Over The Pylon

Howdy there, friends and neighbors. It’s the first workday of 2014, and the first opportunity you’ll have to misdate things for the next few weeks. Of course, this was significantly more troublesome and hard to remember back when things like personal checks were written, but considering how I haven’t written a check in probably two years, perhaps we can all get the date right for once. A guy can dream.

What’s also special about this particular day, short of it being the first day you couldn’t roll out of bed about noon and immediately start day drinking while watching wall to wall football, is that it’s the day of birth of one Cuba Gooding Jr. You remember him, right? For me, he’ll always be Rod Tidwell, the feisty Arizona Cardinal repped by Jerry Maguire on his road to redemption. He won an Oscar for his performance. Then he played the Navy diver with Robert Deniro and it seemed like everything was coming up Cuba. The next few films were anything but notable, well received, or good. There was the movie about the dogsleds, the movie about the gay boat trip, and a dozen other terrible attempts at cinema. Fastest drop from winning an Academy Award? Gotta be in the running. Wherever Gooding Jr. may be today, I hope he at least gets a longer break to take off his paper hat, put down his squeegee mop, and enjoy his 46th birthday.

To the news and notes!

From Mobile, there’s a pretty solid piece about the Cardinals first practice and a good photo gallery of the goings on. Nothing necessarily news-worthy, but scrolling through some photos and reading a non-beat reporter perspective on the Cardinals is a good way to spend the afternoon.

Chris Johnson from Sports Illustrated breaks down the GoDaddy Bowl, and you’ll want to check it out if for no other reason than it’s a national writer giving the Cards some credit and expecting a victory. So there’s that.

Some quotes from BSU and A State players and administrators about the Go Daddy Bowl and Mobile in general. From all I’ve read and heard, people are stoked that this was the bowl and team that BSU ended up with. It certainly beats Boise.

Men’s basketball traveled to central Virginia to take on James Madison, but it was JMU that came away with the W beating BSU 73-68. I would imagine a 2-8 start isn’t what James Whitford had in mind, but this early part of the schedule has done the Cards no favors, with 5 of the last 6 on the road. The Cards out the non-conference season on Friday at Worthen Arena versus Oakland City at 7pm.

Women’s basketball is doing markedly better than their male counterparts, with a 5-6 record, a win last weekend at IPFW, and their MAC opener Saturday at Akron. On the individual side of things, senior guard Brandy Woody was named this week’s MAC West C0-Player of the Week following a terrific stat line from IPFW: 22 points and four assists, including 13 of 14 from the free throw line.

Men’s volleyball opens their season on January 4th versus UC-Irvine at home at 7:30. You’ll get the chance should you go to check out senior Matt Leske who has been named to the pre-season all conference team for the MIVA conference. The Cards were picked to finish 5th by the league head coaches.

Your BSU Tweet of the Day comes to us from @RebeccaEstherS:

Move in day at BSU was one of the best days of my life. It was the beginning of a tremendous experience and something that if I ever had the chance to go back and revisit a time in my life, my times at BSU would be probably number one on the list. I’m jealous of those who are starting the next chapter of their lives in the next few days.

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