Joining the dark side

It's official. The people behind Big MO Sports have agreed to join forces with Mizzou Rah to form a blog more powerful than you can possibly imagine. The ramifications of this are certainly going to be enormous. This could potentially be the most explosive alliance since Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage formed the Mega Powers (the handshake at the 1:25 mark is actually identical to the handshake that was used to signify the unification of Big MO with Mizzou Rah). 

What does this mean for you, the good hardworking people that have kept Big MO alive and running for the past five months? It means instead of typing http://bigmosports.blogspot.com/ into your browser every morning you need to type http://mizzourah.net/. 

I know you're all probably feeling nostalgic and already missing the days when Big MO Sports was set as your homepage but this is actually great news for you. We've got some big things in the works for Mizzou Rah. You'll still get all of my postings plus the regular postings made by the writers at Mizzou Rah, which are almost as good as mine (I know, hard to believe but trust me). 

In addition to the postings, we're discussing trying to put together a regular Mizzou podcast, which to our knowledge would be the first of its kind. No promises but it looks pretty likely that it's gonna happen. Very exciting stuff.

So this will be the final post made on Big MO. Thank you all for everything and I hope you'll be coming with me to Mizzou Rah. 

Happy trails, Ocho Cinco

I forgot to include this in Friday's news & notes and that's just as well because something like this deserves a post of its own.

Last week I received a call from William Palaszczuk (one of the charter members of the Greg Bracey Fan Club) informing me that the real Ocho Cinco was released by the San Diego Chargers in May and we somehow missed it until now. 

The people at Big MO obviously hate to hear that and want to wish Greg well in all his future endeavors. If he ever catches on with another team and ends up making the roster you can bet we'll be the first to be rockin' the Bracey 85 NFL Authentics. 

Good luck Greg and if you're ever in the neighborhood feel free to stop by Big MO and enjoy a cold one on the house. 

News & notes

Seems like each post brings a new set of reasons for not updating this blog more often. This week's excuses? Allergies that have me feeling under the weather and trying to finish up the last couple weeks of my internship at the Bolivar Herald-Free Press. 

But I'll let you in on a little secret. There could be some Mark Mangino sized changes coming to Big MO Sports in the very near future in the form of an alliance of sorts (that's my way of dropping a not so subtle hint). So stay tuned.

But for now we have lots of links to get to!

• First and foremost, Sarah Becking, RIP. I had never heard of Sarah until literally a couple weeks ago when I ran across her website and realized what a truly gifted photographer she was and immediately added it to the links to your right. I had no idea she had been battling cancer. I don't know much more about her than what I've read in the past few days but she left behind a husband, daughter and son. My thoughts and prayers are with her family and friends. 

• The door is now shut and locked on the Keon Lawrence era at Mizzou. I'm glad he's going to be going to school but I worry about how close Seton Hall is to his old stomping grounds. I also don't understand the attitude he gives Mike DeArmond in that story. I thought the local media always portrayed Keon in a positive light even when he was in the midst of a major sophomore slump. But after the past few weeks I'm starting to think there were some attitude problems behind the scenes we didn't hear about. But that's my own speculation so take it for what it's worth and I still hope Keon is successful at Seton Hall.

• Big MO Sports has some more competition from...Chase Daniel?

• Get to know Keith Ramsey! I have to say, I've always hated players who call cheap fouls in pickup games. Nothing ruins a pickup game quicker than one of those guys.

• Our old pal TG3 is sporting a fresh new fro north of the border with the Toronto Raptors summer league team.

• A surge of stories have popped up on espn.com concerning the Mario Chalmers miracle three in the National Championship game including this fascinating story on former Beaker and would be hero Michael Lee (check out Smorgasboard Graves in that picture). A little odd that those are being written over three months after the National Championship game. Maybe it has something to do with them moving the three point line back? Speaking of Chalmers, I hate Kansas more than anyone but I will never understand how so many chumps including J.R. Giddens got drafted before he did. I'm admittedly biased toward players that perform well in pressure situations (I thought Acie Law was a lock to be a great NBAer and so far that prediction hasn't exactly panned out) but give me a break. Giddens?

