TUESDAYS WITH MITCH 100TH EDITION SPECTACULAR!

Welcome to the 100th edition of Tuesdays With Mitch, where I’m providing my vast audience with free entertainment for the 100th consecutive Tuesday. Let’s get into it…

I tried to come up with something special or wild or crazy to do for my 100th post today. I think I pretty much failed in that regard. But thinking about reaching the most significant milestone in the history of the internet led to some reflecting on what I’m doing here each week and why I do it.

If I had a nickel for every time I’ve published a Tuesdays With Mitch over the past two years…  I’d have five dollars. But I don’t. I don’t have any dollars. This blog has produced zero nickels.

But I suppose that’s okay. Don’t get me wrong, I’d rather get paid to do this kind of stuff than do it for zero nickels. And there are a lot of Monday nights that come after long, sometimes hungover Monday days when I sit down with my laptop and really don’t want to take the time and energy to produce another seemingly pointless post.

But overall these silly posts give me an outlet to write, which is something I still enjoy doing. They keep me entertained. They give me something to focus on and keep me sane, because my real-life job is about as uninteresting as it gets.

It’s been interesting to see what hits and what doesn’t. It’s been interesting to develop some little Twitter/blogoshpere niches, where certain groups of people respond in certain ways to certain posts. What do people like? What do people share? What do people gloss over?

With this theme in mind, I’d like to take this opportunity during the TUESDAYS WITH MITCH 100TH EDITION SPECTACULAR! to ask you, the person reading this sentence right now, what style or theme of these posts you like the most. Do you like when I write a whole bunch of insightful and intelligent words about Colorado State or the Rockies? Do you like when I just write a little bit and put a bunch of random funny crap from the internet in here (you know, people falling down and getting hit in the nuts and making a fool of themselves on the news and such)? Do you like when I write a bunch and try to be funny and probably fail most of the time? When I talk about baseball, should I talk about WAR and FIP and wRC+ or poetically describe the smell of the hops at the Sandlot Brewery and the voices of the street vendors selling me a $2 bag of salty peanuts? Do you read most of these on a computer or your phone? Should I stop doing this forever so you are no longer obligated to politely feign interest? Are you a professional in the sports media industry who would like to give me a job doing something I enjoy and am maybe actually kind of good at, so each one of my weekdays is not a dire clock of meaningless, bland, gray hours without an end in sight for the next 40 years, causing me to wake up one day at 65 and wonder where my life has gone and why I haven’t achieved anything?

Sorry, that last one was a bit off topic.

But anyway, let me know if you have any feedback on that stuff. You can comment at the bottom of this page or– like a lot of you already do– my Facebook or Twitter accounts.

In the spirit of reminiscing, I thought about some of my favorite posts that have come along over the past 100 weeks. So here is my list of Tuesdays With Mitch, Ranked:

1. “Why Todd Helton Will Forever Be My Favorite Athlete“. This is probably the best thing I’ve ever written. Not surprisingly, I enjoyed writing this more than any other post (or anything I’ve written in general). I believe it has generated the most views of any of these 100 posts.
2. “Did Colorado State Deserve a Better Seed and a Better Matchup?“. The first ever Tuesdays With Mitch was a pretty solid takedown of the selection committee and their screwjob of Dorian Green, Pierce Hornung and the best CSU team ever. I’m still mad about this.
3. “How To Sneak Into Better Seats at Coors Field“. This was a blast to write and provides a lot of legitimately good, fun advice.
4. “In Defense of Dick Monfort“. Pretty funny satire from last year as the Rockies train came completely off the rails.
5. “Jim McElwain Leaves the Rams Behind“. Providing some perspective on a crazy few days and a great few years.
6. “The Annoying People At Your Super Bowl Party“. I found away to write about the Broncos’ Super Bowl loss without actually writing about the game. It’s pretty much a Jim Rome impression, which is a good place to start.
7. “Some Thoughts On Soccer And The World Cup“. I do not like soccer. Some people do not like that I do not like soccer.
8. “All Things, Ranked.” Pointless, but fun.
9. “Colorado State Football And Rocky Mountain Showdown Preview“. Always fun to set objectivity aside and make fun of CU.
10. “Colorado State Wins New Mexico Bowl In Truly Astonishing Fashion“. Firsthand account of one of the wildest sporting events I’ve ever seen. Another really fun one to write.

I’m not going to recap my favorite videos, Vines, GIFs, etc. of the previous 99 posts today because I did a bunch of that in my Two-Part Year In Review just a couple months ago. But overall, the last couple years have produced some fun stuff in my tiny, obscure corner of the internet. Hopefully you’ve enjoyed some of my writing. Hopefully you’ve watched a game or seen a dumb video and wondered to yourself if that would make Mitch’s blog on Tuesday. Hopefully you’ve laughed a bit. Hopefully you’ve been entertained.

Thanks for reading these each week, or sporadically, or whenever you get the urge to click on a link that takes you here.

As I was putting this together on Monday night, I came across this tweet. It’s a quote from Sam Simon, one of the creators of the greatest television show in history. He died Monday. His quote seems fitting.

pic.twitter.com/njVRKAUwey

— Katie Nolan (probably) (@katienolan) March 10, 2015

Moving on to the current sports scene, where there is plenty to get to…

March Madness has officially (kind of) arrived. The weekend was filled with bonkers basketball and this week will be no different with all the conference tournaments going down.

Colorado State won their last regular season game of the year on Saturday at Utah State. This game won’t get the Rams the national credit they deserve, but they were pumped anyway:

Watch the postgame celebration! Big win for the Rams tonight at Utah State! pic.twitter.com/Vu6J6pJKIO

— Colorado State Men’s Basketball (@CSUMBasketball) March 8, 2015

The Rams were down eight points with under nine minutes remaining. The arena was sold out and raucous. It was Stew Morrill’s last game at the Spectrum after 17 years. Things were bleak.

But CSU proverbially grabbed their proverbial nuts and fought back to win and finish the regular season 26-5, 13-5 in the Mountain West. That’s a really good record!

One could make the argument that this was CSU’s best win of the season. Better than San Diego State at home. Better than Colorado in Boulder. The Rams had to have this one and they found a way to pull it out. And they did it in spite of a poor performance from Daniel Bejerano. As I’ve said before, when Bejerano doesn’t score, the Rams usually lose. It helped that J.J Avila was unbelievable with 29 points, 13 rebounds, five steals, and four assists. The quality of opponent has been low, but Avila has been an absolute monster the past month or so.

Up next is the Mountain West tournament in Las Vegas. The Rams are the 3-seed and play Fresno State at 9:30 on Thursday. Should they win that one, they’ll (probably) play San Diego State at 9:30 on Friday. The winner of that game plays in the championship (likely either Utah State, Wyoming or Boise State) at 4 on Saturday.

So CSU is playing well heading into a tournament that gives them a chance to pick up two more wins against top-40 RPI opponents (should they play both San Diego State and Boise State). A win in those games would give their NCAA seeding a huge boost. As of right now, the Rams are solidly in the tournament. A first-round loss to Fresno would quickly move them back to the bubble, though I’m not overly concerned about that. Selection Sunday is five days away!

March is upon us. And that’s awesome because February sucks. But it’s also awesome because The Madness has arrived.

Off to the weekly departments…

NBA TANK WATCH 2015:

Last week when I introduced TANK WATCH! on the same day the Nuggets fired Brian Shaw and named Melvin Hunt the interim head coach, I noted that the worst thing Hunt could do is get the Nuggets to start winning games. Apparently he didn’t read my 99th post. The Nuggets are 3-2 since Hunt took over. Two of those three foolish wins came over teams ahead of them in the Tankandings in New York and Minnesota. The updated TANK WATCH! looks like this:

1. New York, 12-50, .194
2. Philadelphia, 14-49, .222
3. Minnesota, 14-47, .230
4. L.A. Lakers, 16-46, .258
5. Orlando, 21-43, .328
6. Sacramento, 21-41, .339
7. Denver, 23-41, .359
8. Detroit, 23-39, .371

So after a very unproductive week, the Nuggets have fallen to the 7th spot in the Tankandings. Catching Orlando and the Lakers seems to be slipping out of reach. The best the Nuggets can probably hope for now is holding off Detroit and taking the 6th spot back from Sacramento. The Nugs have 18 games left this year.

Studs of the week:

Steph Curry is, without a doubt, the most entertaining show in the NBA right now. He had a highlight-filled week. We’ll start with this pass.

Pretty awesome, but that was just the appetizer for this ridiculous, silly, stupid, unreal, awesome play on Sunday afternoon, which I’m presenting in both GIF and Vine forms:

Deadspin

…and the Vine:

Vine(s) of the week:

This is the funniest damn thing I’ve seen in a basketball game in years and years and years. I’ve watched this about 100 times and can’t stop laughing. Otto Porter kind of spaced out for a few seconds while covering Tony Snell…

The latest in hilarious bench antics, this one coming from Texas:

One of the great endings from Saturday was this Oklahoma game-winner:

That crazy Oklahoma finish was quickly outdone by this game-winning ONIONS shot from Belmont to upset Murray State and go dancing.

Photo of the week:

John Lollar of Murray State and his interesting leg kick. (It looks like this on video.)

Jeff Drummond

And a great poster of Rysheed Jordan of St. Johns throwing down over Villanova. ‘Nova won by 37, but that picture is awesome.

(Matt Slocum / AP)

And because it’s 2015 and pictures aren’t good enough anymore, here’s the Vine of that one:

A couple links worth sharing:

• This guy got the most out of a restaurant’s “season pass” by eating 270 tacos in three months. He’s a genius. And he doesn’t even look like a disgusting individual.
• Ben Hochman on the Rockies needing to get rid of the worst mascot in sports. Funny, and 100 percent spot on.
• Zac Brown Band will play at Coors Field this summer. I love ZBB, but I find this more interesting because I don’t think I can recall The Keg hosting an actual, big-time concert. They’ve done some small ones after games, but nothing like this, right? Anybody?
• And a really interesting story in yesterday’s Post about a homeless veteran finding a Columbine shooting survivor’s state championship ring in a river in California and returning it to him.

And finally, okay I couldn’t resist putting a couple random favorites from the past couple years in here.

(NFSW, lots of F-bombs in this one)

I love the internet so damn much.

Happy Tuesday everybody. Enjoy all the basketball this week. Thanks for reading. Seriously, thank you. See ya next week. Here’s to 100 more. Or maybe now is a good time for me to stop doing these forever. Either way.

***

Comment on any of this stuff below, or email me at mdhahn1@yahoo.com with post ideas, videos or other media I should know about. Subscribe at the top right of this page. Follow me on Twitter @TuesWithMitch.

Your Weekly Roundup From The Sports World and Internet

Welcome to the 99th edition of Tuesdays With Mitch, where the dress colors are always agreed upon. Let’s get into it…

Getty Images

I have mentioned at some point during each of the past few weeks that this is one of the slower times on the sports calender. Well, this past week had to be the single least newsworthy (most un-newsworthy?) week I can remember since I’ve been doing these blogs. The Avalanche are out of the playoff picture and took several huge steps backwards after last season’s amazing regular season. The Nuggets are a debacle and laughing stock and have finally entered all-out tank mode. The University of Colorado basketball team is having one of the most disappointing seasons in the country and are a complete afterthought. Colorado State basketball is good and should be tourney-bound, but they are in a lull in their schedule with a boring home game against San Jose State Wednesday night and an idle Saturday. The Broncos stuck Demaryius Thomas with the franchise tag, but that was far from a surprise. And I make it a point to not pay much attention to THE NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE in late February and early March because there aren’t any damn games for more than six months and draft speculation is absolutely awful in every way. In baseball, players have reported to Spring Training, but the exhibition games haven’t even started yet, so the stories coming out of Arizona are things like Tulo is running the bases or Weiss is confident in Lyles’ change-up.

So yeah, you get the idea. Not much going down ’round these parts these days.

For me, the most interesting of all these non-stories is probably the Nuggets’ noble quest of losing as many games as possible. Breaking down what has gone wrong thus far is pretty pointless by now. (Answer:  Everything.) Among other things, the Nuggets, like most teams in the Association, are in desperate need of a franchise-changing superstar. With that in mind, I’m adding a new segment that will likely stick around the weekly departments for the next six weeks. I present the debut of NBA TANK WATCH 2015:

1. New York, 12-46, .207
2. Philadelphia, 13-47, .217
3. Minnesota, 13-46, .220
4. Los Angeles (Lakers), 16-42 .276
5. Orlando, 19-42, .311
6. Denver, 20-39, .339
7. Sacramento, 20-37, .351
8. Detroit, 23-36, .390

(Obviously, the “higher” ranking represents the worst record, and thus the greater chance for a higher pick.)

So the Nuggets currently have the 6th-worst record in the NBA with 23 games remaining. They are 1-9 in their last 10 and have lost 10 in a row at home. They’re starting to get the hang of this tanking thing! They’re only three games back of both Orlando and the Lakers in the loss column. So if the Nuggets can continue their impressive run of losing, they could jump up to the fourth slot with a little help. Come lottery time, that would give them a decent shot at the first pick, and an excellent shot at a top-three pick, which would be ideal.

