Bi-Polar, or the Missouri fan base....

I've said this before and I'll say it again.  No group is more bi-polar than the Missouri fan base.  The football team wins the biggest game in recent history on homecoming last year and suddenly we're headed to the national championship game.  They go on to drop the next 2 in embarrassing fashion and suddenly we won't win another game.....ever.  Pinkel is a moron, Yost is out of his element and Blaine Gabbert sucks.  We had a few years when Quin Snyder was spiraling out of control where all we could muster up for the basketball team was apathy.  When we got Mike Anderson I was pretty happy, but when the team made the Elite 8 run a couple of years ago, the bar was raised and Mike started dealing with the same wild mood swings that Coach Pinkel has dealt with since the 2004 season.   

Now don't get me wrong.  I know the season hasn't gone the way any of us wanted, but when the football Tigers dropped the inexplicable loss to Texas Tech last fall, I saw fans completely writing off the season and putting all their hopes into a basketball team that still had more questions than answers.  The team put itself out there for these expectations somewhat but let's remember that these are 18-22 year old kids that have grown up thinking they're bullet proof.  I've gotten a chance to talk with juco recruit Ricardo Ratliffe and think he's just a really fun young man.  However I don't think Ricardo realized how much different the competition was going to be coming from a juco player of the year award into the Big XII, one of the toughest conferences in the country.  Another guy that's taken a lot of heat is Kim English.  All the kid's done is be the best ambassador for Missouri sports I can remember.  But he's become the whipping boy for a lot of fans as he set the expectations too high his freshman year.  The pressure appears to be getting to him as he accused the team of quitting after the conference tournament loss to A&M.  If Kim and the other players don't learn to ignore fans expectations, then I doubt next year will be markedly better.

I don't know any way you can get kids to listen to a geezer like me, so trying to think of ways to get to the team would be hopeless.  Hell, I'm not sure Coach Anderson can get to them right now.  I also doubt that I can get a fan base to change it's stripes, but if I have anything to say it's just quit worrying about the destination and enjoy the ride.  If the AD would determine to just concentrate on one or two sports and let everything else go to hell, those sports might well be more successful, but that just isn't going to happen, as I've discussed in a previous post.  But right now we have a football team that's won 40 games in the past 4 years and a basketball team that's had the best three year run in school history.  I don't worry about kids getting into major trouble and the coaches are graduating kids.  To me that's pretty good.  Would I love a conference title or, dare I say it, a national championship?  Well hell yes, but I'm not going to base my happiness on it.  Like I say, I'm going to enjoy the ride and hope we don't drive over a cliff.

Missouri fans, recruiting and other tidbits...

Well, the football regular season is over and we're working our way toward basketball season.  Nothing to do now except wait for the bowl games to begin, (1st 3 being on December 18th, just a few short days away) finish up with this years recruiting class, get out and support the basketball team, and, being Missouri fans, bitch like hell.  I hate to say that about a fan base, especially one that I consider myself to be a member of in good standing, but it's true.  I frequent a lot of message boards and am constantly amazed at the negativity our fan's.  The Tigers, by most were considered to be, before the season about an 8 win team, 9 if some things broke correctly.  Now, following a 10 win season, the third time in four years the Tigers have reached double digit wins, a large percentage of our followers choose to focus on the negatives.  Yes, we should have beaten Texas Tech.  And if you want to nitpick then yes, we probably also fell a couple of bowl games below where we could, note I said COULD have been selected, although our following the last couple of seasons probably doomed us there.  I choose to be happy myself about the fact that since the day Chase Daniel took over as quarterback in 2006, the Tigers have gone 48-18.  Folks with a bowl game to be played, Missouri has averaged over 9 wins a season.  Folks, the first Missouri game I can remember was played January 1st, 1966 in a 20-18 win over Florida in the Sugar Bowl.  Trust me on this one, these are the "good old days".

Now Missouri has the opportunity to send off our players to a great warm weather destination for a bowl game against a good, if somewhat underachieving Iowa Hawkeyes team from the Big Ten, the conference we hoped to be a member of this summer, yet we're complaining that we were passed over by the Cotton and Alamo bowls.  I get the snub from the Cotton Bowl and understand why folks are a bit pissed off by said snub.  They took a Texas A&M team that the Tigers throttled 30-9 at College Station a few weeks ago.  However, since that time the Aggies reeled off 6 straight wins, including victories over both teams that represented the conference in the title game, Nebraska and Oklahoma.  There is no way to say they weren't the hottest team in the conference down the stretch.  Their last trip to the Cotton Bowl was after the 2004 season, they have a huge fan base that's going to travel and put butts in the seats.  We forget that, outside of the BCS title game, the rest of the bowls are mostly concerned with showing a profit and making themselves look good.  While I don't agree with it, I get it and think they probably made a good choice.  As far as the Alamo Bowl, well Okie Lite finished with the exact same 10-2 and 6-2 conference record as the Tigers and the teams didn't play each other.  It's perfectly within their right to select the Cowboys.  And frankly, if you asked the Missouri players, I imagine they'd all prefer to spend a few days in Phoenix as opposed to Dallas or San Antonio.  Hell, the Insight Bowl even has a bigger payout than the Alamo so that's more travel money for Mizzou.  We need to get over the victim mentality and get behind this team.  The Tigers only lose 5 starters this year and the future indeed looks bright.

