in the milieu bugs me. Griffey Jr. had injuries that, stupidly, keep him out of the discussion. I really do not want to take anything away from Mike Trout. 5-6 more years of the kind of production, at bat and in the field, and he will deserve to be in that discussion with the others. No doubt he has shown that to start. He is awesome.
And as Scribe noted, I still think the arguably best player ever was Willie. The pitching thing with Ruth early in his career makes it awfully close. Mickey Mantle would probably pretty easily be right there if not for knee injuries and/or if he had the benefit of modern medicine.
Seriously though, that is a rare level of a club in baseball. People do not get added to it easily.
Good to see my WKU Hilltoppers put the beat down on that other Bowling Green school last night 59 – 31. Especially since that Ohio Bowling Green was favored by 7 1/2 on the road. They are also favored to win the MAC and the MAC is supposed to be the top non-power conference.
One of these days, the ‘Toppers will get some respect.
And Rams cut Sam.
From what I could tell in the coverage, it came down to a close call between him and another defensive player.
There are a lot of guys who never got as far in the league as did Sam. And, he did sack Johnny Football a couple times, too. He’s got skills and I think some team will pick him up, if the Rams don’t sign him to the practice squad first.
It’s an understandable decision. The other guy — an undrafted free agent — had about the same numbers as Sam across the pre season. Plus, he did better in practice and could play more positions.
Sam would fit better in some other offenses. We’ll see whether any of them pick him up. If not he’ll end up on STL’s practice squad.
Hope someone picks him up – I’ve seen hints that the Rams might want him for their taxi squad, but I dunno how that works. He deserves a better shot than he’s been getting.
I read some more coverage on him and the consensus was that he was getting beat and that the undrafted free agent he was up against was outplaying him in every department. Add to that that he’s of a size that often winds up playing LB, rather than DE, in the No Fun League, and it seems the smart money had all decided he was the far more likely cut.
Or, in other words, he just wasn’t the combination of good enough and big enough to cut it in the league.
The guy they signed wasn’t that much better.
These are all great athletes. But the one they kept was just a bit better.
As I understand it, a team can sign a player they cut to their practice squad after the player clears waivers, i.e., are not signed by another team. The players cut today will clear waivers sometime tomorrow, early in the afternoon.
high everybody
boomer sooners
who cares about embaresment
this is football, not real life
hi, freep!
Freep! Good to see you.
Freep! Nice to see you… Feels like old home week at the Wheelhouse : ) Now who has the key to the liquor cabinet…
the band’s back together!
There’s a key?
I always kind of leaned on it in *just* the right way, and it popped open like magic.
Oh.
That’s why I have to keep repairing the hinges?
No.
You have to keep repairing the hinges because everyone who gets there after bmaz discovers that the cabinet is almost empty, and they slam the doors in disgust.
I’ve heard that the metal strips used for street-sweeper brooms can be turned into nice lock-picking tools.
We’re over an hour into lightning delay before the Gator game gets started. My wife just wondered on Facebook whether the rain will be enough to put out the dumpster fire…
Jim, if you’re cooking in the dumpster you’re doing it wrong.
Come on up to B1G territory and we’ll explain this whole “grilling” thing to you.
And if you’re really serious, come by KC and we’ll show you the difference between grilling and barbequing.
So after a nearly three hour delay for lightening in the area and so much rain the standing water on the field had waves when the wind blew, Idaho finally kicked off to the Gators just before 10 pm. The kick was returned by Valdez Showers (see what Old Man Weather did there?) to the 14 of Idaho, but before the first play from scrimmage could happen, there was more lightening. The game was finally cancelled around 11.
The dumpster fire that is the UF football program has not decided whether and when there will be a makeup game, even though today could work out well since the No Fun League hasn’t officially started and it is a three day weekend. Both teams also have the same open date in late October, but the Gators like to take that week off to start drinking for the Georgia game in Jacksonville the next week.
And … the Texans took Mallett.
For just a 6th Round pick.
Bill Bel must REALLY like Grappo to send Mallet packing for just a 6th Rounder
Especially since Jerry Jones was shopping too.
It’s prolly that he really likes Bill O’Brian–can’t have another BillBel Assistant go bust in the NFL.
Egads. Now they’re saying Mallett only got a 7th round pick.
Hoping BillBel has big plans for that spot on the roster to explain all this.