Woah wait look at this!  The Nuggets fired Brian Shaw a few hours ago! Actual news happened! Something to talk about! I guess Shaw’s books on relating to millennials or his pregame raps didn’t help much.

The timing of this decision is the most curious aspect to me. As mentioned earlier, the Nuggets have finally embraced all-out tank mode. That’s a good thing. That’s a necessary thing. The way the players were playing under Shaw, it looked like they may not win another game this season, WHICH WOULD HAVE BEEN AWESOME!

So why now? What is the point of firing him with 23 games and six weeks left? Why not ride this tank job out for the rest of the year and fire him then? Or, I suppose, re-evaluate things and consider keeping Shaw around? My thinking is that the locker room had gotten so bad, had turned on him so entirely that Josh Kroenke decided the culture that would exist by keeping him around was just too detrimental to the long term process in spite of all the losses (which are good).

Melvin Hunt was announced as the interim head coach. He better not screw this whole thing up by getting these guys to play hard and win games.

Seriously, that would be the worst thing possible the Nuggets right now.

Off to the weekly departments…

Douches of the week:

Take the time to go read this blog post from Curt Schilling. Schilling’s writing is all over the map, but his overall point and message are important. Schilling is a Republican and Christian and is what’s commonly referred to as an “outspoken figure” on Twitter, so a lot of people hate him. Most of his tweets and blog posts are, presumably, met with vitriol from the troll masses. That comes with the territory and should be expected.

This one is different.

Quick recap: Schilling sends completely innocuous tweet congratulating his 17-year-old daughter on making college softball team. Tweet is met with some standard “guy jokes” like “Can’t wait to party with her” or “You don’t mind if I date her, right?”. Schilling acknowledges that this is mostly acceptable. Schilling later starts receiving next-level, disgusting, abhorrent tweets about his daughter, including rape jokes/threats. (Schilling’s description is apt: “But I can’t ever remember, drunk, in a clubhouse, with best friends, with anyone, ever speaking like this to someone…) Schilling publishes their names, schools, fraternities, etc. As of today, they’ve been fired and suspended. Today, Schilling told Dan Patrick he will be pressing charges against every single one of them.

This whole topic has so many levels to it and I’m not really sure where to start. My first reaction was something along the lines of My God, this world is going to hell in handbasket. How in the world does someone see a tweet from someone they don’t like, about about that someone’s 17-year-old daughter and have those things run through their head? And then how in the world do they take the time to translate those thoughts onto their phone or computer? And how in the world do they hit “Send”? 1. What could possibly compel someone to do those things? 2. How could someone possibly be dumb enough to do those things?

This isn’t the standard Shut up Schilling and go to hell type trolling. (Though standard attacks like those also seem unhealthy and problematic; that’s a different, but related, conversation.) This is criminal and psychopathic. And that crap is probably far more common than we realize.

Is this just the way the world is now? Do I need to get used to stories like these? When I’m a super-famous sportswriter with 2 million followers on whatever takes the place of Twitter in 20 years, will I be able to mention my (nonexistent) teenage daughter without wanting to murder anonymous people with silly pretend names?

Or will things evolve? Will the masses slowly start to understand how the internet works? In 20 years will we look back at these early days of widespread social media use as the Wild West Days and say Man can you believe people just said whatever they wanted, to whomever they wanted, on public accounts and thought they would get away with it? 

I dunno, man. I think the biggest problem is that people would never, ever say any of this to anyone in person. That’s what has changed. Just 10 years ago if you were a psychopathic freak and you said this stuff, people would go Hey! You’re a psychopathic freak. I am going to alert the authorities! Or you would just get your ass beat and that would be the end of it. So nobody said stuff like that. But now everybody has access to technologies that allow you to communicate to anyone you want anonymously. Anonymous online communication won’t be going away any time soon. And I’m thinking disturbing stories like this won’t be either.

Anyway it’s a pretty interesting topic, even if it is concerning and disturbing. Hey I know! Maybe let’s try not be mean to each other on the internet. (This tangent is an example what happens when there are not a lot of sports to talk about.)

OKAY MOVING ON…

Studs of the week:

God bless these llamas.

Vine(s) of the week:

Just another thing I could totally do if I felt like it.

I’m not quite sure how to feel about watching James Harden kick LeBron James in the nuts:

I also enjoyed watching Madonna topple over on stage. All the masked deer-men with mantlers aren’t sure how to react!

Tweet of the week:

Juan Pierre reflecting on his power numbers after announcing his retirement after 14 seasons.

I do have one regret I finished with 18 homeruns really wanted to get 20 so if any team wants to sign me for 3yrs that should be enough time

— Juan Pierre (@JPBeastMode) February 28, 2015

Juan Pierre was always pretty damn cool. Naturally, he played his best baseball after he left Colorado, but I always liked his game and swagger. Baseball needs more Juan Pierres.

Photo of the week

ABSOLUTLEY INCREDIBLE photo by Martin Le-May. Green Woodpecker and Weasel. Apparently the Woodpecker escaped. pic.twitter.com/PUt1b2Mbhs

— Jay Ward (@Jayward7) March 2, 2015

This is amazing. The woodpecker is under attack, but it’s more fun if you pretend he and the weasel are pals going for a ride. WEEEEEE!! Or if the Wally the Weasel somehow owns Woody and is riding him like a jet ski. Yeah, see. That’s way more fun. (More actual details here.)

A couple other things worth sharing:

I loved this “flash mob” (not entirely sure that term applies) from Maryland’s student section during their upset over Wisconsin. College is fun, man.

Crab cakes. Flash Mobs annnnd winning B1G home games, that's what Maryland does! #GoTerps http://t.co/6fVJex4Lw3

— Maryland Terrapins (@umterps) February 25, 2015

This hilarious shot is worth a laugh:

(Don’t try to ruin my fun and tell me he was trying to pass it to that guy in the corner either, dammit.)

And finally, If you haven’t seen this video yet, stop and watch. Absolutely amazing. (Hence 10 million views in 2 days. If you’re the impatient type, skip to the 0:45 mark.)

Something about saving the life of an unconscious man rapidly plummeting towards the earth makes for pretty captivating footage.

Happy Tuesday everybody. Thanks for reading. See ya next week for my 100th post.

***

Comment on any of this stuff below, or email me at mdhahn1@yahoo.com with post ideas, videos or other media I should know about. Subscribe at the top right of this page. Follow me on Twitter @TuesWithMitch.

All Things, Ranked

Welcome to the 97th edition of Tuesdays With Mitch, where I’m going completely off the board with a very different post today. Let’s get into it…

A recent trend I’ve noticed and enjoyed in the blogging/Twitter world has been the rankings of a certain, generally random category or criteria. These lists typically offer no explanation or reasoning for each ranking. The list is the list, as determined by the list-maker. That’s it. This lack-of-explanation, I’m-right-you’re-wrong format lends itself to vehement disagreement from perplexed readers. (For example this “Ages 40 and Under, Ranked” list inexplicably ranks the age of 21 as the 38th best age, which is completely appalling.)

These things always have the same title format, which is:  “[Insert Category], Ranked”. Some of them are simple (“Superheros, Ranked“), some of them are very important (“Land Animals That Would F*** You Up In Hand-To-Hand Combat, Ranked“) and none of them are to be taken too seriously. Deadspin is probably the foremost authority in this realm. (They have a whole page devoted to their various “Ranked Lists” here.)

So during what might be the slowest sports time on the calendar and in need of some cheer with this crappy weather during the second-worst month of the year (see below), I compiled my personal rankings of all the random crap I could think of, because most of them are things that make me happy. While compiling these lists, I realized that ranking stuff comes naturally to my somewhat OCD personality. You’d be surprised how often I find myself driving home from work debating the merits of, say, milk vs. V8 Juice or Sundays vs. Fridays or Jager vs. Schnapps.

And yes, I actually put quite a bit of legitimate thought and personal debate into each of these completely pointless rankings that won’t mean anything to anyone. If you need me to defend any of my choices, come at me, bro. And keep in mind that all rankings are fluent and could change at any time; this is just where things stand as of right now. Okay off we go…

Foods, Ranked

1. Steak
2. Cheese
3. Burritos (Non-Breakfast)
4. Cereal
5. Apples (Honeycrisp)
6. Wings (Buffalo)
7. Toast
8. Chile (Green)
9. Potatoes (All Varieties)
10. Sweet Potatoes (Mom’s)
11. Burritos (Breakfast)
12. Lasagna (Mom’s)
13. Seeds (Sunflower)
14. Mac & Cheese
15. Pancakes
16. Burger (Bacon and Cheese)
17. Pizza (With Cream Cheese As One Of Multiple Toppings)
18. Whatever The Free Desert Thing Outback Steakhouse Gave Me On My Birthday About Five Years Ago Was

Famous Or Somewhat Famous Women I Have Never Met Who I Think I Want To Marry* (aka Mitch Hahn Swoon Index), Ranked

*Subject’s availability not a factor

1. Kacey Musgraves
2. Corey Rose
3. Carrie Underwood
4. Katie Nolan
5. Allie LaForce
6. Jessica Alba
7. Kate Upton

Fast-Casual Restaurants, Ranked

1. Chipotle
2. Q Doba
3. SmashBurger
4. Noodles & Co.
5. Subway
6. Five Guys
7. Tokyo Joe’s
8. Panda Express

Beverages (Soft) Ranked

1. Water
2. Tea (Hot)
3. Milk
4. Tea (Iced)
5. V8
6. Coffee
7. Orange Juice
8. Gatorade (G2, All Flavors)
9. Gatorade (Regular, All Flavors)
10. Pop/Soda (All)

Beverages (All) Ranked

1. Water
2. Beer
3. Whiskey
4. Scotch
5. Tea (Hot)
6. Old Fashioned
7. Whiskey-Coffee
8. Whiskey-Coke
9. Gin & Tonic
10. Milk
11. Whiskey-Sprite
12. Tea (Iced)
13. Manhattan
14. Coffee
15. Rum & Coke
16. Bloody Mary
17. Margarita (Rocks)

Liquors, Ranked

1. Whiskey/Bourbon
2. Scotch
3. Gin
4. Tequila
5. Rum
6. Schnapps
7. Jagermeister
8. Vodka

Days, Ranked

1. TUESDAY*
2. Saturday
3. Sunday
4. Friday
5. Thursday
6. Wednesday
7. Monday

*Not really

Months, Ranked

1. July
2. June
3. August
4. December
5. September
6. October
7. May
8. November
9. April
10. March
11. February
12. January

Holidays, Ranked

1. Christmas
2. Thanksgiving
3. Fourth of July
4. Memorial Day
5. Labor Day
6. Easter
7. Mother’s Day/ Father’s Day 100 Percent Tie (Hi parents)
8. Halloween
9. New Year’s Eve
10. New Year’s Day
11. St. Patrick’s Day
12. President’s Day
13. Columbus Day
14. Earth Day
15. Flag Day
16. April Fool’s Day
17. Valentine’s Day

Current TV Comedies, Ranked

1. Veep
2. Parks and Recreation
3. Archer
4. Louie*
5. It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia
6. Workaholics
7. Girls*
8. Review
9. Broad City
10. Drunk History
11. Tosh.0

*Kind of a comedy, kind of a drama. I went ahead and included them, which complicates things because now I don’t know if I’m ranking the BEST shows or the FUNNIEST shows. I remain unclear on this distinction.

Current Or Recent TV Dramas, Ranked

1. Mad Men
2. Breaking Bad
3. Friday Night Lights
4. Fargo
5. The Americans
6. True Detective
7. Boardwalk Empire
8. The Leftovers
9. Better Call Saul (?)
10. Justified

Musicians On The Current Major Country Music Radio Scene, Ranked

• 1A. Zac Brown Band
• 1B. Eric Church
• 3. (None)

Okay that’s enough of that. If you have any questions or corrections on any of these 122 rankings, hit up the comment section.

Let’s hit a couple weekly departments…

Stud(s) of the week:

Lots of studs this week, starting with 88-year-old Lew Dunlop, who was not feeling this high heat at Rockies Fantasy Camp

The Big Lead

Lew is awesome.

Aaaand here’s the most hilarious post game interview ever.

This guy would be more of a hero if he didn’t get caught, but he’s still a hero.

I don’t have time to count how many glass bottles of beer were confiscated but it appears to be a couple 12-packs. Astounding.

And touching stuff from Tom Crean in a post game presser:

An amazing moment after Indiana's win tonight. Tom Crean introduces IU fan Brian Jones, who suffers from ALS. http://t.co/mhAAQMc7VB

— Big Ten Network (@BigTenNetwork) February 16, 2015

Vine of the week:

So this is pretty wild:

And finally, here’s the coolest video I’ve seen in a long time, even though it appears to have been recorded using the flip phone I had in high school.

The lesson here is that Rams are badass.

