SB Nation User Blog: Michael Atchison

Mizzou vs. Nevada: National TV a possibility

Michael Atchison — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 19:02:53 -0000

Hurricane Ike is playing havoc with Saturday's schedule of games to be played along the Gulf Coast, and one consequence may be to shift the Missouri vs. Nevada game (currently scheduled for pay-per-view) into Fox Sports Net's national TV slot.

http://www.kansascity.com/news/breaking_news/story/792431.html

"Hurricane Ike could put Missouri’s 11:30 a.m. game against Nevada on national cable television on Saturday.

"A Missouri official - director of media relations Chad Moller - has told The Star in a text message that MU, Fox Sports Net and the Big 12 Conference are having discussions over whether the game - set for pay per view only at present - could be switched to Fox Sports Net’s national game at the same time.

"Washington State at Baylor is currently in that time slot, but the threat of Hurricane Ike has already caused postponement of the Arkansas at Texas game in Austin on Saturday. The game at Baylor could be postponed as well, although that decision has not been made."

Fun with Numbers: Missouri vs. Colorado

Michael Atchison — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 19:49:12 -0000

I was going to have some fun with last night's box score, but The Boy stole some thunder with his comments in today's links. Still, there's a treasure trove of barely fathomable numbers to dissect.

As The Boy noted, Colorado didn't shoot a single free throw last night. Not one. Can you remember a Big 6/7/8/12 game in which any team ever got the goose egg from the line? Me either. Mizzou's media guide doesn't seem to have an entry for fewest free throws attempted by an opponent in a game, but I know, at the very least, a record was matched last night.

Also, the teams combined to make just four free throws. Another guess, but I'll bet that's the lowest total ever in a Big 12 game.

Almost as remarkable is that the Tigers turned the ball over just FOUR TIMES in the game. Again, the media guide doesn't list a record, but I'd be shocked if any modern Tiger team had fewer turnovers in a game. We are, after all, approaching a limit. Perhaps even more shocking is that Mizzou's guards combined to turn the ball over just once (Lyons had two of the four turnovers, Safford had one). I don't care how soft the defense was, that's quality work by the Tigers' perimeter guys, and is the single biggest reason the team prevailed.

The Boy noted that Carroll is hobbling, but it's still remarkable that the team's leading active scorer and rebounder played 25 minutes and recorded just two points and two rebounds. That's another one for the Elias Sports Bureau folks to sort out: Has a D-1 player who is leading his team in scoring and rebounding in February or later ever played more than half the minutes in a game and contributed a combined four or less points and boards? And has that player's team ever won? I'll bet it has happened, but less than once in every one thousand games, maybe once in ten thousand games.

Despite turning the ball over only four times and shooting a respectable 43.9% from the field, Mizzou scored just 60 points. And despite turning the ball over a respectable 14 times and shooting an impressive 51.1% from the field, Colorado scored just 53. That tells you about all you need to know about the pace of the game. With Mizzou's depleted depth, and Jeff Bzdelik's deeply deliberate style, this wasn't 40 Minutes of Hell; it was 40 Minutes of Leisurely Strolling Through a Nature Preserve (oooh! a butterfly!).

The Tigers' 60-point output was the second lowest of Mike Anderson's tenure, and the lowest total in a win. Missouri hasn't scored fewer points in a victory since February 19, 2005, when Quin Snyder's Tigers beat Nebraska, 56-53. That season's team, if you'll recall, was no stranger to offensive ineptitude, scoring 60 or fewer points on eleven occassions.

See anything else magical, mystical or maniacal in the numbers? Leave a comment.

A Fine Day for a Parade

Michael Atchison — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 19:57:39 -0000

In the hangover haze of Mizzou's Orange Bowl snub, my buddy The Boy makes a pertinent point: the problem isn't the BCS - it's the bowls.

He's absolutely right. Expecting the bowls to cultivate championship consensus is like expecting ice cream to cure cancer. They were never designed to deliver the desired result.

Click 'Full Story' for more.

Bowl games aren't playoffs, they're pageants. They're exhibitions, relics of a bygone era, designed to boost local economies. It's not whether you win or lose; it's where you play the game.

