When all the dust settles my Cards may very well be on the outside looking in.  It has been a fun run with a little football success and some absolutely amazing basketball games to remember.  When the Big XII started to lose teams, I thought the Big East was going to make it but I was obviously mistaken.  I know you all will sleep easier knowing that your conference is stable, but we'll miss playing you all and running the Big East Basketball Gauntlet every season.

I just hope neither team injures themselves.

via cdn0.sbnation.com

via gif.mocksession.com

There's a chance that neither one of these will load, in which case I must humbly ask you to go here and here.

After watching the game last night, I was happy to see other schools, particularly certain other schools, to be struggling as well.  I'm sure CCS will have them ready by week three, but I'm sure UK fans could say the same for their team.

Hi, I’m Dais.  You may remember me from such articles as Welcome to the World of Tomorrow and Adwords Kinda Sucks.  Most likely you don’t though, and that’s just fine.  What you need to know is that, growing up, the only views I got of a locker room were from inside the locker I was just shoved in, and when people refer to the MAC I think of Media Access Control before the Mid-American Conference.  Rarely do I have the opportunity to contribute something of value to this site, but occasionally the sports world collides violently with the mouth-breathing, broken-glasses world I live in.  Prepare yourselves, it’s going to get a little geeky.

SB Nation released its first mobile application today in Apple’s iOS App Store. A few hours later, a tired Steve Jobs woke up in his west coast mansion, read about the SB Nation app, and promptly resigned as CEO of the computer company he founded and led to greatness. I’m sorry Mike, but I’m holding you personally responsible for this one.

The release of this app came as a surprise to me because SB Nation has a fantastic mobile engine that does a great job rendering posts and comments from their blogs.  Their mobile UI is better than 99% of the sites out there and I wondered how an application could improve upon it.

via i.imgur.com

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Google has made it easy to add sports schedules to your Google Calendar.  All you have to do is go here, and select Louisville (and any other team you'd like to follow).  As you can tell, they're tracking the most popular teams and we aren't in the strongest of positions, hanging out with Navy, Duke, and UCF. I'm sure we can do something to improve our ranking. I'm not above subscribing random people accidentally logged in to public computers up for this calendar, and you shouldn't be either.

The evils of ESPN3 have been pretty well documented on this site, and I agree with nearly every complaint listed.  I still love the concept, and feel compelled to say a few words in support of the emerging platform.

Rarely do I get a chance to post anything of substance on this site because while Cardinal Athletics is my passion, sports are not where my expertise lies.  I honestly can’t tell you why a draw play reads like a passing play, or why people are suddenly using the term “wildcat” to refer to our offense.  Ask me about the differences between Android and iOS and I could go on for hours.  While all things U of L will get my attention, I am far more upset about the fact that the U.S. ranks 15th in overall broadband connectivity, than the fact that our football team was picked to finish last in the Big East. In short, I'm a total geek.

When I was growing up I was constantly fed lies about my future. “When you are an adult,” my wise elementary teacher would say, “You will have a robot housecleaner, we will have colonies on the moon, and you will eat entire meals in pill form!” Perhaps that was just an episode of the Jetsons, but I know somebody along the line promised me a flying car.  It is now 2010 and, outside of the Roomba, I feel cheated.  In many ways we expected so much more from technology.

On the other hand, we’ve been given opportunities never before imagined.  Computers are connected across the globe allowing communication near the speed of light.  Mobile computers place near the sum of all human knowledge in the palm of your hand. I dare you to say “I wonder why we get motion sickness” (Hint: It’s an evolutionary hold-over to prevent poisoning) or “What year DID Benjamin Franklin die?” (1790) I’m going to be over wikipedia faster than a proton can cross the CERN Synchrotron. Perhaps the greatest gift the internet has given us is its use as a media platform capable of a seemingly infinite variety of content. We no longer have to decide what newspaper to subscribe to when every major newspaper, magazine, community newsletter, or underground counterculture tabloid is available online.  More importantly we are no longer tied to traditional television as the only means of video delivery.  If I want to get ESPN in HD, Insight requires me to pay for 225 other channels I may never watch.  If I wanted to get ESPNU I would have to pay for 316 channels, because apparently getting 20 movie channels isn’t enough, I need to get the West Coast feed for those channels too! We are standing on the brink of a media revolution, where content need not be controlled by the regulated cable monopolies, or the few satellite companies, but set out for the world to see online. 