Another whine fest that I'm growing tired of is the one currently going on about the state of Tiger recruiting.  Yes, we currently lost 2 kids in Anthony Pierson and Sheldon Richardson that were our highest ranked recruits, but Big Shel has been uncharacteristically quiet since announcing he was flipping his commitment to USC while Pierson is reportedly heading to CoMo this weekend for an official visit.  I wouldn't write off either of these young men quite yet.  And even if they do both wind up elsewhere, why not concentrate on the kids we do have, such as Gerrand Johnson, a 270 lb defensive tackle that will graduate high school in December and enroll early at Mizzou.  Yep, he's only a three star kid, but take a look at his offer list.  The Tigers beat out such teams as Arkansas, Ol' Miss, Nebraska and Tennessee for his services.  He looks like the kind of kid that's going to pair with last years DT prize, Lucas Vincent to give Missouri a nice pair of tackles to build around once Dominique Hamilton and Terrell Resonno graduate next year.   

In short, it's time Missouri fan grew a pair and decided to get behind the sports teams at our university.  Mike Alden has hired a couple of quality coaches that have established winning programs and graduated their players.  I, for one am going to do what I can to support them.  You can either continue to whine and bitch, or you can open your checkbook, buy a bowl ticket, get out to watch a top 15 basketball team and make a wrestling match, volleyball game or do a bit of hot stove work taking a look at what could be very good softball and baseball teams this spring.  Frankly, it looks to be a much better way to spend your time as opposed to the glass half empty approach.  But hell, that's just me.  

Week 14: A list of disappointments.

I'm struggling this week to get excited about the upcoming games.  Since, if you've read my blog, you know I'm a shameless Missouri homer, you might think it was because my Tigers aren't in action.  Well, you'd be wrong.  Three championship games are being played, and frankly, they just don't appear to be compelling match ups.  Oh, there are some good story lines, I suppose.  OU and Nebraska playing in the final Big XII championship game is fitting, but by this time, I don't know if the corn have enough left offensively to hang.  Of course I could be wrong, and it turns out to be a fabulous game.  But I'm expecting to see some sort of 6-3 slug fest with a shitload of punts.  Va Tech and Florida State meeting in the ACC title game does absolutely nothing for me, and does anyone really expect South Carolina to stay with Auburn?

But worse for me than the week's schedule has been watching my team's fan base go into full blown whine and bitch mode.  I've been skimming Tiger message boards this week and am just aghast at what I've seen.  We're already complaining about the bowl game we're going to and I can understand to an extent.  Texas A&M has already been selected to go to the Cotton Bowl and the Tigers beat them by three touchdowns at College Station.  But the thing to remember is that other than the national championship game, and to an extent the 4 BCS games, it's pretty much a wash.  The conference shares bowl revenue so it really doesn't matter financially, and for the players sake, and that's what this should be about, a trip to San Diego would be a better reward than traveling to Dallas or San Antonio for the holidays.  One of my favorite sites is PowerMizzou, a pay site that I love for the work we get from Gabe and Pete, but the message board, which supposedly is full of rabid Missouri fans has become completely unreadable.   Tigerboard has always been a bit over the edge and continues, but at least it's a free site where fans from all schools are welcome.  Missouri Tiger fans have always been their own worst enemies, but that's a topic for another day and I'll quit my own whinefest now.

Moving on to the weekends contests, I currently sit at 70-20 straight up for the season, but 39-42 against the point spread.  If I'm going to catch up, I need a good week, followed by some good work on the bowl match ups.  With that in mind, I've devoted almost 10 minutes of research to this weeks games.  We'll start out in Dallas where corn nation meets up with the land thieves in the final Big XII title game, at least for now.  I suppose it's always possible that the league could expand back to 12 teams, but I can't imagine any school with common sense wanting to align themselves to a conference who's shelf life appears to be 5 years.  The Sooners open as a 4 1/2 point favorite in this game, which could also be listed as the over/under.  The hicks have been devastated with injuries on the offensive side of the ball and will have to rely on a stout defense to keep this game close.  I have my doubts they'll be able to do it.  OU has been beatable this year, but Stoops is good when he makes it to the title game and they have a pretty decent defense of their own.  I think Landry Jones takes enough control of this to allow the Sooners to put it away.  I'm picking OU to win and cover, 20-10.

