After a rough opening period, Vanderbilt erased a thirteen-point halftime deficit to twice take the lead in the second half, but an inability to score any points for the final 4:09 of the game doomed the Commodores to defeat at the hands of the #1 Wildcats. Complete postgame coverage is available here, here, and here. My impressions of the game were 1) Kentucky is a very good team; 2) Vanderbilt showed it could overcome obstacles and come back in a game, playing the best team in the country better than anybody has since an early season ‘Cat loss to Indiana; and 3) UK and Vandy at Memorial Gym is one of the most exciting sports scenes out there.

After a late arrival into Music City Friday night, I couldn’t get myself to the gym for the early taping of ESPN’s Gameday program, but things got on track quickly with a lunch of the best fried chicken in all the land with with 2/5ths of the VSL Brain Trust, among many other notable persons. Follow that up with afternoon honky-tonking– the live sounds of Tootsie’s and Robert’s– and a fresh growler from Jackalope Brewery, and I was primed to enjoy a pregame treat in the form of watching Michigan State defeat Ohio State over some fresh brats. A Sunday morning visit to St. Augustine, and I was Northbound again. Traveling through Kentucky, picking up WKU Radio’s Barren River Breakdown program dulled the sting of the previous night’s loss just a little bit.

The ‘Dores get another regular-season chance against the Wildcats this weekend when they travel to Rupp Arena, where Kentucky has won forty-nine straight.

For more of my pictures, click here, here, here, and here.

Previous Live Coverage:
Beale Street recap: Vandy falls to Cincinnati in the Liberty Bowl, 31-24
Bpbrady’s Long Overdue Sugar Bowl Writeup
Windy City recap: Red Wings fall to Blackhawks 3-2
Michigan’s unfriendly welcoming of Nebraska
B1G Roadtrippin’: Michigan at Illinois
Nashville recap: Georgia escapes, 33-28
B1G Roadtrippin’: Michigan at Northwestern
The Little Brown Jug stays in Ann Arbor
Recap: Detroit Red Wings’ Red & White Game
Motor City recap: Tigers win, 2-1
Music City recap: Vanderbilt wins, 45-14
Concert report: Lyle Lovett and his Large Band
Concert report: An evening with Bruce Hornsby, Béla Fleck, the Noisemakers, and the Flecktones

I saw the above in the @ALDLANDia twitter feed a few moments ago. Assuming it was real, it since has been deleted. Further assuming it was real, it strikes me as all kinds of problematic.

As I’m writing this, SB Nation confirms that the above tweet was real and that Seals-Jones wasn’t the only recruit to receive such a message.

It might not seem like it, but, as discussed on ESPN Radio’s Mike & Mike this morning, LeBron James’ current season is the best season a professional player has ever had. John Hollinger, also of ESPN, created the Player Efficiency Rating (PER) metric for basketball players. In (his) general terms, “the PER sums up all a player’s positive accomplishments, subtracts the negative accomplishments, and returns a per-minute rating of a player’s performance.” It’s an advanced metric, and really, it’s a doubly advanced metric because it’s derivative of other advanced metrics. If you want it, the nitty gritty is here, but what PER allows us to do is compare individual players with their contemporaries and with those from other eras on equal footing.

The following is a list of the top individual full-season performances, based on PER, in the history of the NBA and ABA:

The full list from Basketball-Reference is here.

James already has two of the ten best seasons, and he’s the only active player in that group. (His teammate, Dwayne Wade, is the next active player listed, at 13.) If the current season ended today, though, James would post a PER of 32.8, by far the highest mark ever recorded.

Perception is a valid and important check on the things statistics tell us. I feel like there are a million things one could write about James and perception, expectations, image, and legacy, all of which would get at the fact that the title of this post is something I’d guess most people reject as an initial, gut reaction but also something we all expected we would read, write, or say at some point. There are myriad potential lessons here. One is that these advanced metrics are a way of witnessing history in the moment, something that’s difficult to do based upon perception alone. Another is that, darn it, I hate LeBron and sabermetrics are for idiot-nerds. A third raises questions about the value we place on winning championships as a component of individual players’ legacies. A fourth is that Patrick Ewing, whose best season comes in at #117 on the big list, might not be the Dan Marino of the 1980s and 1990s NBA, and Kobe Bryant, whose best season so far comes in at #51, isn’t quite the heir to His Airness’ throne, or even Shaq’s big seat. And on and on.

