Mizzou – 41 / TexasTech – 10…. Me, Mizzus and Kid were walking back to our rented Mustang postgame when Holy BurlyBlue-Bleeder – “HARK THE SOUND” came over the campus clarion….. YIKES! …. Ol’ Roy ain’t loved in The Show Me State …. Meanwhile The Triangle is drying up …. SoCal is burning ….. and Jim Leavitt leaves $2,000,000 in Piscataway. …. Week Seven Looms.
I’m sitting on a second story porch overlooking Bogue Sound with a cuppa Amaretto flavored Joe. The maritime breezes are wafting, Mizzus is on her 
5 mile spirited walk, and all you guys are breathing sighs of relief that unlike Diogenes ….. BobLee has certainly NOT quit.
We had a TERRIFIC weekend in Columbia Missouri. The resurgent Tigers are a legit Top Twenty team and easily handled Mike Leach’s Red Raiders before 63,395 Tiger loyalists in Memorial Stadium. As usually happens wherever we go, we were inundated in effusive hospitality by “The Riddicks” our gracious hosts ….. longtime friends (and hard-core Democs who DESPISE the Hilly-beast).
The folks who market Missouri football have several “issues” they struggle with. Those “issues” are …..
- Getting fans inside the stadium well before kick-off
- Getting fans to wear the primary team color (gold)
- Getting fans to cheer vociferously at the proper times
- Getting fans to stay thru the entire game.
They even have catchy slogans and t-shirts designed to promote the above crowd group behavior. DUH! …. Sound Familiar?
OK …. For those of you who consider Asheville to be the western-most outpost of civilization ….. there IS a whole wide world “out there”. With the exception of maybe half a dozen schools, EVERY “big time college football” program wrestles with a majority of less than lunatic fans who insist that college gameday is INDEED “a social event” first and foremost and a measure of their personal self-worth is secondary, if at all. In other words over 95% of college football fans in America ARE NOT LOONIES. A very comforting thought.
The Missouri stadium is on the edge of the 30,000 student campus in a college-town of 100,000. The stadium/campus logistics are similar to Clemson with significant festival parking. Imagine if Kenan was a half-mile further south than it is …. and adjacent to The Legend’s Lair.
Mizzou’s first down ritual is …. the PA Announcer says “First Down M-I-Z” …. and the 63,000 reply “Z-O-U”. I still like ECU’s “Arrgghh”.
Our good friends at Mizzou, as usual, are among the well-heeled gentry …. aka fat cats (fat tigers in this case). Their parking spaces are in the shadow of the press box/corporate suite complex and less than 50’ from the stadium entrance. Despite several decades of grid mediocrity they revel in their gameday traditions and have a well-established friends, fun and fellowship routine that insures a good day regardless of the game’s outcome. My kinda folks! …. To Jim, Nancy, Tom, Chris and friends – HUZZA from Team BobLee.
I, as usual, received the “celebrity among us” treatment and fielded endless queries on a wide-range of subjects. “Hey BobLee what about ….. ?“ Of great interest to Missourians is how long Ol’ Roy will rot in the utter depths of Hell for kidnapping a certain young man out of Poplar Bluff. Ol’ Roy’s 15 years in Lawrence Kansas had made him coach non grata in Missouri anyway. Swiping Tyler pretty much eliminated any chance of Roy Williams ever replacing Harry Truman, Stan Musial or George Brett as a state-wide hero. The consensus is that Quinn Snyder is/was worthless human excrement and thru his abject incompetence, Tyler was pilfered out of state by the quite evil Ol’ Roy.
A Missouri alum/fan from Austin Texas brought me up-to-speed on a certain “Liar to dem boys”. Apparently Mack was not suppose to get whomped by K-State right before losing to Bob Stoops. That combo was ill-advised in retrospect. I also learned that the major HIGH SCHOOLS in Texas all have their own Jumbotrons as well as waiting lists for season tickets.
Unless one has a odd fixation with pine trees of which Missouri is bereft, the Missouri Stadium is quite attractive especially chock-full of fans amid all the usual color and pageantry blah blah.
