Tag: ncaa

I will never not enjoy seeing Tennessee lose

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

ICYMI: South Carolina defeats #5 Tennessee, 63-38

Man, this game is proof of the power of sports.  I had a pretty rough day, having to be on double duty all morning with the kids, and while they were down for their afternoon nap, I took my wife to the airport, and got obliterated on the way home in traffic, enraging me to thinking Thanos had a good idea, and how lucky the 2% of people who vanished in The Leftovers must’ve been to have been on a version of Earth without 98% of the population.

All I wanted was for the kids to go to sleep without too much warfare, and perhaps have a quiet evening where I could veg out and watch more television from my listed queue.  Instead, I caught wind that unranked South Carolina had hung 21 points on overrated #5 Tennessee, and I was like hmmmmmm and decided to watch, and hope for the upset; seeing as how my interest in South Carolina is merely in-law, but an opportunity to see Tennessee lose made it feel like it was kind of a no-lose situation for me.

Three hours later, my mood is uplifted, and the aggravations of the day earlier are melted away as ESPN cameras begin monitoring the crowding of the students section of Williams-Brice Stadium, after the inevitable upset is complete.

Seeing Tennessee get obliterated, and effectively dashing any remaining hope for playoff contention is the real win here.  Hendon Hooker demonstrated that his mediocre tenure at Virginia Tech was not the fluke, but his performance for Tennessee was, playing way over his head for an equally overrated and ballyhooed program as the Volunteers are in the SEC as Tech often had been in the ACC.  Instead of blowing out the unranked Gamecocks and making a case to leapfrog the Horned Frogs who needed a last-second field goal to beat Baylor, Tennessee will undoubtedly drop out of the top-10 outright and might not even get a New Years Six bowl.

South Carolina winning, and it pleasing my in-laws is merely the cherry on top. 

Spencer Rattler, oft-being labeled a bust after his much-hyped transfer from Oklahoma exploded on Tennessee like Soldier Boy from The Boys, throwing a double hat-trick of touchdowns that even Al Bundy would have to scrunch his eyes and tilt his head over.  If he performs similarly next week and the Gamecocks can upset Clemson, it’ll have to be one of the more legendary finishes to an otherwise adequate season.

But what a game though, really.  Who doesn’t love a good upset, regardless of the loose skin I might’ve had in the game?  Sure, I don’t like Tennessee and I am not a fan of turncoat Hendon Hooker.  But my in-laws are all South Carolina fans, and I like Shane Beamer being the son of Frank Beamer, and it was a treat to see that ol’ Frank was there to revel in this win. 

Speaking of Frank, it was also nice to see that Virginia Tech didn’t lose eight in a row.  Hard to believe a win against Liberty would be considered such a massive upset, but it also equalizes when they upset the Hokies in Blacksburg just a few years ago.

It was touching to see that both teams, and as I realized, all across the CFB landscape were wearing UVA stickers on their helmets to show solidarity and honor the victims of the senseless deaths and gun violence from earlier in the week.  Regardless of my personal team allegiances, nobody ever likes to hear of anything like that, and it seems pretty unprecedented that it hit multiple, active, student-athletes, whom people literally saw on television just days prior.

All in all though, this was a good example of just how effective sports can be, at being able to make a difference in the lives of people.  For me, it was a great catalyst to improve my day, for some, it’s a reminder of strength, solidarity and mourning, and for many in South Carolina, this is probably one of the better days of peoples’ lives.  Yeaahhhh sportsball

And as the subject says, I will never not enjoy seeing Tennessee lose.  Even when they’re back to being the middle-of-the-pack SEC East program they are, or when they’re having shitty years, but it’s even better when they’re completely overrated, and brought back crashing to reality.

Nothing says celebration like destruction of property

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Sauce: University of Tennessee solicits for donations to repair their football field’s goalposts after they were ripped out of the ground and dumped into the Tennessee River in celebration of upsetting Alabama

I think I already know the answer to this, but I have to wonder if anywhere outside of ‘Murica, people celebrate sports victories by destroying property?  Sure, if I had to wager, places like parts of the United Kingdom probably get rowdy after a win, but by and large I’m not sure if I’ve ever heard of like Japan, Korea, Germany, France or Brazil ever go biblical on their own property, after winning a World Cup or a gold medal or some other monumental victory.

Obviously this is very commonplace in ‘Murica where Philadelphia had been set on fire no less than three times in celebration, and most of Auburn and Tuscaloosa in Alabama have been torched and had trees poisoned as a result of college football games, which come to mind the quickest, with many other examples out there for inquiring minds.

