Are my eyes really blue?

I first discovered NBA JAM in early 1993, when my interest in professional basketball was at its peak. It was the rookie season for Shaquille O’Neal, Alonzo Mourning, Christian Laettner, Horry and Sprewell from Alabama (both in the first two dozen picks!), and Oliver Miler, the Razorback who joined a team with Kevin Johnson, Dan Majerle, and…Charles Barkley, in his first year with the Suns. Who promptly became my team of record, after a sporadic flirtation with the Pistons and Trailblazers. And there was the machine, in the arcade at Brookwood Village, with its computer voice bellowing out one bombastic cliche after another. Naturally, I had to seize on it, after years of video-game football.

And I never played anything but the Suns, obviously. Between Barkley and Majerle, I had a well-rounded operation and could sink threes or break backboards with equal aplomb. Sure, it was a quarter per quarter, but hell, it was worth a dollar a throw to watch that ball catch fire and trail smoke on a 40-foot shot. Naturally, I grabbed it as soon as it was out for the Sega Genesis and worked it into the rotation with Bill Walsh College Football (even though the Sega version swapped Barkley for KJ). And I got plenty of action out of that, until my NBA interest started to wane with my grad school career….which was ironic, given that I finally moved to a place that had a team.

I never got back into the NBA again until the Warriors made their unlikely run in the “We Believe” year, and I tried to get stuck in – but once Baron Davis left, and the team sank back into the swamp, my attention drifted again. Every year, I kept saying “maybe this is the year I get back into it” but couldn’t decide between the Warriors or Kings (or even Wizards) and never really found a hook. And honestly, I was more inclined to think I should just wait and see where the Vanderbilt guys end up…and then, by some random happenstance, the wife got third-row seats at the Warriors earlier this winter, and we went, and they won, and they got on a bit of a streak…

And then, NBA JAM for the iPhone happened.

And as it happens, Stephen Curry and David Lee, at least in Rookie mode, are good for (checks phone) 19 consecutive wins (including 16-0 in campaign mode). Curry can shoot the lights out, Lee helps take care of stuff inside, and it’s worked out pretty well so far. And I’m not just saying that because I think Curry is the easiest way of playing John Jenkins until he actually gets drafted.

This may be the thing that gets me back into the league. Names of players, knowing who the stars are, taking an interest, keeping up with things…who knows, maybe if I have another sport to spread my interest around I won’t wind up as a mental case. Hell, it might be nice to find out what it’s like to casually follow a team for shits and giggles instead of trying to get my soul saved.

And besides, I think the wife will tolerate blue and gold. ;]

…Alabama fans being tarred as psychotic rednecks, or Auburn fans getting justification for their persecuted-martyr complex.

Either way, it proves that I was right to bump my Crimson Tide affiliation to fourth among supported teams and to go all-in on Vanderbilt. Commodore Nation may be many things, but fortunately “world’s largest open-air special needs kindergarten” is not among them. Which is not something you can say about the football powers in the Heart of Dixie.

VANDERBILT 64

GEORGIA 56

FINAL

Down 14 at one point. John Jenkins scoreless at the half. He finishes with 21.

I BELIEVE.

According to a recent survey, only 28% of likely Republican primary voters think Barack Obama was born in the United States.

Let me put this another way: almost three-quarters of the people who will pick the next GOP question the citizenship of the President of the United States.

We’ve now got a whole political party in the hands of people with the intellectual capacity of AL.com commenters. Seriously, I’m sorry, GOP-leaning friends, but you’ve got fucking retards steering the ship.

(cross-posted from Anchor of Gold)
I mean, what else can you say about this game? John Jenkins with a career day and a new nickname: “The Flamethrower.” There were points in the game where I honestly expected the ball to come off his hands on fire a la NBA JAM back in the day. If there was any doubt about who is the superstar of this team – hell, of this league – there should be none now. This was John’s game of distinction.
The rest of the game went well too. Brad Tinsley has overcome his earlier bad outings to become clutch at the free throw line, Festus Ezeli is still a force, and Steve Tchiengang had a spectacular day that shows what he’s capable of when he’s back at 100%. The 2-3 zone continues to be a confounding force on defense, and the new power package with Fes and Steve on the court together looks like another wrinkle to confound our opponents. Add that to the fact that Kyle Fuller seems to have figured it out…don’t look now, but this is a really, REALLY good team.
About the only down point was Jeffery Taylor’s 4 points – it’s tough never quite knowing which 44 will show up, but this team has reached a point where it’s no longer dependent on any one person having to go large in order to win. Which is the kind of thing that will be helpful…later. (I’m not about to jinx anything.)
For those who were there: great, great, great work. The Blue Mist always seems to seep in, but it’s nothing compared to the Black Rain. =)

#18 KENTUCKY 77
#23 VANDERBILT 81
FINAL
JOHN. JENKINS.