The BCS idea, initially, was well-intentioned and more effective than people would now have you believe. Under the old regime, this year's slate would put #1 Ohio State vs. #7 Southern Cal in the Rose Bowl; #2 LSU vs. #3 Virginia Tech in the Sugar Bowl; and #4 Oklahoma vs. #5 Georgia in the Orange Bowl. In the absence of a playoff, the BCS at least gave us the one-versus-two matchup that everyone wanted by breaking the grip conference tie-ins had on the games, and allowing each of the Big Four Bowls to serve as the de facto title game once every four years.

But now that we have a dedicated, non-bowl, championship game pitting one versus two, you have to ask: Why exactly are the bowls still part of the process?

Because they're more resilient than rats, more constant than cockroaches, more deeply rooted than giant redwoods.

Bowls still matter because they still want to matter. They are the HAL-9000 of sports, dictating the mission despite the wishes of those of us along for the ride.

And no one can fix the problem because no one is in charge. It's like the Food and Drug Administration regulating the research and production of pharmaceuticals only to cede authority to the Federation of Deranged Anarchists when it comes to distribution. We play NCAA football until December, and then it just stops, with a confederation of parade planners and conference commissioners taking over from there. And the NCAA is powerless to act because it is nothing more than the sum of its badly fractured parts. With such a powerful voting bloc - the twenty-one schools of the Big Ten and Pac-10 - suckling off the Rose Bowl's lucrative, milky breast, there will be no Tournament of Touchdowns so long as there's a Tournament of Roses.

I'm through being outraged at the Orange Bowl's pick of Kansas over Missouri, and truth be told, I was never all that outraged to begin with. The decision, on its face, was too comical to raise genuine ire, and it illustrated the epic chasm between the words "Bowl" and "Championship" in "Bowl . . . Championship Series." This game has no more bearing on crowning a college football champion than my drive to the grocery store has on determining the Indy 500 winner. And lest anyone think that the bowls could be part of the solution, the Orange's teaspoon-shallow reasoning - they preferred a one-loss team - should disabuse all but those who would prefer Manute Bol to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar because of Bol's superior height.

By falling to Oklahoma last Saturday night, the Tigers ensured that their next contest would be no more than a consolation game, an exhibition to allow long-sufferers like me to experience a New Year's event for the first time, no matter where it was held. Missouri's game in Dallas will mean the same as the Jayhawks' game in Miami. It will mean that someone just had a parade.

Curses, Foiled

Michael Atchison — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 19:21:09 -0000

I am prone to belief in the divine, but not the supernatural. I recognize the existence of coincidence, happenstance, and random events of bad fortune. Never in my life have I believed in curses. Except when it comes to the Missouri Tigers.

There are the lightning bolts of cosmic scorn that even casual fans know: Colorado’s fifth down, Nebraska’s kicked ball, Tyus Edney’s zero-to-heartbreak in 4.8 seconds. There have been other moments, equally powerful but more obscure, like first round NCAA flameouts against Rhode Island and Northern Iowa back when I’d never heard of Rhode Island or Northern Iowa (geography, alas, was not a strong suit). And then there were those times when we were made to pay for our prosperity, like when the undefeated, top-ranked football Tigers lost their shot at the national title by falling to Kansas in the 1960 season’s final game, only to have the game futilely forfeited back later. Or Norm Stewart being blindsided by cancer at age 54 in the midst of a season in which he had one of his best and toughest teams. Or 2002, when an ascending basketball program welcomed Ricky Clemons to town and became a national punch line. Sadly, I could go on. There’s more where that came from.

Click 'Full Story' for more.

Despite what rational thought tells you, sometimes you have to believe your eyes. When water falls from the clouds, it’s rain. When calamity pours from the sky, it’s a curse.

After one remarkable week in Kansas City, though, I proclaim Mizzou to be cleansed. The curse is over.

It started on a Sunday night, in a reborn downtown, in a shimmering building, when Norm Stewart took his place in the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame. As the coach stood at the podium nearly nineteen years after beating cancer – and helping countless others do the same through his charitable efforts – you knew that he was blessed. He was surrounded by family, including Virginia, his wife of fifty-one years, and his son Lindsey, who gave a world-class induction speech, full of the humor and fire he inherited from his dad. Coach Stewart also was joined by the other starters from his high school basketball team, and by members of the Stalcup, Faurot and Devine families who brought him back to Columbia in 1967. And he was surrounded by his players, Tiger titans like John Brown, Willie Smith, Steve Stipanovich, Jon Sundvold and Derrick Chievous, who won eight league championships and eleven conference tournaments (five old holiday affairs, six post-season events) in the 1970s, 80s and 90s. To see this living history mingling in the same room, it was plain that the good times have far outnumbered the bad, and hard to fathom that we might ever have considered ourselves unlucky, let alone cursed.