Back to Tennessee, I get it, the celebration part; beating Alabama is a big deal, because it has not happened a lot over the last 13 years.  Any school that can steal a win over Alabama is truly a massive deal, and worth a good field storming afterward.

But then the uprooting of the goal posts and then throwing them into the river?  That’s just dumb, but honestly I wouldn’t expect anything less from a hick school like Tennessee which is barely relevant in anything outside of women’s hoops.  It’s the epitome of no one of us is as dumb as all of us, and you know that the vast majority of the people who ended up doing it probably don’t even care about football so much as it’s part of the scene out in Volunteer country.

The best (read: fucking insane) part of this is that not only is the school claiming that replacing  two sets of some metal bars is roughly $150,000, is that they’re soliciting people for donations to help pay for it.

Like, both schools are probably getting upwards of at least $1 million dollars each for the television rights to the game, not to mention all sorts of sponsorship monies from all the commercials.  And they have the audacity to cry poor and ask people to pay for the installation of new goalposts?  That’s fucking insanity.

Yeah sure it’s not right for people to celebrate the win by destroying property, and there should be some accountability from the violating parties. But it’s also the greatest moment in the program’s history since Peyton Manning, and some insanity should have been expected.  Not to mention the school is already loaded as fuck and in the grand spectrum of what the UT athletic department generates, $150k is a drop in the bucket.

The irony is also the fact that $150k is probably obviously some grossly inflated estimate so that a bunch of it can be pocketed, but there’s no doubt that at least $150k will be successfully raised.  And that’s the type of money that even the most tenured of educators in the faculty probably wouldn’t see, for trying to teach and develop young minds, while some yellow pieces of metal will have it raised for their sake in the span of a week.

And people wonder why college sports are resented so much, sometimes.  Sure I’m aware of the reality of the chicken and egg dynamic where the education doesn’t grow without the athletics, but when fucking goalposts raises the money that could probably pay two people’s salaries, it does sound pretty fucking ridiculous.

And that’s the kind of shit can of worms opened after a win.  Sociologically, and economically, it probably would’ve been better had Tennessee lost.

But that’s why we play the games, right??

Now this is actually just like old times

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A little while ago, after I wrote about the amazing finish to the regular season, where the Braves caught the Mets on the final weekend of the season and literally stole the NL East crown right from underneath them, I had this sneaking suspicion that I was tempting fate by doing such, and that once the playoffs began, the Braves would be ripe for a good old fashioned, first round NLDS* collapse, like they had done countless times in the past.  Baby luck was no longer in play, and by acknowledging in text that the Braves were anything other than a garbage organization not worth two pennies rubbed together, I was clearly pressing the boundaries of the universe that my feelings of high on the Braves were doomed to come crashing down once the playoffs actually began.

*can’t call it first round anymore thanks to the new wild card round

The fact that the Braves did in fact, get bounced from the NLDS doesn’t bother me; after all it’s something I’ve seen happen so many times that it’s more of an aberration when it doesn’t happen.  What actually does suck is that it came at the hands of the Phillies, which is a team that I’ve never liked at any point in history, so that part does give me some sour grapes.  If it had happened against the Cardinals, I would’ve been salty but unsurprised because it seemed like the Pujols and Yadi farewell tour would’ve been very appropriate to have had run over the Braves along the way, but when they failed to close out the Phillies in the first game of the wild card series, it was pretty much all downhill from there.

More than any other sport, baseball playoffs has and will always be a game for the team that gets hot at the right time.  Because games are played so closely together, momentum can really hang and maintain in baseball, and throughout the history of the playoffs since the inception of the wild card, so often times is the World Series winner the team that just catches fire and stays on fire for a month.  Aided by the magic baby luck brought on by #2’s birth, the Braves were that team that got hot, and stayed hot, and won it all last year, no matter how unworthy of the playoffs the 88-win team really was.

The Phillies appear to be that team that’s caught fire at the right time, and amazingly they did it in the midst of a game, where they looked all but defeated against the Cardinals, but the switch flipped, they came back on the Cardinals, put them out to pasture, rolled into Atlanta, and put the Braves out of their misery too.

As much as I dislike seeing the Phillies succeed, especially at the expense of the Braves, there’s a sadistic part of me that really wants to see the Padres advance on the Dodgers, so that we have an NLCS between the #5 and #6 seeds, with hopefully the Padres going to the World Series to play against the Seattle Mariners,** in a barn burner of a World Series nobody in the world wants to see.

