Tuesday Smorgasboard

First things first- Kyle Singler made a video, and it's awesome:


I found that one on Deadspin yesterday, and it led me to another great video. This one's from Mark Titus, a benchwarmer at Ohio State. Watch and love it:


He's got a great camera stare.

And since I'm piggybacking on their content, here's the Top 5 Plays from Duke-Princeton on DukeBluePlanet (watch in the Kyrie interviews toward the end for a brief and profound Nolan cameo), and here's video of Giants fans getting bloody and fist-fighting from Deadspin.

And how about Nolan Smith singing the national anthem? Anyone?


I love that he attempts trills and falsetto. Funny guy, that Nolan. I keep hearing there are other good Nolan videos out there, so let me know if you find any.

Quickly, going back to football, I have an opinion.

Opinion: There is now too much parity in the NFL.

It's no fun. Upsets and shockers are only entertaining when they're unexpected. But every game in the NFL now is like flipping a coin. It's maddening. How, for example, are the New York Jets only beating crappy teams by the skin of their teeth? How did New England get murdered by Cleveland and then own Pittsburgh? More to the point, how did the Giants, who everyone was calling the best team in the NFC, lose at home to the woeful Dallas Cowboys?

There's no rhyme or reason anymore. I sort of covered this a week ago, after the Giants played the perfect half of football and Eli stole Pete Carroll's wife, but it's worth repeating. The unpredictability is TOO DAMN HIGH. In Troy Aikman's words, the landscape of football changes drastically each week. In my words, the Giants could totally suck by Thanksgiving and it would surprise me. I hate it. Some would argue that it's a good thing, and certainly some level of vertical mobility is nice. But this is getting absurd; it's like randomness. I repeat: I hate it. I hate it so much that I'm rooting for the New England Patriots to go undefeated.

That will teach everyone a lesson.

Also: did the Redskins seriously offer McNabb 5 years and $78 million??? I know exactly nothing about offseason transactions and player value, and even I can tell this is absurd. Let's look at the facts:

1) McNabb is having his worst season since his rookie year.
2) He's already 49 years old.
3) He grumbles about how often he has to pee.
4) When kids hit a baseball into his yard, they don't even bother trying to get it back.
5) He still has a Jimmy Carter poster from college.

Silly.

Enough NFL. Tonight is a pretty great night in college basketball. It starts at 4pm with Virginia Tech and Kansas St. It'll give Duke fans a nice chance to scout an ACC opponent (the third best team in the league, if you believe the rankings) and a K-State team we'll probably play a week from tonight.

It'll also give us our first chance of the season to hate this blockhead:


Man, he pisses me off.

Then, at 7:30pm, the Dukies are back. This time we'll be taking on the undefeated RedHawks of Miami (Ohio). They'll be riding high after their narrow win against Towson, so hopefully we can catch them by surprise, race out to an early lead, and hold on in the second half.

Things I'm looking for:

1. A little grace from Miles.

2. Better defense from Mason, along with some actual post moves.

3. A sense of the system from Seth.

Okay, here's a game. I'm going to make up twelve nicknames for the twelve players on Duke's roster. They will be all new nicknames, in random order. See if you can guess which is which. They're all semi-descriptive, or can be gleaned from clues.

1. Lion-Eyes
2. Snowshoes Jr. (hint: Ole Snowshoes was a nickname of a special player last year)
3. Casey Sanders
4. The Slack-Jawed Slayer
5. The D.C. Rose
6. All Things Go
7. Gentle Jesus
8. Transfusion
9. Fresh Frederick
10. Young Threezy
11. Guy I Don't Know
12. King Cauliflower

Anyone gets all 12, I'll buy you a burger. Here's the roster if you need it.

Before we go, a couple Tuesday Girlfriend Moments that nobody cares about/everyone loves.

1. Yesterday, we were looking at my Duke poster from last season. She asked about some of the white-boy walk-ons, and I told her they never played. "I hate to say it," she said, "but I bet they're only on the team to raise the GPA."

I was sort of puzzled by this, so I asked her to explain. Turns out, she thought the NCAA measured eligibility by team GPA. So if you had one idiot on your team who could only manage a 1.0, you could just add a nerdy genius to balance it out. This idea made me laugh really hard. Can you imagine if it were true? Rick Pitino and John Calipari would spend half their time recruiting the brightest Asian dudes from the engineering department.

2. Without explanation, she came into the bedroom two nights ago with a faraway look on her face. She flopped on the bed, stared at the ceiling, and said, "I YouTubed too long. I saw too much."

We have all been there. Good day, and Go Duke.