It continued the next night in the same building, when the Tiger basketball team played eleventh-ranked Michigan State. I had heard laments that years of scandal and mediocrity had crushed fan enthusiasm, as evidenced by only 5,000 turning out to see the Tigers play Central Michigan on a Monday in Columbia. But what I saw in the Sprint Center suggests that the problem may be playing Central Michigan. On a Monday. In Columbia. In Kansas City, against a top-flight opponent, an overwhelmingly pro-Mizzou crowd of more than 18,000 turned out, and those fans were fierce and hungry for success. And though the Tigers’ rally from sixteen points down fell just short, they played with purpose, and the crowd loved them for it. The next night, when those fans returned to see the Tigers drill Maryland – a program with a national title this decade – it was plain that Mike Anderson’s team is immune from the voodoo of Mizzou’s recent past.

Then, on Friday, already surrounded by a family of Tigers in town for Thanksgiving, I drove to the airport to meet my friends Scott (in from Denver) and T.J. (New York). In recent years, with the demands of careers and families, our gatherings had been limited to weddings and funerals. But with our alma mater’s football team set to play its arch-rival in the year’s biggest game, we ran out of excuses not to get together. As we caught up and remembered winter nights at the Hearnes Center and spring Saturdays at Simmons Field, I realized that the Missouri Tigers had blessed me with the chance to share time with these great friends.

And then, of course, came Saturday night. I’ve never seen a stadium so electric, or a Tiger team so self-assured. From my perch on the verge of 40, it’s easy to forget how young these guys are. Chase Daniel and Martin Rucker are barely old enough to remember the past’s great disappointments. They don’t believe in curses, they believe in each other. When Stryker Sulak and Lo Williams fell down like hard rain on Todd Reesing to secure a heart-stopping triumph, I looked to my right at my wife, who has shared the joy and despair of Tiger sports with me for nearly two decades, and I saw relief. I looked left at my father-in-law, who played on that star-crossed 1960 team, and I saw vindication. Then, as I thrust my hands in the air and looked up into the night sky, from which no calamity had fallen, my mind drifted to the elegant toast T.J. made at Scott’s wedding. Traditionally, he said, the guests bless the newly wedded couple. But when a bride and groom like this share their moment, they bless us.

Missouri Tigers, you bless us. The curse is dead.

Game On!

Michael Atchison — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 22:11:26 -0000

How do you articulate what you can’t even fathom? How do you express what you can’t comprehend?

This week, in my hometown, on the last day of the regular season, the Missouri Tigers and Kansas Jayhawks will play a football game, and the winner will be one game away from playing for a national championship.

There, I’ve written it, put it on the page, stared at it. And I still don’t quite believe it. The Missouri-Kansas game is the center of the football universe. In the best rivalry in sports, in the town that serves as the front for the border war, these two universities will play the biggest game in more than a century of hostilities.

I’ve written it again, and it’s starting to sink in. But I still can’t quite wrap my mind around it.

Still, I like it.

Charlie Henke, Hall of Famer

Michael Atchison — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 19:42:28 -0000

When I heard that former Rat Pack funnyman Joey Bishop had passed last week at age 89, my first reaction, regrettably, was "Joey Bishop wasn't already dead?!?"

My reaction was much the same upon hearing that Charlie Henke had been elected to the Missouri Intercollegiate Athletics Hall of Fame. "He's not already in?" I asked, incredulously.

For many if not most of us, the men who played basketball for the University of Missouri before Norm Stewart became head coach in 1967 are largely forgotten. But Charlie Henke, from tiny Malta Bend, Missouri, remains one of the best ever to wear the black and gold.

Henke, who played from 1958 to 1961, was a star for Sparky Stalcup in the coach's waning days at Mizzou, and he certainly would be better remembered if he had been surrounded by better talent. But statistically, Henke has few peers among Tigers of yore. On February 18, 1961, he sank a shot against Kansas State to supplant Bob Reiter as Mizzou's all-time leading scorer, and his 1,338 career points stood as a Missouri record until John Brown surpassed it twelve years later. Henke's career averages for points (18.1 per game, fifth all-time) and rebounds (9.8, also fifth) make him one of the most productive Tigers in history.