But what about Kobe this year? First, he was visibly upset about the dismissal of Lamar Odom. More recently, he was visibly ignorant of Jeremy Lin. Slightly more recently, he was the victim of Jeremy Lin’s best career NBA performance. The uniform he’s wearing this year is too big. He seems to lack context, even for himself. What’s his story this year?

Kobe has arguably reached the end of his prime, and while it’s fascinating to watch him hoop with somebody’s swooning great aunt, you can’t help but feel like the moment deserves higher stakes. Kobe’s relentlessness has always been his most celebrated quality, but this season, he’s starting to remind me of one of those space probes that somehow keep feeding back data even after they’ve gone out twice as far as the zone where they were supposed to break down. You know these stories — no one at NASA can believe it, every day they come into work expecting the line to be dead, but somehow, the beeps and blorps keep coming through. Maybe half the transmissions get lost these days, or break up around the moons of Jupiter, but somehow, this piece of isolated metal keeps functioning on a cold fringe of the solar system that no human eyes have seen.

That’s Kobe, right? While the rest of the Lakers look increasingly anxious and time-bound, he just keeps gliding farther out, like some kind of experiment to see whether never having a single feeling can make you immortal. He’s barely preserving radio contact with anyone else at this point, but basketball scientists who’ve seen fragments of his diagnostic readouts report that the numbers are heartening. It’s bizarre. He’s simultaneously the main character in the Lakers’ drama and someone who seems to have nothing to do with the narrative logic of the post-Phil team. Whatever the Mike Brown era is, he’s got no point of contact with it. Even Gasol and Bynum, his best supporting players, essentially just concentrate on not interfering with his flight path. Everyone stays out of his way, which is easy, because “his way” is a couple of billion miles from the rest of the Lakers.

So writes Brian Phillips for Grantland, in a piece arguing that the Lakers have nothing to lose by adding Gilbert Arenas right now.

I’m not sure what I think about Agent Zero these days, I do know that I think Phillips pretty much nailed it with that description. 2012 Kobe is playing like carry-the-team-on-my-back Kobe, except that he doesn’t seem too concerned about whether he’s actually dragging the team along behind him. Spike Lee’s Kobe Doin’ Work was about the 2008 playoffs, but the title might more aptly describe this season, where Kobe’s blue collar isn’t so much the value and virtue-laden, American proverbial blue collar as it is an indication that he’s merely punching the clock.

This time of the year is a bit of a lull in the sports calendar, though college basketball continues its upward march toward March, and both Michigan State and Vanderbilt– two teams that have traveled in different directions a bit, mostly by virtue of their original positions this year– appear to be pulling it together when it counts.

After the Red Wings’ record-setting win on Valentine’s Day, they have extended their home winning streak to 23, now besting all such streaks (and not merely those within a single season).

Out East, the Linsanity rolls on. Out West, a rolling avalanche killed three skiiers, including the head judge of the Freeskiing World Tour, in Washington. (These, of course, are not the season’s first skiing deaths.)

Coming attractions here this week include my overdue report on the Kentucky-Vanderbilt game, bdoyk’s nod to Tim Wakefield, and a preview of the 2012 NASCAR season. Thanks to Jalen Rose and all the rest of you for dropping by.

It therefore was with some surprise that I began to hear Rose making post-playing-career appearances in the national sports media, first (to my ears) on Jim Rome’s radio show, where the two considered each other “brothers in smack” (not a drug reference), and then as an NBA analyst on ESPN. Later, Rose rode the social media wave, positioning himself as an independent online presence through his Twitter feed and interactive website.

I haven’t been a podcast person– until recently, my lifestyle lacked one of the two alternatively necessary elements: a long daily commute or the structure of a single, working person– which is why I didn’t mention Grantland’s podcast section in my initial assessment of that site. Since then, though, I have attempted to integrate podcasts into my regular media consumption, and so far, only one has stuck (although I did check in with The Solid Verbal during the college football season).

