Roundtable in Tahoe: Outside Domination

With some of CrossFit’s top athletes in Lake Tahoe, Calif., for the Rogue Vs. Again Faster Throwdown, it was a great opportunity to throw the athletes into a room and get them talking with the cameras rolling.

Dave Castro opens this roundtable discussion with the topic of professional athletes becoming CrossFit athletes. Are we going to see more professional athletes take on CrossFit? Do they have what it takes, and could they eclipse the current stars?

The assembled CrossFitters agree that while some football players and other power athletes might be capable of moving more weight, moving their own mass at body-weight movements will exhaust them at high volume. According to Tommy Hackenbruck, that type of athlete just has “too big of an engine.”

Even if someone has the talent, there’s the issue of training and mental fortitude.

“None of these guys are going to come in and do well without any CrossFit training. That will never happen,” Castro says. “They don’t have that mindset to push like CrossFitters do.”

Pat Barber thinks it’s more likely that CrossFit-trained athletes will transition easily into other sports and dominate the playing field rather than the other way around. Austin Malleolo adds that athletes follow the money, and athletes won’t seek it out until CrossFit becomes a professional sport.

Where will the evolution of CrossFit take the sport of fitness?

9min 19sec

Additional reading: The Marlins Go CrossFit by Paul Fournier, published March 1, 2010.

Pink Mila Kunis Samaire Armstrong Selita Ebanks Michael Michele

Could the Calipari-Pitino rivalry continue on Caribbean soil?

In the wake of two days of speculation that the rivalry between he and Louisville's Rick Pitino could continue on Caribbean soil, Kentucky coach John Calipari attempted to defuse some of the chatter.

Calipari insisted he has not been contacted about coaching the Dominican Republic's national team, though he did not rule out the possibility if he eventually is approached about the job.

"I've been not been contacted by anybody," Calipari told reporters in Lexington on Tuesday. "It would be an honor to be considered for something like that, but I don't know the time frame and I don't even know if I could do it. Where that got started, or whether they're considering asking, I don't know. You'd have to talk to them."

The notion that Calipari could coach the Dominican team originated with a blog post on Inside Puerto Rico Basketball indicating that Dominican officials have reached out to Calipari about coaching their outfit. It was a report that had to be taken seriously considering that Pitino had formally accepted Puerto Rico's coaching gig on Monday morning.

The advantage of coaching the Puerto Rican and Dominican national teams for Pitino or Calipari would be the potential recruiting pipelines both could create for their programs. Pitino will have greater name recognition in Puerto Rico than any other college coach and greater access to the island's basketball prospects as well.

Calipari said he hasn't considered the pros and cons of coaching the Dominican team because officials from that country haven't contacted him.

"No one's approached me about coaching anybody's (team) or being a consultant for a national team, whether it be China or anyone else," Calipari said. "There's stuff out there, but no one's come to me and said, ‘This is what it would mean.'"

Vanessa Simmons Chyler Leigh Julie Berry Lori Heuring Nicole Scherzinger

Dear Diary is Making a List

Dear Santa Diary,

All I want this year is for Michigan to get a kicker?oh and for Ohio State to implode and have their best players all lose their eligibility because of some stupid yet indefensible scandal?

MGoBlog/MySanAntonio

MERRY MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

The well known bloggist Geaux_Blue started a diary series this week called "Shunning Wings," wherein he promises to profile various recruits who spurned Michigan. The first candidate is Terrelle Pryor who, for better and for worse, put an indelible mark on both programs, leaving Michigan virtually empty at QB in '08 and resigned to underclassmen for '09-'10, and putting the exclamation mark on Jim Tressell's conservative, unlikeable iteration of the Ohio State program.

Facts: Dude got discounted tats in return for his autograph. He sold off the gold pants lucky charm they give out for beating Michigan. He sold his 2008 Big Ten Championship ring. He sold his Sportsmanship Award from the 2009 Fiesta Bowl.*

Of course, considering how badly we wanted Pryor, and how badly Rich Rod wanted Pryor, we can't pretend like this is a "this is the type of guy other programs recruit" kind of thing.

