It’s time for a new installment of Hoover Street Rag’s college football rankings. As always, the teams are ranked according to the logic and values of Tom Scocca's weekly Deadspin column, no matter how bizarre or contradictory they may be. We’re making this quick, after a brief pause to wonder how Scocca's writing could decline so quickly after he left Slate.
1. Alaska (0-0)
Undefeated in football, as they are every year.
2. Indiana (3-5)
Some people consider the most horrifying thing about the Big Ten this year is the fact that Indiana still controls its own destiny for a trip to the Rose Bowl. Those people forget the more horrifying thing that makes this possible.
3. McMaster (8-0)
As the highest-ranked team in Canadian Interuniversity Sport football, McMaster is in the driver's seat to win college football's only truly legitimate national championship, provided they can pass through four rounds of playoffs. Canada: it's like a whole other country up there.
4. North Dakota State (7-1)
Similarly, NDSU is back in the driver's seat to defend their national championship, as a loss by Eastern Washington and a 3OT squeaker by Georgia Southern jumped them back to #1 in The Sports Network FCS poll.
5. OHIO! (8-1)
They may not control their own destiny in the MAC East, but they produced a legendary GIF on Thursday, and, in the long run, that's far more important.
6. David Roher
Proved it's still possible to write a decent article on Deadspin. Come back, Katie!
7. [vacant]
The state of mind I tried to reach before writing this post.
Showing posts with label deadspin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label deadspin. Show all posts
Friday, November 02, 2012
Monday, August 20, 2007
No Ned, No Justice
We here at the Hoover Street Rag rarely stray from our focus on Michigan athletics and our beloved marching band, but there are times when it is necessary, nay demanded. Such a time is now. A'Mod Ned, the be-crutched FIU combatant in the Battle of the Orange Bowl, is up for the Deadspin Hall of Fame, and the vote is very close indeed. We are staunch supporters of this American hero, and we urge you to vote early and often. Remember: No Ned, No Justice.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Pants Party! (Part 1)
Geoff: On Friday (and well into Saturday), Craig and I represented the Michigan blogging community at the Deadspin Midwest Pants Party in Chicago. What follows is a horrifying tale of baseball and karaoke and goblins. OK, fine. Not goblins. Or "horrifying". Rather the opposite of that, in fact. But the other two stand.
Ducking out a little early from work, I managed to get to the traffic jams of the Dan Ryan by 4:30 CDT and I even made it to our pre-game destination, Schaller's Pump, by 5:00. I was ready to join the pants partiers inside, when...they all literally walked out the door as soon as I opened it. It was just like high school pep band when our director would finally cue up a song just in time for play to resume. Everyone fell into place for the obligatory group photo, and I snuck into the back row.
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At least I was in time for the walk over to US Cellular Field, just a few blocks away. Lady Andrea (of Ladies... and DeadOn), because she is a sweet and nice person, noticed that I was not someone she'd met, so she came over to talk to me. Let me tell you, it's really weird introducing yourself by your internet pseudonym, especially when it relates in no way to your real name. "Hi, I'm Geoff, or 'The Bad One'" doesn't sound like anything normal people say. PS – Believe the hype:
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Our intrepid organizer, PeteJayhawk (who deserves massive, massive thanks for all of this) led us over to our gate. We had patio tickets, so in this big cafeteria-like space under the right field bleachers we had all the beer, wine, and food we could eat and/or drink, which meant I had more beer spilled on me than any time since I was an undergrad, but it was all good. Across the table from me, Tuffy and JB* kept finding orphaned beers, so we gave them good homes.
Eventually Craig (aka Yostal) showed up, released from the clutches of the AP test, and started making the rounds. The crowd at the table started thinning out, so the two of us figured everyone had gone up to our seats. We were a little surprised, then, to find our section almost completely empty on into the third inning. Silly us for focusing on the game when free beer was still at hand. Even when everyone showed up, we were kind of far away from a lot of the regular commentariat, but that gave us a chance to meet some other fine folks, like Rany Jazayerli of Baseball Prospectus and a Michigan State fan in a Tigers cap whose name may or may not be Joe. One of the benefits, though, of showing up early was that we saw our shout-out on the scoreboard (The message? "DEADSPIN").
The game itself wasn't bad (it ended 2-1, Sox), but it wasn't that exciting without a dog in the fight. A home run ball landed as close to me as any I've had in baseball – it came down about a section away from us – and we mocked the Royals for their two errors. Craig was heckled for his Tigers cap, and it was nice to be able to respond with "SCOREBOARD! SCOREBOARD!" to that. Craig would me like to mention, though, that the "LET'S GO BUCKEYES!" directed at me was out of line, since we were at a baseball game, after all.