When I saw the announcement about the firstsecond episode of the Grantland Network’s “Jalen Rose Show” (the first time it was called that), I didn’t realize it was an actual show or series, and I thought the headline was a reference to Rose’s talkative personality, his ability to carry a segment, a show, a full podcast. Fifteen episodes later, I’m glad I was mistaken.

To give you a flavor of the program, here’s the first of two video clips they have released:

There really isn’t anyone like Rose in sports media today. He is candid, thoughtful, and unintentionally funny. Things he avoid include clichés and directly answering the question asked of him. The former is quite welcome in this time of ESPN supersaturation, and the latter is one of his most important oratorical qualities. He doesn’t dodge questions, like most sports media personalities; rather, his indirect answers are a function of his intelligence and thoughtfulness, which inform the more complete responses he provides. He never begins his answer to a yes-or-no question with a yes or a no; instead, he’ll immediately launch into an anecdote or background explanation that lays the explanatory groundwork for the yay or nay response he’ll conclude with. It’s a style unlike any other in today’s sports media, and it offers the listener at least two benefits: 1) a fresh, engaging aural flow, and 2) a greater opportunity to hear more of Rose’s seemingly endless vignettes from inside the sports world.

And he’s got a lot of those. Did you know he once stole Patrick Ewing’s television? He also shares his unabashed opinions: a question this week about Carlos Boozer’s hair led to his allusion to early male-pattern baldness (“brains blown out”) and the Nixon administration (“the coverup is worse than the crime”).

Good stuff there, new episodes every Monday (it used to be Fridays, and since I know this will hit Jalen’s Google alert, here’s my direct request for a return to Fridays), and they come in easily digestible chunks of forty-five minutes or so. Host David Jacoby does a good job of a) guiding and prodding Rose through a wide-ranging discussion of sports, the sporting lifestyle, fashion, pop culture, and other topics, and b) having a voice that makes you surprised when you see what he looks like. On that first point, the show covers a broad range of sports, although it understandably is weighted toward NBA topics. Rose’s bias in favor of all things Southeast Michigan also is an enjoyable touch for this listener (the Wolverines aside).

Of the only other video clip they’ve released, which comes from the beginning of this week’s episode, Jacoby writes: “We included video in this week’s podcast because we think it is important for people see what happens behind the scenes, like the fact that Jalen will record an entire pod with a baseball bat in his hands. . . . Seriously, as you listen, remember Jalen has a baseball bat in his hands the entire time. It changes everything.”

There may be athletes and non-athletes in sports media today who have more stores to tell than Rose, but there’s no one more candid than Rose in telling more of those stories, and you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone as verbally engaging.

UPDATE:

@ALDLANDia this is a thoughtful take about our Podcast & my media exploits. I will keep it coming & Thanks for the love!—
JALEN ROSE (@jalenrose) February 16, 2012

Last night, the Red Wings set an NHL record with 21 straight home wins.  The record had previously been held jointly by the 1929-30 Bruins and the 1975-76 Flyers.  There has been a lot of chatter on the internets about how the Wings’ record does not mean as much because the two other teams that made it to 20 straight wins did it without overtime or shootouts.  That’s bogus . . . 21 straight wins at home is 21 straight wins at home, however you cut it.  The record wasn’t “number of wins at home in a row without overtime or a shootout.”  It’s just “number of wins at home in a row.”  There are also compelling arguments for why the Red Wings’ winning streak is equally as or more impressive than the ones rattled off by the Flyers and Bruins, such as the fact that the salary cap-era NHL features significantly more parity and the fact that the Red Wings continued this streak amidst several trips to and from the west coast.  In the end, the Wings should be happy about this accomplishment, but not too happy because I still expect to be flying back to Detroit for a parade in June.

In 1965, the San Francisco Warriors traded Wilt Chamberlain to the Philadelphia 76ers for Connie Dierking, Lee Shaffer, Paul Neumann and $150,000. Chamberlain went on to win two NBA championships and three more MVPs after leaving San Francisco.

In 1980, the Golden State Warriors traded Robert Parish and a draft pick – used to take Kevin McHale – to the Boston Celtics for a draft pick. The Celtics landed two future Hall of Fame players who would join Larry Bird to form the franchise’s legendary “Big Three.” The Warriors used the draft pick they received in the deal to select … Joe Barry Carroll.