This is why MGoBlog hasn't made a very big deal of the million minor mishaps accrued each year at various collegiate football programs. Giving a moral "tsk" to a 21-year-old athlete ? even if it's way beyond your own "never tell the kids" collegiate transgression list ? is hypocritical if you root for an FBS team. And since a million crotchety people with internet connections already do enough of this, it's trite. If ever you find yourself sounding like a Yahoo commenter, even if you can't figure out what's wrong with what you're saying, it's probably wrong (this also goes SEC media types).

And not to mention that the whole thing reeks of the NCAA's worst hypocrisy. This is a tax-exempt organization because it's all for the kids, yet here they are laying out a five-game suspension for selling off the same schwag that OSU itself can't push enough. I can't honestly connect the NCAA's decision to delay suspensions until after the Sugar Bowl to money, but does anyone think having them sit out for MSU next October instead of Arkansas in January was made in the best interests of preserving a spirit of amateurism?

So, how to respond to all of this? A list:

• Ohio State fans: Five games for some schlock when Cam Newton was shopped for a fortune?
• SEC fans: NCAA's just protecting their golden conference ? everyone knows the world revolves around OSU's record versus the SEC in BCS bowls. S-E-C!
• Big Ten fans: Wow, can Ohio State be any more of an SEC team?
• A.J. Green/Georgia: Wait, you can delay that?
• Misopogal: What were the tattoos?
• Michigan State: Adding a fifth game was a nice touch.
• Rest of World: This looks really bad.
• Michigan fans: ??

I mean, yes to all the caveats above. But this is still our big rival. This guy spurned us. And now he and his buddies are giving the Buckeyes some well-deserved time in the mud. If you're waiting for an official stance on this from MGoBlog, get it out of Brian. As for me, co-sign on any hand gestures toward the NCAA, and otherwise I'm here:**

User bluesouth breaks down the OSU plan in xtranormal form on the boards.

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* I know what you're thinking: They gave him an award for sportsmanship?

** Not a Blue Fan et al. reserve the right to call us their bitches until such time as Michigan beats Ohio State in a contest of football.

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CRISP These Now!

Before 1994 this was registration. After 2000 everything was done online. In between you wanted to kill someone.

If you were at Michigan from about Tom Brady's freshman season to Drew Henson's last, you will remember the CRISP* lady. If not, consider yourself lucky that you have no idea what we're talking about. This was Michigan's phone-based class registration system before it went all internet. Imagine maneuvering through the world's most complicated touch-tone, automated service system. Now imagine the most annoying lady's voice in the world is behind all the recordings (there was a persistent rumor they were after James Earl Jones to re-record it, which I guess they never did because students who thought this was some sort of Death Star Torture device would just starting yelling out the location of the Rebels' secret base). NOW, imagine only 127 people can use it at a time, so you are given a specific time (like 7:03 a.m. to 7:26 a.m.) that you're allowed to call, and while you're fiddling around in the system and it's misreading your inputs, your classes are filling up quickly so you will need to have backups for all of your timeslots and already know their codes. Now imagine they give you rotary dialed phones in all the dorm rooms.

Nowadays if you're interested in a course, you click on it and it fits automatically into your schedule based on parameters such as location to each other, lunch break, drinking nights, and your hall's designated videogame hour, right?

This is all a long way of introducing some courses you ought to pick up:

Mississippi State 311 and 312

Course Name: History of Mississippi State's 2010 Football Team: From Arkansas to Ole Miss

Professor: BlueSeoul

Prerequisites: Mississippi State 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 207, 208, 210

Counts As: History, Non-North American/European History Requirement, Foreign Language Requirement

Course Description: Remember the series BlueSeoul was doing on watching all of MSU (NTMSU)'s games this year? He did two more: The Egg Bowl, and Arkansas (with pics and breakdowns).

