March Madness is here, ladies and gentlemen, as you are well aware if you haven't been living under a rock for the last week.
I just wanted to make a little list of some of my favorite things about this time of year, especially in 2011:
1. Yogi's Marathon Day - This Thursday is not only the first day of the tournament (not counting the play-in games) but it's also St. Patrick's Day?! Ohhh man. Who smells trouble?
This will be the fourth year in a row for the all-day Yogi's marathon in the little bar, and when you're already planning for something back in December, I mean, how can I even overstate how excited I am? I will eat chili (with cheddar, onions, and green peppers on top), Caesar salad, wings (hot garlic? Hawaiian fire?), and certainly one of my new favorites, the pot roast melt, which has somehow eluded me all these years.
Oh, and there's also basketball. Some unbelievably epic games always seem to happen Thursday (see: Last year and the year before), and of course quarters will be flying back and forth all day long on every possible bet. 2. The Bulls are in first place in the East! At 48-18 after dumping the Wizards today (even without Boozer and Noah), this team is a force to be reckoned with, and a joy to watch. Too bad we can't say the same about IU basketball. They also busted out the green jerseys today. Which is sweet.
3. Northwestern's annual NIT trip. For once, can we please get out of the first round, guys? For the record, Noffke and I are doing an NIT bracket challenge, and we both have the 'Cats making the Elite Eight. He has Va Tech winning. I've got Colorado. Regardless, should be a pretty solid tourney this year. God willin' and the creek don't rise, I'll have more NIT coverage SOON.
NU plays UW-Milwaukee (Bruce Pearl's former team) at Evanston tomorrow.
4. Uh, the actual Big Dance. Let me remind you of just a few people. Kevin Pitsnogle. Ali Farokhmanesh. The Western Kentucky Hilltopper. Excited yet?
5. Bloomington in springtime. It's supposed to be 58 tomorrow. And 70 and sunny on Thursday. Ohhhhhh yes.
There are a couple guys I like in the draft, but one guy I thought was great when I saw him play, even though it was one of his few plays: Mario Fannin. The guy is huge, fast, and in my opinion has first round talent. He weighs 231 pounds, ran a 4.37 40 yard dash, and has a good vertical at 37". Maybe I'm just getting lost in his work outs, but I am really impressed by this young man, and I believe you ALWAYS draft the best player available, especially in the later rounds. His potential is out of this world. So, if he is there in the 5th round (or even the 4th) I'd be ecstatic if the Bears took him.
As you may or may not know. I attended this year's Daytona 500. If you want to see exactly where my seats were click this link. Then zoom out on the picture to see.
Also, I know I asked at least Snuffles about this a while ago, and maybe Pituch too, but how do you rank the Northwestern QBs of the past ten to fifteen years?
Consider the possibilities.
Persa Mike Kafka Zak Kustok Brett Basanez Steve Schnur ... and several more I'm sure I'm forgetting.
For me, I think Kustok has to be #1, Baz #2, Persa #3, but they were all memorable players.
For the last two months, through snow and ice and arctic winds, IU’s new co-defensive coordinator lived and slept inside an RV parked just beyond the south end zone of Memorial Stadium.
Every morning before dawn, Mike Ekeler emerged from his Holiday Rambler Navigator and clicked the remote to lock his temporary motorhome.
Determined to arrive in the weight room before his players, Ekeler would wake early and walk 100 yards along the FieldTurf to work.
He arrived in Bloomington on Jan. 4. Since then, he has been hustling from 5 a.m. to midnight, launching into a mission many would call impossible: Turning a team that has spent the last three years in the basement of the Big Ten into a powerhouse. ***
The grind of Big Ten football comes with sacrifices. New IU coach Kevin Wilson and his staff left successful programs to come to Bloomington, a program known mainly for its losses. Most coaches are separated from their families while they scramble to recruit and coach a team, while living out of temporary residences. They are all trying to settle into their new lives.
Ekeler, 39, traded his Cornhuskers red for the traditional IU crimson when he left his job at Nebraska, the latest in a line of stops at powerhouse programs — Oklahoma (’03-’04), LSU (’05-’07) and Nebraska (’08-’10) — to join IU.
IU hasn’t been ranked in the Associated Press Top 25 in 22 years. Nor have they won, or even shared, a Big Ten crown in 43 years. In fact, the Hoosiers won one Big Ten game in each of the last three seasons.
Ekeler’s rise to coaching success took just seven years, but after the 2010 Big 12 Championship game, the 39-year-old said he knew he needed a change.
In fall 2010, he told the Lincoln Journal Star that Nebraska linebacker Lavonte David, a kid who came from junior college ball, was the best linebacker in America. He felt comfortable.