(cross-posted from Anchor of Gold)

We can’t help it. It’s in our nature. We know that something will go wrong – Green will get away with a walk, Bennett will catch an inexplicable celebration flag, Murray State will hit a ridiculous jumper that we have to see every March for the rest of time. So in the interest of inoculating us against the worst possible calamity, I decided to take a look at our worst-case scenario for next year, in which we lose more or less everyone that could reasonably go short of injury. It’s not pretty, at first glance, but upon review it may not be as bad as it looks.

First up, Andre Walker. This is a young man who is on track to graduate in May – and who lost a parent during his college years. The person who recovers from that sort of tragedy often isn’t the same person to whom it happened. Couple that with all the injury and illness problems he’s suffered this season, and it wouldn’t be surprising for Andre to decide to take his diploma and move on with his life. Under the circumstances, I couldn’t fault him at all, and if he chooses to go, well, God bless him and thanks for a great career as a Commodore.

Next up, the Big Three, the consensus NBA prospects. Right now, I’d say the most likely to go is actually Festus Ezili – you can’t coach 6-foot-11, and what you can coach, he has shown the ability to learn, and fast. Consider what it was like watching him go to the free throw line a year ago, versus down the stretch Saturday against South Carolina. Now I realize that the NBA is no longer in the draft-a-big-body-and-hope-for-the-best mode of years past, but even so, Skynet has so much potential upside that someone will take a flyer on him if he chooses to come out.

As for John Jenkins and Jeffrey Taylor, I suspect they could both use another year’s seasoning – Jenkins to work on his defense and continue improving inside, and Taylor just to get straightened out and find his killer instinct again. But it’s not inconceivable they could turn pro and take a chance on the draft – they’re certainly no worse prospects than AJ Ogilvy was at this time last year. I don’t think they would go, but remember, this is the worst case scenario, so off they go and please let the Warriors get at least one of them.

As for the guys who aren’t part of the current rotation: Meriweather and Duffy are done, although I expect to be reading Fluffy’s column at ESPN.com in a year or two. Darshawn McClellan has a year left after his surprise redshirt, but he too is on track to graduate and rumblings are that he will use the NCAA transfer rule to attend grad school elsewhere and play his final year. So all told, we could see seven guys take a hike come April – again, this is the worst case scenario.

So what does this mean for next year?

For one thing, it seriously depletes the bodycount in the frontcourt – that’s our entire opening-day starting front three, representing an average total of 31 points, 18 rebounds, 3 blocks and 76 man-minutes per game. And JJ23 has averaged 19 points in 34 minutes per game – so that’s 50 points a game, gone. (46 without Andre Walker, just to acknowledge that he hasn’t been around that much. No point in lying – the worst-case scenario is devastating for next year.

But.

We do have three new talents coming on board. Dai-Jon Parker isn’t quite on the level of John Jenkins coming out of school, but he already has a name and a reputation. His only weakness is the ability to move over to point guard – and with the arrival of Kedren Johnson, that might not be an issue. Johnson has size for a PG (6-4) and is a known good defender, as is Parker. And to them, add Shelby Moats, a 6-7 forward with good passing skills and a cerebral approach on the court (sound familiar?) We also get to activate current redshirts Josh Henderson (6-11) and James Siakam (6-6), who presumably have as much practice time as Rod Odom and Kyle Fuller – and after Saturday, it’s starting to look like Rod Odom is clicking.

Right now, though, the worst case scenario for 2011-12 looks a lot like 2008-09: size, youth, and a lot of reloading for the next year or two to come. Five first-year players might make things a little too exciting, and not in a good way, but 2013 and 2014 have the potential to look a lot like the last couple of seasons as a whole bunch of guys get to spend a lot of years together gelling as a team. And let’s not forget we (presumably) still have Steve, Lance and Brad to be the senior leadership on next year’s squad.

The practical upshot of all this is: we have reloaded with this year’s class, enough that the train will continue to run. I don’t think I really appreciated Kevin Stallings as a recruiter until I went through this little exercise, but make no mistake, we have the talent to keep this run going for some time. Yes, the future is still now – but it’ll be there next year and the year after, too.

Guess what? Your boss says the business is losing money. Now this sounds a bit weird, because you know you just signed a huge deal worth millions to the firm, but they’re adamant – everyone’s going to work 9 hour days now, instead of 8, for the same money, and without hiring anyone new to help handle the extra work. And just to make sure you get the message, they’re going to shut down the business until everyone agrees to the new system.

Sounds great, right?

With that, the rundown on what to expect when the NFL’s collective bargaining agreement expires on March 3:

1) The reason we are here is because in May 2008, the owners exercised their option to reopen the CBA. It would have another year to run had they not.

2) This is a lockout, not a strike. The way you can tell is because the NFL would be able to legally replace striking players (e.g. 1987, or “The Replacements”). If the league locks out the players, they are not legally able to field replacements.

