We'll try out your name, Hunter. Just for you. I'm still toying around with how this will all work, and everything, so play along and pretend to be interested.

Kansas Football

KUsports.com | "Summer gridiron report: Time for KU to make history" by Conference chatter

Make sure and check out all of his Big 12 North previews. All worth reading.

Oread Boom Kings " Blog Archive " Strengths & Weaknesses: K-State

Same here. Hiphop and company over at OBK are just starting this S&W series, but it has all of the makings of a great one.

The Quad Countdown: No. 83 UTEP - The Quad Blog - NYTimes.com

And lastly, these are probably the best team-by-team previews you'll find. I've yet to start poring through them, because when I do I can't stop and end up reading like 20 of them at once. They just did UTEP a couple of days ago, and them being a Kansas opponent, I figured it'd be worth reading. They've also already done Duke, as well, which can be found here.

2007 Border War ranks as No. 23 among Big 12 moments - Big 12 - ESPN

Wha? #23? I mean, sure, it wasn't an epic game, but still a fantastic game. With incredible implications. It was basically an Elite Eight game (with the Big 12 Championship being a potential Final Four game, etc.) between two rivals that hate each other as much as any other pair in the country. Only, magnified by ten because they are never, ever good (ever), and it was the only game on at the time, and a billion people watched, and Carl Peterson shoved 10,000 extra SRO people and you couldn't move and you had to wait for hours to go to the bathroom and people were drunk and Gameday was there and it had a great almost-comeback and it was a good game. It should be higher. If it was between Oklahoma and Texas, where would it rank? Huh?

Miscellaneous

K-State's Snyder says he was first choice for Kansas lieutenant governor - Kansas City Star

File this away in the "I don't give a shit" Department. Cool, Bill. Now, I am more confident you know what you are doing. And that you will all of a sudden take a bunch of slapdicks* leftover by Ron Prince and make them competitive.

* Brian Billick's term, obtained via reading John Feinstein's Next Man Up. It's a great book, you sould read it.

Trent Green retires after 15 seasons - Kansas City Star

I always loved Trent Green, so I figured I should acknowledge his retirement. If you gave him time, he could pick apart defenses with the best of them. If he didn't get time, well, um, he wasn't completely awful. We still should have started Damon Huard in 2007, though.

Ramble after break. It's longish, and just about the NBA Finals (SPOILER ALERT!), so if you don't care just skip it. There wasn't a topic at hand, and I've wanted to write about it all day. So, here it goes...

NBA Finals - The Terribleness of Defeat, Even in Short-Term Relationships

Oh boy. First off, I just want to kindly ask KC to preemptively shut up. I don't wanna hear it. Second off, ugh. I still haven't entirely recovered from last night's NBA Finals. And no, it isn't like I'm some Magic fan or something. It's just, I don't like the Lakers. And it's really, really easy for me to adopt a team, and then all of a sudden scream and yell and whine and pout as if I've been following them since Halloween. It isn't really bandwagoning; I just have to pick a team to root for whenever I watch a game (unless I can't, like last year's NBA Finals, in which I rarely even watch the actual games), and when I pick you, I'm with you.

Maybe I'm alone on this. I certainly don't know anybody else who takes to teams so passionately. But last night was certainly rough. I don't know how many of you watched it, but it wasn't pretty.

Orlando was winning early on. Then, they were winning by a lot. Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom and Andrew Bynum were all in foul trouble. Trevor Ariza was pouting and got a technical. Dwight Howard had just as many rebounds in the 1st half as the entire Lakers team (14). There was no question who was better on this night. The place was rocking. The series was well on its way to being evened.

Then, Trevor Ariza ruined it all. He scored 9 straight points, and everything stopped. The fun, bouncing Magic bench stood there stoically, towels over the head, hoping that Dwight and Company could recover. It took almost a full quarter of gametime (from halfway through the 3rd to halfway through the 4th), but they finally did. The Lakers got it up to a 6-point lead at one point, but the Magic fought back. The got it back to even. Then, they took the lead. Hedo Turkoglu hit a preposterous three that shouldn't have been hit, and then came back down and hit a floater. Five-point lead, Orlando. And then, everything went to the shitter. Trevor Ariza hit some ridiculous, 26-foot shot that was released while the shot clock was seemingly paused on 1. I don't remember exactly what happened after that, but it isn't entirely important. It ended up with the ball in Dwight Howard's hands, up 3, around 12 seconds left. He stood on the free throw line, his biggest kryptonite. Clank. Clank, again. Jameer Nelson, out of good sportsmanship, decided to give Derek Fisher a wide-open three. That is rarely (read: never) a good idea. Swish. Tie game. The Magic ran a clusterfuck of an out-of-bounds play, and that was that. Sure, there were 5 minutes to be played, and I kept on watching. Just hoping for a different outcome. But it never came.

I'm still angry.

I know the Magic aren't "my" team, but it hurts like that right now. But they had every chance. The Magic just didn't play well enough down the stretch. In a lot of ways, it reminded me of our game against the Spartans. Except, we just gave it away at the end and didn't have the extra 8 minutes at the end to come back. Or something like that. In any case, I'm in a bad mood right now.

And it's all Derek Fisher's fault.

Yikes.