Chris Webber developed into one of the league’s better power forwards after the Warriors traded him for Tom Gugilotta and three draft picks. Tim Hardaway became an MVP candidate for the Miami Heat after the Warriors moved him. Mitch Richmond turned into a six-time All-Star for the Sacramento Kings after the Warriors traded him.

The list of players whose success grew after they left the Warriors is long and paints a not-so-flattering portrayal of the franchise. If you’re on the Warriors’ roster and seeking stardom, history suggests you should head elsewhere.

Like Jeremy Lin did. … Read More

(via Yahoo! Sports)

Saturday night’s primetime college basketball matchups saw both visiting teams come away with victories. In the early game, Michigan State beat Ohio State, ending the Buckeyes’ thirty-nine game home winning streak with a comfortable ten-point victory. In the late game, Vanderbilt erased a thirteen-point halftime deficit but were unable to close in the final minutes, losing to #1 Kentucky 69-63. (More on this game later.)

We’ve so far resisted the seemingly linfinite opportunities to write about New York Knicks point guard Jeremy Lin– he isn’t even my favorite Lin brother– but his 38-point effort against Kobe Bryant and the Lakers deserves mention.

Finally, while MSU ended OSU’s home win streak, the cross-state Detroit Red Wings came from behind to beat the Flyers in Hockeytown for their twentieth consecutive home win, which tied the record set by the 1929-30 Bruins and matched by Philadelphia’s 1976 crew.

ESPN’s College Gameday returns to Nashville this Saturday, with the focus on an 8:00 pm Central game between Vanderbilt and top-ranked Kentucky, following a 6:00 Eastern game between Michigan State and Ohio State in Columbus. It’s a big night for college basketball– particularly ALDLAND’s brand of college basketball– and because I’ve been to Columbus once and have no immediate desire to return, we’re taking you live to Memorial Gym for the late game.

Both Kentucky and Vanderbilt had high expectations before the season started, ranked #2 and #7, respectively, and while the Wildcats currently are surpassing those expectations, the Commodores have faltered. There are two main donkeys on which the tails of their struggles can be pinned: 1) knee injuries to big-man Festus Ezeli, and 2) a lack of bench support. These two rationales also provide good (and mostly legitimate) smokescreens for what Vandy fans fear may be behind their team’s difficulties: the apparent mental weakness that has kept this group from rising to its physical potential in past years. One sign that this spectre is fading is the pleasantly aggressive and frequently commanding performance of Jeffrey Taylor.

UK comes into Saturday night on a tear. They are 11-0 in SEC play, and they generally have been demolishing their opponents. I saw their most recent game, which was a comfortable win over Florida, a team that itself had a mostly comfortable win over Vanderbilt just last weekend. Vandy, meanwhile, comes limping– literally, in Ezeli’s case– into this game, with Wednesday night’s home win over LSU lukewarm comfort after consecutive eight-point losses to Florida and Arkansas. (The Razorbacks’ 81-59 loss to Georgia on Wednesday doesn’t help either.)

Before handing this post over to more accomplished previewers, a note on one similarity and one difference between these two teams. First, many have cited the Wildcats’ size as a factor in their success this season, but Vanderbilt actually matches up well with them physically. Second, Kentucky’s coach, John Calipari, is known for favoring young players, and this year’s starters– three freshman and two sophomores– track to that preference. Vanderbilt, meanwhile, starts a veteran crew: four seniors and one junior.

For an extended, thorough analysis of Saturday night’s game, read this preview at Open ‘Dores. For a Vandy pep talk, watch Jay Bilas’ video hit.

I’ve seen these two teams play twice before with mixed results. In 2008, the Commodores avenged a 79-73 double-overtime loss in Lexington by stunning the Wildcats 93-52 at Memorial Gym. I stunned myself with my own foolishness when I realized, after the game, that I’d locked my keys in my car and that, even in the Mid South, February is a cold month. Two years later, I saw these two again, when Vandy dropped a heartbreaker at home in 2010, losing by two points after missing multiple opportunites to seal a win or send the game into overtime. That was the most exciting game I’ve attended where the team I favored did not win.

Tomorrow’s game presents an even tougher test for Vanderbilt. I know Bilas is a Dookie of the first order, but if he says they can win, then it can be done. Plus, Vanderbilt has recent experience knocking of #1-ranked rival teams: they did it it to Tennessee in 2008.

