The first of a few posts coming up here today to end your workweek on a note of either good or bad status, depending on if you hate reading stuff I write or not.
- First off, it's the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah. This is important to me, but most importantly, it allows me to re-link to something I wrote last year before I had any readers: a top-to-bottom list of NU football players from most-to-least likely to be Jewish, which, somehow, contained no graduates last year. Damn, James Nussbaum and Aaron Nagel are some Jewy names. L'Shana Tova to any of my fellow tribesmen reading.
- Much more importantly, I forgot this week to change Pat Fitzgerald's intense-o-meter. With a relatively weak opponent in ISU, his intensity dropped off to a 4.1, indicated by a 149° fever. (Ever try to type a degree sign before? I just copy-pasted from the wikipedia page on degrees.)
- While we're talking about Pat Fitzgerald, there's this from the Good Man Project where they asked a bunch of manly men about the last time they cried - well, a bunch of manly men and former Deadspin editor Will Leitch, who, although a great writer, is not nearly as manly as Fitz - and Fitz was one. He claims he cried in the locker room after the Outback Bowl... but I'd like to prefer to believe that his eyes were just a little bit sweaty that day. (But seriously, Pat Fitzgerald crying would make me run for the hills, because whatever could make him cry would probably cut off one of my limbs.)
- I missed this when it first happened because I've devolved into just never reading stuff on my google reader and letting it pile up, but, FBC, don't go.
- Robbie Caldwell received a memo of error from the Big Ten about the late-game personal foul call. We woulda won anyway, but, it's a nice gesture.
- Per Lindsay Willhite, some great stuff about NU's basketball trip. The thing that genuinely, genuinely surprised me is the fact that NU apparently played primarily man-to-man. Not a matchup zone, straight man. This is good in one way, because hey! We get killed in the zone a lot! But on the other hand, one of the things that makes a zone work, is, uh, practice. Practice. Lots of it. And I kind of figured that's why this trip to Italy existed: they'd get to go to Italy and play against pro teams that PRIMARILY face zones and know how to deal with them - have you been watching the FIBA World Championships? Everybody has a 2-3 zone at least as a change-of-pace set! Some teams - Tunisia, if I remember correctly - even run the same 2-3 matchup zone set NU does! And you go over there, and, for the first time in a decade, you teach your guys how to play man? Look, I love the idea of NU playing man - we have the defenders capable of pulling it off - but, I'm a little bit surprised by the timing here.
- By the way, upcoming site feature: I consider myself an X's and O's guy, and a good hour and a half of my roadtrip to Vandy was me discussing installing a 1-3-1 zone on the IM basketball team with one of the guys who played on our A team last year. (I was the leading scorer of the B team, which was the worst team in basketball history.) So that's going to happen.
- Injury report came out... nothing big. I'd assume being out for the first two weeks of the season plus two other WR's having their shirts burned means we won't see Tony Jones this year. No word on the severity of injuries to Niko Mafuli, David Arnold (my closet pick for a potential Jew) or Bryce McNaul, who is now doubtful, not "out" although he probably won't play.
- Last tidbit... I'll be flying back to Chicago tomorrow. This probably won't mean much for content - remember, this site was founded so I could procrastinate while waiting to do actual work. Also, it totally gives me an excuse not to watch Saturday's game, whereas now all I have is that I don't feel like it.