Sam Mellinger

The Kansas City Star

What’s almost always the wildest month of the sports year is especially wild right now, with important Royals dropping like dead weight, the Chiefs signing everybody but the guy everybody wanted, Kansas somehow gutting out a classic NCAA Tournament win, K-State pushing through another wave of drama, and Mizzou, well, they’re probably too depressed right now to read any of this.

Let’s just get right to it:

@Brad_Fischer do you ever worry that another writer/cause/person will hijack #TwitterTuesday?

You guys must act as my security team and copyright infringement^ force.

^ I do not have a copyright on this. But stealing this would be really uncool. I’m looking at you, Babb.

@informedblackmn Before Twitter Tuesdays, could you please post more personal pics and home movies? It makes it easier.

Absolutely not. You people are animals.

@TheBeertree is MU’s loss (choke) to Norfolk State worse than KU’s losses (chokes) to Bradley or Bucknell?

Addressed this on the blog the other day. If you just think in terms of seeding, then yes, of course it is.

I just don’t know how comparable the situations are, and again, I’m not trying to start a Mizzou-KU deathmatch but the following paragraph is true:

The basketball standards are different at Kansas than Missouri.

In the grand scheme, when KU loses to Northern Iowa or VCU they are losing the opportunity to go to another Final Four, win another national championship.

When Missouri loses to Norfolk State, they are also losing an opportunity, but I’m just not sure — if you’re trying to do more than just the math on seedings — how you compare. Missouri basketball doesn’t have the emotional connection or history that Kansas does, or the emphasis.

I suppose you can spin this either way your allegiances tell you. Maybe it hurts at MU more because they don’t get these opportunities as often, or maybe it hurts at KU more because basketball is their showcase.

At gunpoint I’d give the tiebreaker to Missouri, just because of the seeding and everything that went into this season, but I just don’t think the situations are comparable. Two very different programs.

@lazyscience sports agony: even though it’s ridiculous, this tweet made me think (angrily): “yes, we get it, Missouri really choked.”

Sorry man. March is the best, awfulest month of the year.

@kent_swanson Assuming both teams make it, is UNC too talented to follow the blueprint that Purdue found for stopping KU & TRob?

I just think UNC is a bit soft. You remember some of those old Roy Williams KU teams? The ones that couldn’t stand up in a fight? I just feel like UNC has a bit of that stink on it.

If that game happens, regardless of Kendall Marshall’s status North Carolina will be the more talented team.

But I think KU would win that game, because it’s tougher.

So here’s the short answer to your question: it’s not that UNC is too talented to do what Purdue did, I just don’t think the Tar Heels are tough enough to do what Purdue did.

@ClintT13 Pretend you’re a KC sports fan with the “luck” to cheer for Mizzou instead of kU. Was this the worst sports week of your life?

Off the top of my head, a few things that could’ve made it worse: Mike Anderson advances to Sweet 16 with Arkansas, Brad Pitt is spotted wearing a KU t-shirt, or Shakespeare’s gets a health code violation

But, yeah. Between Norfolk State going nuts and KU gutting out that Purdue win and James Franklin’s surgery and Peyton Manning going to Denver…pour yourself a drink.

@jjskck Why do most journalists tend to look for an intangible reason (the ‘retroactive emotional diagnosis’) for every upset loss?

Please allow me to presume you’re talking about this column I wrote for Sunday’s paper, about playing the Big 12 championship draining Mizzou and missing the same game benefiting KU.

First, I’d like to mention that this one little gem of a column got me accused of hating AND apologizing for BOTH Kansas and Missouri. Quite an accomplishment, if I can toot my own horn here. Usually I need at least two, if not three or four columns to do that. So kudos to me.

Second, I don’t know if “most” journalists do this but here is when it often happens: when players on both sides of an issue say it’s happened. There is probably also something to the idea that the print/online medium is typically better to get into these types of things, while TV is typically better to break down X’s and O’s.

When I’m at a game, most times a lot of people reading my columns watched the same game I did, so I try to bring something you couldn’t see or notice on TV. Sometimes that’s emotion, sometimes that’s scene.

@michaelengel Tyshawn dunks with 2.5 left. Purdue hits the shot at the end. Tyshawn ____. #fillintheblank Would KU eat their own?

