The BCS Mess and Lil’ John…A Taste of Things to Come

Originally posted on "Is It Sports?" This is where it all began, our first Is It Sports? post, written by both Ryan and Steve.

Ryan: heres a question for you... if we have so many bowls, cant we eliminate the motor city bowl and have the top mac team play the top wac team instead of them playing 6th or 7th teams in crappy bowls?
Steve: yeah might as well
Steve: I never understood the MAC champ vs. Big Ten #7 thing
Steve: going to a bowl game in Boise would suck too
Ryan: exactly
Ryan: especialy if you are say, boise
Ryan: the only playoff i would endorse is one that features just the conference champions
Steve: like all 11?
Ryan: yeah... works for the big ten
Steve: that would be interesting
Ryan: 10 games and 18 bowls
Ryan: because you cant eliminate bowls
Steve: where would the tournament games be played?
Ryan: and the 4-5 game is always the rose bowl, pac 10 vs big ten
Ryan: same sites as the top 10 bowls
Steve: so who would get the byes then?
Ryan: top three non big ten pac ten teams according to the bcs
Steve: so that would always be the ACC, SEC, and Big 12 champs probably
Ryan: more than likely
Ryan: unless a utah slips in there
Steve: so this year it would have been...
Steve: 1. Oklahoma
Steve: 2. Auburn
Steve: 3. Utah
Steve: 4. USC
Steve: 5. Michigan
Steve: 6. Virginia Tech
Steve: ...or Louisville or Boise State?
Ryan: just go with espn polls for ease
Ryan: louisville va tech boise
Steve: ok so that makes Pitt 9
Steve: and Toledo 10
Steve: and North Texas 11
Steve: so the first round would be Louisville vs. North Texas
Ryan: so, Louisville N Texas
Ryan: va tech toledo
Ryan: boise pitt which would be huge
Steve: I thing Boise would definitely take them
Ryan: yeah, but it would still be a big game
Steve: show how much the Big East sucks
Ryan: then assuming the seeds, ok and boise, auburn and va tech, utah and louisville
Ryan: all quality games... and as it would play out, you would get to see the national champ play 2 undefeated teams no matter what
Ryan: well, barring upsets
Steve: yeah Utah/Louisville would be interesting
Ryan: it would be a shootout
Steve: yeah
Ryan: but i really dont have a problem with the bcs, to be honest with you... you are ALWAYS going to have problems no matter what
Ryan: wa wa, you left us out of the tournament
Steve: yeah its a 117 team league
Ryan: at least there is finality to this
Steve: Notre Dame would be pissed
Ryan: well, give notre dame tyhe big east playoff berth if the deserve it, or make them join a conference for christ sake... the big ten.. they play half of us anyways
Ryan: but i would really prefer the bowls.. .thats the way its always been, and a playoff truly doesnt accomplish anything
Ryan: bowls celebrate winning programs and i think in college football, a program is more valuable than one team
Ryan: so im glad oklahoma and usc got in and auburn didnt, because usc and oklahoma will be good next year, and auburn wont
Steve: I can't believe how much ass USC kicked
Ryan: especially after tech thumped cal
Steve: I know
Steve: Cal must have been pouting
Ryan: i think "sucking" is the term
Steve: yeah
Steve: I just hope Leinart comes out so he doesn't screw over the Niners
Ryan: the heisman is cursed, you know
Steve: yeah, but I think Ken Dorsey's arm is too
Ryan: yeah... florida... what a quarterback hotbed
Ryan: did you see rex grossman in his 7 snaps this season?
Steve: awesome
Steve: well Dorsey went to Miami
Ryan: last i checked miami is still in florida
Ryan: the only good miami is the one in ohio
Steve: I thought you meant like UF
Ryan: well, you got weinke too... remember him?
Steve: because I was going to bring up Danny Awful
Ryan: jesse palmer
Ryan: the last decent quarterback to come out of that state went to UCF
Steve: Rob Johnson
Steve: yeah Culpepper
Ryan: that is not saying much
Ryan: Marshall has produced two qbs more recently than the entire state of florida
Ryan: and i dont care what you say, pennington is a much better quarterback than culpepper
Ryan: pennington to moss at marshall did something culpepper to moss never did..... win
Steve: yeah thats a point
Steve: I don't dislike Pennington
Ryan: i would rather have pennington and santana moss than culpepper and randy moss
Steve: randy's a headcase
Ryan: yeah.... unrelated... do you read espn magazine? simmons article in that one?
Ryan: its about kobe.... he makes a fleeting reference to wrestling that was pretty funny
Steve: oh yeah I read that one online
Steve: how he should become a bad guy?
Ryan: yeah... i liked the part where he smacked nicholson with the chair
Steve: haha yeah I liked that too
Steve: you should read his pyramid scheme article from 3 years ago
Steve: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/020108a
Ryan: i think we could start posting some of our im conversations online on some sort of website and it would catch on
Steve: haha yeah

And there you have it, the conversation that led to this site. All of these conversations are held on AOL Instant Messenger but we're going to change our screen names to our actual names and color code them for your convenience.