You'd have never guessed it after consecutive losses to Boise State and FBS James Madison to open the season, but Virginia Tech sits at 10-2 and meets up with Florida State in the ACC title game.  Florida State has been fairly pedestrian, although beating in state rivals Miami and Florida was somewhat impressive.  The Hokies open as 4 point favorites, and I don't see them having any problems covering.  I'm taking Va Tech in a rout, 38-13.

In the SEC, Auburn and Cam Newton meet up with the 'Ol ball coach, Steve Spurrier and the South Carolina Gamecocks.  While it's entirely possible that Auburn may have all wins vacated at some point due to, well let's say irregularities with the recruitment of Heisman favorite Newton, it's SEC football and they aren't about to forego an opportunity to have a participant in the national championship game for the umpteenth year in a row.  Auburn rolls in this one, 45-21.
There are some other games that would normally be worth picking, but this year they were damn hard to find.  Arizona/Arizona State, USC/UCLA are pedestrian matchups at best.  I had to look to the Big East, which should NEVER be mentioned in a football blog to find 2 teams with winning records playing.  Yes, mighty UCONN travels to South Florida in a match up of 7-4 teams.  Due to being at home, the Bulls are a 1 point favorite.  I admit, I probably won't watch one second of this game, but I think they'll do just a touch better than that.  I'm taking USF to win and cover, 31-27.
That's all I've got for now.  Hope your holiday was great and you enjoy the weekends match ups.  I can't say that I especially will, but I've got next week off at work, and that always puts a spring in my step.  See you next weekend.    

Week 9 recap:Message board free week for me.

Tiger nation is in full meltdown mode today.  Gary Pinkel, Dave Yost and Dave Steckel are apparently back to being idiots that have no business coaching in a BCS conference and our players should have their scholarships revoked.  And if Mike Alden doesn't take care of this then by golly we're going to storm his house and run him out too.  God there are days when I hate a percentage of our fan base.  
Saturday afternoon in Lincoln, the Huskers jumped out to a 24-0 lead 12 minutes into the game and the Tigers were never able to get back into the contest.  Roy Helu rushed for 307 yards as the hicks were able to control the line of scrimmage, and the offensive line gave Blaine Gabbert no time to throw.  There is no way around it, it was a dominating effort by a pretty darned good husker team.  I made a trip to my favorite pay site and read the message board for about 3 minutes and realized I would spend no time there this week.  And I'm not even going going to think about heading over to Tigerboard.  Anyway, I was 4-2 straight up for the week but only 2-3 vs the spread.  (No line was given on kansas/ISU)  For the year I'm 59-15 straight up and 34-30 playing the odds.

As angry as Missouri fan is today, I can't begin to imagine what things are like on the Longhorn boards as Texas dropped to 4-4 and 2-3 in conference play following a 30-22 loss to Baylor in Austin.  The Bears didn't do anything particularly well yesterday.  They passed for a little over 200 yards and rushed for a little over 100 and simply stuck around and waited for the Longwhorns to implode in the 4th quarter.  Yes, this is another game that I completely whiffed on but it's hard to hate on Baylor.  I can only imagine how much dancing was going on in the streets of Waco.  Or would have been going on if Baptists danced.  
The game that I split on this week was in College Station where the Aggies hosted Texas Tech as a 7 point favorite.  I thought A&M would win but fail to cover, but they drilled the Red Raiders 45-27.  The Tigers have to hope that A&M is coming into it's own as they host the huskers in a couple of weeks.

Going into the games I picked correctly this week, one occurred in Norman where the Sooners hosted Colorado.  OU came in as a 24 point favorite and you just knew that they'd be in a foul mood after dropping last weeks game against the Tigers.  Oklahoma used a 26 point 2nd quarter to end this game at the half as they rolled 43-10.
When I began making my predictions for last week, the Oklahoma State team still had their star receiver, Justin Blackmon on tap for this week.  However, a DUI arrest put him out of commission.  Fortunately for the Cowboys, they had a trip to Manhattan to face the Wildcats who are generally always undermanned.  Brandon Weeden still threw for almost 300 yards and a couple of touchdown as Okie State won and covered 24-14.

The final game of the week was in Ames where the Cyclones played host to a kansas team that may be among the worst in conference history this year.    There was no line on this game since the beaks were down to their 3rd string quarterback.  It was easily ku's best defensive effort of the year, but in the end, the result was the same as the jayhawks dropped their 11th straight conference game 28-16.  It was win # 5 for the clones as they hope to go to consecutive bowls under Paul Rhodes.  They close with 2 games at home and just one on the road, which is at Colorado so you'd think they were a shoe in.  Unfortunately for ISU, their 2 home games are against Nebraska next week and closing their season against Missouri.  For kansas fans the season can't end quickly enough.  heh.
That's all I've got for this week.  There are some interesting games next weekend involving some unlikely players as Baylor visits Oklahoma State, and Colorado travels to lawrence as those 2 teams battle for uncontested possession of 11th place in the conference.