It's Thursday. We survived Labor Day weekend with our freedom intact, so don't jeopardize your weekend plans by imbibing too much with coworkers at Applebee's Happy Hour and getting behind a wheel.
Applebee's Happy Hour: Great way to go to jail.
DO IT FOR THE GRAM. Folks, the picture of [celebratory running back held aloft by offensive lineman] is a genre most of us love to know. For the uninitiated, here are Ezekiel Elliott and Chase Farris after performing their autopsy on Michigan last November:
Chase Farris holds Ezekiel Elliott aloft after decimating Michigan in 2015.
Do things enough, however, and the iconic becomes the mundane. Considering Ohio State plans to score points in 2016, it's a good thing players switched it up to keep celebrations fresh.
From mydaytondailynews.com:
“We always say, ‘Do it for the Gram,” Ohio State right guard Billy Price said. “Do it for Instagram. You get the good pictures.”
The Buckeyes turned the celebration around last weekend. After one of the 11 touchdowns in a 77-10 victory over Bowling Green at Ohio Stadium, hybrid back Curtis Samuel lifted center Pat Elflein in the air. Elflein outweighs Samuel 300-197.
“That’s our new thing,” Price said. “The small guys raise the fat guys. I told Dontre (Wilson), ‘Dontre, you’re going to have to start bench pressing more because I’m 315 and there’s no way. It’s a good time.”
I wish football's culture permitted extravagant touchdown celebrations. I'd love to see what else Billy Price and Curtis Samuel could cook up. If nothing else, it would add to the intrigue of a late third-quarter touchdown against Rutgers to put Ohio State up 38.
Coaches would hate it, too, which would make it even more amazing.
BOLD PLAY, BOBBY. After Tom Herman humbled then-No. 3 Oklahoma last week, it might be wise for the Sooners to dial back on recruiting plans when the Buckeyes come to Norman next week.
But according to one source, it's full steam ahead on the 'croot Schooner.
From 247sports.com:
“The [Oklahoma] staff is still targeting the game as a huge recruiting game,” the source said. “That hasn’t changed at all. They are trying to get their top prospects to the game and plenty of them will be there. And a number of them will be there because they are being recruited by both schools. Plus, it is still going to be a highly watched TV game. When it comes to recruiting this game is going to be huge.”
Big, if true.
Recruits won't be joining either team on display, but nobody can convince me it's anything but bad when a competitor smokes your team in front of recruits.
The good news for Oklahoma is Ohio State is much more selective.
TINY SCHOOL LIFE. Tulsa! What do we know? Not much.
Upon inspection, though, it Saturday will be more of a mismatch than anticipated.
From dispatch.com:
“Even from the state standpoint, we get overlooked all the time for (Oklahoma State) and Oklahoma,” [senior receiver Keevan Lucas] said. “That’s even in our own state. That’s why I say when people look at us, they just look at us like, ‘Tulsa, who are those guys? A small school.’ Before they recruited me, I didn’t know who Tulsa was.”
The same probably could be said for many Ohio State fans heading into a game Saturday at Ohio Stadium. Although Tulsa and Ohio State share a former coach, John Cooper, they have never played each other. And although both reside in the Football Bowl Subdivision, they are neighbors in name only. Ohio State’s enrollment for its Columbus campus for the autumn 2015 semester was 58,663 students. Tulsa’s enrollment is 3,473, the smallest among FBS schools.
[...]
Lucas, who hails from Abilene, Texas, described Tulsa as a family-friendly campus where most of the students know one another. Tulsa’s website cites an average class size of 23 students, and Lucas said his largest class probably has 30 students. You could fit Tulsa’s campus (209 acres) onto Ohio State’s campus (1,777) more than eight times.
Shoutout to Tulsa's athletic department, who sent their team into a lion's wolf's den in order to #paythosebills.
Players are forced to take the season "one game at a time," but not me. I'm already looking ahead to Oklahoma. The only concern about Tulsa is both teams survive without injury.
ACTUALLY, RUSSELL IS GOOD. Los Angeles Lakers point guard D'Angelo Russell feuded with his coach, who was bad, and got shunned by his teammates for secretly filming Nick Young confessing to cheating on his fiancée with a teenager he met at a club (among other trysts).
Though it seemed like a disaster, the Lakers fired Byron Scott and replaced him with noted Grateful Dead fan Luke Walton. Kobe Bryant, a bitter megalomaniac a decade past his prime, retired.
Couple that in with flashes he showed, coincidentally, without Bryant on the court, and there's reason for hope in Year 2.
From theringer.com:
Russell wasn’t perfect, but no rookie is. It couldn’t have been easy playing with Kobe, who used possessions as often as Stephen Curry while scoring as efficiently as Josh Smith, and shot as many 3s as Kevin Durant with the accuracy of Jared Sullinger. What the Lakers did was the equivalent of the Wolves taking the ball from Karl-Anthony Towns and giving it to Kevin Garnett. The Farewell Tour took valuable experience away from the Lakers’ young players. Give the Lakers credit for this, at least: Russell played nearly half his possessions without Bryant, per NBAWowy.com, so he got some time to work as a primary facilitator.
russell USAGE POINTS/36 ASSISTS/36 AST% eFG% TS% without KOBE 27.9 18.7 4.7 25.9 46.7 50.1 with KOBE 21.0 14.6 3.6 16.9 49.1 51.4 Russell played so well without Kobe that he could have been in the conversation for second-place Rookie of the Year votes if Bryant hadn’t played last season. His usage skyrocketed without Bryant, and while his scoring efficiency dipped slightly, his per-36 numbers improved drastically. He projects as the full-time starter alongside Jordan Clarkson under new Lakers head coach Luke Walton, so he could receive a similarly high usage rate. It’ll be a shock for Lakers fans to go from Scott’s Kobe-centric isolation offense to Walton’s free-flowing, motion-based system. But the stylistic change is tailor-made for Russell’s strengths as a versatile combo guard.
Also helping Russell: A year of learning to live as a millionaire #teen in Los Angeles under his belt.
Still, with music tastes like this and a desire to skip September (objectively the best month of the year), perhaps he still needs maturity:
"Wake me up when September ends"
— D'Angelo Russell (@Dloading) September 5, 2016
-GreenDay
YO. Hey kids, come play football at California Polytechnic State University Long Beach Poly High School, where you can live near a beach and get a gun brandished at you by a dead-rapper-walking.
Twenty years ago today, the @LBPoly_Football team had an altercation with 2Pac in Barstow on the way back from the football game
— Mike Guardabascio (@Guardabascio) September 7, 2016
According to coaches and players, tensions were high and Pac flashed a gun at the Poly kids, knowing they were from Long Beach
— Mike Guardabascio (@Guardabascio) September 7, 2016
Among the accomplishments of coach Jerry Jaso was talking Suge Knight and Pac out of making a bad situation worse that day
— Mike Guardabascio (@Guardabascio) September 7, 2016
Tragically, Pac was killed in Vegas less than ten hours later.
— Mike Guardabascio (@Guardabascio) September 7, 2016
Several players have wondered to me if Pac would still be alive had they called the cops on him that afternoon
— Mike Guardabascio (@Guardabascio) September 7, 2016
Suge Knight is one of the biggest scumbags in American history. I hope Jaso swept every coaching award that year.
THOSE WMDs. Morgan Stanley analysts see no quick fix at Chipotle... 11 common terms that used to be bad grammar... War games: The hardcore world of military simulations... Engine chess on a rural field... Craig Bohl working overtime with Osborne plan with Nebraska on deck.
