London-based, English bred mando-rock quartet Mumford & Sons took the stage this past Saturday evening at Bonnaroo in Manchester, TN before a crowd of more than 75,000. After two songs off their absolutely excellent debut album Sigh No More, bandleader Marcus Mumford addressed the crowd:
Congrats on your draw.
It fell in stark contrast to say an ACDC-like Are You Ready?! greeting (source: Jim Breuer), and presumably most of the crowd had not even seen the ENG/USA World Cup game that day that ended in 1-1 tie (a tie is the new win in 2010). Still, it sounded like the crowd liked it.*
*I wasn’t at Bonnaroo, but I got to check out this set thanks to NPR, who archived lots and lots of performances from the festival. So far, based on what I’ve heard Mumford & Sons’ show falls a close second to The Dead Weather.
ESPN.com posted a breakdown of the percentage of people who picked each team to win in each round in their Tournament Challenge. Pretty awesome if you ask me.
Of the 16 teams that advanced to the second week, here were the five teams that ESPN users lacked confidence in the most – because showing you that at least 92% thought that Kentucky would make it to Sweet-16 isn’t even interesting to John Calipari on his most narcissistic day.
Tennessee – 19.8%
Cornell – 11.3%
Washington – 8.8%
St. Mary’s – 3.7%
Northern Iowa – .9%
And just how damaging was that Kansas upset? 42% of ESPN’s brackets had them in the Championship game.
A couple good joshers from the wide world of prep football today. Chuck Klosterman (and other ex-high school athletes from North Dakota), these are in your wheelhouse…
The more draconian of the two, eight players at Upper Arlington High School in Ohio have been suspended for tonight’s game after some suggestive behavior in the team photo…
Upper Arlington High School has suspended at least eight players for tonight’s football game against Findlay High School.
A report from a Columbus television station says that at least eight senior players have been suspended from school and will not participate in the game against the Trojans because of sexually explicit gestures made in a picture…
So, eight imbeciles made the shocker in the team picture. Reminds me of the time one of my Catholic grammar school pals, we’ll call him Tito Jackson, flipped the bird in the second grade class photo. (He used both hands actually, which were hanging by his side. It was the double inverted salute, in fact.) My mom was less than thrilled when she saw that, and I didn’t get to play Nintendo track n’ field at Tito’s house for quite some time.
Like Tito Jackson, the actions of these H.S. baffoons did indeed see the light of day. The photo wasn’t discovered until it appeared in the school’s football program book and posters distributed to local businesses.
Meanwhile, it wasn’t player hijinks that stunted the order of Alcoa and Fulton’s game last night, but something out of an Indiana Jones or Kevin Bacon movie…
With Alcoa leading 20-7 in the fourth quarter last night, the game had to be postponed because of sinkhole all of suddenly opened on 41-yard line.
OK, maybeTremors is a bad comparison here. The hole was only a foot in a half in diameter – it wasn’t exactly eating midfield.
Sensing victory, Alcoa coach Gary Rankin wanted to play it out using half the field. Instead, they’ve postponed until 5 p.m today. That is, unless it develops into this…
Easily the best performance in recent times by an athlete with a truly unfortunate name. University of Kentucky guard, Jodie Meeks, dropped 54 points last night, going 10-15 from behind the arc, to lead the Wildcats to a 90-72 victory over Tennessee.
Jodie as in Jodie, the name for females. Meeks as in meek – or docile, submissive, milquetoast. Or Meeks, as in Steven “me and Meeksy are working on a hi-fi system” Meeks from Dead Poets Society.
Frankly, the name Sheryl Miller sounds tougher to me, but there’s no denying that this guy got it done. Check out the highlights:
Each Wednesday, I post a weekly update to the digest “If You Had Money”, which shows the sporting goods and memorabilia you could purchase if disposable income was no longer a thing of the past. Each week, it will inevitably leave you wanting…
I believe it was Lil Wayne who said it best when he said, “GOT MONEY! And you know it, take it out your pocket and show it, then throw it.”
A brief anecdote about zambonis. About three months after I graduated college, I went back to campus for my first homecoming as proud alumni. My buddy Bob, from Memphis, couldn’t make it. So I proceeded to tell everyone that he’d gotten a job as the zambonist for the Nashville Predators – making five dollars per hour, but with full benefits and his own theme music (I want to say it was “Hungry Like the Wolf”). People were eating this up, and no one even questioned the fact that Nashville and Memphis are easily two-hours apart.
Interestingly enough, like Bob, this Zamboni technician is based in the South too. Thus, I couldn’t help but feel compelled to check out what else a guy from North Carolina who owns a zamboni had up for sale. Here are a few of his other auctions…