Happy Tuesday everybody. Thanks for reading. See ya next week.

***

Comment on any of this stuff below, or email me at mdhahn1@yahoo.com with post ideas, videos or other media I should know about. Subscribe at the top right of this page. Follow me on Twitter @TuesWithMitch.

2014 Year In Review, Part Two

Welcome to– and another Happy New Year from– the 91st edition of Tuesdays With Mitch, where I’m blogging for the first time in 2015. Let’s get into it…

It’s 2015 now, but I’m not ready to look ahead at the coming year or look back on the five days that have already passed. 2014 has come and gone and in doing so provided 52 weeks– and 52 posts– of sports and pop culture content. It’s time to reminisce on all that we took in last year so I went back and reviewed each of the last 52 posts and pulled out all of my favorite things.

So let’s look back at the year that was. Sports highlights, sports lowlights, news bloopers, funny videos, moving pictures… Here are some of my favorites. The best, the worst, the most memorable. We’re talking Vines, GIFs, videos, posts, pictures, tweets, moments and other stuff from 2014. (This post got so big, I split it up into two sections. Part One was posted last week.)

I present: Your Tuesdays With Mitch 2014 Year in Review (Part Two):

We pick this thing up in…

JULY:

The dog days of summer produced a lot of baseball and soccer talk across the country. And the early part of the month produced another all-time great Vine.

This one became so popular so fast, lots of people thought it was fake, causing the MLB to step in and confirm its validity. It was quite the controversy.

The World Cup finally came to end in mid-July when some country beat some other country. I couldn’t take it anymore and had to provide my thoughts on soccer, which evidently pissed some people off.

On an international scale, we suck at soccer. We always have and we always will. We suck because we don’t really give a damn. We never have and we never will.

People were excited about the World Cup not because they have a newfound love for soccer, but because of national pride (I am an advocate of U-S-A chants, after all), an excuse to weekday day drink, and the biggest factor, social media group think.

Social media was flooded with athletes and celebrities voicing their support on the job done by the #USMNT. For what? The team’s 1-2-1 performance? Or was it to help build their own brand, get a few ReTweets and Facebook likes and show that they’re in touch with pop culture and supportive of whatever you support?

This obviously goes far beyond famous athletes and other celebs. It became “the thing to do” for everybody. Countless Americans didn’t want to feel left out, so they posted a bunch of tweets, statuses, pictures and stupid memes about the #USMNT even though they literally couldn’t name one player on any team the day before the World Cup started.

Is soccer on the rise in the United States? I guess. Maybe. But if it is, it’s increasing from a tiny minority to a small minority. So congrats on that, soccer.

I regret nothing.

But hey, this Vine of goalie or keeper or whatever Tim Howard not giving out hugs is still stellar.

Even though the Rockies were really bad, watching their infield turn double plays was a treat all year. This was probably the best one, which I referred to at the time as “majestic artistry.”

By mid-July the wheels were completely falling off for the Rockies and owner Dick Monfort wasn’t handling things well. This led to what was probably the funniest thing I wrote all year, “In Defense of Dick Monfort.” That post received quite a bit of positive feedback, so thanks. Go read it again, you lazy bum.

The ESPY’S came and went at the end of the month. Stuart Scott’s speech was just the best.

(Note: I had most of this post completed prior to Scott’s passing on Sunday, so this video was already embedded. This speech is certainly more difficult to watch today than it was just a few days ago. But it’s also more moving and important to watch. He nailed it, man. I also encourage you to watch ESPN’s beautiful tribute and Rich Eisen’s perfect, live remembrance from Sunday.)

AUGUST:

Sad news came in the beginning of August when Pat Bowlen stepped down as owner of the Broncos to focus on his battle against Alzheimer’s. So, so damn sad.

I don’t read much Woody Paige anymore, but his column on Bowlen was a must-read.

August brought us the first sniffs of the college football season, starting most importantly, with THE RUNNING OF THE GUMPS. I enjoyed breaking down the Alabama hillbillies racing to worship Nick Saban. (Seriously I just cracked up over looking at the pictures/captions of those freaks one more time.)

And a trio of amazing news stories all came out around the same time, starting with my favorite news blooper of the year.

Followed by the best overall news story of the year, without a doubt.

Although this dude was not to be outdone.

The firing of Jack Graham came in early August and began a CSU-intensive few months for this blog. I kind of still can’t believe it happened. At the time, it seemed like this meant the on-campus stadium project had officially fallen through.

August 17th brought Todd Helton’s number retirement ceremony. It was perfect.

(Aaron Ontiveroz/Denver Post)

The Little League World Series came along and was as entertaining as always. We can’t forget this great speech from a coach who managed to keep everything in perspective.

ICYMI: Rhode Island #LLWS coach Dave Belisle delivers heartfelt speech, reminds us all what it's really about. » http://t.co/5t9kkcmPjx

— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) August 19, 2014

A lot of you enjoyed my “Colorado State Football and Rocky Mountain Showdown Preview“. I spend a good amount of time just trash-talking CU, including discussing these numbers, which have only gotten dramatically worse after CU went winless in the Pac-12 in 2014.

Obviously, part of the reason for Colorado’s awful records and innumerable blowout losses is because they usually play a really tough schedule. This is all funny to me because one of the bragging points among Colorado fans is their conference. They’re in the Pac-12! That’s one of the best conferences in the nation! It’s prestigious! They play really good teams like Stanford and USC and Oregon! Good for them!

One interesting sidenote many CU fans seem to forget: Colorado is 4-23 against the Pac-12 in their three years in the conference. Wait guys, 4-23? That’s really bad. That’s a .148 winning percentage. But hey it’s a really prestigious conference! Who cares if they get blown out and embarrassed by all the good teams every week?

The pre-showdown CU hate is one of my favorite traditions every year!

SEPTEMBER:

September began with a recap of CSU’s fun victory over CU. The CSU student section was named Stud of the Week for their remarkable performance.

@NolanLees

Naturally, as the season wore on and CU was revealed to be a really bad team again, the win looked less and less important to Rams fans. Still fun though.

The first true “football weekend” started with a bang as the NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE! got underway. The Broncos beat the Colts in the first of many victories that would leave large portions of the fan base disappointed because it wasn’t dominant enough. The weekend also included what I still consider to be the greatest play in the history of the game:

Deadspin

This same week saw CSU lose to Boise State in a game that would greatly affect the remainder of their season regarding aspirations for a conference championship and a “New Year’s Bowl.”

The following week produced another Broncos’s win and, from the college world, this Vine, which has 23 million loops:

I love the pass defense here.

And this guy provided the best selfie-video of the year, from an LSU tailgate.

The Broncos lost to the Seahawks in their third week, which I said was “cool with me.” More importantly, that week provided us with a mascot wildcat intently listening to a postgame locker room speech. The speech is cool, but that mascot, on one knee, nodding in agreement is one of the funniest damn things from the entire year.

“Colorado State Beats Boston College For A Huge, Wild Win” was one of the more fun write-ups I did this year. Here’s the lede:

Colorado State had no business beating Boston College as our Saturday mornings transitioned into Saturday afternoons. Not after CSU traveled farther east than the program had since 1959. Not after kicking off at 10:30 a.m. local time (an underrated factor in this game). Not after their senior quarterback threw two first-quarter interceptions. Not after falling behind 14-0 late in the second quarter. Not against an ACC team that beat the #9 team in the country on this field two weeks ago. Not with CSU’s senior quarterback beat up and grabbing his shoulder in pain after just about every play. Not when they were down three points facing a fourth-and-eleven with 1:05 left.

It also produced one of the better pictures of 2014.

Grayson to Lovett for the biggest play of Colorado State’s young season and a huge, dramatic win. (Stephan Savoia/AP

Indeed, the win over Boston College set the tone and made a statement in what would turn out to be a very special year for Colorado State.

On the last day of the MLB regular season, Jordan Zimmerman threw a no-hitter. Here’s the last play of the game from a unique vantage point.

OCTOBER:

October is always one of the best times of the year for sports. That was certainly the case this year with a great MLB Postseason, the NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE!, college football, the NHL and the NBA all in full swing (eventually).

The first week saw the Kansas City Royals beat the Oakland Athletics in an incredible one-game playoff. They won it on this 12th-inning hit from Salvador Perez. This was probably the best game of 2014 in any sport.

The first Saturday in October saw four MLB postseason games and 11 of the top 19 college football teams lose. This might have been the best sports day of 2014.

Katy Perry was on ESPN College Gameday that morning, and after Ole Miss upset Alabama, she was out on the town celebrating:

One of those postseason games went 18 innings. It ended, at last, when Brandon Belt did this. (Notice the bat drop swag.)

By mid-October, the CSU Rams and the Denver Broncos were both rollin’. It seemed easy. Too f**kin’ easy. IT’S SO EASY! At least that’s what Julius Thomas thought.

And around this time, some huge news came off of a football field, when it was announced that Rockies co-GMs (or whatever they were) Dan O’Dowd and Bill Geivett both resigned. Jeff Bridich took over the role. My quick thoughts on the situation:

The Rockies organization is a mess. Change is good. At this point any front office change has to be considered a good thing. That said, the real problem is the guy who owns the team and he isn’t going anywhere. And because of Monfort’s stubborn loyalty towards O’Dowd, resigning is the only way O’Dowd was ever going to leave.

Naturally, Monfort immediately filled the position with an internal candidate. Very, very “Rockies” of him. Jeff Bridich seems like a bright young executive and for all we know, he could be the perfect replacement. But it would have been nice for Monfort to at least poke around the baseball world outside of his own organization.

So I think Rockies fans should proceed with some cautious optimism. I can’t get overly excited, but this is progress. And progress is good.

If you’ve been keeping up with these posts, you know how I feel about this truly amazing Vine.

Still laughing at that thing.

Not to be outdone, Lou Holtz had this to say in another Top-5 Vine.

After those nutty couple of weeks, we turned to watch CSU beat Utah State on homecoming weekend in front of their first sellout crowd in over a decade. The Rams were rollin’ at 6-1 and the games were a blast.

That same weekend Peyton Manning broke the NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE! record for career passing touchdowns. (Man, there was a lot going on.) Of course Peyton and friends had to have some kind of silly (stupid) scripted celebration queued up.

@_MarcusD_

And the MLB Postseason marched on, too, with amazing game after amazing game. The Giants and Royals secured spots in the World Series. Here’s Joe Buck with my favorite play call of the year.

WE’RE STILL IN OCTOBER HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?! The Broncos moved to 6-1 with a convincing win over the Chargers. CSU moved to 7-1 with a dominating win over Wyoming to keep The Boot. And the Madison Bumgarner train charged into the World Series without slowing down. By the time he was done, he had put together one of the all-time great Postseason performances in MLB history and perhaps the best individual performance by any athlete in my lifetime.

The other great individual performance from the World Series came from CHEVY GUY, who became an instant sensation after producing all-time high levels of discomfort for everyone watching. “You know, technology and stuff.” (Also keep your eye on Bud Selig at the 33 second mark.)

The Nuggets and Avs also started their seasons in October. Those have both been, umm… disappointing. And boring. And uneventful.

NOVEMBER:

The first weekend of November saw the Broncos go into New England and get their asses kicked by the Patriots. This GIF is a pretty fitting description of how the day’s events went.

@cjzero

The loss to the Patriots forced the Broncos to reevaluate lots of things as their season moved along.

A week later a boring game against the Raiders produced yet another Top-5 Vine.

This guy was an easy selection for Douche of the Week:

So was this bird and the people delighted at his horrifying antics:

Mid-November is when the University of Florida fired their head coach, prompting some national speculation about who might replace Will Muschamp. Jim McElwain’s name was mentioned often. I wrote:

There are always a lot of moving parts in these situations and much of my outlook is based on speculation, but as of right now, there are plenty of reasons to be confident McElwain will be back with Colorado State next year.

Hmmm…

Odell Beckhamn Jr. made the best catch any of us have ever seen.

Deadspin

In the month’s final week, Colorado State went to Air Force for both teams’ final regular season game. The Rams were looking to finish an 11-1 season and still had hope for a Fiesta Bowl apearance. The Falcons capped off their own great regular season (9-3) when they beat the Rams with a field goal on the game’s last play. At the time, it was a devastating loss for Rams fans.

(Andy Cross, Denver Post)

The Broncos beat the Chiefs the next night and Travis Kelce did this.

https://twitter.com/xmasape/status/539267701894811649

And Tom Brady was taken for a walk by his handler:

CJ Zero/ Cauldren

DECEMBER:

The beginning of the year’s final month started with some big news when Jim McElwain did, indeed, accept the Florida head coaching position and leave the Rams behind. This was another of my better (and most read) posts of the year.

Those three strange days are over now, having put an odd stamp on the end of the Jim McElwain era at Colorado State. It was a short era that should be remembered fondly. It should be remembered as the three years that brought Colorado State out the dredges of 3-9 seasons and into respectability.

The Rams are no longer an embarrassment. The Rams are a force in the Mountain West. The Rams are back on the college football map.