The dreaded "inverted option":

We'll be seeing a lot of this play or some variation of it.   Although this one isn't really part of their option series, it is third play of their sweep series.  (The first 2 being the sweep and the counter sweep.) You can tell that this play is a designed QB keeper by the blocking assignments. It doesn't matter what you call it, Relf will have the ball, and he will be running between the tackles with 1, 2, or even 3 lead blockers.

MSU is in a split back slot right.  Ark responds with a 4-3 and a late shift into an outside blitz. The safety moves up into man coverage and the MLB fakes a blitz.

In the comments for the Ole Miss one sammylittle asked BlueSeoul to provide a series summation before the bowl. Co-sign that!

NCAA Rankings 412

Course Name: Graph Theory Ranking: Post-Season

Professor: joeyb

Prerequisites: NCAA Rankings 312

Counts As: Statistics, Math, Global World View

Course Description: In this class you will learn which teams in FBS had the best seasons in a statistical revamp of the rankings system. Essentially it's a new computer poll, and better than some of those that are used for the BCS. Then again, uh, Auburn is 4th. Here's his Top 10:

1	Oregon	1.677444
2	Stanford	1.963008
3	TCU	2.011924
4	Auburn	2.066706
5	Oklahoma	2.25209
6	Boise State	2.321805
7	Wisconsin	2.461991
8	Ohio State	2.473381
9	Missouri	2.555164
10	Virginia Tech	2.564181

Sign up to learn more.

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* C.omputers R.eally I.rritate S.ome P.eople

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More Ohio State

This is a snapshot from this year's edition of The Game, in case you thought that was Fresno State or something opposite Denard and Co. It's also a screenshot from this year's UFR of Ohio State (Not THAT UFR). Unfortunately, Brian seems, for the moment, to be continuing the recent tradition of drowning in sorrow rather than taking the time for a post-OSU Upon Further Review since 2008. This year he didn't even bother with the un-kempt promise, which doesn't bode well for us, but UFR fans may take some solace, for the mighty mighty stubob has stepped up.

Upon Further Review: Ohio State (by stubob)

OFFENSE | DEFENSE

I'm still working on getting the charts a bit nicer, but the job is a good one. As Brian or anyone else who've UFR-ed a game will tell you, it's a heck of a job. And stubob did one heck of a job. Diarist of the Week.

This doesn't mean you're off the hook, Cook.

Making Grades

Kicker fail.

It's the end of the semester, which means it's time for report cards. AC1997 has a two-part series giving each position a grade. The position breakdowns are a bit strange, and it's more of a "how do we look next year" than "how did we do this year" kind of thing, but they're good reads and good argument-starters.

Quarterback ? A+

That?s right, I went there. I struggle to see how this position could be any better. Denard will be a Heisman candidate for the next two years, Tate has proven to be a very good backup quarterback and spot starter, and Devin will now be a freshman next year and one of the highest ranked dual-threat talents of the past three recruiting classes. I guess it would be nice to have a developmental prospect, but fourth string QBs grow on trees.

I took the liberty of converting to Michigan-style grading:

Offense: 2.63

Defense: 2.19

FINAL GPA: 2.42

The offense's grade was hit severely by the Failure grade at kicker, which I guess is true. I'd much rather he'd just graded '10 and left the '11 predictions for later on.

Season's Spirit

Alternate backgrounds from monuMental, depending on whether you've been naughty or nice. Does wanting to eat the "Nice" one make one naughty? Also, since I'm late in posting this week, here's this week's masterpiece:

I shall leave you with a bit of poetry from SpyinColumbus: 'Twas the week before the Gator Bowl, and back in A-squared?

Evangeline Lilly Lisa Marie Keira Knightley Monica Keena Anne Marie Kortright

Breakfast Buffet: Mark Lyons makes Albany regret good deed

Pull up a chair and sit down at the breakfast buffet, an assortment of all the freshest newsworthy college hoops stories on the net. To make a submission, contact me via email or Twitter.

