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2019-2020 Football Season
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Posts posted by Beau Vine
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2 hours ago, Tex Long said:
I see pretty much anyone as someone who would prefer living in Florence, Italy to living in Mount Vernon, Texas. Particularly so if the someone has zero financial issues. Perhaps a year (is it only a year?) is all someone can stand, but...
You're not really serious with this, are you? Art can't get good BBQ or chicken fried steak, there's no Southern Baptist church in Florence, everyone is speaking a language he doesn't speak, and worst of all, none of the people there take football seriously. Mount Vernon fixes all of that.
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1 hour ago, spystud13 said:
And was available to every team in the sport for virtually nothing when ST started.
OPS+ of 114 over the last 4 seasons. Now making $2M.
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Jim Edmonds is brutal on the ears.
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3 hours ago, Cheeseweasel said:
She's not walking on sunshine.
Well, she was on Hale'akala.
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1 hour ago, formermav43 said:
That’s the same point the article made.
It's also the point that flew over the second poster's head.
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1 hour ago, RDCanecutter said:
Forget East-West-North-South. There are people who don't know left from right, who think that maybe some rivers flow inland from the sea,
That's MaC's point though. No one knows East-West-North-South in Hawaii, because it basically doesn't exist. If you tell someone to drive east while giving directions, they'll look at you like you're an idiot. You tell them "drive makai" = drive towards the water or "drive mauka" = towards the mountains. (I lived there four years and I'd still have to look at a map to tell you if I lived on the east or west side of O'ahu.) That's the big gigantic hole in her story. She had to know that walking downhill, she was headed makai.
Shit, even my wife could handle this system.
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No idea what his motive is here, but he sounds even more idiotic than usual.
QuoteSince going down in flames as a liar, a cheat and a dangerous individual who relished inflicting harm on others to save his own reputation, Lance Armstrong has attempted to soften his image.
After years of intimidation and strong-arm tactics that did actual damage to the lives of people who challenged him during his notorious doping scandal on his seven-year run atop the Tour de France, Armstrong eventually acknowledged defeat.
As part of his pseudo mea culpa, Armstrong attempted to show a lighter side seen in this cutesy bike repair video he posted in 2014.
But if there was any belief that Armstrong has actually changed who he is at his core, he put it to rest in a yet-to-be-aired interview with NBC’s Mike Tirico.
Lance Armstrong: I wouldn’t change a thing
USA Today previewed the interview. One thing is clear: Armstrong is still an awful human being.
“We did what we had to do to win,” Armstrong said, via USA Today. “It wasn’t legal, but I wouldn’t change a thing — whether it’s losing a bunch of money, going from hero to zero.
"I wouldn’t change the way I acted. I mean I would, but this is a longer answer. Primarily, I wouldn’t change the lessons that I’ve learned. I don’t learn all the lessons if I don’t act that way. I don’t get investigated and sanctioned if I don’t act the way I acted. If I just doped and didn’t say a thing, none of that would have happened. None of it. I was begging for, I was asking for them to come after me. It was an easy target.”
Lance Armstrong apparently doesn't have any regrets. (AP)MoreArmstrong justifies doping
Armstrong goes on to justify his behavior by explaining that he doped because it was the only way to maintain an edge in a sport where doping was rampant. Without doping, there was no chance to compete.
"I knew there were going to be knives at this fight," Armstrong said. "Not just fists. I knew there would be knives. I had knives, and then one day, people start showing up with guns. That's when you say, do I either fly back to Plano, Texas, and not know what you're going to do? Or do you walk to the gun store? I walked to the gun store. I didn't want to go home.
"I don't want to make excuses for myself that everybody did it or we never could have won without it. Those are all true, but the buck stops with me. I'm the one who made the decision to do what I did. I didn't want to go home, man. I was going to stay."
It wasn’t the doping that made Lance a pariah
That’s all well and fine. This isn’t a sanctimonious rant against the ills of doping and cheating in sports. Cycling was corrupt at its core, and in a large way, Armstrong’s doping was a symptom of that problem, not a cause.
But this isn’t about doping. It’s about Armstrong wrecking people’s lives to protect his own well being.
There are dopers in every professional sport. The steroid era in baseball reduced a generation of heroes into villains disdained by the sports world. But for the most part, these men were simply cheaters in a game.
Armstrong cheated more than his sport
You may not like Mark McGwire or Barry Bonds. Hell, Bonds may be a bonafide jerk. But these are men who simply looked for an illegal edge to enhance their careers playing a game that ultimately has no legitimate consequence.
Had Armstrong stopped there, he wouldn’t be the pariah he is today.
But he didn’t. He wantonly wrecked careers and ruined relationships of people who stood in his way using public and private tactics of intimidation and reputation smearing.
