Five O'Clock Five, Saturday Edition

Elvis Presley would have been 70 years old today. Read two insightful posts, with related interesting links, on the King's beginnings here and here.

I like Charlie Weis more every time he opens his mouth.  In a press conference yesterday at Notre Dame, he answered a reporter's question concerning recruiting speed thusly:

"I love speed, love guys that can run, but first I want guys that can play," Weis said. "Somebody will say, 'There's a receiver who runs a 4.3!' Well, he might be better suited to having those track spikes on. He can run a 10.3 100 meters, but what if he can't catch the ball? Show me a guy who can play, that's what I'm looking for. I like playmakers. Don't get me wrong, I love speed, but speed can be overrated. If he's not a football player, what difference does it make how fast he is?"

Finally, a coach at ND that gets it.  Notre Dame has failed miserably in recruiting football players since about 1993 and I blame Lou Holtz entirely.  While Holtz should be credited with making the Irish faster than they ever were, he coveted speed over everything.  And that carried over into the Davie and Willingham eras.  That's how ND ended up with so many Clifford Jeffersons, Bobby Browns, Randy Kinders and Brock Williams'; and not enough Bobbie Howards, Grant Irons', Lee Bectons (who had to be the slowest starting tailback in major college football history), and Reggie Brooks'.

I also love this, in response to a question about ND's offensive output this past year:

And here is my simple philosophy to that question: I believe you utilize the players you have. If you have running backs, you run the ball. If you have a quarterback and receivers that can throw it, you throw the ball, as long as you can protect them. I'm a personnel-oriented guy. We're going to study the personnel we have.

We're going to study the new people, whoever we end up bringing in here. We're going to add them to the mix. We're going to see what we have, and that's what we're going to do. My system is broad. I mean, there's been years where I've thrown the ball 65%, run it 35%. This year I ran the ball over half the time. That had something to do with I had a runner that was pretty darn good. I think rather than reinvent the wheel, you find out who you have, what you can do, and that's what you do.

On the other side of that is when you're playing your opponents, you have to find out what their weaknesses are. If there's a team that we're going against that's not very good against the run, we'll be running it a lot. If we're playing against a team that's not very good in coverage, we'll be throwing it all over the yard. So, it's your personnel and their personnel, because football is a personnel game. You need to know what your personnel can do and what they can't do, and you need to know what your opponents can do and can't do, and it changes on a weekly basis.

Both Bob Davie and Tyrone Willingham failed miserably at fitting their system to their personnel. They also failed miserably at making adjustments to the other team (especially Willingham). And Bob Davie should never, ever coach again at any level for his utter failure to get David Givens (yeah, that David Givens, the one with 56 catches this year) the ball at least 15 times per game. He should have won the Heisman in 2000 (and 2001, for that matter), and instead was splitting time with Joey Getherall and Javin Hunter.

Wanna keep your teenagers from drinking at parties?  Show them these pictures of what happens to the guy who passes out first.  All I know is, if I ever woke up in the condition that some of those folks are in, I'd kick the ass of the first person I saw.  Even if they didn't do it, they certainly didn't do anything to stop it.  (Link via Boing Boing.)

Let me say this up front:  I hate reality TV.  I don't watch "Survivor," or "American Idol," or "The Apprentice," or "Fear Factor."  But.  Have you seen the GEICO ad that purports to be a commercial for a reality show called "Tiny House?"  Someone needs to make this an actual show.  I would watch it.  Everyone would watch it.

Via A Small Victory, here's a story about Matt Leto, who's 21 years old and so good at video games that he's parlayed into a near-six figure income and god-like status among other video game devotees. Besides wanting to smack the shit out of his parents for letting their kid spend fifteen years of his life in front of the TV instead of outside physically interacting with others of his species, what struck me about the piece is how desperately the author tries to make Leto out to be more than the stereotypical computer/gaming nerd.

So how does Leto come off? Well, let's see. Still lives at home? Check. No girlfriend? Check. Enormous ego? Check. Socially inept? Check. Personal hygiene takes a back seat to playing? Check.  So there you go.  Even on the human interest side, reporters try to fit the facts to their angle rather than the other way around.

Comments

[adam h]

Thank you again, Robb, for guiding me to some of the funniest pointless crap I've seen. I never would have found this stuff - God bless you for wasting enough time to find it and show me the way...
Yes, I would watch every second of 'Tiny House'! The line, "This is kind of awesome!" followed by "This is so NOT awesome!" kills me for hours after I see that commercial.
And the drunk kid whose bunk bed is falling over on top of him...Che would be proud, I'm sure.

This is one of your best posts in a while. Thanks!