• Albany's 88-64 loss to Xavier on Tuesday night was proof that no good deed goes unpunished. After the Great Danes gave stranded Xavier guard Mark Lyons a ride from upstate New York to Cincinnati on their team bus, he promptly repaid the favor by scoring 18 points on a career-high six 3-pointers to propel the Musketeers to a comfortable home victory.

• Long Beach State may have entered Tuesday night's game at UC Santa Barbara below .500 on the season, but the 49ers defeated the defending Big West champion Gauchos 71-55 to emphatically prove they're title contenders. Larry Anderson returned from a wrist injury to score 25 points and Long Beach State held UCSB stars Orlando Johnson and James Nunnaly to a combined 6 of 27 from the floor. 

• Is tradition-rich DePaul a more difficult rebuilding job for new coach Oliver Purnell than football-heavy Clemson was? That's what one NBA scout told the Chicago Sun-Times. "DePaul will be tougher,'' the scout said. "The difference is kids from South Carolina who are good players and may not get into North Carolina or Duke or Wake Forest still want to play in the ACC. The kids [in the Midwest] want to play in the Big Ten more, not necessarily the Big East."

• One of the teams I flat-out whiffed on going into the season was Providence, which I thought might be DePaul-bad and instead has turned out to be downright competitive in the Big East. The Friars showed their mettle again on Tuesday, pushing fifth-ranked Syracuse into the final minutes at the Carrier Dome before falling 81-74.

• We still don't know anymore about the status of Kyrie Irving's injured toe, but we now have a little better idea of when more information will be available. The Duke point guard will have his toe examined next week, at which point doctors will attempt to decide how to treat it and perhaps determine a timetable for his return.

• Michigan probably wouldn't have beaten Purdue anyway on Tuesday afternoon, but it didn't help that star guard Darius Morris was held out of the starting lineup as a result of an undisclosed rules violation. "I made a mistake and apologized to my teammates, and we're ready to move forward. I learned from this experience and from this game," Morris told the Detroit News.

• One of the chapters author George Dohrmann cut out of Play Their Hearts Out to pare the book down was about the relationship between Oregon State guard Roberto Nelson and his father, who is currently in prison. Dohrmann released a couple excerpts from that lost chapter on his blog recently in order to highlight why Roberto's grades suffered to the point that he had to sit out all of last season. 

• Among the cooler items in the Sports Illustrated vault is a photo of former North Carolina coach Dean Smith's practice itinerary for March 4, 1997. There's no real revelations or surprises on it, yet I still spent at least five minutes staring at it for some reason. 

Amanda Swisten Scarlett Chorvat Kim Smith

In the end, the Broncos are who we thought they were (whatever that was)

Boise State 26, Utah 3. The final score isn't particularly pretty, and with 13 penalties on top of six turnovers and a pair of missed field goals, neither was the game. But make no mistake: The ribbon on Boise State's third consecutive 12-win season came with a characteristic beatdown.

The Broncos outgunned Utah by upwards of 300 yards in total offense, 523 to 201, on a difference of almost three full yards per play. They went over 200 yards rushing and 250 passing for the seventh time this season. They kept the opposing offense out of the end zone for the fifth time. The nation's most sack-happy defense brought down Ute quarterback Terrance Cain five times. They punted once, on the second series of the game. And they trounced another ranked opponent, their third top-25 victim of the year.

Across the board, Boise settled in over the last two-and-a-half quarters to exactly the brand of front-running dominance it exhibited for all but one quarter of the regular season, exiting the stage with just that one lingering bit of unfinished business: Just how are we supposed to judge that performance, anyway?

For the believers, the numbers and the final score against the Utes were good enough to leave you wondering what might have been if Kyle Brotzman – who ended his career tonight as the NCAA's all-time leading scorer among kickers – hadn't ganked those crucial field goals at Nevada. But with the slow start, turnovers and blown opportunities, it certainly wasn't good enough to convert skeptics who refused to look past the second-rate schedule. In that sense, it was an appropriate final act for the most divisive team in recent memory: The Broncos gave the wedge one final whack, took a bow and exited stage left to simultaneous applause and indifference.