**at the time I’m writing this, the Mariners have just blinked first in the 18th inning of their elimination game and are on the cusp of getting eliminated  🙁

But as for the Braves, it’s back to being the Barves all over again, getting bounced in the NLDS.  Yes, it’s something that does suck, but honestly?  The good thing about a fairly fresh World Series victory, or any championship for a favored team, is that it always creates a cushion of absorbing the disappointment of future defeats.  I can still say I got to see the Braves win a World Series in my lifetime as a Braves fan and as an Atlanta resident, and because it happened pretty recently, this year’s fuckup doesn’t really irk me at all.  Being a Braves fan, it’s mostly just kind of business as usual, losing in the NLDS.

All the same though, woof, what a shitty day to have been a sports fan.  This really was kind of like a bloody Saturday as far as my casual fandoms go.  The Braves get bounced from the playoffs by the Phillies, Virginia Tech takes the L against an equally unimpressive Miami squad.  Normally Alabama getting upset is always kind of amazing, but the fact that it happened against Tennessee is irksome enough, but then realizing that their quarterback is Hendon Hooker, who used to be Virginia Tech’s QB before he transferred out and has developed into this Alabama-beating Jesus motherfucker, leaves a little bit of bitter in my mouth.

Also, I learned that Dikembe Mutombo has a brain tumor and is undergoing treatment, which hopefully is successful.  Those who know me well enough, know of my fandom of Mutombo, so this isn’t just sad because he’s kind of a meme, it’s sad because I genuinely have always been a fan of the guy.

And the cherry on top?  #25 JMU, my very literal hometown school in Harrisonburg, nationally ranked in probably like the first time ever, immediately loses to Georgia Southern, and undoubtedly that ranking.  Heavy is the team that wears a ranking, and even the Dukes couldn’t salvage this turrible day to be a sports fan.

Also, the Mariners just lost and are bounced, so there goes the hopes for a Padres/Mariners World Series. 😭

Good riddance, Coach K

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

North Carolina 81, Duke 77 F

There comes times when successful sports people call it quits, that people tend to come out of the woodwork to shower them with praise, or just show a whole lot of respect and grace, regardless of if they were a teammate, rival, competition or adversary.

When David Ortiz was on his retirement tour, the New York Yankees and their fans gave him a lot of respect, standing ovations showed a lot of grace.  When Derek Jeter was in his final games, the Boston Red Sox reciprocated and showed a lot of respect to the Captain on his way out.  Michael Jordan was celebrated in every city on his way out, and the list goes on for notable figures who were shown a lot of respect at the ends of their career.

But as far as Coach K goes, fuck the grace and dignity.  Good riddance to this sniveling little troll that is basically the most reviled guy in the history of men’s college basketball.  As a fan of college basketball, I for one am ecstatic that Coach K fell short of getting to go out a winner, and once again, collapsed and lost in what should’ve been one of the grandest highlights on his way out.

In fact, to some capacity, this really has been one of the best years of college basketball in my life, because Virginia Tech won the ACC Championship AKA the National Championship A, and Coach K choked in three different games which should’ve been the coup de graces on his retirement tour:

  • Lost to North Carolina in his final home game at Cameron Indoor Stadium
  • Lost to Virginia Tech in the ACC Championship/Natty A game
  • Lost to North Carolina in his final game ever, in the Final Four

And the way he lost in all of these, as a legitimate contender for success, only to fall short repeatedly, it’s the perfect way to see Coach K ride off into the sunset.  I’ll be the first to admit that I was a little worried that Duke really was going to ride some wave of do it for Coach all the way to the National Championship-B, seeing as how they managed to not suffer their typical chokejob to some non-conference opponent, but the narrative of the journey couldn’t have been written any better if it were done by Vince Russo.

Of course, it had to be North Carolina who sent Coach K packing, and of course, it had to be in their first-ever meeting in the Final Four.  Of course this had to be the rubber match of the season.

And I let out a sigh of relief that North Carolina did their job and actually put Coach K down for good.  I had a bad feeling of sports pessimism that Duke was going to get their retribution, and ride that momentum into the Natty B and actually win, and let Coach K retire as a champion, the ultimate baller way to leave a career.  A way that should really only be reserved for true good guys in sport, like David Robinson, John Elway and Peyton Manning.  Had Duke overcome North Carolina and won a Natty B, that would have exorcised all of their failures of the season previously, and Dook Nation would have been even more insufferable, if that’s even possible.

But thankfully, the good guys won in the end.  Frankly, once this game had passed, nobody will even give a shit about the actual Natty B game.  Shit, I had no clue to whom Kansas was even playing, it’s that irrelevant compared to the other side of the bracket.