Count fellow riders Greg LeMond, Frankie Andreu and Scott Mercier among his victims.
He doubled down on his cheating the playing field by causing real-life harm.
And this is all without considering the massive disappointment he turned out to be for cancer survivors and yellow-bracelet supporters.
Despite a public downfall that included an Oprah appearance, the loss of a fortune and lame attempts to be charming to rehab his image, Armstrong is telling the world his true colors have not been altered.
He wouldn’t change a thing.
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4 minutes ago, MaybeACoordinator said:
Literally every Hawaiian knows that if you are lost you just head downhill. No matter where you are on Maui, or any other island, if you just head downhill, you will hit a road or the beach in a few hours. Yes, it's harder going in some places than others, but Maui is not the Big Island size-wise or Kauai in terms of wilderness....So...17 freaking days?
Truth. Mauka. Makai.
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On 5/25/2019 at 6:36 PM, petscii said:
Washington and Cal decided to pussy out and not play the last game of the season.
Pussies.
The Huskies actually quit the weekend before.
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2 hours ago, torre said:
That rationale – an emphasis on top-50 wins and not on RPI
The fuck is this???!?! If you're emphasizing top-50 wins, you are emphasizing RPI. What do you think that top 50 is ranked by?
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2 hours ago, deech said:
It amazes me that Bru or his family would risk losing a year of eligibility with this mess. 18 year olds going to be 18 year olds though and hope that we take the high road.
They're all absolutely sure that he'll be a first round pick in the 2022 NFL draft whether he plays 2 years or 3.
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3 hours ago, VirginiaLonghorn said:
RIP. Such a shame that one play tended to overshadow the career of a really good player. He certainly didn’t deserve the crap slung his way after that misplay.
Bob Stanley fucked up that inning worse than he did.
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RIF, Bert.
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So zero non-conference road wins gets you a #13 overall seed.
Mike Martin gets a parting gift. TCU gets a gift for????
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Hopefully he has enough parking tickets that he won't be able to transfer.
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Shouldn't today be one of those days where there has to be a full slate of games?
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3 hours ago, HenryJames said:
...said Eller, 35, a physical therapist and yoga instructor.
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Eller told the Times she had intended to go on a short walk. She went off the path to rest and when she resumed hiking, she got turned around.
“I wanted to go back the way I’d come but my gut was leading me another way – and I have a very strong gut instinct,” Eller said. “So, I said: ‘My car is this way and I’m just going to keep going until I reach it.’”
That's a woman all right.
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Nothing makes a manager look stupider than a bullpen that can't get it done. Having said that, I hate just about any decision to IBB the bases loaded.
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3 hours ago, PittsburghTiger said:
That was just about unwatchable at the end. The final 30 seconds took about 25 minutes. Horrible.
Can someone explain to me what the referees feel the need to run across the floor after a review and explain the situation to the TV crew? They did it so many times last night that Webber quit standing up to hear.
Why wouldn't they just grab the PA mic and announce it to the whole crowd in the arena?
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1 hour ago, texifornia said:
Pass. I don't want guys who abuse apostropes like that. Oh wait, he's a DT?
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57 minutes ago, Deej said:
Almost hit one head-on coming up 8th Street the other day. He was going full speed, the wrong way, in my lane, as a cop stood there and watched. Cop didn't do a damned thing.
You should have run him over. Should have also done something to the guy on the scooter.
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13 hours ago, PokerFace said:
How has no one brought up the Google Pixel commercial with Awkwafina and 2 Chainz? Her voice makes me want to stick an icepick in my ears.
You probably don't want to ever watch Crazy Rich Asians then.
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On 5/25/2019 at 12:13 AM, Incredulity said:
If I play this right I probably get some favors next week too.
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Quote
The MIAC is made up of small, private Minnesota schools, and Division III doesn’t have athletic scholarships. The Tommies won the league’s men’s and women’s all-sports titles in each of the past 12 seasons and won 11 of 22 regular-season titles this academic year. Recent football dominance has further illustrated the gap.
Nine of the league’s 13 teams would have needed to vote to remove St. Thomas. A person close to the conference with direct knowledge of the situation told The Athletic that no actual vote took place, but everyone understood what was happening and an agreement was worked out. The person was granted anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the situation. St. Thomas will have two more years in the MIAC through spring 2021 as it searches for a new home.
“I’m sad about it,” Esten said. “It’s certainly disappointing. We worked really hard and made it clear our priority was to maintain membership in the conference. This is a conversation that had been going on for a while, so I wouldn’t say we were surprised. But we made it clear we wanted to stay in the MIAC. We were a founding member. We have proud and rich history with this conference. But it was inevitable. The outcome was brought upon us, and now we look forward.”