Jim McElwain put them there.

The McElwain news was quickly followed by bigger, more important news when the CSU Board of Governors approved the much talked about new, on-campus stadium. Somebody, somewhere thinks it will look like this, sooooo… that’s pretty sweet.

It’s slated to open for the 2017 season if all goes well.

The end of the year wasn’t that long ago so you should really remember this stuff.

Colorado State played in the Las Vegas Bowl without a head coach and was blown out 45-10 by a good Utah team. Shortly thereafter, CSU announced the hiring of Georgia Offensive Coordinator Mike Bobo, which appears– albeit before a single game– to be a very solid hire.

Proud to be CSU Rams! pic.twitter.com/ph6kiMc8YA

— Coach Mike Bobo (@CoachMikeBobo) December 25, 2014

I thnk that’ll do it, folks. 2014 was a fun one around these parts. I really do appreciate the hundreds of thousands of devoted readers who check in here each week. Here’s to a successful 2015 with more of the same fun posts on Tuesday afternoons.

And again, if you missed it, here’s Part One from last week.

And finally, here’s the funniest year-end video I’ve seen to date. You should recognize some of these clips, as I’ve happily touched on a bunch of the stuff in here over the past 12 months (and in the past two posts. Careful, you might hear some bad words.

Happy Tuesday, everybody. Thanks for reading. See ya next week.

***

Comment on any of this stuff below, or email me at mdhahn1@yahoo.com with post ideas, videos or other media I should know about. Subscribe at the top right of this page. Follow me on Twitter @TuesWithMitch.

2014 Year In Review, Part One

Welcome to– and a Happy New Year from– the 90th edition of Tuesdays With Mitch, where I’m blogging for the last time in 2014. Let’s get into it… .

Tomorrow is the last day of the year. 2014 has come and gone and in doing so provided 52 weeks– and 52 posts– of sports and pop culture content. It’s time to reminisce on all that we’ve taken in this year so I went back and reviewed each of the last 51 posts and pulled out all of my favorite things.

Let’s look back at the year that was. Sports highlights, sports lowlights, news bloopers, funny videos, moving pictures… Here are some of my favorites. The best, the worst, the most memorable. Vines, GIFs, videos, posts, pictures, tweets, moments and other stuff from 2014. (This post got so big, I split it up into two sections. Part Two will be out next week.)

I present:  Your Tuesdays With Mitch 2014 Year in Review (Part One):

 JANUARY:

The close of college football season is always an important staple of the year’s first month. The Sugar Bowl between Alabama and Oklahoma gave us one of the best videos of the year right off the bat.

Yeah… that’s gotta be the video of the year.

And the BCS National Championship wasn’t bad either.

The biggest thing from January ’round these parts was the AFC Championship game that saw the Broncos pound the Patriots.

Leading up to the game, I wrote this “Why We Should All Hate the Patriots” post that lots of you enjoyed. This could come in useful again in a couple weeks (although apparently some of the GIFs and pictures are no longer “active”).

The AFC Championship is when we learned that pretend horses ARE NOT ALLOWED TO DRUM!

SB Nation

This still cracks me up.

The Broncos won 26-16, but the game wasn’t as close as the score indicates. It was 23-3 with under ten minutes left in the fourth quarter.

@corkgaines

The Broncos were heading to the Super Bowl. They were favored. Optimism was high. Things were good.

FEBRUARY:

And then…

(Getty Images)

(Getty Images)

…The Super Bowl happened. 43-8. The Broncos were completely overmatched in every aspect of the game against an impressive Seahawks team. Has to be considered one of the worst days in Colorado sports history. Probably the worst sports day for anyone in or around my generation.

What a nightmare. I did, however write this post that lots of you enjoyed on “The Annoying People At Your Football Party.”

Next we have the I-kind-of-like-the-Broncos-but-really-I-just-want-to-get-wasted guy. “Dude, we gotta do shots for every Broncos’ touchdown!” on Sunday quickly faded into “Alright dude, we gotta do shots every time the Seahawks score or the Broncos turn it over or they show Richard Sherman on the sidelines or a Bronco gets tackled or they go to commercial!” Again, these guys are pretty standard for most sporting events. Comes with the territory. No big deal.

After the Super Bowl came the Olympics, but before that, let’s check in on Jacoby Jones attending a Pelicans game. This might be the best interview of the year.

Okay, back to the Olympics. The biggest early story was obviously Bob Costas’ freaking eyes, which both looked like they might fall out of his head at any moment.

via @sbnationgif

Ashley Wagner’s reaction to a judges’ scoring was all the rage for about 24 hours:

via Deadspin

After the Olympics, one of my favorite pictures of the year made its rounds. The first 2014 Heisman candidate:

This fairly mysterious picture popped up on Reddit in Late February.

MARCH:

In March we transitioned to basketball and hockey. I wondered if the Nuggets would be better off tanking their season away and laughed at Jan Vesley jab-stepping even though nobody was covering him.

Via The Big Lead

Spring training also started up, which provided this awesome picture from an Indians’ exhibition game.

Via @mlb

In mid-March, the Broncos released Champ Bailey, which just depressed the hell out of me. I wrote about that situation here. Even though some of the outlooks have become outdated after nine months, it’s probably one of the better pieces of writing I produced this year.

…(W)hen I look back at Champ’s days as a Bronco, I think I’ll remember the week-in, week-out excellence more than anything. Without hyperbole, I can say that for several years, Champ was, hands-down, the best football player on the field every single week.

I’ve never seen a cornerback that defended the run like Champ. He was the best cover corner in the game, but he was also the best tackler on the Broncos.

I remember Champ used to track the number of balls his receivers caught on him for a whole season. After an All-Pro year, Champ would lament that that number wasn’t zero. That’s a serious indication of greatness.

So here’s to Champ Bailey, who was just a pleasure to watch and root for over the course of ten seasons in Denver.

For my generation of Broncos fans, there will never be another Champ Bailey.

In the college basketball world, the Buffs were trying to win just enough games to get off the bubble and secure an NCAA tournament bid, while the Rams, Falcons and Cowboys floundered. Even though the Border War didn’t mean much, this dunk from Josh Adams was sick.

March also saw the One-Year anniversary of this blog, which I celebrated by half-assing a post because I was down and out with strep throat.

But the basketball season rolled on, leading to this really insightful tweet from the always insightful Magic Johnson:

The only way San Antonio or Miami don't win the championship is if neither team makes the finals.

— Earvin Magic Johnson (@MagicJohnson) March 7, 2014

Then came March Madness, which produced possibly the best sports weekend of the year (and one of my better posts). The antics of March Madness will never get old.

(via Deadspin)

via @sbnationgif

CU did, indeed build up a good enough resume to hear their name called on selection Sunday. They received an 8-seed and played against Pittsburgh. Things went poorly.

No. 9 Pitt absolutely destroying No. 8 Colorado, 46-18 at the half. #MarchMadness

— NCAA March Madness (@MarchMadnessMBB) March 20, 2014

Pitt just misses the most lopsided 8/9 game in NCAA tournament history. Blasts Colorado 77-48. Record is 30 (Michigan-Tennessee in 2011).

— Patrick Stevens (@D1scourse) March 20, 2014

I felt the need to clarify that last tweet.

“In the game referenced in that last tweet, Michigan won by 30 and was the 8-seed. This means Colorado just had the WORST PERFORMANCE EVER from an 8-seed. Historically awfu! They had a good year, but damn, it did not end well.”

APRIL:

April meant baseball, which meant a long winter officially coming to an end. It was time to make ill-fated Rockies predictions and head out to the ball yard. I predicted the Rockies would go 85-77. Optimism was high. I was wrong.

Opening Day also provided perhaps my favorite sports media piece all year (definitely my favorite from the local media). Benjamin Hochman’s colorful account of the Opening Day festivities at Coors Field.

Early April also brought us the national championship that saw Connecticut beat Kentucky. Kentucky lost, but I love this picture of James Young’s amazing dunk.

Getty Images

The national championship also meant the close of the college basketball season, which of course meant “One Shining Moment” was coming to give you goosebumps.

The best early-season baseball GIF still makes me laugh, eight months later.

via Deadspin

Bubba Watson won the masters. His kid was not impressed.

The Big Lead

The Avalanche completed an incredible regular season turnaround and strutted into the playoffs with swagger and confidence. Here was my “recap” of Game One:

“You know what happened. Roy pulls the goalie with three minutes to go (!). Erik Johnson saves an empty net goal by doing this (!) with less than two minutes left.

HockeyGrrls

Then Stastny scores with 13 seconds (!) left. Then he scores again in overtime (!). It was awesome.

AND THE AVS WIN!!!! https://t.co/cDqOdT0kgs

— Colorado Avalanche (@Avalanche) April 18, 2014

 

You also have to listen to Marc Moser’s homer radio call of the two Stastny goals. They’re epic.

Regardless of what happens in the rest of this season and series, Game One will be one of the best sports moments of the year in Colorado. To welcome playoff hockey back to Denver in that manner was truly unbelievable.”

Indeed it was.

This time of year also introduced us to Bartolo Colon batting, which became a favorite around these parts.

Adam Hunger, USA Today Sports.

I could still watch that Vine all day.

As April rolled on, the Avs series went seven games and produced the quote of the year from Patrick Roy when he said “”Now it’s our turn to — sorry for the words — put our balls on the table.”

The series was unbeliveably dramatic and entertaining. Here is the Game Five overtime winner from Nathan McKinnon.

Of course, the Avs lost Game Seven in overtime. It happened on a Tuesday night, so I apparently chose not to cover it seven days after the fact.

MAY:

As we said goodbye to the Avalanche, April flowed into May and the Rockies were playing really good baseball. Troy Tulowitzki had one of the best months any of us had ever seen. He was the best player in the game.

.@Rockies SS Troy Tulowitzki named NL Player of the Month. pic.twitter.com/hByz0KpvCJ

— MLB (@MLB) May 5, 2014

The NBA Playoffs produced one of the great Vines of all-time, when Damian Lillard hit a walk-off three-pointer.

And I wrote one of my most-viewed and best-received post of the year: “How to Sneak In To Better Seats At Coors Field“.

1. Don’t be too afraid to get caught and have a back up plan. If I get asked for a ticket when trying to enter a section, I generally say something along the lines of Oh yeah my buddy/mom/dad/whoever has mine they should be coming over soon. Then I stand there with a quizical look on my face scanning the fans for my pretend companion before slowly drifting back into the concourse crowd like Shoeless Joe in a cornfield. The usher leaves the park that night gazing at the moon and wondering if I even existed at all. Now, if I’m already seated and an usher comes to give me the boot I usuallly hand him or her my $4 Rockpile ticket with confidence and annoyance as if to say Yeah old man, I know what I’m doing. Here’s my ticket. I usually get quite a kick out of the usher shaking his head, turning and pointing across the stadium at the Rockpile. What? You mean this four dollar ticket doesn’t grant me access to this 2nd row aisle seat? Oh. I’m sorry. Honest mistake.

This real-life version of Andy from “Parks and Recreation” made an appearance.

Wes Welker passed out 100 dollar bills at the Kentucky Derby.

For The Win

With the benefit of hindsight, we are left to wonder if Wes had consumed anything that might have made handing out money a little more fun that it should be.

The progression of baseball season provided us with a new Bad British Commentary video, which was welcome news.

This kid was one of our Studs of the Week:

So was HERO CAT! REMEMBER HERO CAT?!

And I really enjoyed watching an old fat dude smell his armpit and share it with his companion.

JUNE:

By June, the Rockies were falling apart after a 2-7 East Coast road trip. I was still a little bit optimistic at the beginning of June, because I’m an idiot.

The NBA Playoffs were slowly creeping along, and Lance Stephenson provided us with their most memorable moment when he blew in LeBron’s ear.

via @cjzero

Mid-June also means the Spelling Bee freakshows come out to ESPN, which always makes me long for the days when I had summer vacations with nothing to do but laugh at home-schooled weirdos.

As June moved forward, I came to the sad realization that the Rockies, indeed, sucked. This quote from my June 10th post explains the state of affairs at the time…

At some point the injuries became too much to handle, specifically when Nolan Arenado went down. That dramatically changed the entire makeup of the Rockies, both offensively and defensively. And the horrible news just keeps coming. Yesterday three more injury related headlines were announced. Eddie Butler would hit the DL after just one start. Michael Cuddyer would hit the DL (again) and it sounds like he’ll be out for a long while. And Carlos Gonzalez would need surgery on that damn finger. So let’s take a look at the status of eight very important Rockies:

• Tyler Chatwood 60-Day DL
• Brett Anderson 60-Day DL
• Jordan Lyles 15-Day DL
• Eddie Butler 15-Day DL
• Boone Logan15-Day DL
• Nolan Arenado 15-Day DL
• Michael Cuddyer 15-Day DL
• Carlos Gonzalez 15-Day DL

I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s hard to win without any players.

That pretty much summed it up for the Rox. By mid-June, half of their team was on the DL and their season was over.