“If I had stayed, I would have become as big as my linebackers,” Ekeler said. “Instead of coaching, I would have gained 300 pounds. I’d’ve ate eight hot dogs and smoked two packs of Marlboro’s on game day because I would have nothing to coach. There was no challenge.”
A guy who once had a pet piranha, he likes life outside the comfort zone. So he left Nebraska for a program full of challenges.
Wilson said the team should perform at a successful level in the 2011 season. “Then again talk is cheap,” Wilson said. “So the way we practice and prepare over time will show how we can be in the Big Ten.”
IU Athletics Director Fred Glass said Ekeler hasn’t even watched game tapes on his guys. He’s waiting to judge their on-field talents when spring ball starts at the end of March. Ekeler said he will work from 5 a.m. until midnight. He wants to change the program that has seen only eight bowl games in its 126-year history.
Ekeler said there’s no doubt in his mind that IU will turn it around.
“No, it’s going to happen,” Ekeler said. “The change starts this coming fall.” ***
A yellow electric cord wound from the left side of Ekeler’s Navigator to Memorial Stadium, giving the motorhome its power. He said he was a little disappointed he couldn’t hook up the sewage too.
“Oh, that uh, that there’s an RV ... it’s a good-looking vehicle, ain’t it?” Ekeler quoted from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation when discussing the Navigator.
But unlike a Chevy Chase character, he’s not embarrassed by his RV — a Mother’s Day gift for his wife. On the University of Nebraska’s website, Ekeler said the Navigator is his third RV and it drives like his F150. The Navigator, white with champagne trim, is 45 feet long. Its MSRP lists at $592,649.
Dirk Ochs, Ekeler’s former K-State teammate, laughed when he heard Ekeler is living in his RV at Memorial Stadium. But he said he takes seriously Ekeler’s guarantee that the new coaching staff will change IU football into an elite program.
“When you go to a program that hasn’t had success and then you have success, there’s something to be said for that,” Ochs said. “We’ve done that before. That’s why all of us went to K-State — to build up a program that was never very good.”
Tom Osborne, Nebraska’s athletic director, said Ekeler would always boast with confidence before games against good teams.
“He’d think we were gonna win 50-0,” Osborne said. “It always made me feel good to talk to him, but it didn’t always turn out that well. However, I’d rather be around someone who is optimistic then always negative. Mike sees the glass half full.” The comedy and charisma Ekeler used at K-State has never left him.
His new IU linebackers are already playing jokes on him, so he said the fun will continue. It’s who he is, it makes him happy and so does living in that RV.
“And I live in a van down by the river ... I’m going to live down by the river eating governmental cheese.”
“I’m a comedic coach,” Ekeler said after quoting a classic Chris Farley skit from “Saturday Night Live.”
According to Ekeler, a linebacker won’t amount to anything unless he laughs at his jokes.
“I kept a linebacker from playing for three games because he wouldn’t laugh at my jokes during a meeting,” Ekeler said about a former Nebraska player. “He just needed to figure it out. Now, the guy’s a linebacker for the New York Giants.” ***
The cherry wood of his new desk gleams with the morning sun. The back glass wall of his office gives Ekeler a view of the North End Zone. He hasn’t called the off-white rectangle his work space for more than a month, but already his four children, J.J., 10, Cameryn, 9, Abigail, 7, and Bella, 3, added a family touch.
On their first trip to their dad’s new office, they started to turn the place into home. “I <3 you. You rock,” written in red marker, accompanied by a red smiley face with green eyes remained untouched in 3-week-old dry erase ink.
Eventually, the drawing will be replaced with names of players, opponents or the other work of a 5 a.m.-to-midnight job. Eventually, IU will become home. And Ekeler said he hopes eventually IU will turn into a championship team.
A video of a recruit played on an LG flat screen as Ekeler slightly reclined in his chair. Although the weather outside said 28 degrees, he said it feels tropical and those winds are nothing like the ones in Nebraska, or to Ekeler, “N-Alaska.”
As nice as the RV might be, the south end zone wasn’t a permanent location. Ekeler and his wife, Barbie, have already found a home near College Mall. Ekeler’s last night sleeping beside the football field in his Navigator was Sunday. He, Barbie and the kids moved into the new house Monday.
Even though his walk will increase from 100 yards and his home will no longer be powered by IU Athletics, Ekeler is determined to give his all to IU.
“We’re going to do it,” Ekeler said. “We have the right players and leaders. The staff really doesn’t care what happened in the past.”
Then with another laugh he added, “I’m an optimist. A three-quarters full kind of guy.”
I think this article is hysterical. A naked man was arrested for running around questioning Jay Cutler's dedication in a parking lot. Really? How did this guy think this would end? That people wouldn't think he's a lunatic. I guess that is what makes him crazy. I think the only fitting end would be for Jay Cutler to show up and answer this guys questions. I mean doesn't he know who this guy is?
