Whose Shake Is This!!?

It’s Talladega, Baby!!!

It’s the race we’ve been waiting for!! The Aarons 499 from Talladega Superspeedway tees off tomorrow at Noon. Qualifying and all Satruday activities at Talladega have just been canceled as I write this up. The field is set by owner points and Jimmie Johnson and Matt Kenseth start on the front row. But it really doesn’t matter much at ‘Dega who wins the pole. It more a matter of who survives the inevitable mayhem at the end. The spoiler seems to improve the racing at Texas, but ‘Dega will be it’s first real test. Can it keeps the cars out front taking off like goddamn fight-bombers? Can it break up the drafting parades a bit and allow for more passing?

Practice speeds at ‘Dega are not always a strong indicator either of success, since some of the back markers practice in qualifying trim in the hope of garnering some the start and park money. Mike Bliss, for example, notched 197.268 mph in the 2nd practice…the 3rd highest speed. Junior and Jeff Burton and Bad Brad Kesolowski had great practice runs. Burton topped the charts in the 2nd practice at a sizzling 199.467 mph and I’m still (sorta) hanging on to the Jeff Burton Bandwagon by the skin of my teeth. But truth be told, I’d rather see Junior win this one instead of Burton. And, as always, Kenseth for the win over anyone else.

But enough of these feeble words.

It’s Talladega, Baby!!

It’s Talladega, Baby!! And it my first semi-annual fan-service extravaganza. Jimmie Johnson comes into to Talladega with a 108 point lead on Matt Kenseth, but I’m not going to let that rain on our parade here. It’s Talladega, Baby!! And that means, TITS!!

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Yes, I know it’s the Holidays. Christmas, New Years and all that and I hope it’s happy. Also, it’s not only the end of the year, but also the end of the Decade. But if you’re expecting anything Holiday or Fin de Year/Decade related, or a sad parade of Top 10 Lists, well, best prepare yourself to be disappointed. Or at least, dispense with those expectations entirely and then you won’t be disappointed at all, and might, when all is said and done be somewhat pleasently surprised, albeit vaguely.

Most likely, I will leave the Decade Stuff, the Best O’ The Year Stuff, to better, simpler minds. There is one GREAT Best of The Decade List I saw recently, and i highly recommend it. Ben Cohen has complied a Top 10 Best American Sports Writing Of The Decade. This is GREAT reading. Fabulous stuff. If I could write 1/10th as well these sportswriters…well…I’m begging the question. Onward.

While having a beer at the Grumpy Troll this afternoon, I got to wondering about when, exactly men’s basketball shorts stopped being short. There had to be a moment, or a descending series of moments when that occurred. What got me thinking about that was that I was watching the replay of last night’s Wisconsin vs. UW-Milwaukee basketball game, and UW-Milwaukee has this big galoot trudging around out there, 6’7″ 310 pound (yes, you read that right) James Eayrs, who looks more like one of those Eastern Europeans sumo-wrestlers. Anyway, those basketball shorts on him looked especially ridiculous….you could’ve used them to wrap up a Minneapolis-Moline Tractor as a Christmas present. If fact, he looked like a Minnneapolis-Moline tractor. So it made me wonder…when did this goofy trend start.

Doing a little digging, I re-discovered my memories of University of Michigan Fab 5 from the 1991-92 season. The Fab 5:  Juwan Howard, Jalen Rose, Chris Webber, Jimmy King and Ray Jackson bagn the 1991-92 season as freshman finished the season by winning the NCAA Championship. They popularized and propelled the trend towards baggier and longer basketball shorts. When they first hit the courts in their long baggy shorts, and black shoes and socks…they were like nothing anyone had ever seen…and they played like nothing anyone had ever seen. Long and baggy became cool and pretty soon College and then NBA player began adopting the new look. BUT…

The look didn’t start with the Fab 5 however. While I haven’t pinned this down to the exact moment…the actual origin of the look began with the Arkansas Razorbacks basketball team during the 1990-91 season. Back then, the Razorbacks were not nationally televised and though a pretty good team that made it to the Elite 8 that season under head coach Nolan Richardson, they weren’t poised on the brink, so to speak. They didn’t have the flair and the style that Michigan had the following year.

Early in the 1991 season, Michigan assistant coach Brian Dutcher noticed his players pulling their shorts down to their hips and wearing their jerseys untucked. Remembering seeing the Arkansas team wearing longer shorts the previous season, he ordered shorts for the Fab 5 to wear that were about 2 to 4 inches longer than average. Juwan Howard liked them, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Well…it really IS the end of the Noughties…and as much as it galls me to spit those words off my tongue, I guess there is no avoiding the reality of it. And a dreadful decade it was from a cultural, political, economic, social, emotional, ethical standpoint. If not for sports, the Noughts would have been even more a total miserable hell than it already was.

Sports survived it all. Even the Milwaukee Brewers were able to rise above by the end of the decade.

And speaking of the Brewers…

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