Happy Friday everyone, and welcome to your morning Skull Session.
The offseason continues to roll on, as we approach Jane's Addiction levels of ennui and make a last ditch attempt at trying to stave off the slings and arrows of outrageous boredom. So far it seems to be working, and this week was a particularly fun week in the world of sports, specifically the sport of spelling things.
Yes, that's correct, the Scripps National Spelling Bee was completed last night, with Snigdha Nandipati winning the overall competition by spelling the word "guetapens," which is another word for a trap. Snigdha apparently studied for 6-12 hours a day for this thing, which doesn't sound like a lot at first, but keep in mind that all of her remaining hours were not spent asleep in some kind of chamber in Superman's Fortress of Solitude and that she actually had school and stuff.
If you feel bad that a 14 year old kid is probably smarter than you, don't feel too bad about that because there's a 6 year old who almost got to the semifinals this year who is also smarter than you. On the plus side, you would destroy them both in arm wrestling.
PAX SOUTHEASTIA Picking up from the Saban story in yesterday's Skully, the SEC is trying to dictate the way a potential four team playoff would work, favoring the idea that the four best teams would be selected rather than four conference champions and you know what, I'm totally on their side with this.
Of course, obviously this concept interests the SEC because given recent college football history, having the top four teams compete in a playoff would greatly favor their conference. The SEC would've had two representatives in a hypothetical four team playoff three times in the last five seasons under this concept, and would be pretty well set up to continue their dominance of college football. Still though, my personal motivation for this idea is that now this is more or less the only way that a fringe team would ever be able to compete for a national championship, barring an expanded playoff. If allowing two SEC teams in the mix means that by some crazy fluke Furman gets a shot at the title, I'm all for it.
NOT LAUGHING Oh James Franklin, you're so funny and cool!
I’ve been saying it for a long time, I will not hire an assistant until I see his wife. If she looks the part and she’s a D1 recruit, then you got a chance to get hired. That’s part of the deal. There’s a very strong correlation between having the confidence, going up and talking to a woman, and being quick on your feet and having some personality and confidence and being articulate and confident, than it is walking into a high school and recruiting a kid and selling him.
Hahah! Yeah! Misogyny!
Look, beyond the pretty awful "no fat chicks" implications there, as an added bonus he literally compared picking up women to picking up recruits. All I'm saying is that given recent events in Ohio State recruiting and elsewhere, that's uh... pretty gross. Franklin later went to Twitter to offer up a half-assed apology, but honestly even though I doubt Franklin really does what he describes, it's still some pretty petty crap with worse undertones. Also, you know, it's 2012.
Money money money money... muh-nay!OL UNCLE PENNYBAGS Wow, didn't mean to turn today's Skully into the SEC show, but it looks like it's shaken out that way because I want to briefly talk about the money involved in Steve Spurrier's plan to play football players between $3500 and $4000 per season. Let's say that teams pay everyone who plays in half the games per season that amount. Conservatively, we're talking about roughly 40 kids. So let's lowball it and give em $3500 bucks each, which works out to $140,000 dollars total. In one sport.
My point is, who pays this? Big schools will have no problem chucking 4 G's at a few dozen kids, but what does Indiana do? What does every second tier team in the Big East do? What does the entire Sun Belt do? The problem is that if you want to create a level playing field in college sports, paying players will have the opposite effect. Why should Recruit A go to School 1 when School 2 can pay him 2 or 3 grand more a year to play there (in addition to the scholarship he's already getting)? It'd further corrupt an already unequal system.
GRRM KNOWS FOOTBALL I don't really know why this happened, but here's an interview with A Song of Ice and Fire creator George R R Martin about his two favorite teams, the Jets and Giants. Included are such hard hitting questions as:
- Are you ever going to finish the series or is the TV show just an elaborate ruse?
- Why suspenders?
- Rex Ryan versus you in a wings eating contest, who wins?
- (obligatory Tim Tebow question so when you answer it we can go "Eeeeeee!!")
THE LINKS OF CHOCOLATE... MMMM Awww, poor Weezy... PRAISE THE LORD, PROGRESSIVE BOINK IS BACK... Rex is gonna make Nick watch his sister compete in the Olympics. Uh, duh.... Bill Self? Okay fine... Accurate... Reenacting Dukes of Hazzard is not advised when you weigh over 300 pounds
