Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- The first video footage of a giant squid in US waters is recorded. As amazing as this creature is in so many ways - I have to admit that I'm slightly disappointed that a giant squid is just 12-feet long.

- Heh Heh

- Interesting profile of Ohio State strength and conditioning coach.

- Lincoln and the art of transformative leadership. (Long read)

- UConn leaving the ACC to return to the Big East. Move makes a lot of sense.

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting and thought I'd share.

- Tebow, Tebow, Tebow

- WTF Whistling

- Watch Aptera employees smash prototype electric cars as company goes under

- The dangers of pornography

- Will Ferrell Old Milwaukee ads - Ad Number 1 - Ad Number 2

- Here's a map of the new Big East in 2014

Dave Gavitt, the Big East, Holy Cross and the Road Not Taken

Yesterday Dave Gavitt, the founder of the Big East passed away. Yesterday the news broke that Syracuse and Pittsburgh will be leaving the Big East for the ACC. Yesterday Holy Cross beat Harvard in football 30-22. All of these stories are related.

If you are a sports fan from Worcester of a certain age - you know the story well. Dave Gavitt wants to form a new basketball league that will cash in on TV money and they want Holy Cross as one of their centerpiece schools. Father Brooks and the College of the Holy Cross say "No thanks."

Years later schools like Georgetown and St. John's are national powers and Holy Cross fans are asking "what if" questions.

Yesterday Dave Gavitt passed away and in a terribly cruel twist of fate the league he formed may have passed away with him. Syracuse and Pittsburgh leaving the Big East for the ACC became official this morning. All of which in my mind validates the wisdom of Father Brooks all those years ago.

Where would Holy Cross be today if they had joined the Big East? They would have had to have spent millions to upgrade the football program and to what end? The realist knows that football success in this day and age would not be possible. They can't draw athletes from a whole state or afford a modern stadium complete with luxury boxes like UConn. Holy Cross has an enrollment of just 2,900. Compare that to Villanova who has a student body of well over 7,000. A place like Notre Dame has an enrollment of around 8,500 and is actually considered small by the big-time college football movers and shakers. The cold, hard fact is that the student body at Holy Cross just could not support a big-time program. A BCS Holy Cross would be a joke Holy Cross. What benefit would come from Holy Cross getting whipped by TCU by 40 points? What benefit would that bring to the value of a Holy Cross degree?

People who still wish to believe that Holy Cross should have joined the Big East all those years ago will argue that the Crusaders could have been a basketball member of the Big East like Georgetown or Providence College. They would have a point. But where would that have left the football program which had an equally storied history as the basketball team? People forget that Holy Cross played in the Orange Bowl back when being in a Bowl really meant something. What about the football team? Do they try to exist in between worlds like Villanova? Do they drop the program - again like Villanova? Georgetown (enrollment over 9,000 undergrad and grad combined) didn't have football when the Big East was formed but they have since added a team to compete at the Holy Cross level which I would take as evidence that Holy Cross was doing things the right way.

People say that you are known by the company you keep - yesterday Holy Cross was associating with Harvard. They regularly associate with Ivy League schools and the reputations of the Patriot League schools are pretty much unblemished.

Today the Universities of the Big East are wondering what their future holds and how they could be so betrayed by "brother" institutions. Who is in the better situation?

Stream of Consciousness

It was a long weekend and I'm still "recovering". I drank many beers and bet on many games (at one point I hit seven straight games) plus I played lots of cards. Obviously I haven't had any time to post here but I figured I'd just toss out a bunch of miscellaneous thoughts.

- The NCAA BCS championship game is shaping up to be Missouri vs. West Virginia. I've been on the Missouri bandwagon from the first game of the season but to me the real story here is the almost certainty that a team from the Big East is in a great position to win the National Championship. When Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College bolted the Big East for the ACC there was talk that the Big East was done as a football conference and some people were writing that the Big East's automatic BCS bowl bid to the league champion should be taken away. For the Mountaineers to be in a position to come away with the National Championship is a great story as far as I'm concerned.

- The college football polls are a mess. Can anyone explain to me how Virginia Tech can be ranked ahead of both Boston College and LSU when those two teams both beat Virginia Tech? The polls are a joke.

- I'm rooting for San Francisco to lose the rest of their games. How great is it that the Patriots own the 49er's first round pick? The Pats could be looking at getting a Darren McFadden or a Chris Long or they could trade the pick for two picks further down in the first round and wind up with a Mike Hart and a top offensive lineman.

- I am so sick of people saying that the Eagles gave the rest of the league "the blueprint" for how to beat the Patriots. Yeah sure - all you have to do is "hold" the Patriots to 31 points and have your QB throw for well over 300 yards without throwing any interceptions. Yeah sure - that's a blueprint all right.