Despite those impressive credentials, Henke may be best remembered for his role in the most violent spectacle in Missouri lore. Entering the final game of his career, Henke was engaged in a fight for the Big Eight scoring championship with Kansas's Wayne Hightower for the second straight year (he had finished second to Hightower the previous season). The Jayhawks invaded Brewer Fieldhouse for the season's last contest, and the animosity between the programs was greater than ever before. KU's football team had beaten top-ranked Missouri less than four months earlier, costing the Tigers a national title, but had been forced to forfeit the result for playing Bert Coan, a running back who was ruled ineligible. Kansas's basketball team had also recently been placed on probation, and some in Lawrence believed that Missouri athletics director Don Faurot had snitched on them. The Jayhawk fans' fury boiled over when the Tiger hoops team visited Allen Field House in February, and they showered Mizzou's team with such hostility that pre-game introductions were called off. When the teams met again in Columbia, it was a nasty, physical affair, but Henke was sensational, scoring over Hightower with ease, and clinching the scoring title. But early in the second half, Hightower intercepted an outlet pass thrown by Henke, drove to the hoop, got fouled, and then sparked one of the wildest scenes ever on a basketball court.

Henke was ejected for his role in the riot, an unfitting end to one of Missouri's finest careers.

Random Thoughts from a Football Weekend

Michael Atchison — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 19:01:24 -0000

I officially declare it the Greatest Homecoming Weekend Ever! Glorious weather, good friends and a thorough dismantling of a nationally-ranked team made for a fabulous 48 hours . . . .

I met Homecoming Grand Marshal/Football Hall of Famer Roger Wehrli and his wife Gayle (remarkably lovely people) twice over the weekend, and confessed that, when I was a kid, my favorite book was All-Pro Football Stars 1977 (it sorta still is, actually), in which Mr. Wehrli was recognized as one of the NFL’s top defensive backs. I also told him that my father-in-law wore number 23 for the Tigers just a few years before Roger and Johnny Roland did, and that we like to say that Bruce’s number was retired, which is half true . . . . A streak continues: the Tigers have never lost a Homecoming game after I’ve eaten a Heidelburger the preceding Friday night. . . . While waiting for the parade to begin on Saturday morning, I saw Gary Leonard dragging a three-wheeled red wagon along a Ninth Street sidewalk. While it might appear peculiar to see a seven-foot man captaining such a defective vessel through the streets of a mid-sized Midwestern town, with Gary it somehow seemed normal. . . . Columbia’s West Junior High School band has a scrappy cymbal player who overcame a broken strap/handle to provide the event the proper fanfare. . . . The parade’s most prolific candy-thrower, by far, was Rocky Alden, wife of Mizzou’s athletics director Mike Alden. . . . Noted without comment: A group of adult people dressed in some oddly sophisticated Star Wars regalia marched in the parade. . . . Weekend’s Moment of Zen: Attending a reception at Jesse Hall, sitting outside on the north steps, beer in hand, contemplating the Columns. . . . Offensive coordinator Dave Christensen is a mad scientist. The whole world anticipated one of history’s great aerial showdowns, and he controlled the game by running the ball down Texas Tech’s throat. Before Saturday, I could not fathom that Mizzou could score 41 points despite Chase Daniel throwing the ball just nineteen times. Pity the poor defensive coordinator who has to prepare for this team. . . . Jeremy Maclin (who badly needs a nickname, by the way; The Jet? Flash Maclin? Somebody help me) has easily the best football speed I’ve seen in two-plus decades of closely following the Tigers. The only possible precedent I can come up with is Mel Gray. Maclin’s 57-yard catch and run for touchdown in the fourth quarter was pure poetry. . . . Mizzou’s defense has developed a fourth quarter sadistic streak. In the last two home games, the front seven has pinned back its ears and punished Sam Keller and Graham Harrell. I like it. . . . Though there’s work to do before we get there, Mizzou’s November 24 meeting with Kansas at Arrowhead Stadium is starting to look like the most anticipated sporting event in Kansas City since the 1988 Final Four. Disagree? What ranks above it?

(To read this post in full HTML glory, go here.)

A Family Reunion

Michael Atchison — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 18:57:59 -0000

A couple of weeks ago, I had the privilege of speaking at the Kansas City regional dinner for the University of Missouri's Jefferson Club. A packed house of Tiger supporters came to celebrate Mizzou's basketball history and their own commitment to the University.