The Spurs and Heat played in the NBA Finals. LeBron James set the internet ablaze with irrationality and hot takes when he was carried off the floor because of leg cramps.

@cjzero

Of course, the Spurs would go on to win the series in a relatively easy five games.

AP Photo/David J. Phillip

Yoenis Cespedes made the throw of the year.

The L.A. Kings won the Stanley Cup. Naturally, the most important part of the series for me was a lady falling on her face behind a news broadcast.

Deadspin

By late June, the Rockies awfulness reached a remarkable crescendo with this amazing play:

The World Cup came and that was big news for a lot of people. It included a cannibal guy!

That wraps up June, which wraps up the first half of 2014.

Keep an eye out next week for Part Two.

HAPPY NEW YEAR. And happy Tuesday.  Again, thanks for reading these each week. Here’s to a successful 2015 with more of the same fun posts. See ya next week.

***

Comment on any of this stuff below, or email me at mdhahn1@yahoo.com with post ideas, videos or other media I should know about. Subscribe at the top right of this page. Follow me on Twitter @TuesWithMitch.

What Is Wrong With The Broncos? …Is Jim McElwain On The Move?

Welcome to the 85th edition of Tuesdays With Mitch, where the orange and blue sky might be falling. I wrote a lot of words this week. Let’s get into it…

Sunday was not a good day. (AAron Ontiveroz, Denver Post)

At some point late in the fourth quarter of the Broncos’ disheartening and discouraging loss to the Rams on Sunday, I provided the group of family and friends with which I was watching a distinct summary of both the day’s events and the broader implications concerning the big picture of the Broncos’ 2014 season. With the outcome having already been decided, I sullenly slumped forward, plopped my chin on my  palm and proclaimed the following:

“Well…

…(long pause)…

…(sophisticated stroking of chin hair)…

…(vacant stare)…

…

Shit.”

I think that pretty much sums things up, but let’s dive in to this mess.

The Broncos have just gotten their asses kicked for the second time in three weeks. And this one was pretty much a disaster. They lost 22-7 to the St. Louis Rams. They lost by 15 points. To the St. Louis Rams. They scored 7 points. Against the St. Louis Rams. THE ST. LOUIS RAMS!

Krusty The Clown watched the game. He has the same question as lots of Broncos fans.

Good question, Herschel. What DID we just watch?

We saw dropped passes and bad tackling. We saw bad throws from an MVP quarterback. We saw garbage offensive line play. We saw a kneel down. We saw injuries. We did NOT see any field goal attempts.

Now, there’s no sense in playing the blame game, unless you’re writing a blog about the Broncos after the Broncos got their asses kicked by the St. Louis Rams. Then there’s a ton of sense in playing the blame game. Let’s point some fingers!

THIS IS ALL THE OFFENSE’S FAULT!

For the first time in a few years, the offense was without a doubt the main issue in a Broncos’ loss.

Peyton Manning does not look sharp right now and is undoubtedly playing the worst football of his three seasons in Denver. He seems uncomfortable in the pocket. He seems hesitant or unwilling to throw the ball down the field. He’s hanging his receivers out to dry. He’s throwing picks. It’s all kind of odd to watch.

*Sidenote:  I do not care about Manning’s “bad” body language. He’s been doing that his whole career. His career has been pretty good. He gets pissed off when things don’t go well. So what? Peyton Manning is afforded certain luxuries such as this.

The running game has, for the most part, not been much of a factor throughout the year. On Sunday that nonfactor-ness went to a whole ‘nother level.  The Broncos ran the ball ten times. Manning threw 54 passes. TEN! FIFTY-FOUR! That’s amazing. To an extent, I am of the belief that a team with Peyton Manning and Demaryius Thomas and Julius Thomas and Emmanuel Sanders does not need to lean too heavily on the run. That’s not necessarily a point of emphasis based on the personnel that has been assembled here.

But regardless of your offensive makeup, you can’t throw the ball FORTY-FOUR more times than you run it. That is absurd.

Yes, the offense took a hit when two of the passing game’s most important and prominent weapons left with injuries in the first half, but shouldn’t that mean you run the ball– or try to run the ball– MORE?

We can talk about the lack of a running game. We can talk about the two big injuries. We can talk about the struggles of Manning. (Struggles is a very, very relative term here.) But there’s another problem that outweighs all of those.

This offensive line is crap right now. The Broncos have a guard playing tackle, a center playing guard, a new guy playing center, and an all-pro playing like crap. That’s not exactly a recipe for success. Right now the lack of a running game comes back to the offensive line play. The (relative) struggles of Manning comes back to the offensive line play. St. Louis has an above average defense, particularly in the front seven. And they just owned the Broncos up front.

It was ugly.

The Denver Broncos and their immensely talented, record-setting, intimidating offense scored seven points on Sunday. That’s a problem.

THIS IS ALL THE DEFENSE’S FAULT!

Don’t get me wrong, I am identifying the Broncos’ offense as Reason Number One they were dominated on Sunday, but we can throw plenty more blame around.

The defense gets some credit for holding St. Louis to just one touchdown and forcing five field goals. I guess. They only gave up 22 points. The way this team is constructed that’s supposed to be good enough, right? I guess.

But they really weren’t all that impressive when you consider the opponent. Shaun Hill was making his first start in over two months. He’s a backup’s backup. Tre Mason is a fine young rookie running back, but he’s been up and down since taking over as a starter. Kenny Britt is Kenny Britt. He’s not exactly curling the toes of wide receiver coaches across the league. What I’m trying to say is THE RAMS’ OFFENSE SUCKS.

Yet the Broncos defense again had trouble getting stops on 3rd-and-longs. They forced zero turnovers. They sacked Hill just three times.

It would have been nice for this new, revamped defense to step up and shut the Rams’ crappy offense down on a day when Manning and Co. were not at their finest. We’ve heard plenty of talk about the Broncos needing to learn to win a low scoring game. A game that sees both teams score in the teens or low-20s. Evidently this defense isn’t ready for that.

Yes, some of this comes back to the offense. The two interceptions, the bad field position after failed fourth-down attempts, and the lack of a running game didn’t do the D* any favors, but I’m not exactly giving the defense a thumbs up.

*How many times did CBS show that middle-aged dork with the cutout of the D and the fence during the broadcast? Like, ten? It amazes me that someone would bring that to a game in 2014.

THIS IS ALL THE SPECIAL TEAMS’S’S’S’ FAULT!

Tuesdays With Mitch is here with some breaking news. Good teams in THE NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE! have kickers. All of them. Right now, the Broncos do not appear to have a kicker after they thrice turned down long field goal attempts and instead elected to go for it on fourth down or punt. Those game situations are as follows, and keep in mind THEY’RE PLAYING IN A FREAKING DOME!

• 3-0 Rams. 1:22 left in the first quarter. 4th-and-5 from the 37. The Broncos decline a would-be 54-yarder and fail to convert. …A made field goal would have simply tied the game in the first quarter. That’s obviously not important at all.
• 13-7 Rams. Opening drive of the third quarter. 4th-and-10 from the 38. The Broncos decline a would-be 55-yarder and punt. …Leaving three more (potential) points on the board in a close game.
• 19-7 Rams. 9:37 left in the fourth quarter. 4th-and-4 from the 28. The Broncos decline a would be 45-yarder and Manning is sacked for a loss of 12. …At this point it’s a two possession game with under ten minutes remaining. The game would have stayed two possessions with a made field goal, so many would argue that going for it is the right call here regardless of whether or not a kicker wearing a Broncos jersey exists somewhere in the world. HOWEVAH, if the Broncos had kicked a couple of those long field goals earlier, another field goal here might have made sense.

This is not college football, where #collegekickers are notoriously shaky and erratic. This is THE NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE! Kickers in THE NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE! need to be able to make, or at least attempt, 50-plus yard field goals. In fact, I’m fairly certain they’re paid a handsome salary to do just that. So I’m not putting these decisions on the coaching staff. If they don’t trust Brandon McManus, so be it. But something needs to be done about this. You can not have a guy on your roster that you don’t trust attempting field goals when a very, very large portion of his job description involves attempting field goals.

Aside from having a kicker who is not allowed to kick field goals, the Broncos special teams units have been awfully pedestrian all year. They have zero kickoff return threats. They have zero punt return threats.

The more you think about it, the Broncos do not appear to be a complete football team.

…I also have McManus in both of my fantasy leagues, you jerks.

So looking ahead…

The Broncos come back home for their first game at Mile High in exactly a month on Sunday. Things don’t appear to be getting easier. The 6-4 Dolphins come to town with the 2nd highest rated total defense and 2nd highest rated passing defense in THE NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE!. Miami played on Thursday night last week, so they will have a few extra days rest.

After that, the Broncos take their annual trip to Arrowhead to play the 7-3 Chiefs, who will also be coming off a Thursday game with a few extra days to rest and prepare. So yeah, the Broncos and Chiefs will be playing in Arrowhead in week 13 with first place on the line. I didn’t see that coming.

Oh, and the Patriots look like a damn powerhouse after beating the Colts handily in Indianapolis. For Denver to catch New England, the Broncos need to win out and the Patriots need to lose twice in their final six games.

Much of my focus in this space throughout the season has been on securing the top seed in the AFC. This is all one long preseason, I said. Enjoy the ride until the real games start in January, I said. That’s no longer the outlook. Right now the focus needs to be trying to win the division by trying to win some football games by trying to not suck on offense, defense, and special teams.

Because excluding a two-quarter stretch (roughly) against a team that hasn’t won a game in a calendar year, the Broncos have looked pretty crappy three weeks in a row.

You know me, I’m much more levelheaded than most sports blowhards you’ll hear or read. I actually misplaced my Broncos Panic Button a couple years ago and have never bothered to look for it. But after watching the Broncos on Sunday afternoon I think I’m going to need to locate that thing. Because if the Broncos have a similar performance in this week’s game against the Dolphins, I’ll be mashing down the Broncos Panic Button and heading for the hills until… Rockies season? Oh Dear Lord.

Before Emmanuel Sanders got hurt, Emmanual Sanders got sad. 😦 is right, Emmanuel. (Joe Amon, Denver Post)

One quick thought on the Broncos potentially signing Hall of Fame MeatHead/DoucheBag/ScumBag/Racist/Sexist/Homophobe Richie Incognito:

This is something I find myself torn on. Not because I wonder whether Incognito would be able to play well after his time away from the game. I think he would help this team’s patchwork offensive line immediately. Not because I’m concerned with the chemistry in the locker room. I think the Broncos have a veteran locker room that wouldn’t put up with his nonsense and I think even Incognito would be able to stay in his lane for the season’s final couple months. And no, I don’t really care about the media distraction it would bring (though that would be the biggest annoyance).

I’m struggling with this thought because as a fan, Incognito is one of the last people on this planet I would ever want to root for. He is a terrible dude. I’m not naive enough to think all Broncos players are saints. Assuredly, they are not. But I do have a hard time believing that anyone in the Broncos’ locker room, the entire NFL, the entire world is as big of a douche as Incognito.

So this is the question I find myself asking:  Would it be worth it to root for someone I find to be hilariously stupid and mind-numbingly repulsive if it substantially increases the Broncos’ chances of winning the Super Bowl?

I’m not entirely sure how to answer that.

Off to the weekly departments…

Stud of the week:

Let’s talk about Jim McElwain. He’s pretty awesome. First though, let’s recap the CSU Rams’ eventful bye week.

First, Boise State took on San Diego State in a game that could have had huge (HUGE!)implications for CSU. Things got off to a pretty great start, with the Aztecs jumping out to a 20-0 lead in Boise. I was feeling prett-ay darn good about things. But San Diego State isn’t all that good this year and Boise State is. So the Broncos came roaring back and won 39-28, delaying the Rams’ Mountain West championship hopes at least one more week.

Boise State plays in Laramie this week at 8:15. The Broncos are 14-point favorites. CSU fans are all die-hard Wyoming fans until further notice.

On Sunday some good news was released in the form of the national polls. CSU was bumped up two spots to #23 in the coaches poll. They moved up one spot to #22 in the AP poll. The committee’s rankings will be released in a couple hours and I think CSU has a somewhat reasonable chance to sneak in there after multiple teams ahead of them lost on Saturday.

Jim McElwain’s name has been linked to the open head coaching position at Florida. (Lance Iversen/USA TODAY Sports )

Okay back to Jim McElwain… Other college football news surfaced on Sunday, when Florida announced the firing (or resignation, whatever) of Will Muschamp. Of course, this immediately sparked speculation as to who will replace Muschamp as head coach in Gainesville. Jim McElwain is on just about every list of potential candidates.

Bovada even has odds on who the next coach will be. McElwain opened as the second most likely “candidate”, but has moved to third as I write this. This is obviously kind of silly, but it’s also a bit concerning, as oddsmakers are generally extremely well-informed.

I would be very surprised if McElwain took the Florida job. It’s a possibility, but I would be very surprised.