• This afternoon I was doing some research for a story I'm writing for my internship  and ran across some old columns by former Springfield News-Leader sports reporter Scott Puryear that are wonderfully amusing looking back on them: 1. Remember when everyone loved Pinkel before they hated him and before they loved him again? Now you do. 2. Back in 2003 Pinkel signed a talented high school quarterback named Chase who was going to keep the momentum going once The Great Brad Smith graduated. But his last name wasn't Daniel. 3. Remember that backup punter we had in '06 who wore No. 10 and the cameras used to always cut to him thinking it was Chase Daniel? Bet you didn't realize someone once wrote a column about him.

• The latest from Zou Dave. Would enough Mizzou fans be willing to pool their money to pay Zou Dave to produce these things full-time? We should look into this.

• Just ran across this seconds ago, Sherron Collins, livin' like a National Champ I guess... 

• Just found another Keon update. Turns out he needed to leave New Jersey for two years so he could go and grow up. But now he's mature enough to live at home again. Okay, that makes sense. Glad we cleared that up.

• If you've been in downtown Columbia in the last few months you've probably noticed the new sandwich joint Which Which? (where Shake's used to be). Fantastic place, I'd highly recommend the house chips. When you're eating there you'll also be supporting former Tiger Will Franklin who owns 40 percent of Columbia's franchise. I'm hoping they'll let Franklin put together his own favorite sandwich and market it as "The Helicopter" or something similarly silly. 

• It's official, people outside of Columbia consider Mizzou preseason National Championship contenders. Gotta love high expectations. 

• By the way, I love how the KC Star is having all of their sportswriters put together blogs. Other news organizations take note, this is how blogs can be used effectively by the modern media. Two thumbs up to Posnanski, Flanagan, Mellinger and company.

That's it for now. Next week marks the arrival of NCAA '09. I'm actually planning on finally ditching the PS2 and picking up either an Xbox 360 or PS3 (really leaning toward the 360) and NCAA will probably be the first game I purchase so expect a review sometime in the near future. Although I'll probably have a new set of excuses for not writing another post until next weekend. See ya then!

Eric Chenowith days of summer

I've been wanting to write a post all week but just haven't had anything to discuss. The day the first football practice report comes out can't get here soon enough because the last week has moved like former Jayhawk Eric Chenowith. I'm going to try to come up with some original stuff to post other than just links but in the meantime things are just going to be a little slow.

Fortunately, for you Big MO diehards I was able to scrounge up a couple of interesting links to pass along and give my always thoughtful analysis:

• Our old buddy Aqib Talib has already gotten off to a great start down in Tampa Bay. I wouldn't think anything of this if it happened on the football field but a personal finance training session? I'm just glad my Chiefs didn't draft this clown.

• Fox Sports college basketball writer Jeff Goodman gave his take on Keon's transfer in his blog. It's a little ways down the page so I'll just post what he wrote here: 
  "While Missouri guard Keon Lawrence is saying he is transferring to be closer to home, we’re hearing that he just wants more shots. No surprise. I saw Lawrence score 50 points in an AAU game and walked away in complete disgust. It was one of the most selfish performances I’ve seen in a long, long time."

I'm personally not taking a lot of stock in that. "We're hearing that he just wants more shots." Who are you hearing that from? Keon? Mike Anderson? Other coaches? And his description of that AAU game is painfully vague. This is a pretty good example of what blogs written by "credible journalists" should not be. In the games I personally saw Keon play in I did not notice any selfish behavior to speak of. I did however, see him with tears in his eyes after several tough losses over the past two years. But maybe he was crying about his low shot total. 

• Speaking of Keon, Steve Walentik has a list of schools that he could possibly end up at. I'm just glad that it at least appears that Lawrence will be going back to school because initially he expressed some doubt. I also think it's a good thing that he doesn't have interest in Rutgers, the school closest to the neighborhood he grew up in. 

• Be sure to scroll a little further down on that page and also check out this article on the chemistry that Mike Anderson's incoming freshman class are already forming. Am I the only one that breaks into a huge smile when I read that Kim English, Marcus Denmon and Miguel Paul are literally having sleepovers at Mizzou Arena? As encouraging as I find this stuff, lets not get carried away with it. These guys can be as close-knit as the Brady Bunch, if they don't have talent, toughness and good coaching it's not going to mean a whole lot. But I will say I don't recall reading anything like this about the last several incoming freshman classes. Just pointing that out.