Over time, though, the aftertaste of one final blowout for the road may serve to deepen the sense of missed opportunity. Boise State didn't open the season in the top five by some lucky accident: This season was the logical culmination of a sharp, decade-long rise, the golden window for a team somehow returning 23 of 24 starters from a 14-0 Fiesta Bowl champion that finished fourth in the polls in 2009. This was the team to finish the ascent.

And it filled that potential, for the most part, and then some. It knocked off the eventual ACC champ in what amounted a road game on opening night, and reeled off nine straight as a double-digit favorite without encountering anything that even resembled a challenge. All things considered, it was probably a better team than the '09 edition over the course of the entire season – except for the season-killing collapse in Reno, which slammed the window shut, possibly forever. This time, ten starters will be moving on in 2011, including Brotzman, prolific receivers Titus Young and Austin Pettis and All-WAC defenders Ryan Winterswyk, Winston Venable, Brandyn Thompson and Jeron Johnson.

The lineup they leave behind faces the first of a couple crucial rebuilding seasons to sustain the consistency that put the 2010 edition on the cusp of a once-a-generation breakthrough. Odds are, though, that tonight was Boise's final hurrah as a serious national player for the foreseeable future. This was the team, and it fell just short of the summit. One last reminder that it really did have the tools to get there is almost as cold a sendoff as another reminder that it probably didn't. Almost.

- - -
Matt Hinton is on Twitter: Follow him @DrSaturday.

Michelle Branch Melissa Howard Samantha Mumba Busy Philipps Thora Birch

Breakfast Buffet: Arizona gets bounce-back win at NC State

Pull up a chair and sit down at the breakfast buffet, an assortment of all the freshest newsworthy college hoops stories on the net. To make a submission, contact me via email or Twitter.

• If Arizona's players were "frightened" by playing BYU in Salt Lake City last week as coach Sean Miller suggested, the Wildcats regained their road swagger at NC State on Sunday evening. A Derrick Williams alley-oop dunk sparked a 10-0 second-half run that propelled the Wildcats to a 72-62 victory and ensured that NC State will enter ACC play without a marquee win.

• One of the secondary storylines to emerge from UCLA's win over BYU on Saturday is that the first John Wooden Classic without the event's legendary namesake also could be the final one. Between a lack of high-quality matchups, sparse crowds and Wooden's death last June, there are increasing signs that the double-header will not return to Anaheim next season.  

• Sandwiched between a huge win over in-state rival Gonzaga and this week's loaded Diamondhead Classic, Sunday's road test at Santa Clara was a classic trap game for Washington State. The Cougars fell behind by double-digits midway through the second half, but rallied to force overtime on a late Klay Thompson three-pointer and then pulled away for a hard-fought 85-79 victory.

• Neither Mike Singletary nor John Roberson were in the starting lineup for Texas Tech's 82-71 loss at UTEP on Saturday. "They've got to play better," Coach Pat Knight told reporters. "They're not going to start just because they're seniors. I gave these seniors too much credit before the season. They've got to step up." 

• TCU coach Jim Christian granted the Fort Worth Star-Telegram behind-the-scenes access on the Horned Frogs' recent road trip to Nebraska, resulting in an in-depth story that takes readers places they don't typically get to go. We get anecdotes from the charter flight to Lincoln, pregame meals, film sessions and even a post-game fight in the TCU locker room.  

• How does Mississippi State freshman Renardo Sidney evaluate his 12-point performance in a 31-point loss to Virginia Tech on Saturday? "It was a tough loss," Sidney told FoxSports.com's Jeff Goddman. "But I think I played well. I could have done better, but I'm getting back to what I used to be. And it'll help once Dee (Bost) gets back."