I told you so, way upthread:
I think what Cheatin’ Bill is working on is something like that old TV commercial, where they took video of a first-season Texans game and digitally erased half the Texans’ o-line, then turned the defense loose on David Carr and put him on his ass. I foresee Biebs getting his butt very acquainted with the turf at Foxboro.
And reporters all over New England hunting and stalking for the sharp-edged quotes from Giselle.
Added: Two DLs. Neither of them Sam.
I think Bill Bel would have picked up Sam if he thought he was as good as either one of these players. He pretty clearly did not.
Also, I see Bill is back to his old ways of carrying just two QBs.
Well, Sam is not a good choice for BillBel for 2 reasons:
1) BillBel breeds complexity. You gotta be able to do it in practice to do it on the field. Sam is not a good practice player, apparently. So that’s not gonna work.
2) BillBel is the consummate multi-use demander. You gotta play DE AND special teams AND long snap AND maybe tight end. That’s not Sam.
Niners seem to have some D-Line issues. Just saying.
And coach Bill is an arrogant dick. I love the Pats but BillyBoy has no bedside manners.
To Scribe’s point, Bob Ryan writes..
” Bill was a bad boy. He was an envelope-pushing bad boy, and he got caught. He got caught and he didn’t care. He did it again and then offered up a preposterously lame and thoroughly disingenuous excuse about not being sure of the rule in question. Let’s make one thing clear: Nobody in the NFL knows the rules and regulations better than Bill Belichick.
People hereabouts want to pretend the S-word didn’t happen. The rest of the world knows better. And many Patriots and Belichick haters love to point out that since that S-word thing happened the Patriots have not won a Super Bowl. They coulda/shoulda/woulda won both times against the Giants, but they didn’t. Hats off to the Giants, and to Eli Manning, who twice one-upped Brady by taking the ball behind on the scoreboard and then orchestrating winning touchdown drives in the biggest showcase the sport has to offer.
Some people believe it must be divine intervention, punishing Coach Bill for being a naughty, envelope-pushing boy. I’m not going there.
I will!
The simple fact of the matter is that Brady and Cheatin’ Bill had to cheat to win. Cheatin’ Bill surrounds himself with the Mystique and Aura* of being the wise, inscrutable technician who Finds New Ways To Win. Any honest NE fan knows how far Cheatin’ Bill’s wisdom goes, encapsulating it in the phrase “4th and 2”.
His last New Way involved cheating. Since he was found out on that one, we know the result. It looked for a while that his tight end play was the Next Big Thing, until Gronk turned out to have bones of clay. Too much time in the mosh pit and making Dunkin’ Donuts commercials.
And Brady? If he was so good, he would have managed to win one of those Giants Super Bowls. He would have strapped his team on his back and gone out and won. Instead, I think he’s letting his missus run interference for him.
As noted above, Bad Eli and Evil Big Ben each have more Super Bowl wins than the Patsies since 2004.
Oh, the Patsies fans will hold these truths within them until, in the dark and quiet of their home at night, they will quietly admit to themselves that (a) I’m right and (b) the Football Gods are still making Cheatin’ Bill pay for cheating. Their quiet admission runs something along the lines of Jefferson’s meditation on slavery: “I tremble for my country, for I know God is just.”
I think Cheatin’ Bill still has some payments to make.
—
* In the immortal words of Curt Schilling, circa 11/01, after he and the Diamondbacks defeated the Yankees on a bloop hit in the bottom of the 9th of game 7, Mystique and Aura sound like the names of some dancers working at the strip club down by the airport. That’s the neighborhood Cheatin’ Bill lives in.
Vengeance is more satisfying when exacted in cold blood?
Way too harsh on Tommy….. warm up to the Pats and Brady, they have a fine team
And yes, I realize long snapper is a special teams player. Right now the Pats ain’t got one. Ninkovich will have to do the job, but if Brady has to hold kicks, then I guess Ninkovich will long snap again.
Aloha, Marcy, bmaz, Jim and wheelies…! I had the distinct pleasure in chatting with Prof. Juan Cole today, ahead of next Sunday’s FDL Book Salon on his new book, The New Arabs, of which I have the honor of hosting…! I’d asked how Turkey would respond to an independent Kurdistan in Iraq, and he’d assured me that Erdogan was on board, and it was Iran that was the real wild card, I’d respectively disagreed but let it go…! Soon after the hour and 1/2 chat we had, I’d found Laura Poitras explosive Intercept article, How the NSA Helped Turkey Kill Kurdish Rebels Wheels within wheels, eh…? ;-)