The Connect: 02/25/09

Not enough MySpace angling In addition to Eye on the U's gallery (see previous post), even more images lurk out there in the internets. [Someone is praying that contact days never come, and it's my 8th-grade dance date there in the white jersey.]

Additional media to slobber over includes a 10 minutes video of players' bottoms, Whipple holding court, and Coach Shannon making a funny on camera.  Of course, my personal favorite Shannon video is still the one with small children in ties, where Randy encourages fat kids everywhere with a tale of survival while moms fail to lurk off-camera because no one wants to explain to their 9-year-old son that "running train" has nothing to do with toys on wheels.

If it's as big as they say, I'll be his girlfriend  Barry Jackson reports on the size of Mark Whipple's playbook, which the 'Canes are "eagerly embracing."  Like starving children who've only been fed measly rations of bubble screens!

UM coach Randy Shannon has placed no limits on how creative Whipple can be with play-calling. (He was very creative as head coach at Massachusetts.) "Sometimes, you're going to have to outscore people," Shannon said. "And that's one thing Coach Whipple has always been able to do."

Well, I guess sometimes you do have to outscore people! You know, if you like winning and stuff.  The Connect totally approves of this plan.

I shall build him a shrine of candles and mobile homes  Your humble blogger is not a native of the 305.  Rather, I was shocked to find upon entering this world that my parents had chosen Polk County. This became much more tolerable once I shared a school zone with Ray Lewis and I found out it's the lightning capital of the world. And now I have a new patron Hurricane to call my own: early enrollee and pride of Ridge Community High School, Mike James. And Jacory Harris LOOOOOVES him:

"I could go into the city, go home and people will be like I can't wait for Lamar Miller [to get there]," Harris said. "I'll be like 'I can't wait for you to see Mike James.' This guy really impressed me. He would call me to come out and throw on Saturdays when nobody was out here. He would tell me I got to be like [former Georgia running back] Knowshown Moreno. He sits up there and admires everybody. He's just so hardworking and determined, he wants to make it. The man, for a freshman, is super strong. Today, he maxed out at 350 [pounds]. I forgot what he squated, but it was like 400, 500 pounds. He's a man."

Hell, yeah, he's a man!  That comes from having to carry buckets of water to fill a bathtub and building our own houses with trees hewn down by hand up there in the country. Let bullet point #3 serve notice: the obsession begins.