A large part of the decision came down to the lack of athletic parity. The St. Thomas football team has won six conference championships since head coach Glenn Caruso took over in 2008. The Tommies are 30-2 in league play since 2015 and reached the Division III national championship game in 2012 and 2015. In the past two years, St. Thomas’ average margin of victory in MIAC wins was more than 40 points per game.
Questions about St. Thomas’ dominance have been around for years, but a 97-0 football win against St. Olaf in 2017, three weeks after an 84-0 win against Hamline, changed the conversation into something serious, the source close to the league said.
Esten, who was hired in November 2018 and took over this January, downplayed that notion.
“I think it’s the catalyst created by the media,” he said. “The conversations I’ve been in, this has not been about one sport. It’s not been about one contest or one team. It’s about comprehensive competitive parity. In the last five years, St. Thomas has won more than 50 percent of the conference championships in all sports. I do think it’s unfair to say it’s about one sport.”
But it’s not just St. Thomas’ winning — the Tommies finished only third in the football standings last year — it’s how and why it has happened.
St. Thomas’ undergraduate enrollment is more than 6,000 students, about double the next-highest MIAC school. It’s more than triple some schools. Its investment in athletics is higher than at the other schools. The difference became too much for its opponents.
“Members just felt they didn’t look like us anymore,” the person close to the league said. “Didn’t look like a small Division III institution, which is what our membership is made up of.”
The situation had become so untenable that several members of the conference threatened to leave if a change wasn’t made.
“The presidents came to a consensus that the conference itself would cease to exist in its current form if St. Thomas remained,” St. Thomas president Julie Sullivan said in a statement.
Not everyone in the MIAC is happy with the decision. Saint John’s, the biggest rival to St. Thomas, was against the move.
SJU has its own proud history. Former football coach John Gagliardi won 465 games in 59 years leading the program. The Johnnies won the MIAC this past season. The 2017 game between St. Thomas and Saint John’s drew a Division III-record 37,355 fans at Target Field, home of the Minnesota Twins.
“We’re disappointed the conference isn’t going to stay together,” Saint John’s athletic director and golf coach Bob Alpers said. “This conference always has been one of the finest D-III conferences in the country. The idea of it not staying together, it’s really disappointing to us. Our hope going forward is we continue the relationship and the rivalry with St. Thomas. We really want to do that.”
In 2017, Saint John’s beat St. Scholastica 98-0, but that was a nonconference game. Alpers didn’t want to speculate on the motives of other members to remove St. Thomas.
“People have been careful about comments they’ve made,” he said. “Nobody’s ever (mentioned football) directly.”
Several schools within the league did not respond to requests for comment. A statement from Concordia said that it “supports the announcement made by the MIAC (Wednesday). Any further questions should be directed to the MIAC office.”
Esten doesn’t know what the future holds. He wouldn’t list specific conferences, but the Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, home of Division III-power Wisconsin-Whitewater, and the Upper Midwest Athletic Conference could be options. Asked whether St. Thomas will consider moving up to Division II, Esten said everything is on the table, noting that St. Thomas has to earn an invitation to a conference. It can’t necessarily choose where it wants to go.
St. Thomas says it tried to work out issues with the other schools individually, but it defends its growth and investment.
“We’ve done everything the conference asked us to do,” Esten said. “We’ve done everything the NCAA has asked us to do. We have prioritized our student-athlete experience. We’ve invested in creating conditions for success, and we’ve enjoyed some success. I can only speak to what’s important to us, and those are priorities for us. And those won’t change.”
This also puts teams in an awkward position for the next two years. Will the remaining MIAC schools negative recruit against St. Thomas? Could St. Thomas choose to run up football scores? The league hopes to keep everything respectful and in-house, but this is uncharted territory in which animosity behind the scenes will be hard to avoid.
Despite a theoretical even playing field without athletic scholarships, the divide within Division III has long been evident. It’s especially true in football. Since 2005, only Mount Union, Wisconsin-Whitewater and Mary Hardin-Baylor have won the Division III national championship. In that span, St. Thomas and Wisconsin-Oshkosh are the only other schools to even reach the Stagg Bowl title game.
St. Thomas’ success within that group could have been a point of pride within the MIAC. Instead, the goals and philosophies of the small Minnesota private colleges don’t sync anymore. Some within the conference think it’s a short-term response that will have long-term consequences. Time will tell.
The MIAC is coming up on the 100th anniversary of its founding. The decision to remove a founding member because it was winning too much certainly puts a cloud over that. The news release stated St. Thomas leaves “in good standing.”
Said Alpers on the loss of a longtime rival: “It’s not a great day.”
2019 ATH Bru McCoy
in 🤫$9.95🤫
Posted
Scares ya to death....