The first thing we need to consider is the buyout in McElwain’s current contract, which is an unheard of $7.5 million. Yes, Florida is a big time school with a big time budget and big time donors, but SEVEN AND A HALF MILLION DOLLARS, in a lump sum, one-time payment, is a lot of money, even for them.

I think people’s’ eyes can glaze over when we start discussing millions of dollars in big time athletics. For reference, Will Muschamp’s 2013 salary is about $2.7 million. So McElwain’s buyout alone is almost THREE TIMES what Florida is paying Muschamp each year. That’s not chump change.

Also, it sounds like Florida is going to aim higher than a head coach at a Mountain West school. Florida is considered a top-five or so job in the country and they will probably have their initial sights set on a head coach from a Power 5 school like Mike Gundy (Oklahoma State) or Dan Mullen (Mississippi State).

So my guess is Florida would have to swing and miss on a couple of their first choices, then they would have to REAALLLY, REAAALLLYYY want Jim McElwain to the point where coming up with multiple briefcases filled with cash isn’t an issue.

And that’s only half of the equation.

McElwain has to want Florida, too. McElwain is comfortable in Fort Collins. He is the highest paid coach in the Mountain West (although obviously a job like Florida would provide a big raise). Maybe McElwain will pull a Sonny and be cool staying in Fort Collins for a long time (fingers crossed). But assuming that’s not the case, McElwain doesn’t have to jump at the first job opening that comes his way. He has the luxury to sit back and wait for what he considers the perfect situation.

If McElwain doesn’t want the task of completely rebuilding a powerhouse, he can simply wait for a good situation at a school he considers an upgrade. Chris Petersen did this when he stayed at Boise State for eight years before finally leaving for Washington after last season. Petersen’s name was mentioned in every big school’s coaching vacancy for years. He waited until he saw a school that fit his profile and was left in good shape by the previous coach.

Florida needs a new coach. Michigan will soon be needing a new coach. Nebraska may (maybe not) soon be needing a new coach. McElwain’s name will be associated with every job opening in the country.

There are always a lot of moving parts in these situations and much of my outlook is based on speculation, but as of right now, there are plenty of reasons to be confident McElwain will be back with Colorado State next year.

Douche of the week:

This guy needs to reevaluate everything in his life and I mean that sincerely.

Douche is even a douche when he’s interviewed after the whole thing went down.

A few other things:

The Nuggets beat the Cavs last night in a game that will surely represent the moment that their entire season turned around. Until all that actually happens, this free throw sums up their season.

Never change, JaVale. That’s from Sunday’s loss to New York. The Nuggets scored eight points on 1-16 shooting in the second quarter.

This dude did not like Mr. Referee touching his bottom.

SB Nation

Mr. Referee looks kind of terrified.

This is the greatest punt ever. Right back in his own grill.

I stumbled across this GIF from a recent boxing match this week. It is the coolest thing I saw all week. Incredible.

Deadspin / @bubbaprog

And,

Peter Forsberg is proud to be the third Swedish player inducted to the @HockeyHallFame. His speech: http://t.co/UKfeUm9SH7

— NHL (@NHL) November 18, 2014

A couple links worth sharing:

• I was hit pretty hard by Chris Ballard’s longform story on NBA player Ryan Anderson adjusting to life after his girlfriend’s suicide. Ballard is one of the best.
• AP story on Jack, the 9-year-old with brain tumors that CSU football has “adopted” as a teammate.
• College basketball is back! I enjoyed this piece on how awesome (and American) the game is.
• Off the board a little bit here, but I really enjoyed this profile of Chris Pratt from one of my favorite online writers.

And finally, here’s Daniel Tosh tearing up ESPN. Really good stuff:

Pretty solid from Tosh, but he loses some credibility when he includes Mike and Mike in his “you guys are cool” disclaimer at the end.

Happy Tuesday everybody. Thanks for reading. See ya next week.

***

Comment on any of this stuff below, or email me at mdhahn1@yahoo.com with post ideas, videos or other media I should know about. Subscribe at the top right of this page. Follow me on Twitter @TuesWithMitch.

Weekly Roundup; Rams Ranked

Welcome to the 84th edition of Tuesdays With Mitch, where OH HEY DID YOU KNOW IT GOT COLD OUTSIDE?! Lots to get to this week. Let’s get into it…

Cam and his Rams are getting some recognition as one of the best teams in the country.. (Erin Hooley, Coloradoan)

Let’s start with the Colorado State Rams, who continued their winning ways Saturday night against Hawaii. Nothing surprising about this one because Hawaii is not good at playing football, but it was nice to see the Rams take care of business at home against a lesser opponent.

Garrett Grayson threw four touchdowns to four different receivers, even though his favorite target, Rashard Higgins, watched the game from the sideline. (Higgins should be back in two weeks vs. New Mexico.) CSU averaged 6.8 yards per carry on their way to 293 rushing yards. The Rams’ defense pulled down a couple of interceptions. 49-22 final. Saturday night went about like most people expected.

The game went well, but the two most interesting questions of the weekend for CSU football came after the Rams had finished playing. On Saturday night:  Would Boise State actually lose? And, on Sunday morning:  Would the Rams finally enter the national rankings?

Playing against a bad New Mexico team, Boise State was down by 11 points with under three minutes remaining in the third quarter. The Broncos then scored 22 straight points and won by 11, putting a bit of a damper on my Saturday night after getting my hopes up for a while.

So for the Rams to win the Mountain Division and host a Mountain West championship game (and remain eligible for a New Year’s Eve/Day bowl), they still need to see the Broncos lose one of their three remaining games. Boise is a 19-point favorite over San Diego State at home this weekend. That’s followed by a trip to Laramie for an 8:15 kickoff on November 22nd. Laramie. Late night. Late November. Wyoming isn’t any good, but nobody wants to play under those circumstances. I’m hoping for about a ten degree night with 40 mph winds and chaos.

The final piece of news that came out of Ram Country this weekend was good news. First, the USA Today coaches poll was released. Shortly thereafter, the Associated Press Top 25 was released. For the first time all season, Rams fans didn’t have to scroll all the way to the bottom of the rankings and scan the “others receiving votes” category.

Because, for the first time in over 11 years, the Colorado State Rams are nationally ranked.

The coaches have the Rams 25th, the AP has them 23rd.

The other rankings come from the College Football Playoff selection committee, which releases its rankings each Tuesday evening. It will be interesting to see if they also give the Rams some love and sneak them in their rankings. Frankly, that would be a bit of a surprise, as the committee hasn’t ranked any “Group of Five” teams in either of their first two rankings.

And of course, it would be wise to bear in mind that the only rankings that matter are the committee’s final rankings after the regular season ends. And even those don’t matter if the Rams don’t find a way to win the Mountain West.

All of that said, I was pretty pumped to see Colorado State in the national rankings. I’ve seen enough 3-9 seasons and stood through enough beatdowns in the cold to appreciate how awesome it is for the Rams to have a number next to their name. That means when you’re watching some dumb ESPN debate show, the CSU logo will just be scrolling across the bottom of the screen telling you who their next opponent is! Or when you click on “college football scoreboard” their game will be right there on the front page! Woooo! What else is there in life, right?

The progress this program has made in three short years under Jim McElwain is simply astounding. The CSU Rams are ranked! In 2014! Exclamation points! Who woulda thunk it? I’m sometimes accused of being too optimistic when it comes to CSU athletics, but even I didn’t see this coming. At least not so quickly.

Time for your weekly record update thing even though by now I think we all get the point and this is getting redundant I don’t care I’m going to keep doing it anyway! Colorado State is now 9-1 in 2014. They’ve won eight in a row. They’re 13-2 in their last 15 games going back to last season. 15-3 in their last 18; 16-4 in their last 20.

The Rams are off this weekend, followed by New Mexico at home in what should be a win. Then they travel to Air Force the day after Thanksgiving in a game that scares the hell out of me and has a chance to ruin everything.

But right now, we’re into mid-November and #23 Colorado State (always wanted to type their name like that) is still staring an 11-1 regular season right in the face.

Hey while we’re on the topic of important necessary changes at Colorado State, here’s a link I’ve been meaning to share for a while. First, check out “A Summary of the Four Options Under Consideration for Colorado State University’s Football Stadium.” Then provide your feedback here, but only if you agree with me. This stuff is important. (Option Four is the way to go). I should probably devote an entire post to the stadium discussion at some point. Kind of surprised I haven’t done that yet.

And one more link while I’m at it. Here’s the latest episode of “The Grind”. (Not as cool as some of the previous episodes, but still worth watching.)

Some other quick thoughts on the local squads…

The Broncos blew out the Raiders. Nothing to see here. You should know by now that I’m far too levelheaded to get concerned with just about anything in a 41-17 win, especially on the road. Nitpicking is stupid. First place in the AFC is still very realistic. This concludes my commentary on the Broncos’ victory over the Raiders.

The Nuggets might be really, really bad. I’m not one to overreact too often, but after watching them lose five in a row after winning on opening night, I think I’m going to go ahead and overreact. This team looks terrible. They’ve been blown out by the Sacramento Kings. Twice. That usually tells you all just about all you need to know about an NBA team.

I’m still convinced the roster has quite a bit of talent, but not much is going right in the season’s first couple of weeks. Bryan Shaw needs to figure this team out quickly or his tenure as a head coach will be a short one.

I also wanted to talk about the Avalanche’s slow start, but I don’t have time. Hey they look bad too! How’s that for #analysis?

Yesterday, Michael Cuddyer turned down the Rockies’ $15.3 million qualifying offer and signed a two-year $21 million deal with the Mets. I loved Cuddyer’s attitude and watching him play while he was in Colorado, but it made no sense for the Rockies to re-sign him. Simply put, he no longer fit the roster or the payroll. The Rockies’ payroll has been too top-heavy for years. Had Cuddyer accepted the Rockies’ offer, they would be even more top-heavy. That’s not a recipe for rebuilding. There’s also the matter of having Carlos Gonzales in right field, Corey Dickerson in left and Justin Morneau at first base. Oh, and Cuddyer hasn’t been able to stay healthy. Oh, and he’ll be 36 next season.

So new general manager Jeff Bridich passed his first major test. He played the Cuddyer situation perfectly. The QO was a bit of a gamble, but it worked out and now the Rockies receive a compensatory draft pick from the Mets in return. I’m told that is better than nothing.

Now, I just want Bridich to go sign Russell Martin. That should be priority Number One. (Even if it is a long shot.)

Off to the weekly departments…

Vine of the week:

We have a no-brainer this week, as the local football squad produced one of the great Vines of all time. Seriously, everything about this is absolutely incredible.

The score on the screen. Brock’s eager little jog. The fact that Peyton starts his trot right when Brock turns his back. Peyton’s sluggish, workmanlike, head-down jog. And of course the look on Brock’s face when he realizes he doesn’t get to play. It’s like a teenager inviting his little brother to the movies with the older kids and then leaving without him. The camera is positioned absolutely perfectly.

It’s just amazing. Possibly a top-5 sports Vine of all time.

Stud of the week:

I could pick a legitimate selection here, but let’s think about how awesome Carson Palmer’s agent is. The Cardinals’ quarterback has bounced around the league for years without much success. He had a mostly mediocre season in 2013 with Arizona. Now, he’s been pretty good in leading the Cardinals to the NFL’s best record halfway through 2014, though he only had five starts entering the weekend. So on Friday the Cardinals rewarded him with a three-year $50 million contract extension. $20.5 million is guaranteed. MORE THAN TWENTY MILLION BUCKS! IN THE BANK! FOR FIVE DECENT STARTS!

But odd contracts for large sums of money are fairly commonplace in sports. This is all worth mentioning because of what happened on Sunday. Two days after signing that extension… Palmer tore his ACL and is out for the year.

How amazing is that?

I mean, it reeaaalllllly sucks for all parties involved, but that is some incredibly bad timing. And– AAAAAAND!– in 2005 Palmer signed a $119 million contract with the Bengals and promptly tore his ACL 10 days later!

So props to Palmer’s agent or whoever was working to get this most recent extension in place. I want that dude picking my lotto numbers.

Douche of the week:

Before the Broncos played the Seahawks in week three, I gave Seahawks fans “Douche of the week” honors because they’re all horrible. Well they’re in the news again (kind of) with the strangest thing I’ve seen at a football game all year.

What’s amazing to me is the reaction of all the people who are not being attacked by that thing. They think watching an old dude get eaten alive by an evil, giant bird is just hilarious and all in good fun. Hahaha that guy is going to get his eyeballs ripped out of his head! Go Seahawks!

The more I watch this, the more I start to wonder if that bird thought that dude’s hair was some kind of rodent

Here’s another angle.

SB Nation

Tweets of the week:

The official Nuggets’ Twitter account had some fun hyping the Cleveland Cavs and all of their star players coming to town.

The #Nuggets hit the practice court today in preparation for tomorrow night's game against Shawn Marion and the Cavs. pic.twitter.com/DeD1wRqHV0

— Denver Nuggets (@nuggets) November 6, 2014

Tomorrow night: your #Nuggets host Anderson Varejão's Cavs.