First, in case you missed the Super Bowl for some reason, here’s the whole thing in ninety seconds:

(HT: It’s Always Sunny in Detroit)

Second, our coverage of the Big Game®:

• The winners and losers of Super Bowl weekend
• Bdoyk’s post mortem
• Bdoyk’s pre mortem

After the jump, an infographic, a motion graphic, snipers, and more.  

How much alcohol did we really drink last Sunday? Pull off the beer goggles for a closer look at a popular infographic.

Two late-breaking sets of Super Bowl images: snipers in the stadium rafters and the ankle-healing power of LMFAO, as applied to Rob Gronkowski (here, here, and here).

Looking back on the regular season…

Remember Monday Night Football’s darkest hour?

(HT: Internet Addiction) (Where do you go when the lights go out in the Bay Area?)

Other highlights from our 2011 NFL coverage:

• A boy named Suh
• Mark 2011 as the year the Lord took on NFL player contracts
• “The Ballad of Kerry Collins”
• Why is Roger Goodell carrying water for the NCAA?
• The Weekend Interview: Chris Johnson
• Philadelphia dreamin’, on such a summer’s day

ESPN Los Angeles reports that Chauncey Billups, Man of Troy, wounded Achilles, mightiest of all Greek warriors, in a battle during the Second Trojan War last night in Orlando, Florida…

Experts in Detroit, Denver, and New York wondered whether Billups had finally earned his nickname, Mr. Big Shot… 

Oh.

You know that feeling when you go through a break up? You wake up the next morning. You feel tired despite hours of sleep. You check your phone hoping for a text that will make you realize that what happened the night before hadn’t really happened; it was just a bad dream. You drag yourself out of bed, and put on the clothes that make you feel the most comfortable and secure (sweat material, a big scarf, and a glamorous pair of sunglasses are always in the mix). You tell yourself it will be ok, and haltingly pull yourself together and get out the door. You go to your favorite coffeshop, in hopes that a cup of your favorite dark roast will wake you up and make you productive once more. But as you sit, trying to avoid songs that inspire memories, occasionally accidentally stumbling upon photos, you get flashes of sadness and hurt, maybe even an occasional tear. You rehash everything, and think to yourself, “If only we had done ____ differently, things would be so different.” You sigh deeply, and your friend walks in and says, “You look…..sad.” You drop your head on the table in a way that you think Carrie Bradshaw did once, and make some absurd sound and make the conjecture that you’re likely doomed to a lonely future of multiple cats and maybe some Golden Girl-esque roommates. The whole day passes by in a woosh of general malaise. Oh that doesn’t happen to you? Yeah, me neither…

This is how the day has passed. The low level nausea, the sadness, the strange groans. However, this time, it wasn’t attributable to a relationship gone south, but rather the demise of my beloved Patriots. Three plays. Had three plays turned out differently, I think it would have been the Pats to win; however, as it played out, the right team won and my heart is a little broken. For the next million years, I will shield my eyes from the butt slide seen round the world. I’m grieving this as I do any break up, with a few glasses of wine, some retail therapy, and bad reality television (seriously, y’all, that Alicia Keyes back up singer can SING, right?). Pretty soon, it will be onto Phase 2: my favorite outfit, hottest heels, and a little extra swagger with which to confront those who offer you a sympathy, “Oh, I’m so…sorry?” Yep, I will mourn and I will move on. I will always have love in my heart for the 2011 squad though.

The good news is: pitchers and catchers is so so soon. AND we got a Beckham commercial and TWO Tim Riggins sightings, so the night wasn’t a total wash. Oh, and I got a solid chuckle when my dad called in earnest at halftime to ask me if Vince Wilfork was on stage with Madonna (granted, this is the same man who asked me after last year’s Grammy’s who was on stage with “Christina Pullthrough”–yep, that’s right, Gwyneth Paltrow.) In the end, it’ll be ok, but I am secretly hoping that this break up with the 2011 season comes with a bit of a break-up diet too.

Winner: The New York Giants. They scored first, with a technical safety on the Patriots’ opening drive, when Tom Brady stood in his own end zone and intentionally grounded the ball, and they scored last, when Ahmad Bradshaw carried a little more momentum than he probably expected on a largely undefended running play, to beat New England 21-17.