Good riddance, Coach K.   And for as much dislike I have for his career, it’s because he was a good coach. It’s just he looked like a little troll goblin and always recruited obnoxious players whom his obnoxious school would make into hateable douchebags, but I digress.  I’m not supposed to be giving this sniveling goblin any respect on the way out.

As if Vanderbilt had a hard enough time existing in the SEC

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Impetus: Vanderbilt changes their logo to their athletic department; impresses nobody

A long time ago I saw some quote that I never really committed to memory, but the gist of it is something that always stuck with me.  It went something along the lines of, there’s few better ways to hide mediocrity than stashing it behind a new logo and branding.

When it comes to college athletics, Vanderbilt is pretty mediocre.  They suck at football, they suck at basketball, and they’re occasionally good at baseball, but college baseball has a level of parity that most other sports wish they had, so it’s not really saying that much.  What doesn’t help is that Vandy is part of the SEC which is obviously the biggest football conference in the country, and they’re also not that terrible at basketball either.  So they’re mediocre at just about everything, but also in one of the most competitive athletic conferences out there.

But as far as logos are concerned, I had to give it to Vandy’s old logo, for standing out.  Sure it was just a letter V inside of a silhouette of a star, but there really weren’t many other teams or identities out there that were similar.  No interlocking letters, no script fonts, no abstract bullshit, just a letter V inside of a star.  They came before the Houston Astros rebranded, so they had a lock on that concept first too.

It wasn’t my favorite logo out there, but it was identifiable, and one of the more noteworthy things about Vanderbilt athletics in general.

But then for whatever reason, they decided to change it up, and in a horrific, downgrading manner.  They basically have turned into a generic high school logo, with their plain old V, with some instances of it having a thick stroke, and others having a slight bevel in the center.

It reminds me of playing a video game where someone makes their own team in an established league, but custom teams only have a selection of generic letters to choose from, so someone made the Valdosta or Vinci, and they have this boring looking V on the marquee going up against the Chicago Bulls.

The link above has a lot of the initial greatest hits of internet snark and armchair comedians sharing their takes on the new logo, and there’s really not much else that I can add to it, plus I’m too lazy to write stupidly long-drawn out posts anymore.

What really spurned me to post something at all, was the claims that this new logo was two years in the making, and came after extensive research:

Updates on the Vanderbilt identity come after extensive input from across the community, with more than 500 completed surveys, 70-plus one-on-one interviews and dozens of workshops and group engagement sessions conducted during the past two years.

Yeah, that’s all bullshit.  Either Vandy is lying about how it really took two minutes to come up with such an unoriginal and boring concept, or this is a textbook example of overthinking and overplanning something into oblivion.  By adding as many cooks into the kitchen as 500 surveys and 70+ interviews and workshops and focus groups, every person who thinks they’re an artist or a designer chips more and more away at something with potential, until it turns into this new Vanderbilt V logo.  I do a lot of surveys; I’m a Senior Manager of IT for a Fortune 50 company if it helps me get $1.58, I’m sure I’d be a fan of a boring generic V too if the price were right.

When the day is over, it doesn’t really fucking matter and is more something for me to write about, being the logo and design snob I can be.  Vanderbilt is kind of the definition of mediocrity, but now they have the perfect logo to help visually exemplify their position in the collegiate ranks.

Suck it, Dook. Also eat shit, Coach K

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

And nnnewwww: Virginia Tech 82, Duke 67 F

Lol. Oh man. Never thought I’d ever see this day ever. Frankly never thought I’d even consider this a possibility either, but here we are.  ACC champions.. of Men’s basketball: the Virginia Tech Hokies.

The literal turkeys giving new definition to cockblocking, having denied all sorts of favored basketball programs a conference title in the vaunted ACC.  A #7 seed going gangbusters and inexplicably winning four games in four days.  A title that should’ve been won by Notre Dame, or Duke.  A title game that was destined to be UNC/Duke #1,069.

All these should haves and could haves, that never did happen, all because of an improbable hot streak by a team hardly known for basketball. 

It feels like just a week ago, I was writing about clowning on Patrick Ewing, and learning that just a year ago he took an #8 seed Georgetown squad and won the Big East.  But as much as I dunk on Ewing, he’s still a reputable Hall of Famer, and it was the Big East he won, not the ACC.  Virginia Tech winning the ACC in hoops is like McDonald’s winning a bracket in coffee, McDonald’s winning a tournament of chicken sandwiches, or McDonald’s winning a competition of quality competency.  I’m not sure why I’m taking shots at McDonald’s here, maybe it’s because it’s 4:25 am the morning after daylight losings or maybe I’m getting hungry, but the point remains.

