I don't know if you guys have heard, but it's awful hot outside! (I know it's raining or something in Chicago, but, well, its still on sauna over here in the apple.
Lotta random stuff done piled up over the past week, so let's get to it.
- I got a pretty impressive email discussing all the crazy things all-conference left tackle Al Netter does that got him named to the AFCA Good Works team. The sentence "orphanage in Guatemala" was involved. Anyway, my point is, Netter and the group he founded, Uplifting Athletes, are having an event today at 6 p.m. at Ryan Field to help try and cure Niemann-Pick Type C and purportedly most of the team will be there. So, if you're in town, go do that.
- Brian Bennett over at the dominant Big Ten blog at ESPN has been profiling "workout warriors", and NU's is Tyler Scott. The Creator has bumped up his bench from 265 to 400 since he got to NU - I really think he has a chance to push Kevin Watt to get some playing time at NU's other defensive end spot on the opposite end of Vince Browne. Especially since he's apparently strong enough to pop a dude's skull with his bare hands like a Mortal Kombat character.
- Alex Marcotullio's British squad won't advance to Division A next year, but still, good things. The team is on a five-game winning streak, but somehow is fighting for 13-16 place, after their first two losses to Portugal and Finland kinda doomed them. Marco has been playing great - he hit a game-winning hook shot after picking up an offensive rebound over the Chosen Team, Israel, and is averaging 14.3 points and a whopping 7.3 rebounds. (To be fair, a lot of teams he's playing against have nobody over 6-foot-8.)
- NU had their coaches caravan, which meant ACTUAL ARTICLE ABOUT NORTHWESTERN SPORTS YEAH. More Wrigley? To be honest, yeah, sure, go for it.
- The Gazette of good ol' Cedar Rapids, Iowa has been running a pretty good series about how the B1g's division scenarios got put into place - not geography, but balance of power, you know how it is. Anyway, one of the pieces was about how valuable of a commodity NU was in the procedures - not because "THEY SUCK WE WANT THEM IN OUR CONFERENCE FOR A WIN EVERY YEAR", surprisingly, but because teams wanted to have the opportunity to play more frequently in the Chicago media market, knowing that alumni in the area - as well as hot recruits - would have nice access to the game. Someone should tell this to all those coaches who purportedly refuse to let their basketball teams play Northwestern.
- On that front, Baylor done released their hoopyball schedule, and Northwestern's on it, December 4. I think I saw a documentary on LaceDarius Dunn and Perry Jones III playing against Northwestern's defense, it was called "Hostel" or something along those lines.
- How is Dan Persa's health? We're all confused.
- Rick Reilly wrote an article welcoming Nebraska to the Big Ten - he's topical! - and, well, TMill from Hammer and Rails did it justice. As a potential sportswriter, there's practically nobody whose work I find more consistently subpar than Reilly's. On the plus side, this one doesn't mention the determination of little 13-year old Jimmy Abrahamson shooting his way to the state archery finals - Abrahamson, you see, was born with only one arm.
- The new Kanye/Jay-Z is out. Nobody and nothing is touching My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy anytime soon - we already know Watch the Throne won't by its inclusion of "HAM" - but it's pretty awesome to hear two rap giants duke it out over an Otis Redding sample. However, it's only the second nicest soulful vocal sample on the upcoming LP, so, no biggie. This doesn't even count as a hip-hop treatise.
- I really like that people are actually using the FanPosts - I forget stuff over here, so, throw things over there, and the discussions have been pretty nice. For example, I forgot some stuff here. Go put it over there.