• Among the most anticipated midseason debuts this weekend was 6-foot-9 center Drew Gordon, who transferred to New Mexico after averaging 11.2 points and 5.3 boards as a starter last season at UCLA. Gordon received a huge ovation from the New Mexico fans at the Pit on Sunday and scored 11 points in 20 minutes in an 84-58 win over The Citadel.

• Before he leaves the Memphis Commercial-Appeal for good later this month, Dan Wolken offered one final state of the Memphis Tigers piece. Wolken acknowledges that the underachievement of Will Coleman and the growing pains of the freshmen are legitimate concerns but chides fans for not always recognizing how good a job Josh Pastner is doing in just his second year as a coach. 

• Barring an upset of epic proportions, Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski will tie Dean Smith at 879 wins with a victory over Elon on Monday night. That gave the Raleigh News & Observer the ideal peg for an insightful story on the relationship between Smith and Krzyzewski, their similarities and differences and how they made each-other better by coaching at rival schools.

Ehrinn Cummings Sienna Miller Cindy Taylor Halle Berry Catherine Bell

Breakfast Buffet: UCSB hands UNLV its second straight loss

Pull up a chair and sit down at the breakfast buffet, an assortment of all the freshest newsworthy college hoops stories on the net. To make a submission, contact me via email or Twitter.

• One glance at the box score from UNLV's 68-62 loss to UC Santa Barbara pretty much tells the story of why the Rebels have lost two straight after an impressive 9-0 start. UNLV forced 25 turnovers and grabbed 23 offensive rebounds, but the Rebels simply couldn't shoot against UCSB's matchup zone, hitting just 29 percent of their shots from the field and missing 23 of 29 threes.

• Credit UCSB, however, for taking advantage of UNLV's poor shooting behind 23 points from James Nunnally and 12 apiece from Orlando Johnson and Jaime Serna. It was disappointing when the defending Big West champion Gauchos dropped a pair of two-point games to Oregon and North Dakota State to open the season, but they've redeemed themselves by winning four of five. 

• It's rare for a win to be as discouraging as a loss, but Wake Forest's 69-67 squeaker over UNC Greensboro only cemented how much the Demon Deacons are going to struggle in ACC play this season. Not only is UNC Greensboro 0-9, the Spartans also had yet to lose by any less than 12 points this season including a trio of losses to ACC teams by more than 20 points apiece.

• Montana's 71-66 victory over Oregon State improved the Grizzlies' record to 2-0 against the struggling Pac-10 this season and continued the Beavers' trend of futility against small-conference programs. The lone bright spot for the visiting Beavers was that Roberto Nelson had 13 points in 17 minutes in his second college game, raising the question of why Craig Robinson didn't play him more.

• Missouri had better hope that freshman Phil Pressey is ready to make an impact in extended playing time. The Tigers indefinitely suspended starting point guard Michael Dixon for undisclosed reasons on Wednesday, meaning that Pressey will definitely be the starter against Oral Roberts on Thursday night and perhaps against Illinois later this month. 

• Former top-100 recruit T.J. Taylor is leaving Oklahoma without ever playing in a game and plans to resurface at a junior college. "T.J. is dealing with some things personal in nature and he informed me today that he is leaving our program," coach Jeff Capel said in a statement. "We wish circumstances were such that T.J. could remain with us, but we are certainly sensitive to his situation. We wish him the best."

• All of Fab Melo's early season struggles can't be attributed to injury, but the Syracuse freshman says that a torn calf muscle that is currently preventing him from practicing certainly isn't helping. "It's been there for like two weeks," Melo told the Post-Standard. "I thought it was my Achilles, but it hurts [in] the whole area." 

• A handful of coaches are among the nominees for a United Nations NGO Positive Peace Awards, which recognizes those whose contributions in their communities exemplify and demonstrate the word "positive." John Calipari and Bill Self cracked the list, as did South Dakota's Scott Nagy and Tennessee Tech's Mike Sutton.

Pink Mila Kunis Samaire Armstrong Selita Ebanks Michael Michele