Loser: The New England Patriots. Despite going down 9-0 early in the game, they took a lead into halftime, thanks for a field-traversing drive on which Tom Brady was 10-10 in passing. The Pats suddenly looked like their old, domineering, mechanistic, enemy-vaporizing selves. And they got the ball to start the second half! I sent a text message to Bdoyk at halftime: “Tide has turned.” Her response: “Don’t say that.” To the hyperstitious greater Massachusetts sports community, I’m sorry if that in-game prediction of victory caused your players to develop stone hands on the final drive. 

Winner: Ahmad Bradshaw. As mentioned, the Giants’ final touchdown was a bit odd. (Deadspin has the video here.) Down two with a minute left, New York’s strategy would have appeared to be to burn as much time off the clock, having driven to a point comfortably within field-goal range. At best up five (missing the 2-point conversion actually only put them up four), the last thing the Giants wanted was to give Brady a full :57 to march down the field. Watch that clip twice, first to see Bradshaw’s apparent indecisiveness upon finding himself on the goal line, and second, to decide whether the New England defense (despite a good acting job by Brandon Spikes (#55) after the fact), let him score, something that may have caused Bradshaw to carry an unexpectedly unnecessarily large head of steam that he was unable to reverse.

Loser: Rob Gronkowski. The star tight end played hurt, but did little more than that on Sunday night, catching just two passes. (His counterpart, Aaron Hernandez, caught eight, including one touchdown.) Yet he nearly caught the Hail Mary pass pictured above, which would’ve won the game and made him an unassailable champion of grit in the New England sports and adult entertainment communities. It also would’ve turned Bradshaw into a goat for failing to sit down outside the end zone on the play described above, thereby giving Brady the necessary time to conduct the game-winning drive. As well as Hernandez played, you have to think that a healthy Gronkowski would’ve made a difference in this game.

Winner: The legacies of Tom Coughlin and Eli Manning. Coughlin seems to spend the first 3/4ths of every season being “quit on” by his players and generally on the coaching hot seat, only to somehow get them to stop reviling him and pull it together just in time to make it into the playoffs and go on a tear. Manning has been the little brother of all little brothers, being laughed at when he described himself as elite, and barely able to avoid his older brother’s shadow even in doubling up on Peyton for Super Bowl wins in a game played in “the house that Peyton built” and in a week in which Peyton’s health continued to grab headlines. Still, Eli deftly avoided submitting to his brother, notably in Dan Patrick’s postgame, on-field interview, and he very undeniably has two Super Bowls to Peyton’s one, with nothing but the usual players-quitting-on-Coughlin to stand in the way of a third ring down the road. Coughlin is a two-time champion now too, and it seems harder to imagine he’ll face the same amount of job pressure going forward. And while Public Enemy’s legacy certainly has taken a hit due to Flava Flav’s more recent antics, the fact that he and Coughlin shared the coach’s first embrace following his postgame interview suggests that the public has accepted Coughlin’s commitment to timeliness.

Loser: The legacies of Bill Belichick and Tom Brady. This is absurd, of course, as their legacies as winners and champions are firmly established. I had to stick with the binary organization of this post, though, and I do wonder how the Patriots’ losses last night and in Super Bowl XLII will shape the way we understand these two once they’re out of the game. You can’t say that either is on the decline, but the makeup and style of gameplay certainly has changed in New England. That doesn’t seem to explain it, though. It also isn’t as if the old guard ran into another juggernaut on a roll (these Giants are more 2011 St. Louis Cardinals than early 90s Cowboys or 80s 49ers) or some young, paradigm-shifting buzzsaw (Cam Newton hasn’t played in the Super Bowl…yet).

Winner: Madonna. I am not a fan of hers, but neither am an an anti-fan, and I thought she put on a great halftime show. Yes, during her introductory entrance, some kids may have been wondering who was ripping off Lady Gaga, and yes, some portions certainly evoked Gwen Stefani, but the whole thing made me feel like we finally had returned to that pre-Jacksonian era of glitzy, up-tempo Super Bowl halftime acts. The focus remained on the music, and her pipes sounded strong, but there was a ton of showy visual entertainment the whole family could enjoy. I liked Madonna’s willingness to share the stage with other pop stars, most successfully with Cee Lo Green. Phil Collins must’ve just missed the final cut. And yes, in case you weren’t positive what you saw, independent sources using video evidence have confirmed that M.I.A. flipped you the bird right before the camera cut away from her after her solo bit.