A certain Mizzou tradition of interest to all us dirty old men is the Golden Girls. The Golden Girls are a combination dance /cheerleader troupe of twenty-four blonde leggy young ladies in gold-spangled tights and disco boots. They prance around the stadium throughout the game in open-defiance to any fuming feminists hell-bent on power washing such chauvinist titillation from the gameday experience. Mizzus commented that most Golden Girls ended up being “info babes” on assorted Midwestern TV stations. Fox News hires the best of each crop.
So anyway …. Mizzou wins the game quite easily. Mike Leach’s vaunted flying circus never gets untracked. I expected a minimum of 60-70 total points easily. There was one play of particular note ….. mid 4th quarter, Mizzou up 20+ points and easily in control. Texas Tech on their own 25 …. 3rd and REALLY long. Every play a pass so Mizzou defense laying their ears back and Burma Roading it. Mizzou calls a safety blitz and the safety starts a full sprint from 20 yards off the line of scrimmage heading right up the middle. Apparently the QB never sees him and the blitzing safety never slows down, hitting the LOS just as the ball is snapped. The retreating QB gets about two steps before the Mizzou blitzing safety hits him like a Mack Truck stomping a slow possum. Just the way a Defensive Coordinator would draw it up. 63,000 went nutzo.
Game over …. Say our good byes at the postgame tailgate and me, Mizzus and Kid begin our walk thru campus to where our Mustang is hitched. It was Homecoming so we ambled thru GreekTown to see the decorations et al. We’re smack dab in the middle of campus when the clarion sounds across campus ….. “Hark The Sound …. “ …. Except it’s “Ol’ Missouri” out there. Yep, both UNC and MU use the exact same alma mater tune. That will no doubt flummox the loon faction but tis true. Upon investigation, about a dozen schools use that same tune. Get over yourselves Tar Heels ….. ain’t too much unique in this world. I did wonder if there were any former burly ex-linebackers from Mizzou standing hand over gold-bleeding heart as THEIR alma mater pealed over the hallowed ground.
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The Water Crisis Is Real …… While Reverend Algore of the Church of The Imminent Calamity is all aflutter over Global Warming (and flimflamming the Swedish nutjobs at the Nobel Prize & Tanning Salon in downtown Stockholm) there REALLY is a Water Crisis. To paraphrase Fritz Hollings, there’s way too much toilet flushing and tooth brushing going on. No doubt it’s caused by us extreme right-wingers’ insistence on daily hygiene but nevertheless WE ARE RUNNING OUT OF WATER.
As The Triangle regrettably learns the term “strategic flushing”, we are once again reminded that Mother Nature and her boss, aka The G-Man HisHeavenlySelf, are really in charge. The Triangle dries up while SoCal burns …… Tornados lurk in the MidWest …. The Northeast has its blizzards …. The Southwest has its 110 degree “dry heat” and Seattle is in perpetual mildew. No matter where you go …. There’s some sort of uncontrollable nasty weather that “happens” to the annual consternation of the locals.
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Just a week ago Jim Leavitt was the national catbird in his little green USF visor. The desperate sleeping giants across the fruited plain were lining up to court the messiah de jour to please lead them to the BCS promised land. Then the Golden Bulls went up to Piscataway. When the Scarlet Knights were done with’em, Jim Leavitt’s market value went from “name it” to “take it or leave it”.
This week Coach Jag and Steve Logan take TO’B’s boys to Blacksburg for the annual ACC “Game Of The Century” for this year. I’m picking the Eagles to soar over the Hokies. ….. especially if Hokie 12th Man Jim Alderson is not on hand.
Congrats to TO’B for taking Chuckie’s boy to G-Vegas and emerging victorious to the total shock of most of Western Civilization. If Butch beats TO’B in November …. After TO’B whupped Skip …. After Skip whupped Butch …. That means all three schools’ Lunatic Factions can gather in the Bojangles parking lot in Selma and scream WE ARE BETTER THAN YOU ARE at each other until it gets dark and their mammas come get’em.
Of course I’ll be in Groves on Saturday next to see if all of Butch’s kids that were NOT caught smoking marijuana this past week can upset Grobe’s guys. It should be a humdinger which, of course, I will like a lot.
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That sigh of relief you heard earlier this week was Madison Avenue appreciating a “known team” being in the Fall Classic. We will get to see Big Poppie, Manny and The BoSox play some ragtag sandlot bunch from Colorado. The games in Denver will further remind us that Mother Nature does not much care for baseball in late October.
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