Thursday, January 22, 2009

You reap what you sow

Stupid gets you beat eventually, and last night Florida basketball put a whole lot of stupid on display late in losing to South Carolina. Up 67-60 with just over two minutes remaining, they turned it over on two posessions and compounded the issue by fouling. That allowed SC back within three. Then Nick Calathes and Chandler Parsons each missed the front ends of one and ones, and Dan Werner let his man get behind him in a situation where the one thing you can not do in any circumstance is let that happen. It all led to an unbelievably aggravating 70-69 loss. It's unfortunate, because the Gators displayed excellent shot selection during the game and did a lot of good things. Now the question is whether they learn from this debacle and come out energized against a very beatable Vanderbilt squad Sunday. A split of a double road week isn't that bad, but you hate to let one you had get away like this.

FSU is waiting on the final NCAA damage report from their academic scandal. That's supposed to happen anytime now, but in the meantime someone in the school's front office decided they need to be proactive about improving their image. How? By ripping off Ohio State's "the" schtick. Apparently consultants were paid to come up with such a brilliant plan. Is this some kind of joke?

The fallout from Clear Channel's chainsawing of its staff continues, as Jacksonville people will now be subjected to the worst host sports radio has to offer. Dan Sileo's morning show will now be on there in addition to Tampa and Orlando. You may think this is professional jealousy. It is not. Sileo has been proven to be a liar and a phony. He was a terrible player yet tries to make his supposed career the centerpiece of every discussion. Sileo plays the race card anytime he needs to generate cheap controversy. He doesn't cover events but acts like he's well connected everywhere. People I know at the Tampa station Sileo's on were mortified when told they would have to begin carrying his Orlando show, but he accepted ten thousand more per year to do it and Clear Channel wanted to avoid the expense of a morning program in Tampa. Now for another forty pieces of silver Sileo's got the morning spot in Jacksonville too. That's going to work really well the morning after an NFL weekend - Tampa people want Bucs talk, Jacksonville wants the Jaguars, and Tallahassee FSU. Instead they'll get a mishmash of forced controversy and subjects they don't care about - delightful. "Cost effective ratings death" - that should be the Sileo show's new slogan.

The Academy Award nominees are out. Everyone agreed The Dark Knight was a terrific film and it tore up the box offices all summer. Naturally they didn't nominate it for best picture. I guess the feelgood fun of The Reader was too much for them not to put it in instead. The Razzie Awards are supposed to be the anti-Oscars. I get that, but who are these awards supposed to help? If you couldn't tell that Eddie Murphy's "Meet Dave" or "The Love Guru" looked awful, I can't help you and I'm not sure anyone else can either.

1 comment:

Jeremiah said...

I think I left the bottom of my jaw on my living room floor last night when I came into work this morning because of that game last night. What the heck has happened to Dan Warner?? That was about as inexcusable as it gets and he seems to be regressing as an overall player. He still can't shoot. He's not rebounding very effectively, and now his defense is real shoddy and he can't stay out of foul trouble.
The coaching staff deserves some blame, too, because they were too worried about Downey, so they left four guys in the frontcourt. I would've taken my chances on Downey making a midcourt runner and made sure I had two guys in the backcourt guarding anything under 30 feet from the hole.
Having said all that, Holmes made about the best pass Carolina fans have seen since Todd Ellis was QB to win it for the Gamecocks, so good for them.
Calathes and Parsons will take some for missing those free throws, but those two played their tails off last night, so I'm not going to get on them.
I gave up caring about the Oscars a long time ago. They completely ignore comedic and action movies, so I don't bother with them. I use to enjoy the MTV Movies awards because they would do the opposite, but of course MTV jumped the shark about everything and I don't watch anymore. (or I got too old and just don't get MTV anymore.)