Loser: The commercials. At least two companies leaked their commercials (the ones that starred Matthew Broderick and Jerry Seinfeld) before the Super Bowl, and, before the game, I had been thinking that that was a good move. I still think it probably was a good move in terms of getting more views of those commercials, but it didn’t do a thing for the in-game viewing experience. The advertising slate lacked any real standouts, and what is Bud Light Platinum, or is it best I don’t know? The one exception was Clint Eastwood’s Detroit commercial, “It’s Halftime, America.” Made me want to drive my Jeep through a brick wall.

In other weekend sports…

Winner: Michigan State. After losing by one point to the Wolverines in Ann Arbor, the Spartans dominated Michigan at the Breslin Center on Sunday afternoon. This may be Izzo’s worst team, but, on the back of tenth-year senior Draymond Green, he’s got them playing extremely well and, as usual, they appear to be peaking at just the right time.

Loser: Vanderbilt. They saved the meat of their conference schedule for the end, and it isn’t treating them kindly. After falling to Arkansas in Fayetteville, the Commodores took another road loss this weekend, this time in Gainesville. Their next two games are at home, first against LSU on Wednesday, and then a huge matchup that Bdoyk and I will be attending against Kentucky this Saturday night. After this week, Vandy has to play each of Florida and Kentucky once more in the regular season, so these home games become very important for the confidence of the sometimes mentally weak Commodores.

Winner: Los Angeles Clippers. Looking to add some muscle, they added Kenyon Martin. I agree that LAC needed to boost their toughness, but I actually am not too sure if this was the best way to do it. In support of the move, though, there’s always this.

Loser: Memphis Grizzlies. After starting pretty strong, the Grizz have lost two in a row and six of their last eight to settle in at 12-12, which has to be pretty disappointing for a team that was supposed to be a contender in the West this year, even given the absence of Zach Randolph.

My interpretation of the apparent lack of media probing into the breakdown in talks is that it is evidence of the changing perception of the two fighters toward a more positive view of Mayweather.

__________________________________________________

Related
Cinco de Mayweather
Four rounds with Floyd Mayweather and Victor Ortiz

I am not much for cover bands, and tribute bands, I think, are even worse. The former are, at best, live-action human jukeboxes, and the latter present, to me, such an existential block that I can barely hear the music when I’ve found myself in their presence. I realize, though, that there is mounting evidence that I am a music snob, which is why I am happy to report the following:

Last week, a group of top young musicians from across the state came together to present a one-off tribute performance of Fleetwood Mac’s multi-platinum album, Rumours. In short, it was fantastic. The players were in full costume and persona, and they performed the album, as well as an encore of hits from the band’s other albums, extremely well. There really was a special feeling about the night, a fundraiser for the 100-year-old Wealthy Theatre, which served as the venue.

Because I’m planning to enjoy my vinyl copy over the weekend, I’m not going to feature a Rumours track in this space this week. Fleetwood Mac has a large catalogue and a long history, and many fans of their Stevie Nicks-era hits might not realize that the band went through a number of substantial changes in its history. The easiest way to think about it is as two different groups: first, a guitar-driven British blues group, and then second, as the vocal-driven pop act better known to FM stations today. The band’s founder, namesake, and drummer was Mick Fleetwood, and he and erstwhile bassist John McVie decamped from John Mayall’s legendary Bluesbreakers to form the steadfast rhythm section of Fleetwood Mac. They were fronted by what became a three-guitar attack of legendary players– Peter Green (writer of such songs as “Black Magic Woman”), Jeremy Spencer, and Danny Kirwan– all of whom eventually went mad, triggering the band’s first decline. Before that point, though, they were ripping the classics:

But seriously. I am. At the conclusion of highstepping through the middle of my local watering hole, celebrating the shank heard ’round the world, I high-5ed my New England brethren and we declared, “We’re going to Indy!” Our hopes were shattered, however, when a Kayak search yielded $500 rooms at the Days Inn. Therefore, you’ll find us at a local duplex, unbothered by non-Patriots fans. A modern day foxhole of gametime anxiety and unfettered love for TB12.

