Morning gang. It's Thursday. One more day to get a mailbag offering in.
Deal? Deal.
From the "Talks too much" studios, where does the time go?
College hoops
We have little motivation for the conference tournaments. But if we needed to name four items of interest that have caught our eye this week, well, here you go:
Kentuck's Willie Cauley-Stein, fourth from left, celebrates with teammates during a ceremony marking the teams undefeated regular season after an NCAA college basketball game, Saturday, March 7, 2015, in Lexington, Ky. Kentucky won 67-50. (AP Photo/James Crisp) We enjoyed seeing a huge number of Kentucky fans in the stands for last night's SEC tournament opener. Did we mention that UK does not play until noon on Friday, yet, there were more Big Blue backers in the stands in Nashville last night than there were Mississippi State and Auburn fans put together?
We think N.C. State has the firepower to be dangerous in the tournament.
We think the Big 12 is the most complete conference going.
We miss the Big Ten and wished they hadn't decided to stop playing basketball. Wait, they're still playing? OK, great.
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Spring starts
Here's TFP SEC football ace David Paschall's preview to the start of Alabama's spring practice.
As the spring football calendar starts to hum, here are five questions around the SEC, including one that Ace Paschall leads off with in his insightful article in today's TFP:
* Will Alabama name a quarterback?
Florida head coach Will Muschamp waves his arms after disputing a call by officials during the first half of an NCAA college football game against Eastern Kentucky in Gainesville, Fla., Saturday, Nov. 22, 2014. (AP Photo/John Raoux) * How much can Will Muschamp improve a wretched Auburn defense?
* Is Tennessee ready for prime time?
* Can Georgia reload?
* Can the teams in the Magnolia State replenish and repeat last year's historic runs?
Thoughts, and we'll answer some of these later in the day. Deal? Deal.
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Oklahoma chants
What do you make of the Oklahoma controversy?
By now you have certainly seen the racist video rants of the stupid drunk SAE fraternity punks at Oklahoma.
It's embarrassing and awful and staggering that those types of racial slurs and feelings can still be around today, much less chanted and shared en masse.
It's 2015, and other than the bus, that video was the vision of the hatred and the visual reincarnation of the fight that drew the nation's attention to Selma, Ala., 50 years ago last weekend.
FILE - In this Nov. 5, 2014, file photo, Ray Rice arrives with his wife Janay Palmer for an appeal hearing in New York, regarding his then-indefinite suspension from the NFL. The NFL's troubles with domestic violence were selected the sports story of the year Tuesday, Dec. 23, 2014, in an annual vote conducted by The Associated Press. (AP Photo/Jason DeCrow, File) Sadly, the lasting lesson here is not one of right-and-wrong or racial tolerance or even the punishment for being overtly stupid. No, the lesson here again, much like the Ray Rice lesson, is everything is magnified by a factor of 10 when a video is involved.
Yes, those college punks deserved to be punished for the overwhelmingly crude remarks. That said, who among us has not been somewhere where a cruel joke or an offensive diatribe has happened? Truthfully?
So, the fact that this is on video is the reason everyone from the White House to White Station to the space station has an opinion on it.
Not unlike the Rice video of the punch he delivered to then-fiancee Janay Palmer, the act is plain and obvious and clearly wrong. But the video - the hard evidence and the context and lasting images - make it drastically worse, rightly or wrongly.
Is that fair or unfair? Would these Oklahoma clowns be any less of punks if someone had not rolled a phone video of the bus chants? Of course not, but it would be another frat house filled with jerks rather than a group of guys who are a national target and could be expelled from school. Again, the Rice lesson is applicable, because Rice's act was wrong and he was punished.
Then the video surfaced and he was re-punished again with even more fervor.
University of Oklahoma students hold a sign to be carried to the now closed University of Oklahoma's Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity house during a rally in Norman, Okla., Tuesday, March 10, 2015. The university's president expelled two students Tuesday after he said they were identified as leaders of a racist chant captured on video during a fraternity event. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
And while we're here on the punishments dealt from disingenuous authority figures - Hi Roger Goodell, hope all is well - the hand-wringing being done by the folks at Oklahoma, while warranted and deserved, comes off as hollow and hypocritical.
Sadly, what would guess the percentage of Oklahoma fans and boosters is that are more worried about how this incident affects football recruiting that how it reshapes the national narrative on the university as a whole? We'd say at least a third and maybe as many as half, and that would sadly be the case at quite a few national football show ponies across the country.
As for the hollow part, well, let's remember that the Oklahoma football program has at least two violent offenders in cases of domestic violence. Highly touted running back Joe Mixon and wide receiver transfer Dorial Green-Beckham were admitted to school despite serious cases of domestic assault.
While we'd never believe anyone to support the frat boys' views and racists chants, Oklahoma apparently thinks that stupidity is better than hitting women.
The trigger factor for that awkward and skewed view that stupidity and hatred are worse than violence against women is, at least in part, trigger by the image of the video.
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This and that
- No one does college hoops better than TFP ace columnist Mark Wiedmer, who is again aces catching up with UT radio personality Bert Bertlekamp and recalling the Vols 1979 SEC hoops title here. It's worth your time.
- Fore! Yes, we'd let this golf course alligator play through.
A copy of the Chattanooga News-Free Press from the time of the 1993 blizzard.- OK, we gained four pounds just reading about this - yes, a minor league team is offering a hot dog in a Krispy Kreme doughnut bun with bacon and strawberry filling. Holy heart attacks and cholesterol problems.
- On this day 22 years ago the great blizzard of 1993 started. As many headaches as the snow and cold have caused us, '93 was a monster.
Charlotte Bobcats owner Michael Jordan watches an NBA basketball game in this April 16, 2014, file photo.---
Today's question
According to this story, a pair of game-worn Michael Jordan Nikes from 1984 could draw as much as $50,000 at auction.
Interesting, and further evidence that Jordan is the Babe Ruth of his generation.
So what's our Rushmore of collectable sports shoes?
We'll go with a pair of Ali's boots, the original pair of the back-and-red Air Jordans, Jim Craig's skates from the 1980 hockey Miracle and one of Seabiscuit's shoes.
Thoughts?