… and Frank Murtaugh is happy about it for lots of reasons, including the fact that Lane Kiffin is two time zones away.
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Month: August 2010
I’m as excited as I’ve been in at least four years for the start of college football. This has much to do with Tim Tebow being in the NFL and Lane Kiffin again being two time zones away from where my family sleeps. (If there is a football god, Kiffin will someday coach Tebow with the Washington Redskins.) The temperatures around here make for a cruel welcome to football season, but the college game remains the lingua franca of Southern sports fans. (Or for any man, woman, or child who considers “the American South” home.)
Lane Kiffin is far, far, away.
Here are seven stories I’ll be following over the next four months.
• Conference USA is no BCS league; we’ll be hearing and reading this until the University of Memphis is finally able to make a big switch. But considering C-USA remains the Tigers’ battle ground for 2010, you couldn’t ask for a more challenging home schedule. The four highest-ranked C-USA teams, according to Rivals.com, will all be visiting the Liberty Bowl. An upset over Houston, UCF, Southern Miss, or Tulsa could well make the season for first-year Memphis coach Larry Porter. And if you can see only one game this fall, get tickets for the October 30th contest with Houston. Cougar quarterback Case Keenum is on every Heisman Trophy watch list, and aims for a third consecutive 5,000-yard passing season. Yeah . . . 5,000 yards.
• This will be the third straight season — and fifth in the last seven — that a Heisman Trophy winner returns for a chance to join Ohio State’s Archie Griffin as the only two-time recipients of the hallowed stiff-armed hardware. (There were actually two Heisman winners playing last season: Tebow at Florida and Sam Bradford at Oklahoma.) But I’m not convinced Alabama’s Mark Ingram will repeat. The Tide has another tailback — Trent Richardson — who will demand carries this season. The Heisman doesn’t go to sidekicks. If I were to pick a winner here in August, I’d go with Pitt tailback Dion Lewis. Lewis rushed for 1,799 yards as a freshman last season, and his Panthers have a schedule with only two Top 25 opponents.
• Here’s a bowl scenario worth watching. Let’s say 8th-ranked Nebraska — on its way to the Big 10 in 2011 — upsets Texas (ranked 5th in the preseason) in the Big 12 championship game on December 4th at Cowboys Stadium. And let’s say the top Big 10 teams — Ohio State, Iowa, and Wisconsin — disappoint. (Unlikely, as the Big 10 is top-heavy. One of these teams will lose no more than a single game.) Would the Rose Bowl, which traditionally invites a Pac 10 and Big 10 team, consider the Huskers for New Year’s Day 2011? This presumes, of course, Nebraska wouldn’t be in the mix for the BCS title game.
• If you’re looking for this season’s Game of the Century, mark your calendar for October 2nd when Alabama hosts Florida. The only two SEC teams in the Top 10 — the teams that squared off for the SEC championship last December — will play in the regular season in what will likely be mere prelude to the SEC championship two months later. (Another game worth watching will be next Monday night, when Boise State and Virginia Tech play in Landover, Maryland. The Hokies could be all that stands in the way of a second-straight undefeated season for the Broncos.)
• In debating which conference is the country’s second best, it’s hard to ignore the ACC. The league that steals our attention every March starts football season with five teams in the Top 25: Virginia Tech, Miami, Georgia Tech, North Carolina, and Florida State.
• Here’s an upset waiting to happen: LSU over Alabama on November 6th. Tiger coach Les Miles will be fighting for his job, having gone 9-4 in 2009. Tide coach Nick Saban will be back in Death Valley, where he sculpted the 2003 national champs but now will face the scorn of an entire football culture. If Alabama can get by Florida in October, this will be its final hurdle before the SEC championship game.
• Memphis coach Larry Porter will likely name his starting quarterback for the Mississippi State game today. Between freshman Ryan Williams and sophomore Cannon Smith, may the better signal-caller win. But purely in metaphorical terms, I like the idea of a guy named Cannon playing quarterback, the son of a man who made his fortune with a company built on delivering through the air. The headlines will write themselves.
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sister myotis’ bible camp
Named after the Union Navy ironclad and launched with an pre-presidential quotation from Abraham Lincoln, New Jersey band Titus Andronicus’ second album, The Monitor, offers something of an unintentional answer to a recent cultural moment that had Southern governors invoking “Confederate heritage” and downplaying the role of slavery in the Civil War. In many ways, the old South has been the poetic victor of that war over the years, but here’s the rare Yankee-centric evocation of the Civil War era, one in which the model of heroism isn’t Robert E. Lee but Lincoln, William Lloyd Garrison, and John Brown. A surly, articulate young bunch, led by singer Patrick Stickles, Titus Andronicus filters Springsteen-inspired verbosity and anthemic energy through punk aggression. While they don’t make their recurring Civil War theme on this album topical, they use it to tap into a union of elegant language and righteous anger, and they evoke the enormity of that historical moment as something of a rebuke to their own generational torpor (an antipathy from which Stickles does not exclude himself.) Like Garrison, they do not wish to think, speak, or write with moderation. And they will be heard. Loudly. Titus Andronicus plays the Hi-Tone Café tonight. Showtime is 10 p.m. Admission is $10.
Here’s the official video for their song “A More Perfect Union”:
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How Many Kids Attend Memphis City Schools?
Math is important in school, and so is knowing how to correctly count the number of students in the school system. John Branston has some thoughts on the issue.
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Counting Kids at MCS
Remember the tardy bell? When you were a few seconds late for class, or a few minutes late for school?
Well, in Memphis there’s a different definition of tardy. Apparently, according to Memphis City Schools officials, tens of thousands of students are tardy by a few weeks. They don’t start coming to class under well after Labor Day.
Their presence is crucial this year. For the first time in memory, the Memphis City Council, which has to fund the schools, is taking a hard look at enrollment in MCS. The early estimates have ranged from 92,000 to 120,000. In other words, as many as 28,000 students could be “tardy.” If they are, instead, not really there at all, it’s a difference of about $300 million in state and local funding, at the going rate of $10,300 per student.
Watch for the biggest, most intensive round-up of school kids ever in the month of September. The survival of several underenrolled schools could be at stake.
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On the Scene at India Fest
India Fest 2010 packed the Agricenter, and there was plenty of delicious food to be had.
A number of different Indian states (which are tantamount to different countries, with different languages and traditions) were represented, and I tried to sample as much as I could. I took recommendations from the event organizers and was on my way…
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the ostranders
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Grand Marshalls Announced for Pride Parade
None of this year’s Mid-South Pride Parade grand marshals are old enough to drink, and one isn’t even old enough to drive a car. But all three have already made great strides for LGBT equality. Bianca Phillips has the story.
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india fest