Many television stations are licensing their shows for online streaming.  Some producers are skipping the old standard all together and releasing directly online. Netflix allows for thousands of movies to be streamed, now onto your phone. The biggest thing those who have given up cable and dish are missing is live sports, but we’ve made tremendous strides here too.  I know most of the sports world disagrees with me, but I think ESPN3 is one of the coolest innovations in the last few years.  Yes they’re evil, but the promise of streaming high quality live sports is too exciting for a geek like me not to love. We’ve been living in a world where live events can be broadcast in High Definition in near real time, assuming you subscribe to the right channel, and that channel decides to broadcast the event.  Now I can load up live streams from across the globe, all on the same platform.  When I think of ESPN3 I feel a little less cheated about the future I was supposed to have. Someone still owes me a flying car.

twitter.com/goodedgar

 @Cbrickley11 just prank called DC; talked like Coach P and told DC he was suspended again for violating team rules. He freaked! Smh. lol

@JerrySmith34 just knocked on me and @Cbrickley11's door and smacked us in the face with his towel. #SMH

Golden Bears? #SMH I eat Golden Bears for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Pretty funny so far, but you only have a few (hopefully more than one) games left to use it to its potential. 

http://www.doubletnation.com/2009/11/16/1159512/leach-rumors-start-early

If we're speculating, we might as well see what they're speculating.

Some of the better points of conversation:

My question to all of you and the folks in Louisville is “why would you want to hire a coach coming off a perhaps 7-4 or 6-6 season”? The alums and admin will want nothing to do with that. The coaching profession is all about striking while the iron is hot and Leach was firey hot last year, not this year. This year proves that there is much work to be done and why should he leave to start all over again given next year’s team and the incoming recruits. No school wants a coach coming off an average season and has yet to win any conference titles . . . - WreckerRaider

IMHO, you guys are right on the money as to why this rumor makes litle sense, and thus probably trash. However, the notion that our coaches name is mentioned often, and with wreckless abandon doesn’t fly. The reason his name has come up in the past is because, in fact, he was shopping... - TTUMAR

...Leach is going no where. He’s got one of the best paying contracts in college football today. Is on the verge of putting an exclamation point on what will be 10 years of extraordinary development, strategy, and accomplishment for a program that should always be indebted to him. The double TT and Leach brand are inseparable. He retires a Red Raider the
ultimate “rebel” (pirate)! - Raiderit

There's a chance the UConn Huskies are wholly unstoppable. There's a chance that the Cardinals are in for a beat down that rivals the previous two times the teams met this season.  There's a chance that all this new attention and publicity will get them is remembered as the final team UConn pushed aside on their way to perfection.  But if David slew Goliath, the Mighty Ducks beat the Hawks, and some shady loansharks managed to shatter the foundations of the global economy, then there's a chance that our lady's can pull this off.

Either way, let's enjoy the national attention while we have it.

USA Today tells us about Becky Burke's journey to Louisville and now, St. Louis.

Business First lets us know that Governor Beshear may be the person outside the team that benefits most from a victory tonight

Wall Street Journal blogger David Roth says we're a "Darker than dark horse."

ESPN.com reports that Geno Auriemma is doing his best to keep his players grounded, insisting that NCAA Tournament Cards are a lot better than Big East Tournament Cards.

AP via Rivals via Yahoo found 12 out of the 80 minutes UofL played UConn that they can be proud of.

Go Cards.