Will you be there!? pic.twitter.com/GAyy6WHWR6

— Denver Nuggets (@nuggets) November 6, 2014

Tristan Thompson will be there. Make sure you are, too.

Get your Cavs vs #Nuggets tickets: http://t.co/huT4yN2MYp pic.twitter.com/TgsyLDgbbO

— Denver Nuggets (@nuggets) November 6, 2014

We're out for today, #Nuggets fans.

See you and Dion Waiters tomorrow! pic.twitter.com/D5htPsT7JS

— Denver Nuggets (@nuggets) November 6, 2014

Pretty good stuff from the Nuggs. Yes, they got blown out by LeBron James, Kyrie Irving, Kevin Love and company, but that was going to happen anyway. Might as well get some trolling in ahead of time. I say it all the time, but I love when official Twitter accounts show some personality like this. We’re making progress in that regard.

If only the actual team– you know, like the players and coaching staff– could make some progress now.

And a bunch of other stuff:

The craziest play of the football weekend came from the Utah vs. Oregon game. Two touchdowns on the same play! (Almost.)

I saw this live and was awfully confused, so I’m glad I could track it down on the internets. The Joker really likes Jimmy Graham’s butt.

At some point, dudes just gotta quit jumping in the stands.

Pretty decent interception that I could totally do if I wanted to:

Uproxx / CBS

It’s rare for the best touchdown catch of the week and the best touchdown dance of the week all happen on the same play. Thanks John Brown!

A couple links worth sharing:

• An interesting and long read on Demaryius Thomas and his unstable upbringing. Required reading for all DT fans.
• I think it’s safe to say that I had more fun than most in my time at CSU. But this kid has me beat. Dude definitely had more fun in one night than I had in four years.

And finally, we’ll end on a positive note, because fist bump kid is pretty awesome.

Yay sports!

Happy Tuesday everybody. Thanks for reading. See ya next week.

***

Comment on any of this stuff below, or email me at mdhahn1@yahoo.com with post ideas, videos or other media I should know about. Subscribe at the top right of this page. Follow me on Twitter @TuesWithMitch.

Recapping An Incredible Week In The Sports World

Welcome to the 80th edition of Tuesdays With Mitch, where I’m still trying to comprehend all of the sports I consumed over the last seven days. Let’s get into it…

Demaryius Thomas’ record-setting performance was just one part of an amazing week of sports. And now he smells like beer, lady. (via @Broncos)

I started last week‘s post by mentioning that we were officially entering one of the best times on the sports calendar. Those words would prove prophetic. The past seven days have just been unreal for a guy or gal who likes football and baseball. Who knows, there might have even been some soccer on, too! Let’s recap a few of the finer moments from around the sports world since last we spoke in the form of words, Vines, Tweets, GIFs, pictures, videos and whatever else exists these days.

TUESDAY

No football is played on Tuesday nights because the NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE! clearly doesn’t understand good business. Playing games on one-day’s rest would lead to a beautiful product with a high level of play and low injury rate. SMH. No worries though! The MLB Postseason kicked off on this night with a one-game playoff between the Oakland A’s and the Kansas City Royals. The game marked the end of Royals’ 29-year postseason drought, the longest in major professional sports.

It only turned into one of the greatest baseball games ever played.

The Royals were down four runs in the sixth inning with Jon Lester on the bump. And Lester was just cruising. But they somehow chipped away. Scored three in the eighth. One in the ninth. To extra innings we go.

One of my favorite aspects of this game was Royals’ reliever Brandon Finnegan, who was drafted THIS JUNE! He’s 21. He came into the most tense atmosphere one can imagine and dominated for a couple innings.

Eight pitches, three outs, in a playoff game, for Brandon Finnegan. He was in college in June.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) October 1, 2014

He was pumped:

Brandon Finnegon slow-motion strikeout reaction. https://t.co/zkxn8c1JM8

— Mitch (@TuesWithMitch) October 1, 2014

But the Royals’ magic appeared to run out when Oakland scored in the top of the 12th.

On the contrary, their magic was far from over. Eric Hosmer hit triple that looked like it might be a game-tying homer. Christian Colon singled him in on a ball that went about ten yards. Colon stole second, the Royals’ seventh steal of the game. 14 position players played for the Royals, and HALF OF THEM stole a base. Seven steals!

Then Salvador Perez came up. He was 0-5 coming into this at-bat, when he sent the Royals to the ALDS:

Jeff Passan made that Vine. The opening paragraph from his piece the next morning was all goosebumps if you’ve ever been a fan of a downtrodden team.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – There is always a payoff. That’s why we’re addicted to sports. No matter how ugly it gets, how miserable the team, how long the skid, how abhorrent the owner, how dreadful the management, how unlikeable the players, the payoff exists, somewhere in the future, at some random juncture, like on a Tuesday in the middle of America at a baseball stadium that for 29 years waited and waited and waited for such a night.

What a game.

WEDNESDAY

Still no football. What the hell, NFL?! The players haven’t even played since Sunday. That’s two whole days of resting. SMH. No worries though! There was another one-game playoff in the baseball world. This one was between the very hatable San Fransisco Giants and the easy-to-root-for Pittsburgh Pirates.

It was a bit of a letdown after Tuesday’s show, but I won’t complain about watching an elite pitcher throw a complete game shutout on the road against a good offense. Madison Bumgarner was incredible in an 8-0 Giants win.

Bumgarner is usually pretty mellow, but after the game he gave into some locker room peer pressure.

Jason Miller/Getty Images

I prefer the picture, but here’s the Vine of Mad Bum wasting about 44 ounces of beer:

There was also this incredible moment of a baffled security guard and an old lady in the Giants’ dugout:

THURSDAY

Thursday was the first of five straight days with both football and postseason baseball.

We started with the Detroit Tigers and Baltimore Orioles to begin the ALDS. This was a one-run game until the ninth inning when the Orioles busted it open with eight runs to win 12-3. The Baltimore crowd was almost as good as the Kansas City crowd from Tuesday.

As that game was in its final stages, the NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE! started their fifth week. The Packers blew out some crappy team. I literally can’t remember who they beat right now (legitimate sports overload, guys). I could look it up in like 10 seconds, but who really cares? Thursday Night Football is pretty stupid. At least this one gave me an early lead in my fantasy league.

But we had more baseball! The Royals, coming off that ridiculous win on Tuesday, had to go on the road and face the team with the best record in baseball in the Los Angeles Angels. Each team scored a run in the third. Each team scored a run in the fifth. And that was it through nine innings. And ten innings. Tension was high. Then Mike Moustakas hit a homer in the 11th. Greg Holland quickly locked down the bottom half of the inning and the game.

The Royals, in their first two postseason games in 29 years, played 23 innings and won each by one run. Amazing.

But that’s not all.

We also had some college football with unranked Arizona heading to Eugene to play #2 Oregon. This turned out to be a very entertaining game. We even had Heisman candidate quarterbacks running over defensive backs while catching 26-yard touchdowns from running backs.

via @cjzero

Naturally, the Thursday night showcase game was an omen for the weekend to come. Arizona came into Eugene and took down the #2 team in the country in their own crib. This game ended a little after midnight because sleep is overrated because SPORTS!

FRIDAY

This day saw all four MLB Postseason series in action. The first game started at 10:07 a.m while I was still groggy-eyed at the office. The last game ended some 13 hours later after about ten beers while I was at my third bar (I think). Three of the four games were decided by one run. The other was decided in the 11th inning. Just an amazing day of baseball.

Baltimore and Detroit started us off. Baltimore was down three heading into the bottom of the eighth. They scored four in the frame and won 7-6.

San Fransisco beat Washington in another one-run game that saw Bryce Harper hit a ball that appeared to go 800 feet or so:

Friday’s main course was a matchup of Clayton Kershaw and Adam Wainwright. Naturally the two best pitchers in the National League combined to give up 14 runs. The Dodgers entered the inning down 5 and dropped an 8 spot on Kershaw, who had the best regular season since Pedro Martinez in the late 90s. Fort Collins native Marco Gonzales, a rookie on the Cards, got the win in his first postseason action.

Yet, the best game again involved the Royals, which was fine with the Kansas City Police Department:

Officers on radio discussing how ridiculously slow tonight is. @Royals seem to be great crime prevention.

— kcpolice (@kcpolice) October 4, 2014

A well-pitched game from both teams led to extra innings again. And it led to Eric Hosmer heroics again. His 11th-inning bomb gave the Royals a 2-0 series lead over a 98-win Angels team.

@mlb

So make that 34 innings in three postseason games for Kansas City. All extra-inning, one-run wins. Simply astounding stuff.

We also got a great Vine of what happens when you give thundersticks to a couple kids rooting for opposite teams.

https://twitter.com/Lana/status/518253083777060866

So sometime after 11 p.m., Friday’s madness comes to an end. Time to take a breath, because the next day was…

SATURDAY

This was the nuttiest single sports day of the year, or is at least tied with the first two days of the NCAA tournament back in March.

The college football weekend was complete chaos. We saw losses from the teams ranked:

• Second.  #2 Oregon 24, Arizona 31
• Third.  #3 Alabama 17, #11 Ole Miss 23
• Fourth.  #4 Oklahoma 33, #25 TCU 37
• Sixth.  #6 Texas A&M 31, #12 Mississippi State 48
• Eighth.  #8 UCLA 28, Utah 30
• Fourteenth.  #14 Stanford 14, #9 Notre Dame 17
• Fifteenth.  #15 LSU, 7, #5 Auburn 41
• Sixteenth.  #16 USC 34, Arizona State 38
• Seventeenth.  #17 Wisconsin 14, Northwestern 20.
• Eighteenth.  #18 BYU 20, Utah State 35
• Nineteenth. #19 Nebraska 22, #10 Michigan State 27

Now, not every one of those games are upsets. But still, five top-18 teams lost to unranked opponents. That’s a pretty wild day!

The biggest of these wins was probably Ole Miss taking down Alabama. They like to party in Oxford and wins of this nature don’t come around very often, so the people in town were fairly excited. They tore down the goalposts and took them for quite the tour around town and campus, chronicled here. One of the uprights found a final resting place in some dude’s apartment.

Goal post made it home pic.twitter.com/EbimQguVEU

— Buckner Corso (@BucknerCorso) October 5, 2014

Also happening in Oxford: Katy Perry, who was a guest on ESPN’s College Gameday that morning, doing this:

I also encourage you to read more on the scene from Oxford in this excellent piece.

The ending to the Arizona State – USC game was also pretty decent:

AZ Central

And oh yeah, on the local scene, Rashard Higgins had four receiving touchdowns in an easy Colorado State win over Tulsa on an absolutely gorgeous Colorado afternoon. Decent.

 

Here's a big, orange crowd watching a CSU Rams blowout on a picture perfect Colorado afternoon. pic.twitter.com/4EpOHMKUEI

— Mitch (@TuesWithMitch) October 5, 2014

Not much analysis needed here. The Rams’ are still rollin’. Make that 10-3 in their last 13. Traveling to Nevada on Saturday night is a big one. CSU opened as 1-point favorites.

Hey baseball happened too!

Just two more postseason games decided by one run is all. And hey, one of them lasted 18 innings.

Wait, what? 18 innings? In a postseason game? Yeah, that’s a record. The Giants and Nationals just kept playing and not scoring until Brandon Belt did this:

Check out this bat drop! I had no idea Brandon Belt had that level of swag. Again:

Cut4

Once that game ended after six hours, it was time to flip over to the other NLDS game, a well-played game that saw the Dodgers even the series with the Cardinals by scoring a dramatic (surprise) 8th-inning go-ahead run.

So that’s it for the day, right? That game ended sometime after 11 p.m.

Nope. Boise State and Nevada were still going back and forth in an important Mountain West battle. Boise was able to hang on in Reno to win an entertaining 51-46 game. (CSU probably wouldn’t have minded if the Wolfpack pulled off the upset.) What a day.

What? There was one more game still going on?

Well look at that! Washington State and California were exchanging after-midnight touchdowns. Connor Halladay set an all-time NCAA record with 734 yards passing. SEVEN HUNDRED THIRTY-FOUR YARDS PASSING. He lost. His kicker missed a 19-yard field goal as time expired. 60-59. Hope you took the over. That was an unbelievable finish to an unbelievable Saturday.

NOOOOOWWWW are all the Saturday sports over?? It's 1 AM.

— Mitch (@TuesWithMitch) October 5, 2014

SUNDAY

Ten hours after that last college football game ended, a full slate of NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE! games kicked off.

Locally, Sunday was all about the Broncos game. And naturally, there was plenty to talk about.

Peyton Manning threw his 500th touchdown pass. Demaryius Thomas set the Broncos all-time single-game receiving record. The Broncos won comfortably. They still look like the best team in the AFC. I have essentially no concerns about this team as the long preseason rolls on. (Okay, maybe the running game a little bit.)

While the Broncos were playing, the Orioles completed the sweep of the Tigers in– guess what?– a one-run game.

