Weekend Notes

A HUGE sports weekend in our house, for a lot of reasons.

Border War

I’ll start with the best part of the weekend, for me at least, KU pounding Mizzou in Kansas City. And Darryn Peterson was back! Well, kind of. That’s a whole other deal that I’m not going to get into today.

The Tigers battled gamely for 16–17 minutes. They seemed to have momentum after a thunderous Mark Mitchell dunk forced a KU timeout. However, the Jayhawks put the hammer down in the four minutes before and four minutes after halftime and were never truly threatened again.

Now with five games in the books since the basketball rivalry was revived, we’ve had four bonafide blowouts and one game that was a nine-point KU win that felt like it would have stayed between five and nine points if the teams kept playing all night. Maybe next year, the final game currently scheduled between the schools, will have some real drama in the last 90 seconds.

I did not know until Saturday that this year’s game was, technically, a KU home game and next year’s will be a Missouri one. I’m on record as thinking it’s stupid to share these games between campuses and Kansas City. Pick one or the other, but not both. If the KC games will have a pronounced home advantage for one team rather than being a near 50–50 split, there’s no reason to play them. Can we blame former KU athletic director Jeff Long for this? It’s stupid enough to be his idea.

It was also stupid to play this game at 1:00 on a Sunday in December in Kansas City. It was nice that the NFL scheduled the Chiefs game for the evening, but imagine if they hadn’t. Official attendance was announced as over 15,000 Sunday. ESPN never offered any full crowd shots to show if that was accurate. I bet you could have sliced a third off that number if the Chiefs had a 1:00 game. People love their Jayhawks and Tigers, but the Chiefs will always be bigger than anything else going on in KC.

I also did not realize that the future of the series is in doubt. I’m not sure if the vagueness from Bill Self about extending it is posturing or just tweaking Mizzou fans. Based on what he’s said in recent weeks, though, it sure seems like he’d rather play North Carolina every year than Missouri.

He makes a valid point about needing to take advantage of every NIL opportunity when scheduling. So unless David Booth and the Mizzou Wal-Mart connections want to turn this game into a pay-for-play event, KU will focus on more multi-game tournaments like the Players Era tournament where they are likely to play three high major teams. I’m not sure Missouri is the game that should be sacrificed for that. Especially if these NIL games make it even more difficult to play quality opponents in Allen Fieldhouse. College sports is in a really weird place right now; more on that later. With non-conference, on-campus games getting rarer and rarer, and often limited to two year contracts, keeping Missouri on the schedule long term gives an anchor to the first semester games that everyone will look forward to.

I don’t think the hate will ever be what it used to be, at least amongst the players. But Allen and Mizzou Arena are much better environments when the old rivals come to town instead of Towson or whoever.

By the way, that’s 10 KU wins in the last 12 games versus the Tigers. Pretty nice!

Colts

The Colts were playing at the same time Sunday – again, stupid time for a college basketball game! – so when I checked for updates at halftime I was bummed to see Daniel Jones’ season ended on the wet turf in Jacksonville. And probably the Colts’ season. And, honestly, next year too. The big plan to build around Jones is dead and, unless Chris Ballard can pull some kind of miracle over the summer, it will likely be Riley Leonard or Anthony Richardson behind center next fall. Maybe Jason Bean will get another shot next summer.

A brutal, brutal injury for Jones. He was on the verge of getting a huge extension from the Colts in a couple months. His late season swoon could be written off to the broken bone in his other leg. The Colts were all-in on him and had no other options. Then his achilles popped and he’s/they are screwed.

In one calendar year Indianapolis teams have lost Tyrese Haliburton and Jones to achilles tears. Fernando Mendoza and Braden Smith better be very careful between now and New Year’s Day, because something is clearly in the air here.[1]

College Football Playoff

Holy shit, the Hoosiers did it! I knew they had a great shot in Saturday’s Big Ten championship game, but I still expected Ohio State to win. That’s basically a pro team and no matter how good a story IU was, how solid a team they are, talent was going to win out, right?

IU said “fuck you and your 80 future first round draft picks.” They took every shot OSU threw at them and gave them all right back.

I’ve obviously watched a fair amount of IU this year. The thing that really struck me is how smart and locked in they are. They just don’t make mistakes, or if they do, they aren’t crippling ones.

For example, on Ohio State’s final drive, when they had third and goal inside the five, the Buckeyes ran a really nice play that would be a touchdown like 80% of the time. But an IU linebacker picked up the running back immediately and killed the play. I imagined OSU running that same play against KU’s defense and could only see KU players falling down, running into each other, or looking at each other while no one covered the running back and gave up the TD.

Even sweeter for IU fans, Purdue got destroyed by Iowa State Saturday. So as the football Hoosiers were ascending to #1, the Boilermakers were taking the worst home loss ever for a top ranked basketball team. Alas, the basketball Hoosiers got run out of Gainbridge Fieldhouse by Louisville, so it wasn’t a perfect day for IU people.

