ALDLAND Podcast

Aldland is back with another podcast, talking about all of the hottest issues in the sports world. On tap this week is discussion of a possible new football league to rival the NCAA and a discussion on what impact David Beckham has made on soccer in the United States. Get at it, and tweet at us with ideas for discussions for future podcasts so I can stop browsing Reddit more than I already do.

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Download the ALDLAND podcast at our Podcasts Page or stream it right here:

Auburn’s Tainted Title: Victims, Violations and Vendettas for Glory (via Roopstigo)

Mike McNeil can detail how the culture of big-time football works in a fast-growing community of 53,000 under the thumb of its major industry: Auburn University athletics. In an economic impact survey by the school in 2007, the report stated: “a conservative estimate of Auburn football’s direct visitor expenditures is more than $79.6 million during seven home events. That spending generates some $173 million in economic impact.” The university tentacles reach everywhere as the leading employer in Lee County. Chris Hughes, the judge who is scheduled to sit on the bench at Mike’s trial next week, is an Auburn University alumnus. According to his website, he once worked at the university coliseum and his sister is an Auburn University professor.  The school is a massive construction zone these days thanks to public funding and the largesse of wealthy alumni, many of whom sit in luxury boxes at Jordan-Hare Stadium, seating capacity 87,451.

As part of the BCS-dominant SEC, Auburn athletics feeds off the more than $3 billion earned by the conference through network and cable TV deals and will be part of an incoming stream of millions more with the SEC TV Network set to launch in 2014. “They recruit you by telling you what you want to hear: You’re family; you’re like a son to me,” says Mike. “But the reality is your class schedule is planned around football, not the other way around. It’s a business and there are players on the payroll.”

McNeil is not alone in understanding how Auburn football operates as an underground society beneath the NCAA’s radar. “Auburn does whatever Auburn wants,” says Thorpe. In interviews with more than a dozen players from the BCS title team, a portrait emerges of a championship tainted by allegations suggesting a program going off the rails. … Read More

(via Roopstigo)

This version of the Harlem Shake is undeniably hokie

(After spending a mesmerized morning starring at this, I decided just to hit publish instead of continuing to fail to come up with something gif-witty about jigs and jacked-up trucks.)

NCAA issues its best decision…ever?

In a story breaking late Friday evening, the NCAA “denied the Football Rules Committee’s proposal to require an institution’s uniform to be a different color from the field of play.” This means that Boise State can wear its blue uniforms at home games, at least as far as the NCAA is concerned.

This is one of the first topics ALDLAND tackled, way back on August 3, 2011. At that time, BSU was just about to start its first season as a member of the Mountain West Conference, which didn’t make its new member feel welcome by issuing a bill of attainder prohibiting the Broncos from wearing blue at home conference games. As I pointed out then, the rule made no sense, since the conference permitted member Colorado State to wear their green uniforms at home conference games, and CSU has a green field. It’s also as good a time as any to remind people that the players don’t operate from the vantage point of the Goodyear Blimp while playing the game.

The NCAA’s recent decision to reject a proposal that ALDLAND has shown to be nonsensical, unworkable, and flawed may be the best decision in its history. As the internet will tell you, though, the bar is pretty low. We nevertheless take a moment this evening to applaud the high point of Mark Emmert’s tenure as NCAA president. This pour of Woodford is not for you, Mark, because that would constitute an improper benefit.

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Previously
There’s a new dress code in the Mountain West Conference

College football coaching: The easiest get-rich scheme ever

The internet is full of get-rich schemes. They require completion of complicated steps, and along the way, you’re sure to wittingly or unwittingly (but never Jason Wittenly– more on him later) divulge most to all of your private identificatory material and click on a few virus downloads in a process that never quite leads to that free ipad, college tuition, or $10,000 prize. Perhaps ironically in this Internet Age, the pound-for-pound best way to get rich fast without having to try too hard is completely offline. In fact, the less you know about technology, the better, I’d say. The trick is to be a mediocre college football coach for just a few years, then get fired. Here’s how a man named Derek did that very thing. 

From morning to night, Vanderbilt stages a Signing Day worth celebrating (via Yahoo! Sports)

In a rare quiet moment in the Vanderbilt war room Wednesday, Ava Franklin walked in and was overtaken by curiosity.

“What are the balloons for?” asked the impossibly cute, 5-year-old daughter of the Commodores’ head coach.

For the National Signing Day party, she was told.

Ava thought for a second, then delivered the perspective-packed question of the afternoon, “What’s Signing Day?”

You’ll find out soon enough, kid. But if you must know now …

Signing Day is what has obsessed your father and his colleagues for months. It is what gets him into the office before you awaken, and gets him home after you go to sleep. It is a high holy day in the college football world, a festival of hope for fans and a culmination of dreams for players.

