(Manu Ginobili Combover Watch is dedicated to the belief that everyone’s favorite Argentine Basketball player is balding fast, and would be too proud of his hair not to do something drastic about it before his retirement. Like, say, a terrible combover.)
The NBA playoffs are deep into the conference semifinals, and fans have been blessed with some very good matchups in this round. The crown jewel of the conference semis has to be the seven game battle between the defending champion San Antonio Spurs and the New Orleans Hornets. Take the time to watch game five tonight, if for no other reason than that Hornets point guard Chris Paul has been playing absolutely out of his mind.
Perhaps a more important subplot for Digital Headbutt is that Manu Ginobili’s bald spot has developed to frightening proportions. Just look at these photos from Games 3 and 4 of the Yahoo Spurs gallery (Photo by D. Clarke Evans/NBAE via Getty Images):
(Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)
As with the first edition of Combover Watch, the pictures fail to do his bald spot justice, but you get the general idea. As much as I’m rooting for the Hornets and Chris Paul’s 10:1 Assist/Turnover ratio, I think it would be an injustice to wait until the Olympics in August to see how a true Argentine recession develops.
By now, most of you have become familiar with Lou Holtz’s Pep Talk and the drinking game I chose to attach to it. (We have a few new elements to the game-check it out.) However, are you wondering how drunk you would have been if you had tried to play it? Let’s find out.
You don’t even want to KNOW what the Pringles are for.
Fan IQ thinks the pep talk was a disaster, but the weirdness is something worth cherishing. But on to the tally.
Right off the bat, I see his loose tie, the talk is for a once-proud program who lost to Oklahoma State in Week 8, and I recognize a left side off-tackle run play to the left of his head. That’s one + one +two +three = seven sips before he even says anything.
“The time to worry is before you place your bet, and not after they spin the wheel.” That’s fortune cookie material. One sip.
“We solved sexism, racism, we’ll solve problems with Nebraska football if enough people care.” That is the kind of analogy and hyperbole that no one could hope to understand but him. Two + three = five sips.
“I’ll always have a future.” Bill Callahan? Future? HA! Two sips.
“If I didn’t show up, who would miss me and why?” Think about that before the next time your mother-in-law tries to show up. Three sips.
“Let’s go make Texas sorry that we showed up today. Let’s go!” That is one mad septogenarian right there. four + one = five sips.
So not counting the lisps (which, I admit, may be too many to keep track of), if you had played the Drinking game in Week 9, you would have taken 23 gulps of beer or 11.5 shots of liquor during Lou’s Pep Talk for Nebraska. If you add to that the Huskers’ close loss to Texas in that game, the number goes to 27/13.5.
As of right now, UNC has the title of “most excusable 2-6 team in the nation”. However, it really has been difficult to categorize this exciting, yet frustrating year. It’s much easier to characterize our losses than the season as a whole, and with the magic of the Internet, I’ve stumbled upon something comparable: the ill-fated drummers of Spinal Tap.
This is exactly where UNC is this season: on the cusp of success, but always losing under bizarre and mysterious circumstances (most of which are their own doing).
ECU and Virginia games: “Bizarre gardening accidents.”
The game at East Carolina was the first time the Tar Heels faced a division I-A offense, and it showed. Patrick Pinkney had a field day against the Carolina secondary, on route to over 400 passing yards. However, UNC’s offense was able to keep pace, and had the ball in a 31-31 game, in ECU territory, with less than two minutes left.
This is where things got out of hand. First, Yates fumbled the second down snap. Then, on 3rd and 4 from the 34, UNC have the ball to tailback Johnny White, who was stopped for no gain and set up a 51 yard field goal attempt. The snap was good, but Ryan Bauchom completely botched the hold, he had to fall on the ball. East Carolina regained possession near midfield with 53 seconds left, and eventually won on a last second field goal of their own, ironically after their kicker had missed his last 3 attempts.
Against Virginia, one of the plays that prevented us from winning the game was the 4th quarter interception by defensive lineman Chris Long, which eventually set up the game winning field goal. The Cavaliers did not always put pressure on T.J. Yates in the second half, but the entire game the defensive line managed to bat down passes at the line of scrimmage. On one such play, Chris Long managed to deflect the ball to himself, catch it, and run 30 yards the other way into field goal range. Julius Peppers is the only player I can recall who was able to make such a play in college. it was simply unbelievable.
The way we lost our first two games were so bizarre that we may never again see the Tar Heels lose in quite the same way.
Virginia Tech and South Carolina games: “You can’t really dust for vomit.”
The Tar Heels had kept each of these games close, but had allowed teh game to slip away due to their own very-ill-timed mistakes.
Against Virginia Tech, North Carolina was well into the third quarter, only trailing 10-3 and driving to score. Ryan Houston had played a solid game up to this point at tailback, and Carolina was faced with a second a goal at the 5. Houston got the ball and was stopped at the line, but the ball was propelled out of his hands and into the end zone, where Virginia Tech recovered. Not long afterwards, T.J. Yates, having just gotten out of terrible field position, threw a pass that deflected off of Kenton Thornton’s fingertips and into the hands of Xavier Adibi, who returned the interception to the 3 yard line and set a up Brandon Ore’s game-winning touchdown. Without those turnovers, UNC wins the game.