Who am I kidding. Even the most ardent Hoosier hoops fan was fine losing a December basketball game to clinch the school’s first conference title in over 50 years, first outright one in 80 years, and first ever #1 ranking.

As for the CFP itself, I love that there’s controversy. The playoff, in general, is a good thing. I think 12 teams is at least four too many, though. And the dumbness surrounding the process will get even dumber when another four teams are eventually added. In a couple years we’re going to be arguing about why the 17th best team in the country was left out.

I get why Miami got in over Notre Dame. They beat the Irish way back in week one. If all other factors are close, and everything I saw had the teams neck-and-neck by nearly every metric, that game nearly four months ago has to carry some weight.

That said, I don’t understand how Notre Dame could be ahead of Miami in last week’s rankings then fall without either team playing this week. One of the talking fools on ESPN said the committee “needed all their information” before making the final determination. THERE WAS NO NEW INFORMATION FOR THESE TWO TEAMS. BYU losing Saturday had zero impact on Miami’s and Notre Dame’s resumes.

Now, is Notre Dame the better team now? Oh, absolutely. I don’t think anyone is scared of Miami while no one would want to go to South Bend next weekend. Any tournament, though, needs to be based on your full season’s accomplishments, not just what you’ve done over the last month.

Bowl Games

Notre Dame made things even dumber by announcing Sunday evening that they would not accept a bowl bid. I don’t think that’s going to make many neutrals support your cause, Irish.

Worse, earlier in the weekend both Kansas State and Iowa State announced they would not accept bowl bids. Not because they think they were screwed by the playoff process, but because they both had coaching changes last week. Which might be the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Both schools named new coaches within a day of their previous coach’s departure so it’s not like they were in some lurch without either a permanent or acting coach. Both schools, I would assume, had been preparing as if they would play in a bowl game. And suddenly because of a little hiccup they decide not to play in whatever crappy game they were slotted to?

My new rule: if you are bowl eligible and you turn down an invite, you are automatically banned from going to a bowl the next season, no matter how many games you win. Theoretical 12–0, 2026 Notre Dame would be stuck at home because 2025 Notre Dame acted like babies.

I made a joke Sunday afternoon that we were just a few dominos away from KU going to a bowl. Turns out KU, and at least eight other five-win teams, turned down offers to fill open bowl slots. The word from one national writer was this group of teams all declined because so many of their players had left campus already.

I say, who cares? Surely KU, Auburn, Florida State, etc. could round up 60 kids who want to practice for a couple weeks then go play one more time this year, right?

I get that going to Birmingham on December 29 to play Georgia Southern isn’t exactly a plum assignment. But get over yourselves. KU should let a bunch of sophomores and freshmen get a shot in a game that really has no stakes.

Like I said in the basketball section, college sports are in a weird place right now and it is hard to predict where they will be next year, let alone in five. This feels like it could be the beginning of the end of the bowl system. The playoff will expand in another year or two, and once there are 16 teams playing will anyone care about those crappy bowl games that used to fill up late December? Once upon a time there were only a handful of bowls and it was a genuine accomplishment to make one. Perhaps the playoff will lead us back to that point.

HS Hoops

After L’s big night last Tuesday we wondered if there would be any change in her role for their next game. Thursday, just before the team turned their phones in, she texted saying that she was not playing JV that night. Her work paid off!

That only translated to 3–4 minutes of game time in the varsity game. Which was fine. She got fouled right before halftime and hit both free throws. She also grabbed a rebound and had one turnover. It wasn’t a night where we needed her as our starting guards played well and weren’t in foul trouble.

We played a 4A team that was 5–1 coming in. Midway through the third quarter we were up 16 before our offense fell apart. ZHS got as close as four but never got it down to one possession, and we stretched it back out for a nice 12-point win. One of L’s former travel teammates on ZHS played almost the entire game. They each scored two points, so L was much more efficient!

The girls get a full week off from games before they play again this Thursday.

Omen?

Sunday my first cold of the season started to hit me. In general I feel fine, but my nose refuses to stop dripping no matter what drugs I take.

It was so bad I went into M’s room to sleep since I was constantly blowing my nose and I figured S deserved a decent night of sleep even if I was unable to. Good thing M doesn’t come home for Christmas for two more days.

At about 3:30 AM we were all woken by our smoke alarms going off. After dashing through the house to make sure nothing was actually on fire, I grabbed a ladder and started pulling alarms from the ceiling. I found the offending one on my third try, in L’s room. The wiring on it has always been weird but I’ve put off fixing it for seven years because it was never troublesome. Just to confirm, there was no smoke in her room so she wasn’t having a cigarette in the middle of the night.

Naturally I could not fall back to sleep after. It was pushing 5:00 before I finally passed out and I got maybe 90 minutes of sleep before L started banging around in the bathroom next door.

Hopefully that’s not a sign this is going to be a bad week.