And on Wednesday at your daddy’s office, Ava, Signing Day went like this: … Read More

(via Yahoo! Sports)

A question about Super Bowl Media Day

First, here’s Sports On Earth’s Mike Tanier on Super Bowl Media Day:

The most notorious event of Super Bowl week: a Roman orgy in which the wine and debauchery have been replaced by banal quotes and poorly concealed hostility. Media Day is our industry’s excuse to stuff a tube down our own metaphorical esophagus and gorge ourselves like foie gras geese on a fatty slurry of pregame hype. The players trapped inside interview booths for hour-long interview marathons are ironically the only people in attendance not trying to draw attention to themselves. The whole event is televised, and sometimes open to the ticketed public, so fans can watch players go glassy eyed at inane questions while reporters jostle each other as if the person who gets 18 inches closer to Pernell McPhee wins an automatic Pulitzer.

Media Day, like many Super Bowl events, has acquired its own gravity and atmosphere, so sportswriting cutups like me are more likely to write about Media Day than to write reports based on the interviews we conduct during Media Day. You might think that this would be a good year to report on the phenomenon of reporting on the phenomenon of Media Day, which I am technically doing in this sentence, but in fact that became a common angle on Media Day about two years ago. At some point, you just stick phrases like “Delanie Walker spoke to a bikini model holding a disco ball dangling from a fishing pole Tuesday,” on a plate with some field greens, then move on to something else.

Tanier’s basic take on Media Day isn’t new or fresh– something he readily acknowledges– even if his way of presenting it was.

The question is, why do the same people who hate Super Bowl Media Day seem to absolutely love the cultural circus that is college football’s SEC Media Days?

This is an open thread.UPDATE: This no longer is an open thread.

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Related Super Bowl Coverage
Beyond the Archives: How Big Government Cost Southern Conservatives a Super Bowl Win
Super Bowl Politicking
ALDLAND Archives: Breaking Up is Hard to Do
ALDLAND Archives: Why I Hate Harbaugh

Bowl Pick ‘Em: Dénouement

With Bama’s drubbing of Notre Dame in the National Championship, the inaugural (Or did we have one last year?  You tell me.  Seriously, tell me.) ALDLAND Bowl Pick ‘Em Challenge is over.  I promised I would write a post about the winner, and so here I am, writing something again for the first time in what seems like forever.  The actual winner was blog founder AD, who is widely believed to have cheated to win.  Just kidding, I don’t want to tag him with that kind of label because it might one day adversely affect his candidacy for the Bowl Pick ‘Em Hall of Fame.  Since you know everything there is to know about AD already (quick recap: is a brony, believes he has a pen pal in Burkina Faso, although in reality it is just Chris Cunico humoring him, favorite athlete of all time is Bobby Higginson) I am going to write about the runner up DRTAZ 1.

DRTAZ 1 is an interesting guy . . . or girl.  The reality is that we don’t know anything about him . . . or her.  An APB was put out on the tweet yesterday which received no response, so I am just going to make stuff up, much like I just did about AD (or did I?).  DRTAZ 1’s name derives from his or her favorite Looney Toons character of all time, the Tasmanian Devil.  Interestingly enough, DRTAZ 1 hates Dizzy Devil, the Tasmanian Devil analogue from Tiny Toon Adventures as he or she thinks that Dizzy Devil destroys the integrity of the Tasmanian Devil.  Let’s be real, DRTAZ 1 is totally right about Tiny Toons.  That show suuuuuuuuuuuucked.  It was all about Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain, am I right?  Anyway, DRTAZ 1 can often be seen wearing gear with the Tasmanian Devil on it and has many Taz stuffed animals lying around the house.

Now, you might have heard “stuffed animals” and said, “I know who DRTAZ 1 is: popular podcast humor fodder, Bad Jeremy!”  I can confirm that Bad Jeremy is not DRTAZ 1, because he knows absolutely nothing about college football.  Furthermore, he is not allowed to use the internet so he couldn’t fill out a bowl pick ‘em entry.  He is also not a doctor, which DRTAZ 1 obviously is.  DRTAZ 1 graduated at the top of his or her class from the University of Miami’s medical school, where he or she was best friends with Marvelous of 7^th Floor Crew fame.  After graduation DRTAZ 1 decided that he or she did not want to practice medicine and instead embarked on a career making art using those little plastic things you put on a peg board and then iron so that they make a shape.  Contrary to what you might think, DRTAZ 1’s favorite subject for little plastic thing art is not in fact the Tazmanian Devil, rather it is the Busby series of video games.

I don’t have much to say about DRTAZ 1’s entry.  It’s linked above, so you can check it out for yourself.  He or she simply picked better than everyone except AD.  As such, he or she is entitled to a receipt signed by AD as well as a signed Andy Brink head shot.

What team would you rather have seen play Alabama last night?

I think we can safely say that Notre Dame wasn’t up to the task of competing for a college football national championship. The game was by some accounts “boring” and others “hilariously disastrous.” People tend to like to see these championship games be competitive affairs. What team other than the Irish do you wish played Alabama last night? 

Another question: Do or should any AP voters vote Ohio State #1?

The most essential national championship preview

If there’s one outcome-determinative piece of information I can give you in advance of tonight’s college football national championship game between #1 Notre Dame and #2 Alabama, it would be this: Alabama quarterback A.J. McCarron brought along thirty pairs of shoes for the occasion. Everything else you’ll read is nonessential.

That said, I’ll add my prediction, which is