As the youngest of 8 kids, my dad instilled a love for Boston sports early and often. However, his one true love are the New England Patriots and I have to say that I think I agree. I spent many Sundays in my younger years watching the atrocious squad get devastated over and over and over again. Then, something awesome happened. They got great (and I got accused of being a new, bandwagon fan. I mean, my favorite player used to be Tom Tupa, so…there’s that.). It’s been a good ride, and I’m  so so so so so excited to be heading to SB46. However, the last 10 days have been brutal. The Ravens victory locked up, I immediately turned my attention to how nervous I was for this game. I’m talking about literal nerves. Can’t sit still, can’t focus, feel a little grab in my chest every time I breathe, nerves. You see, I haven’t quite recovered from the last postseason match up of these two squads. I consider it to be the Voldemort of Superbowls. After the Balitimore game, I got the following email from my former (Boston loving) roommate, with whom I watched the disaster unfold (from our friend, Luke’s, apartment in NYC):

fyi – under no circumstance should you and I watch this Pats/Giants Super Bowl game together….and you should prob tell Luke not to have people over to his apt for a watching party…and none of us should spontaneously move back to NYC in the next two weeks.

I feel better getting that off my chest.

Go Pats.

I laughed. Seriously though…I will be sure that none of those things happen.

Every time I sit down at my computer and prepare to do work, , I think to myself, let me just check my Twitter feed one more time…it’s a time sucking cycle that’s led to infinite articles, Spotify playlists, image galleries, video clips, etc etc. I just cannot wait. I love this team. It’s hard not to (yeah, yeah, I know a ton of you disagree). Even the stars started as down on their luck guys with a chip on their shoulders and something to prove. I really, really hope that they prove it on Sunday. In the meantime…..eeeeeeeeks.

Upon changing my calendar this morning, I was greeted by the above image, which is the cover of the official football program for the 1947 meeting between Ole Miss and Vanderbilt. According to Rivals, Vandy won the game 10-6 and finished that season with a 6-4 record, going 3-3 in the SEC. Not a bad year for them, and, for us, not a bad Groundhog Day.

According to its own forecasts, the SPFL, whose management includes a number of former XFL and NFL Europe executives, will debut in 2013 with eight teams playing a 14- to 16-week season. The summary lists the cities under consideration as New York, Washington, Memphis, Orlando, Charlotte, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Denver, Dallas, Phoenix, Houston, Los Angeles, and Seattle. Teams would be centrally owned by the league, a la Major League Soccer.

The league is pitching itself as one that would not be a direct competitor to the NFL by declining to compete for time or players.

For anyone who loves postmodern establishment framework-busting, that premodern time when there were biologically different types of humans cruising around the Earth simultaneously, or who has admitted to playing fantasy XFL, this is thrilling news.

While Craggs’ Deadspin piece, linked above, includes some downers from “sports economists” like “this is XFL redux without the pizzazz and the McMahon baggage, but with all of the other flaws,” the fact that SPFL’s “director of cheerleading, Jay Howarth, was in charge of XFL cheerleading” should be news enough for any fence-sitters to jump on the SPFL train. 

If you think this post has been slim on analysis so far, consider the above graphic. (HT: Deadspin)

While watching the two main games described above, I thought that ESPN was using this Super Tuesday to debut two new courtside reporters, Shannon Spake and Samantha Steele. Both looked vaguely familiar though, and Google Images revealed that they’d merely been pulled from other ESPN components, Spake from their NASCAR team and Steele from the Longhorn Network. (Indeed, I unwittingly included a picture of Steele in one of my LHN posts last fall.)

ESPN's Samantha Steele and Shannon Spake

Given the relatively putrid state of the on-court affairs in both games, I wasn’t tracking the coverage with an eagle eye, but I thought both handled themselves confidently and avoided asking bozo questions of the coaches, which goes pretty far in the world of courtside and sideline reporters. Considering the fact that the Longhorn Network still remains “largely unavailable in Texas,” it probably is a good thing for Steele that she’s getting exposure on the mothership.