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NCAA Football FanHouse (Free subscription) | 01/07/2009
by Brian Cook Filed under: Boston College , Florida So you're a moderately successful ACC program in a state where the college football prospects all wear skates and drop their Rs. You've just fired a guy for having the temerity to interview with an NFL team. You're about to hire your third head coach in four years and the last two left because your athletic department just can't get along with folks....
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NCAA Football FanHouse (Free subscription) | 01/06/2009
by Brian Cook What's your instant reaction to this bit of hijinks? COACH Joe Paterno's glasses are classics in their own right, and now somebody has taken the glasses from the Paterno statue at Beaver Stadium. University police reported the disappearance between Jan. 2 and 3 and are investigating it as a theft and criminal mischief. Is it "holy crap, you can take the glasses off Joe Paterno's statue?"...
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The FanHouse - San Francisco 49ers (Free subscription) | 01/05/2009
by Brian Cook Filed under: Boston College The hottest new trend of 2008 and 2009 appears to be a diseased athletic department. See: West Virginia, Rich Rodriguez, and Bill Stewart or Auburn, Tommy Tuberville, and Gene Chizik. You can add Boston College to the list, too, as they've declared they'll fire Jeff Jagodzinski if he dares to interview with the Jets. In a word: bats. Jagodzinski has been good,...
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NCAA Football FanHouse (Free subscription) | 01/02/2009
by Brian Cook Filed under: Auburn Or: Youtube videos as modern-day editorial cartoons. Somewhere in this four-minute video of an ample Auburn fan being goaded into eating a ketchup-dipped lizard is a parable for all folks liable to say "War Eagle" every fifteen minutes: You don't want to eat the lizard at first. Who would want to eat a lizard? But by God you've got to eat something and it's the only...
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NC Mental Hope News (Free subscription) | 01/01/2009
CHICAGO — The game came rather easy for Brian Cook, and he'll forever credit his father for much of his success. Yet it was Brian's relationship with the man who put a basketball in his crib that was unimaginably difficult. Life with Norm Cook was largely traumatic, heart-wrenching and impossible to comprehend. All Brian knows is the voices that rattled inside his father's head are finally silent....
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NCAA Football FanHouse (Free subscription) | 12/19/2008
by Brian Cook Filed under: NCAA FB Coaching , NCAA FB Scandal In the offseason the NCAA decided to change its clock rules for the third consecutive year, implementing a 40-second clock a la the NFL and allowing the clock to run on an out-of-bounds play after the ball is ready to snap. There was due outrage. The rules committee claimed games would be no shorter ; I thought this was plausible . What...
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NCAA Football FanHouse (Free subscription) | 12/18/2008
by Brian Cook Filed under: Florida , Oklahoma , Oklahoma State So there's some company that's producing sporting events in 3D, and they've picked the BCS championship game for one of their first major test runs. Should be interesting. The halftime feature on Tim Tebow's adventures in Filipino circumscision will be worth the price of admission by itself, and maybe they'll play Captain EO in the pregame....
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NCAA Football FanHouse (Free subscription) | 12/17/2008
by Brian Cook Filed under: Florida , Notre Dame A couple weeks ago Urban Meyer sent a couple fanbases into a tizzy when he said Notre Dame remained his "dream job" and that he could see himself coaching there down the road. Naturally, this made everyone crazy, and Meyer was -- and probably is -- going to be barraged with questions about it until he dies or takes the job. But this should come as a...
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NCAA Football FanHouse (Free subscription) | 12/17/2008
by Brian Cook Filed under: Florida , Oklahoma , NCAA FB Media Watch Raise your hand if you saw a Gary Danielson hissy fit coming after the Tebow Child was inexplicably passed over for the Heisman by a guy with 18 more touchdown passes than he has. Okay, that's everyone. Cue fit . Danielson is talking about Tebow losing the award despite being first on the most ballots: Well, because it's a strategy...
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Third Quarter Collapse (Free subscription) | 12/17/2008
On this trip, [the Magic] shot a sizzling 47 percent [on 3-pointers] (61-of-130), with Jameer Nelson (14-of-27), Rashard Lewis (18-of-34) and Brian Cook (7-of-9) holding hot hands. The Magic made 22-of-43 3-pointers in the fourth quarters. Brian Schmitz of the Orlando Sentinel
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NCAA Football FanHouse (Free subscription) | 12/15/2008
by Brian Cook Filed under: Boise State , Maryland , Nevada No, seriously. Buried at the end of a positive article on the Humanitarian Bowl "hoping for a big turnout" that matches the whopping 26,000 that showed last year is this stark reminder of what happens when your bowl game is played in Boise, Idaho : As of Monday afternoon the University of Maryland says it's sold about 16 tickets to the game....
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NCAA Football FanHouse (Free subscription) | 12/14/2008
by Brian Cook Filed under: Auburn , Iowa State At right, Track 'Em Tigers reacts to the Chizik hire . It's been clear that the people running Auburn's athletic department were kind of petulant little babies for a while now -- ever since the Petrino planegate fiasco -- but the extent was unknown until Tommy Tubberville was fired or forced out or resigned or whatever and Auburn didn't immediately hire...
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Orlando Magic Blog (Free subscription) | 12/13/2008
Things didn't look good for the Magic as they entered the fourth quarter trailing Phoenix 87-77, and without Dwight Howard, who had to leave the game with under 8 minutes remaining in the third quarter with what was reported as a sore knee. Brian Cook and Jameer Nelson each hit a three in the opening minute of the fourth to get the Magic right back in it, and it would be a close game the rest of the...
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Get The Picture (Free subscription) | 12/12/2008
Brian Cook alert: it looks like Butch Davis is taking a page out of the Nick Saban book on recruiting math. Hey, it worked out pretty well for ‘Bama this year, didn’t it? Oversigning - it’s not just for the SEC anymore. (h/t The Wiz of Odds)
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Line Out (Free subscription) | 12/11/2008
Some addenda to this week's preview for tonight's These Arms Are Snakes show at Chop Suey: These Arms Are Snakes, Trap Them, Narrows (Chop Suey) To my mind, the best thing These Arms Are Snakes ever did was buy that first Kaoss Pad back around 2003. (Full disclosure: TAAS bassist Brian Cook has written for The Stranger.) On their debut EP and parts of their first full-length, frontman Steve Snere's...
