ConstableRabbit

It's not exactly the old away hat -- the C is white.

Wow -- that's all the right stuff.

Vandy just canceled the rest of its Northwestern and Ohio St. series, likely to replace them with cupcakes.

Northwestern: 87 INT return yards Miss St.: 106 passing yards

Some great comments on that article:

GET SOME [expletive] CUTTY

I really don't think that should be an issue. The whole "Cubs Way" manual that is being/has been created should have everybody preaching exactly the same thing top to bottom. I think having more guys just allows more individual attention for each player and time to work on things. Plus, another set of eyes to spot potential problems with mechanics can't be a bad thing. Christians have (for the most part) the same manual, but that doesn't stop us from being hypocritical, arrogant, and (often times) wrong... The manual argument wasn't great, but your religion analogy is just plain terrible. There aren't 2B people in the team's front office and Christians can't be "fired" for incorrectly following their manual.

Awesome.

Yup, he checks all the favorite athlete boxes: -Really good yet somehow underrated -Gets the meatball faction all worked up -Openly disdains the media. Much like Aramis before him :swoon:

9 conference games and drop ND for those that had them on the schedule. The championship game would be "The Big Ten"

That's the only possible rationale. The TV market thing makes sense in theory, but in practice I'm skeptical. Not to mention that I think either school dilutes the league/brand (meaning, even if the TV market thing is true, I'm still not sure I'd want to add them). Penn State and Nebraska made sense on various levels; this leaves me feeling that the Big Ten is selling its soul. People are leaving the midwest -- it's a demographic shift as much as it is anything else. BTN needs eyeballs and SI's Pete Thamel has speculated that the conference could gain $100M additionally annually from a Rutgers/MD addition. Sure, great. I'm all for eyeballs. I'm just not sold this is anything more than hypothetical eyeballs. As this blog points out, http://thequad.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/19/the-geography-of-college-football-fans-and-realignment-chaos/ , Rutgers may be the most popular team in New York City, but with just 600,000 fans; a great comparison is that Nebraska is the most popular team in Omaha, Nebraska, with about 400,000 fans. Rutgers has more football fans than all of three Big Ten teams (Indiana, Purdue, Northwestern). Maryland has less fans than every single Big Ten team. I agree that Rutgers and Maryland are close to huge TV markets; but, at some point, doesn't actually being popular in those TV markets matter? Again, if this leads to $100 million more in revenue based on TV markets, that's great; I just do no understand why it would. Moreover, even if it does for the time being, surely someone eventually will realize that 600,000 fans aren't worth that much. And then the Big Ten will be left with Rugters -- a team that has gone to less bowl games than Indiana. Less than Indiana! I think you're underselling how big some of these markets are. Even leaving out NYC... you have the entire state of New Jersey to consider. Getting NJ and maybe NYC markets to have the BTN, along with the Baltimore/DC market is huge.

That's the only possible rationale. The TV market thing makes sense in theory, but in practice I'm skeptical. Not to mention that I think either school dilutes the league/brand (meaning, even if the TV market thing is true, I'm still not sure I'd want to add them). Penn State and Nebraska made sense on various levels; this leaves me feeling that the Big Ten is selling its soul. People are leaving the midwest -- it's a demographic shift as much as it is anything else. BTN needs eyeballs and SI's Pete Thamel has speculated that the conference could gain $100M additionally annually from a Rutgers/MD addition.

Agreed. McCarthy is a funny guy on twitter and stuff, but on the mound he's just a worse version of Rich Harden. In what way is McCarthy any version of Harden? Oft-injured pitcher. And by oft, I mean this year.

Repeat puns won't float. I guess I went overboard. No, seriously, we've already a-mast many puns, including your second one.

Okay, that was overboard.

I want to know what the context of the conversation was that lead him to discuss the FA market in 2015. I could be wrong, but I think 2014 is the final year of the current WGN/CSN TV deal, which would explain why he's bringing 2015 up. wgn deal ends after 2014, but the [expletive] csn deal runs through 2019 Well, considering the fact that Ricketts owns a sizeable chunk of CSN Chicago, I can imagine that the team would still stand to make some money off of that, depending on how it's structured.

I'll be attending NU-UM and it's my first time in Ann Arbor -- any must-do's while I'm there?

Bahahahahaha this is awesome!

Len's voice is still nasally and annoying, and his HR voice crack still sucks. However, he's a smart broadcaster whose commentary is excellent. If Karros can't provide the latter, I doubt the lisperers will be able to deal. Those things bothered me a bit at first and now don't at all anymore. It's like when you meet a fat ugly stranger and you are really aware of how fat and ugly they are compared to when you know them that's just what they look like. I'd imagine that people who come into constant contact with Paul Sullivan aren't always thinking about how he looks like a troll of some kind. Haha, I think the analogy is more like meeting a fat and ugly stranger, but then realizing that they're actually really smart and a nice person. They have good attributes to balance out the bad. Deep down, I hope Sullivan's colleagues call him Gollum or something behind his back.

http://www.footballoutsiders.com/quick-reads/2012/week-8-quick-reads Interesting, but what's the root cause? Does our line get skittish? Is it because the opponent's DL is fresh? Is Cutty's 4th quarter excellence padded by some garbage time performances? How much of this can be attributed to variance vs. a legit trend? I demand answers, damnit!

Len's voice is still nasally and annoying, and his HR voice crack still sucks. However, he's a smart broadcaster whose commentary is excellent. If Karros can't provide the latter, I doubt the lisperers will be able to deal.

Reds beat reporter

Glad they didn't come after the guy who currently lives in KC and has 2 tickets because he didn't want to go back to the end of the line. Or the guy in SF :)

...aaaand Nate Burleson is out for the year after talking smack. Was this his "tribute"?