The South Carolina game was even more self-sabotage. For example, Quan Sturdivant had recoverd a Mike Davis Fumble at the SC 15 yard line, and the UNC offense quickly proceeded to throw away their golden opportunity; sack, holding penalty, uncontested rush to the left side, ill-advised throw under pressure, easy interception. The Joe Dailey trick play pick was just as inexplicable. (The one pass they let him throw all year and it’s an interception. Go figure.) A few other missed opportunities, such as Greg Little’s two dropped touchdown passes in the fourth quarter, would have almost certainly changed the outcome of the game.
Certainly we had help along the way with these two games, but for the most part, we were responsible for our own demise.
South Florida and Wake Forest games: “You know, dozens of people spontaneously combust each year. It’s just not really widely reported.”
These were two games in which the Heels screwed up in just about every way possible (and ironically, both 37-10 losses). Carolina did a good job of keeping it under control for the middle of the game, but the team fell apart in spectacular fashion at the beginning and end of each of these contests. By the time it was over, all that was left of them was “a little green globule”.
Any future losses in 2007: “Well, I’m sure I’d feel much worse if I weren’t under such heavy sedation. “
With four games left in the 2007 season, absolutely nothing should surprise us about this team. We have shown signs of promise in nearly every game we’ve played. More than 50 of the 84 players on our roster had never played a down of college football until this season. The Tar Heels have a nucleus of talented young players (42 true or redshirt freshmen), most of whom will be suiting up in 2008, 2009, and even 2010. This team will be very good, very soon. However, our inexperience makes pretty much every game a crapshoot; we cannot truly claim to know what will happen. So, losses to Maryland or Georgia Tech shouldn’t get your blood boiling too much.
The Duke game, of course, is when we make it big in Japan.
Digital Headbutt began to delve into the sports blog universe one year ago this week. Its beginnings were humble, and I was not even fully aware of the vast sports blogosphere around me until this space had been around for three months. 207 posts and 110,000+ hits later, I may very well have created a monster. The kind of monster who ventures into the realm of the unknown, for varying lengths of time, and brings back stuff like this.
Of all the posts on Digital Headbutt, these three were statistically your favorites:
I would like to thank all of the sports blogosphere, and all of the great people, too many to mention in this space, whom I would not have collaborated with, spoken to, or met without Digital Headbutt and Tar Heel Mania. You have made this worthwhile. Because dammit, they won’t let me put AdSense on this thing!
For the past month or so, I had been too distracted by Lou Holtz to throw my support behind any particular player for the Heisman trophy. But now, my decision is clear: the Heisman should go to Mike Hart. Is it because he’s on pace to rush for over 1,500 yards and 18 touchdowns? Because he has single handedly kept the Wolverines in the Big Ten hunt and Lloyd Carr with a pension plan? Because he’s playing better football than many of the other potential candidates? Because his main rivals’ teams now keep taking turns in the Vietnamese boathouse? No, its because of his new campaign ads.
If these don’t get you pumped about Mike Hart’s Heisman campaign, nothing will.
Austin Powers was the man. In the 1960’s he had become one of the greatest and most beloved international spies that this world has ever known. But beneath his story lies a secret…that his story is not yet over.
Let us begin with what you know. The story goes that Austin was at the peak of his game as a spy in 1967, and had his arch nemesis, Dr. Evil, completely cornered in his secret Nevada lair. But Dr. Evil bought himself just enough time to escape in a rocket/cryogenic chamber, and shoot off into space to return at an undetermined later date, when Austin was either dead, or too old to fight him. The British secret service, all but certain that Austin was the only man who could stop Dr. Evil, decided to counter his move by cryogenically freezing Mr. powers until Dr. Evil’s return to earth.
That was the official story. But if there’s one thing we’ve learned about international intelligence, it’s that agencies only reveal what they want you to know. Only now, through a obscure photograph, can we realize the truth.
It turns out that Mr. Powers was never frozen at all. MI-6 was well aware that cryonics caused irreversible tissue damage, and concluded that a frozen Dr. Evil could not be revived anytime in the forseeable future, and thus was no longer a threat. At this point, Austin wanted to retire and go into another profession. But he would never be able to do so under his current identity; any job taken by the most famous spy in the world would have the inherent risk of death at the hands of foreign governments, still unaware or skeptical of his “retirement”.
No, they had to change his identity completely. Appearance, accent, body build, even his personality…everything. And so MI-6’s work on Mr. Powers truly began. They hired the world’s top plastic surgeons to rebuild him from the ground up, and put him through what is today the most extensive brainwashing program ever declassified, to make him the exact opposite of a British spy hipster–a football coach from the American heartland. He learned all that there was to know about down home Americana, and more American football than the rest of his countrymen put together would ever know. In 1969, his new life would begin as the head coach at a small college, William & Mary. Over the next 30 years, he would eventually become one of college football’s most well known figures.
However, MI-6 now admits that just enough of the old Austin remained to attempt a fruitful search for his current persona. There had been suspicions as to which college coach he had become, but it was not until this photograph from a 1976 press conference was found that his true identity would be revealed:
Austin Powers, one of the world’s greatest spies, has lived a completely different life in retirement…as Lou Holtz.