I've given lots of talks about Tiger hoops, but never in a room so alive with the program's history. Norm Stewart was there, as was Ed Matheny (who played from 1941 to 1943), Phil Snowden (who played for Norm Stewart's freshman team in 1957 before going on to greater fame as a Missouri quarterback), George Flamank and Ned Monsees, Don Early (1962-65), Greg Flaker, Bob Johnson (1970-71), John Brown, Al Eberhard, Gary Link, Bill Flamank (1973-75), Willie Smith, Kim Anderson, Derrick Chievous and Lynn Hardy. It was a remarkable assemblage of men who spanned nearly sixty years of Missouri basketball.

I talked about the beginnings of Tiger basketball, Missouri's World War I era Golden Age, and stars of long ago like George Williams, John Cooper and Bud Heinemann. We celebrated the program's history, Norm Stewart's upcoming induction into the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame, and the brotherhood that binds these men and their school.

The past players came to celebrate all of that, but as much as anything, they came to support Bill Flamank, a hard-working forward and a second generation Tiger who was the third member of his family to wear the uniform. Bill has endured a year of incomprehensible tragedy, losing his wife and suffering devastating injuries in a terrible car accident, for which has undergone five surgeries to date. Though he moved about on crutches, Bill walked tall.

Coach Stewart spoke a few words after I finished, and praised Bill's perseverance. As you spend time with the men who played so hard for Coach Stewart and his predecessors, you can see why they were so successful. They are tenacious, dedicated men of character, and they make for a tightly-knit fraternity. John Brown made the trip to Kansas City from Rolla because he wanted to ensure that Bill got out to a dinner where he could be supported by his friends.

No one made a show of why they were there, and Coach Stewart spoke of Bill's circumstances in only vague terms. Everything about it was understated and dignified, but stirring nonetheless. It was one of those times when you really could be proud to be a Tiger.

(to read this post in full HTML glory, go here )

Mizzou's New Wave

Michael Atchison — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 02:03:09 -0000

It was a Dali painting of a Fellini film set to a Tom Waits soundtrack. When victory became inevitable, fans searched for novel ways to entertain themselves. Under the black of night, a sea of gold unleashed a wave that gathered momentum, and for a time, seemed to gain consciousness. A beach ball bounded lively on the alumni side. Tens of thousands lingered at Faurot Field until midnight to soak in the sultry, surreal atmosphere despite the fact that the outcome had been decided an hour earlier.

Click 'Full Story' for the rest.

I thought, for a moment, it might have been a dream.

After so many 40-point beatings at the hands of Tom Osborne's Nebraska teams, it was hard to fathom. But the Missouri Tigers gave the Cornhuskers a methodical, decisive drubbing on Saturday night in Columbia, and they made it look easy, while the Huskers looked helpless.

The Osborne era had unofficially ended in the same place in October 2003, when the Tigers handed Dr. Tom's hand-picked successor a 41-24 defeat. Despite a 10-3 record that year, Frank Solich was fired for clinging to an antiquated system and for falling to Missouri, a team the Cornhuskers had handled without fail for a quarter century. With the option gone the way of the dinosaur, and with pro-style passing the wave of the future, Nebraska turned to an NFL coach who immediately burned up the recruiting trail. But the two-star results delivered thus far by Bill Callahan's five-star talent clearly weren't what the people of the corn had in mind.

On this stunning Saturday, it was like Freaky Friday, with the programs trading places. Missouri dominated like the Nebraska dynasty of the 1990s, while the Huskers toiled as listlessly as some Tiger teams of the late 1980s. Even the fans seemed to swap, as Mizzou's notorious tailgaters filled Faurot full and filled it early. A half hour before kickoff the stands were packed and crackling with energy. The faithful came to their feet for Marching Mizzou's pre-game show, an occurrence unprecedented in my experience, and they rose to the occasion every time the Tigers' defense needed a boost. It was a ferocious display by the fans, whose craving for victory was palpable. I had feared that hours of sun-drenched preparations might sap some energy, but I couldn't have been more wrong. The "M! I! Z!" chant emanating from the students hit us alumni side geezers with a physical force. I've been at Faurot Field too many times to count, but I've never witnessed anything like that. It wasn't just a good night at the stadium, it was the Platonic ideal of the college football experience.

Does Saturday's result portend the breakthrough we've long hoped for? We'll see. But on one spectacular fall evening, it sure felt like Missouri football had arrived.