3) The core issue is that the league wants an 18-20% giveback on player salaries. This is ostensibly because the league is losing money – but the kind of cash being thrown around by the broadcasters makes this sound a little sketchy (ESPN alone paid $2 billion for Monday Night Football).

4) The league also wants to go to an 18-game schedule. The players have actually agreed to this, contingent on expanding rosters from 53 to 58. The league is offering 54. Look at the roster bloodbath suffered by the Green Bay Packers this year…and add two more regular season games. You’d need to expand rosters to 60 just to stay proportionate – but ownership is not interested in stroking any additional checks.

5) The players have very little leverage. 2/3 of the players make the league minimum, and once the lockout starts, they’re on the hook for their own health insurance (pre-existing conditions, anyone?) – the NFLPA has done what they can to accumulate a strike fund and war chest, but it’s anyone’s guess how long that will last. Meanwhile, the owners have TV money in hand whether the games are aired or not, although the networks may have make-good arrangements based on whether they lose the opportunity to sell advertising in that space.

So the owners will shut the game down, the players will attempt to hang tough, the usual yahoos will start up about how these guys are getting millions of dollars to play a game (without contemplating the guys who are getting billions of dollars to stage the game), and, in all likelihood, the players will limp in and capitulate in time to get in an abbreviated 8-game season a la the 1982 strike. Then again, the Redskins’ first two Super Bowls came in strike years…

Yes, apparently Green Bay will be just fine rolling the dice with Aaron Rodgers.

The phrase above (from Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age) ricocheted around my head out of nowhere a couple of weeks ago, when my rant about Jay Cutler and his antagonists got promoted to the front page of Anchor of Gold and I was Twitter’d a message that I had been promoted to front-page access. It flitted through my mind again when my recruiting summary was well-received, and again yesterday when one of the siterunners asked somebody else to post a recap, which I did and which was itself well-received. For which I am profoundly grateful, given that I haven’t done sportswriting to order in seventeen years.

In The Diamond Age, nation-states have largely given way to “phyles,” distributed entities organized around a common culture rather than geographic or (necessarily) racial lines. It’s hard not to see echoes of this in the world of sports, where concepts like “Red Sox Nation” and “Raider Nation” have been aped and emulated to the point where Vanderbilt’s own Steve Tcheingang (himself a native of Cameroon, and one of four different nationalities represented on the squad) tags his Tweets with #DoresNation. Any major city in America will have at least one bar associated with fans of each single NFL franchise – Vikings bar in Nashville, Packer bar in New York City, Steeler bar in Santa Monica, or (erstwhile) Redskins bar in Palo Alto. Similarly, Pete’s Tavern up in China Basin has in years past become the de facto home of Vanderbilt basketball in San Francisco.

So where does the quote come in? I have often said earlier that I would be just as happy to have no comments on my blog, and that I don’t find the lack of comments to be a problem anywhere else (and indeed usually block them, SBNation blogs excepted, when browsing elsewhere). Since the opportunity cost of having one’s own blog is as next to nothing as makes no difference, having comments (as John Gruber has said) is rather like building your own soapbox, with your own time and effort and creativity and credibility, and then being expected to offer that soapbox to anyone who wants to wander through, with predictable results.*

What has happened at AoG is that the siterunners have, in essence, offered me the use of their soapbox, with the unspoken reciprocal understanding that I will make appropriate use of it, and that by doing so, I will contribute in a way that enriches the community as a whole. Which, in turn, will reflect on me as a member of that community. And since this has become the principal blog of Vanderbilt athletics…well, put it all together, and you see where I would get the sense that I have been given an equity stake in the tribal enterprise.

I didn’t go all in for Vanderbilt until fall 2006. It was a prolonged exercise (possibly chronicled here, possibly elsewhere) that arose from the demise of Division I athletics at my undergrad, leaving me with three institutions whose associations were less strong than the traditional four-year-undergraduate institutional affiliation. I managed to hammer out a logical path that ended with justifying my permanent affiliation with Vanderbilt and making a commitment to trying to foster that affiliation. It paid out pretty quick, with a Sweet Sixteen season for basketball, a #1 ranking for baseball, and a winning season for the first time in 26 years (and a bowl win for the first time in 53!) for football, and now the entire athletic program is on the way up. I have enough time and emotion invested with the black and gold that any Vanderbilt success would be far more satisfying than, say, the Giants’ win in the World Series (which, while enjoyable, was not as ultimately gratifying as if I had been following the team closely for the whole eight years since the last pennant). So to be part of the greater tribe now – doing game recaps on the site, live-blogging with the others, swapping tweets with players, etc etc – is a tremendously gratifying capper on five years of realigning my support.

* I got multiple recommendations and stars for a comment on EDSBS: “I used to have a genius level IQ, multiple degrees, and a fast track job at Apple. Then I read the comments at AL.com. Now I wash myself with a rag on a stick.”