You don’t have to read the entire conversation up there if you don’t want to, but we kicked around some pretty interesting ideas, namely our solutions to the college bowl system and compared Marshall’s ability to produce quality quarterbacks with the entire state of Florida. Marshall won. Decisively.

There are a few other things talked about in that convo, all of them sports related. The thing is though, we aren’t sure how much or little of our time will be spent on sports. Hence “isitsports”. We aren’t sure either. Note the conversation below:

Ryan: ok... given the conversation we had last night, and the abundant time on my hands, i have determined something
Steve: what's that?
Ryan: well, i was thinking today about how intimidating most rappers are, then i realize how unintimidating lil jon is... and then it dawned on me that with the release of "ok" by Nivea, featuring lil john, he only needs to make one more song to complete his career, and at the same time, finish the joke the entire rap industry is playing on him.... but my idea is a song called "what?!" by DMX and Lil Jon
Steve: why would it complete his career?
Ryan: well, all his major phrases have been turned into songs then... yeah, lets go, ok, what
Ryan: what else does he have left?
Steve: haha ok
Steve: nothing much
Steve: you know how PDiddy had that Vote or Die thing?
Ryan: right
Steve: I saw a pic in magazine of Lil John passed out on the floor drunk wearing a shirt that looked just like Diddy's that said Crunk or Die!
Steve: I thought it was hilarious
Ryan: oh lil jon... how we'll miss you when youve completed the circle
Ryan: and after watching a couple hours of music videos, ive realized that nelly is the least intimidating rapper
Steve: he'll be one of those guys that in 10 years people will look back and be like what the hell were we listening to back in 2004?
Steve: yeah Nelly is pretty much crazy
Ryan: well, hes out to make money, not to build his image
Ryan: he is the modern ll cool j
Steve: yeah I guess

The earlier conversation was about one of my new interests, rap feuds. By the way, I’m from suburban Minneapolis; Steve is from south side Chicago.

Other than being ironic in a musical sense, it provides the biggest disconnect between us. Sure he is a Republican and I’m currently in between parties, he’s looking forward to a successful engineering career, and I’m, well, lazy. Needless to say, we are different people. The only thing we consistently disagree on is his insistence that the White Sox don’t suck and the Twins do. I’m sure you, the reader, will hear all about that over the coming however long we feel like writing this. For the time being, however, I’m going to have to say we won’t be putting 4 page IM conversations in our posts. – Ryan

Ryan pretty much summed me up. Like he said, I am from the south side of Chicago but I’m really only a fan of the White Sox, Bulls, and Blackhawks. I’ve always been a Cubbie hater and the Bears…well are just fun to make fun of. My NFL teams are the 49ers (2-14 I know, I know, but you gotta stick with your teams) and Raiders. Since I’m an engineer, just try to bear with my crappy writing skills.

In our conversation about Marshall vs. the state of Florida, I made my first of what might be many mistakes. Brad Johnson, who went to Florida State, is the QB I was thinking about, and even though he won a Super Bowl, I think he probably belongs on that list as well. Rob Johnson went to USC. Yeah, that Rob Johnson. You might remember him as the guy that got beat out for a job by a 56 year-old midget from Canada. The Johnson boys split time with the 2002 Super Bowl Champion Buccaneers, but their biggest contribution to that team was not screwing up…well Rob did, and that’s why Brad was the starter. I’ll never forget Brad’s legendary touchdown pass to himself when he was on the Vikings, and let’s not forget that he’s about to lose his job to an unproven and/or twice failed son of a Super Bowl winning quarterback, and might wind up as the starter on the (gulp) Cardinals. But the moral of the story here is that QB’s from the Big 3 colleges in Florida don’t live up to the hype they receive. I can’t believe I forgot about the best Heisman winner to ever play in the NBA, Charlie Ward. I’m sure there are plenty more where that came from as well. With Chris Rix and Brock Berlin entering the draft this April, NFL teams might want to look, but not touch. - Steve