I actually checked in at a time in which I thought the game would’ve been over, only to be mortified at seeing there was still like three minutes to go, with Tech only being up by like 7 points. I don’t know, I closed the app too fast to remember.  But I was absolutely sure that because I deviated from my normal game ghosting, Dook was bound to go on a massive three-pointer spree, close the deficit, and then some other Plumlee brother would come out of nowhere to jam down some go-ahead punctuation dunk to shatter my hopes and newfound dream of seeing Tech winning the ACC in men’s hoops. 

I put my phone down and decided three minutes of game time that probably ended up being 30 minutes of real time was more important to get when I needed to be up at 3 am for my morning flight.  And went to bed completely expecting to see Dook winning like 79-74.

But that didn’t happen.  I awoke to see that Tech didn’t even waver or even have to bend much less actually break.  Dook was the team that collapsed, failed to close the gap and end up getting blown up in the end.  Coach K’s humiliating farewell tour continues with another L, having lost the ACC title game, after getting blown out at home in his final game on the court named after him.

Does this still count as baby luck?  It’s still within the first calendar year of #2, after all.  I got to see a Braves World Series, seen Georgia not Georgia and win a natty in football, and now a completely improbable ACC championship from Virginia Tech.

It’s a shame that I’ve become so busy for sports, because as a fan of them, this by any measure has been a pretty incredible year for my general sport fandoms, interests and allegiances.  But then again, being so balls out with them is what usually leads to heartbreaks and disappointments.  I’ll take everything as it’s happened here, and arrogantly do my written victory laps retroactively and often times after the facts.

And with that, we may resume the status quo where Virginia Tech will probably get bounced by a school nobody’s heard of like Jackson State, and hopefully the Coach K farewell tour continues with yet one more L, to hopefully another school nobody’s heard of like Creighton.

Whatever though, because right now, Virginia Tech are champions, of the ACC, and that is something to be proud and happy about.  I had a hard time picking an image to use for this post, and I was really tempted to use one of Coach K getting fed shit, but when the day is over, it was still more important to back the boys over shitting on Coach K.  Instead, here’s a mini gallery of some of the choice photos I found after the game:

Continue reading “Suck it, Dook. Also eat shit, Coach K” →

Suck it, UNC

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Wtf is this sorcery: Virginia Tech 72, North Carolina 59 F

Best part about this was looking for a good image to accompany this post; I found an image I liked, but even better than that was the headline from the source in which it came from.  Frankly, I couldn’t have written a better headline myself.

Obviously, with games I care about, I ghost harder than an employer ducking a candidate, and try to do absolutely anything and everything other than pay attention to the game, so that I can hopefully be pleasantly surprised when I do check in.  So other than a regrettable score check at one point in my evening, I didn’t bother checking again until I was pretty sure that the game was over, and lo and behold, Virginia Tech has continued to royally cockblock the entire college basketball scene, and spoiled yet another contender, easily defeating the vaunted North Carolina.

And everyone knows that the vast majority of sports fans really, really, really wanted a third UNC vs. Duke game, this time for the National ACC Championship, and all the storylines that would’ve come from it.  Like Coach K’s chance at redemption against Carolina after getting owned at home, UNC’s quest to feed Coach K more shit, by denying him an ACC championship on his way out, and just all sorts of other pomp and circumstance that are involved whenever UNC and Duke are slated to meet.

Yeah, no, none of that shit is going to be happening anymore.  Thanks to Virginia Tech of all schools, the ACC championship is going to be Duke vs. Virginia Tech in the matchup nobody outside of Virginia really wanted to see happen.  It’s fucking great, as far as I’m concerned.

But it also fucking sucks, because by all measures, Virginia Tech will have gotten this far in the tournament, and probably get throttled by Duke.  They’re not playing in Blacksburg, where they seem to have Duke’s number, the game will be held in “neutral” Greensboro which is obviously like an hour away from Durham.  As I said in a prior Tech hoops post, it kind of sucks to get to the finals and lose, as opposed to getting bounced earlier, because by now there’s all this hope and disappointment to be plopped down when the inevitable happens, and as much as I love to see Duke and Coach K eat shit as much as any other non-Duke alum on the planet, but they’re still ranked for reasons other than being on Coach K’s payroll, and Virginia Tech is still Virginia Tech, and failure to win a big game, is all but in their blood.

Oh well though.  Wins against Clemson, Notre Dame and North Carolina is a hell of a run for Tech, and should be more than enough to get them through the bubble and into the NCAA Tournament, where they can instead get bounced in the second round to a school nobody outside of their alumni knows where they are, like Bucknell, Abilene Christian, or St. Bonaventure.  It’s been a fun ride all the same.