And his almost snapping self from the indignity of overseeing any more game threads this season.  The man gave too much heart to this program, and it was hard enough to watch him have to chase Pryor into the endzone at the beginning of last season.  But this is going to be flat out miserable.  We need something to lighten the mood of the game threads.  Let him retire at 1-0 and save the rest for next seasons.

Possible replacements:

The picture of the broken-down Kragthorpe bus (which could be titled, Almost Working Kragthorpe Bus).

Almost-smirking Ron Cooper. 

Almost-sentient Lee Corso.

A sad clown.

That C-health code rating turned into a "Go Cards" sign.  Actually, that one seems like an almost perfect metaphor for this season.    

Here is a nice little dig at our favorite anti-trust arrangement by the brilliant minds at the Onion.  It's not their greatest work, but it's still fun:

BCS officials disgusted

DETROIT—Claiming that determining an unquestioned national champion through a playoff system "went against the very idea of sporting competition," and that the sheer exuberance of college basketball fans was "a shocking and nauseating display of everything wrong with collegiate athletics," top BCS officials roundly condemned the NCAA Tournament Monday.

Good start guys.  It appears that we have collectively gone about 6-94 after the first two games of the BET.  I am pretty sure no one has a perfect bracket anymore.  Thus, if you think you were an idiot, like me, for picking G-town over St. Johns, rest assured you are just like about 45 of the other idiots on this site, and you aren’t really all that far behind. 

And seriously, DePaul over UC.  Really?  We batted a nice .020 on that one as a group, which resembled my lifetime batting average if you count that one error as a hit.  Pretty impressive work, guys.  I guess I should have seen that one coming considering that Depaul had steadily improved over the course of the Big East season from facing 10 minutes of scrub subs to about 2 minutes of Shannon Fraley-types by the end of the season.  They are just hitting their stride. 

Monday’s match-up will be the #1 team in America (having earned that ranking deep into the season) v. our own beloved team likely to be ranked #6 or even #5.  That’s a composite ranking of #7 or higher.  I cannot think of another Cards regular season game of such import based upon the rankings, and certainly, I don’t think there have been any home games this important.  Not to mention that there is a good chance it will decide 1st place in the BE at the end of the season, and the winner of the game will put themselves in stong position to claim a #1 seed the NCAA in March.  Last season's Georgetown game might have had more technically on the line, but neither team was sitting as high as the Cards will be tomorrow (G-town was #8).   

The closest game to compare that I remember without research is actually the other sport that no longer exists at UofL.  In 2006, the #5 Cards hosted the #3 Mountaineers for a composite #8 ranking.  Now, because of the importance of the regular season in football, that game was much more important in every other aspect.  But tomorrow should outrank it by 1 or 2 based on the polls. 

Someone do the research. 

Not to steal Mike's thunder if he was planning a review, but just to remind everyone about the preseason contest, here is the link to what everyone projected.  It looks like everyone was a bit optimistic (no surprise), but JMC came the closest:

http://www.cardchronicle.com/2008/6/10/549265/community-projection-hunte

I didn't do too badly myself, but I was hoping to be wrong (and that we'd be running the ball better and playing with the lead more). 

Here's a decent topic for the off-season:

10 Worst Sportscasters

Maxim has created a list of the 10 worst sports broadcasters that might be worthy of some half-hearted debate.  There is one glaring omission for those who agree with Mike, but they do identify the omitted’s broadcasting partner who certainly is worth of inclusion. 

Continue reading this post »

Because this is a long week that was made even longer by a opening round loss and a Friday evening start time, I decided to waste some time helping prove Mike's point that Lunardi has inside sources.  So here's a nice distraction to pass 3 minutes of your "waiting for Gus Johnson" time.  

Continue reading this post »