After the game let out, the police seemed determined that I not go the way I wanted, and so I wound my way through the South Side up to our hotel at McCormick Place, where we dumped our bags and caught a cab. We'd been given a vague location for the bar we'd be post-gaming at of "Damen and Milwaukee" and the address of "1540", which we gave to our cabbie, a shriveled old white guy. He asked where we were from. To Craig's "Outside of Detroit," he replied, "Detroit? Hellhole." Your service industry employees, ladies and gentlemen! Even better? He dropped us NINE BLOCKS from Damen and Milwaukee, and left us with no idea where to go once we realized that. We did find it, but we took the looooooong way around.
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It was all worth it, though, when we found everyone at the Pontiac Cafe on the corner of Pierce and Damen, arriving just in time to watch Lady Andrea rock Scandal's "Goodbye to You" for live band karaoke. I recommend you just go over to Ladies... for her write-up and pictures, because there's no way I can do any better. I'll wait...
...Finished? Good.
I'd like to commend Craig for his performance of U2's "Desire", which was an inspired change from Cheap Trick's "I Want You To Want Me." I signed up for the Sex Pistols' "Anarchy in the U.K.", but was skipped by the head karaoke dude, which is a terrible injustice, as my version was going to be PHENOMENAL**. We stayed at the Pontiac Cafe long enough to close the joint down. Some Deadspinners were in favor of finding a 4AM bar, but Craig and I had to be up and out of our hotel before 10:00, so we caught a cab back to our hotel (much better, though even this guy told us that Detroit was "full of gangs").
In the end, it was all over too soon, I barely got to talk to half the people I met, and I can't wait for the next edition. Deadspin commenters are remarkably cool people, and I hope to hang out with them more in the future.
* The "*" in "JB*" is part of his screenname
** By which I mean "somewhere between terrible and adequate"
Pants Party (Part 2)
Craig: One of the stranger moments of sitting with a bunch of knowledgeable sports fan is the mini-conundrum that erupted from a random stat placed on the board, showing that between 2000 and 2007, the White Sox had the best overall record in the AL Central. Given where we were sitting in the outfield, our collective vision was blocked from seeing whom the bottom two teams were, and Geoff and I presumed that the Tigers were bringing up the rear of the AL Central, whereas the rest of the group presumed it was the Royals, only for us to collectively realize that no one was completely sure (some research upon my return to SE Michigan indicated that it was in fact the Royals bringing up the rear)
A note on my karaoke performance: I am not at all musically gifted, and I know this, so that is why song choice was so critical in this regard. "I Want You To Want Me", while a great song, is much more about the awesome interplay of the whole band as one in it, and has a really tricky fast word section "Feelingallalonewithoutafriendyouknowyoufeellikedyin..." whereas "Desire", well, no one is actually going to be able to sound like Bono, but you can try and hit the inflections and the nuances of the song and can pull off something reasonable. I was also aided by harmonica accompaniment for the last section, which was pretty cool as well. Sadly (or really, THANKFULLY), no video exists of my performance, so we cannot prove or disprove my thesis. I also want to say that Geoff would have rocked "Anarchy in the UK" hard, since so few songs are in his deep range, he knows where his bread is buttered. And it still would have been less terrifying for Geoff to sing "I am an Antichrist" than Will's entire performance.
Was it a perfect trip? No, but what is? In a world where GZ and I are both used to pinpoint planning and control over every aspect of what we're going to do in the collective, this was some minor chaos. But, minor chaos breeds stories to tell, memories to have, and things upon which perhaps to improve the next time. We met with a great group of people who didn't disappoint and who welcomed all comers in like a demented family reunion. Going in blind, it was much more than for what I could have hoped.
It was 2:19 when the final bell rang and I could get out of work, but not before I changed out of my khaki pants and high school official polo shirt into a maroon number and some long khaki shorts. Getting on the road at 2:45 EDT, I began blasting towards Chicago as quickly as good sense and the legal limit would allow, and I was doing great until I hit Marshall and a huge construction backup that largely stemmed from people not understanding the concept of zippertooth merging. The entire drive to Chicago was just a race in my head between where I was on I-94, what time it was on the clock, and where and when I wanted to be. I made it, but not before the temperature had dropped nearly 35 degrees since I had left SE Michigan!
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