And then Sunday night the Royals completed their three-game sweep of the heavily favored Angels with a rare comfortable win. The scene in Kansas City was awesome again.

Salvador Perez partying on the dugout with fans. And a broom.(John Sleezer, KC Star)

It just never stops, man.

MONDAY

Monday was just your average, really mellow day of two tightly contested postseason games. Bumgarner slipped up at home and the Nationals stayed alive. Cardinals’ mid-season acquisition John Lackey shutdown the Dodgers to take a 2-1 lead in that series.

And oh yeah, there was a Monday Night Football game that saw Russell Wilson have some sort of career night that led (in part) to my fantasy team losing after holding a 72-point lead heading into Sunday night’s game. Freaking brutal.

Those seven days made for a dizzying amount of sports consumption. If one could overdose on enjoying sports, I would have been a goner sometime Saturday night. What a week, man.

I would say I could use a break… But there’s two more postseason games tonight.

A couple links worth sharing from the past week:

• Just one: Absolutely incredible, rare, recently discovered footage from the 1924 World Series. Complete with old-timey windups, an unnecessary dive into first base, and 40,000 fans storming the field in Washington DC. From 90 years ago! One of the coolest videos I’ve ever seen.

(All that other stuff is taking the place of the other weeekly departments.)

And finally, Here’s the latest episode of “The Grind.” It’s the best one yet, with some really cool footage from the Boston College upset. After hearing McElwain yell “Go Take It!” at halftime and the boys sing the fight song postgame, I found myself frantically searching for some pads to throw on.

Happy Tuesday everybody. Thanks for reading. And a big, special thank you goes out to sports for their continued existence. See y’all next week.

***

Comment on any of this stuff below, or email me at mdhahn1@yahoo.com with post ideas, videos or other media I should know about. Subscribe at the top right of this page. Follow me on Twitter @TuesWithMitch.

Your Weekly Roundup From the Sports World and Internet

Welcome to the 73rd edition of Tuesdays With Mitch, where we have reached our last post before we can dive into some actual, real-life football. Let’s get into it…

(Aaron Ontiveroz/Denver Post)

I was privileged enough to attend Todd Helton’s number retirement Sunday at Coors. It was pretty great.

Brad Hawpe and Matt Belisle each made a short speech. I was impressed with Belisle, who spoke very comfortably, funny, and naturally. But it was Helton’s 11-year-old daughter Tierney Faith that garnered the most laughs and applause with her, “My daddy’s been home A LOT… Do you want him back?” The crowd roared.

Todd made a nice speech and kept it short. I don’t think public speaking to a crowd of 42,000 people is his favorite thing, which isn’t much of a surprise.

Both Monfort brothers were on the field, but seemed conscious enough to stay out of the way for the most part. Neither spoke. So that was good.

The Rockies don’t get much right between the white lines, but they’ve handled all of the Helton retirement stuff really well, right down to that horse in the header of this blog.

As you should know, Todd is my favorite athlete ever. so I thought the proceedings were pretty special. But damn, seeing Todd Helton out there in that suit made me wish I was a kid again slamming Squishies and watching 17 at first base instead of gearing up for five days and 40 hours of work I don’t really care about.

Anyway, here’s the farewell video to fans that was played before Todd spoke. Goosebumps.

If you need something to do while I’m over in the corner pretending not to cry, here are some GIFs of the ceremonies:

 

 

(I’m not sure why those aren’t looping like normal GIFs, but whatever.)

Hey while we’re at it, check out a crazy, crazy Helton stat I came across on Sunday:

The #Rockies have scored 17,583 runs in franchise history, Todd Helton produced 13.9% (2,438) of them.

— Ryan M. Spaeder (@theaceofspaeder) August 17, 2014

And one more  to spark a little Hall Of Fame debate:

95 Hall of Fame players have an OPS+ (OPS adjusted to player's environment) that is worse than or equal to #Rockies Todd Helton.

— Ryan M. Spaeder (@theaceofspaeder) August 17, 2014

Off to the weekly departments…

Stud(s) of the week:

This kid is named Blake Money. Oh look, he has three siblings. Oh look, one of his siblings is named Cash. That means his name is Cash Money. That’s a cool name.

shoutout cash money pic.twitter.com/Z5SDHMzSWq

— Lana Berry (@Lana) August 15, 2014

I wonder if that’s real. You’d think Cash Money would be in the crowd supporting Blake, right? Oh… He was there, all right. He was freaking there. And he is Cash Money.

cash money is even more cash money than i expected him to be pic.twitter.com/GADd7EWltM

— Lana Berry (@Lana) August 15, 2014

Cash Money is a stud. The Money parents are studs.

The LLWS gave us one more stud. I love this coach’s talk to his players after his team was eliminated last night:

ICYMI: Rhode Island #LLWS coach Dave Belisle delivers heartfelt speech, reminds us all what it's really about. » http://t.co/5t9kkcmPjx

— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) August 19, 2014

Douche of the week:

Vine of the week:

This one is better without the sound, but the guy’s face at the end cracks me up.

Tweet of the week:

I have no idea what any of this means, but it makes for a pretty great Tweet:

i've waited my entire life to read this: pic.twitter.com/MzCeML82oG

— tipper gore (@katebushvgore) August 15, 2014

A couple links worth sharing:

• Jack Graham received a “poor performance review”, which essentially means nobody liked working with him. I don’t know if this had anything to do with his firing, but… Probably. Maybe. Yeah, I don’t know.
• Drew Magary’s “Why Your Team Sucks” is pretty funny every year. I assume most of us will enjoy this year’s editions on the:
• Raiders,
• Chiefs,
• and Chargers.
• A player for the Michigan basketball team who has survived two separate plane crashes and a prolonged coma and seen his whole family die in said plane crashes made his first appearance for the Wolverines.
• Some of the best stuff I’ve read from the continually depressing news coming out of Ferguson. “America is Not For Black People“, “The Front Lines of Ferguson“, and John Oliver is able to add some humor and provide you with all you need to know in his segment from his HBO show. The YouTube version already has about 2 million views in two days.

The picture of the week is actually Nike advertisement featuring CSU’s own Becky Hammon, who, of course, is about to be the first woman to coach full-time in the NBA:

Nike

Some other stuff the internet had to offer from the past week:

Before you talk about how stupid the Ice Bucket Challenge is, watch this:

Speaking of the Ice Bucket thing, these people didn’t do very good. Some of these are stupid, some are intentional, but some are pretty damn funny:

And finally, here’s a minor league manager going absolutely nuts. Thanks, man!

Happy Tuesday everybody. Don’t forget the Simpsons marathon (Every episode ever in succession) starts on Thursday on FXX. Clear out the DVR. Thanks for reading. See ya next week.

***

Comment on any of this stuff below, or email me at mdhahn1@yahoo.com with post ideas, videos or other media I should know about. Subscribe at the top right of this page. Follow me on Twitter @TuesWithMitch.

Dee Hart Transfers and Your Weekly Roundup

Welcome to the 71st edition of Tuesdays With Mitch, where we’re officially in the dog days of summer. That usually means there’s not much to talk about. But the internet provided plenty of material this week. Let’s get into it…

Dee Hart is now a Ram. (USATSI)

We’re jumping right into the weekly departments after a few words on someone I’m hoping is a future Stud of the Week.

Colorado State football just made an interesting move that could potentially change their 2014 (that’s the upcoming one!) season dramatically. Yeah, I’m talking a little college football. We’re getting close.

Colorado State needs a running back. Kapri Bibbs left with two years of eligibility remaining to try to make an NFL roster. Donnell Alexander, who is also pretty damn good, transferred to Akron in a strange story that seemed to involve his family clashing with the coaches. (Or something like that.) So the Rams didn’t really have anyone to tote the rock this year. They might have found one.

It was announced this week that Alabama running back Dee Hart is transferring to CSU and will be eligible to play immediately, since he already has his degree from ‘Bama. Hart is a former 5-star recruit from Orlando, who didn’t find much playing time with the Tide after tearing his ACL in his sophomore year and re-injuring it on a punt return a year later.

This could turn out to be a huge move. Garrett Grayson has turned into a stud at quarterback and the receiving corps figures to be the deepest and most talented we’ve seen in years. Having a capable running back can provide some important balance.

Now, I’m not saying the Rams have found the next Kapri Bibbs or anything, but I do think this could prove to be an important pick-up. If Hart can earn the starting job and just be a solid player, the Rams would all of the sudden be set at all of the offensive skill positions. A couple hundred carries for 800 or so yards and 12 touchdowns would go a long way for this team.

Nobody knows if this move will even work out for the kid, but if it does, it could be one that changes the landscape of the Mountain West.

So that would be cool.

I hope to have some sort of Colorado State football preview in the next few weeks to break things down a bit more. PINS AND NEEDLES, AMIRITE?!

Stud(s) of the week:

Last week was full of crap and sad/annoying stories. We’re taking the opposite approach this week, with 5 different studs. Yay!

Speaking of Alabama football, all of their fans are freaks. But I love this video so much that these people all get a nod for their studliness.

Here’s the scenario: Fans line up with a chance to get an autograph from Nick Saban (who all of these hillbillies absolutely worship), but there’s only a limited amount of time (or something, I honestly don’t care to know the specifics) so they all hit the field at Bryant-Denny and really have to hustle to ensure their spot in line.

They do it every year. This is the first I’ve heard of it. And I fell in love before I even watched the video because it was introduced to me as “The Running of the Gumps”, which makes me laugh hysterically every time I hear it. THE RUNNING OF THE GUMPS!

All hail THE RUNNING OF THE GUMPS:

Okay…

Oooookayyyyy….

Okay. I wasn’t planning on doing this, but I need to break this down a little further. We gon peple wutchin’ n Tuscaloosa!

Determined GUMPS are prepared for the rain; or possibly wanting Nick Saban to sign a blue and white umbrella.

“Sir, Nick Saban will not sign a trash bag full of human heads. We apologize for the inconvenience.”

Whassup baby?

Not enough old dudes with mustaches tuck their Alabama football T-shirts into black shorts.

The emotions vary greatly during THE RUNNING OF THE GUMPS.

I bet this lady runs the 40 in 10.6 seconds flat in those kicks.

Ten bucks says this dude tried to talk Saban into giving him a tryout.

Saban will be really confused when this guy asks him to sign a giant painting of his four cats. Wait, no he won’t.

These people are cheating. You are supposed to run, GUMPS!

I think this was the part of the video when I stopped and thought, “Seriously, WHAT IN THE HELL is going on?”

Your RUNNING OF THE GUMPS MVP

I just don’t understand how all of these people got off work on a Monday (haha). But seriously, can someone remind me to never go to the state of Alabama?

And to wrap this little segment up… An Auburn fan gave this whole scene a different soundtrack.

ROLLGUMPS!

THE RUNNING OF THE GUMPS is my new favorite holiday.

The Ray Rice story is still horrible, but the news producer who screwed this up gets some studly props. Perhaps my favorite news blooper of the year.

I also give props to the male anchor for making that face and casually pointing towards the screen he’s watching like Hmmmm….. I uhh…. I don’t think that’s the right video. Yeah. Yeah, that appears to be a fight between an old guy in a sweat suit and a guy in a spiderman costume. Definitely not Ray Rice. Right? Yep.

Absolutely hysterical.

More news bloops: Louis Slungpue: Absolute stud.

I have the sense of humor of a 12-year-old sometimes, so getting the phrase “took a really large dump” on the news is hero-level stuff.

Shifting gears to a more traditional stud, you ought to know I loves me some Vin Scully. So the announcement that he was returning for his 66th season (think about that) was a pretty awesome moment, even if all those Dodgers flags make me want to projectile on my laptop.

Well done and creative job by the Dodgers with this announcement as well. Vin is just an American treasure.

And this week’s true Stud Of The Week is Jim Kelly. Watch this SC Featured that takes an intimate look at his battle with cancer. ESPN is so good at this kind of thing. I can’t embed this one, but it’s available here. NBC also aired a powerful video on Sunday night during some stupid preseason game. It’s available here. They’re both worth your time.

Douche of the week:

I can’t think of anyone else, so we’ll go with Dick Monfort again, because why not?

Vine of the week:

Pretty sweet catch. (Kind of.)

Picture of the week:

This is what it looks like when 29 sumo wrestlers are all on the same flight.

機内ではこんな感じでした。
ぎゅうぎゅう状態です。#sumo pic.twitter.com/4vmXZQMHRy

— 八角部屋 (@hakkakubeya) July 30, 2014

A couple links worth sharing:

• Some disturbing news from the Air Force Academy, who is now investigating its athletic department. Good work from the Colorado Springs Gazette.
• Huh. I guess that’s all I got this week.

And finally, just look at this freaking catch from last night:

.

@cjzero

Play of the year in 2014.

Happy Tuesday everybody. Thanks for reading. Enjoy your preseason football. See ya next week.

***

Comment on any of this stuff below, or email me at mdhahn1@yahoo.com with post ideas, videos or other media I should know about. Subscribe at the top right of this page. Follow me on Twitter @TuesWithMitch.