I see where you’re going with this, so you’re assuming Purdue wins in overtime. In the postgame, Taylor said he asked everybody around him if he did the right thing and, now that I think about it, I’m not sure he ever said what their answer was.

Watching live, I had the same thought you did, that Taylor dunking that ball was the only way Purdue had a chance to win, unless you think Purdue could’ve gotten a VERY quick foul, then count on Taylor to miss at least one of the two free throws, then hit a three-pointer with the VERY little time remaining.

The money move would’ve been to dribble out as much as possible and then just throw the ball high into the air — memory is foggy, but I vaguely remember Magic Johnson doing something like this once — to kill the last second or so.

But Taylor is also a college kid, spiked with adrenaline at that point, and seeing an easy dunk in front of him. Hard to crush the guy for taking it.

@PhilGarver Did I understand this correctly? When KSU plays road games, they don’t feed their players?

This is a heck of a point. I have a lot of thoughts on this, most of which I put on Twitter the other day, but here’s where we stand…

It’s a b.s. rule the NCAA has in place. Jamar Samuels isn’t an NBA prospect. Nobody (including Jamar) is getting rich off his pro career. Curtis Malone isn’t a K-State booster, and he isn’t an agent. John Currie put the team in an awful position by not giving the team time to prepare for this, and Frank Martin put Currie in an even worse position by essentially calling him out in the press conference.

But also: it is an NCAA rule, and if Malone didn’t know that, he should’ve. K-State has a compliance department that could’ve told Jamar this was a violation. And the explanation that Jamar needed money to eat is just silly, nearly as silly as Mitch Albom’s now-famous narrative about the Fab Five not being able to afford McDonald’s while at Michigan.

Jamar was headed on a road trip, and players get fed on road trips. Actually, they get fed at home, too.

I don’t begrudge the kid at all for wanting the money, I don’t begrudge Malone at all for wanting to give it. At least in this case, it’s a stupid rule, but it’s also a rule that everyone should’ve known exists.

A while back, I got a speeding ticket, for 11 over the limit, the cop sitting at the bottom of the hill. I whined and complained, even asked the cop if he knew about gravity (I was a punk college kid, gimme a break). It was a b.s. ticket, but it was also true that I was going faster than the (b.s.) law allowed. So I paid it.

@froggiemlm #twittertuesday The Missiouri thing for kansas fans to do would be to get NSU shirts correct?

Well, I actually saw a little bit of this in Omaha.

Writing this will make me no friends anywhere, but it’s the truth so here goes: Missouri fans aren’t that different from Kansas fans who aren’t that different from K-State fans.

Don’t get me wrong. There are snobby KU fans and angry Mizzou fans and insecure K-State fans, and the stereotypes can provide for good jokes and easy laughs, but as time goes on, the more I have this job, the more I also notice insecure KU fans and snobby Mizzou fans and angry K-State fans, or angry KU fans and insecure Mizzou fans and snobby K-State fans.

We’re all sports fans here, and there are far too many of us to generalize in the ways that make for good message board jokes.

I mean this with absolutely zero holier-than-thou. I love the passion, laugh at the (funny) jokes, appreciate the interest.

But I hope that somewhere in the middle of the craziness, we can all keep a baseline understanding of reality.

Also, I wonder how many KU fans might buy something off this website and send it across the state line.

@danedri Does K-State win against ‘Cuse if Jamar Samuels is in the game?

Would love to have seen the Wildcats try. Chances are they still would’ve lost — Syracuse is one of the best and most talented teams in the country, Fab Melo or not — but it sure would’ve been a better game.

@mitchopkins Have you ever had anyone react to you calling them the way Bob Knight did to Jason McIntyre? How did/would you respond to that?

This will be hard for you guys to believe, because I’m so charming and suave, but I’ve been yelled at lots of times. Sometimes, like with Dayton Moore, we’ll yell at each other and then in the same phone call move on to a professional conversation. Sometimes, like with Buddy Bell, he just walks off and I’m unsure what happened.

My favorite line, though, happened back when I was covering high schools, a conversation with Rockhurst football coach Tony Severino. I forget the details now, but I must’ve asked a question he didn’t like.

He paused. Asked how old I was. I’d just graduated college, so I was 22.

“(Shoot),” Severino said. “Twenty-two? I’ve got shoes older than you.”

@TbobSmith If you had to buy one Royals T-shirt jersey, with current contracts in place, and Sal Perez is sold out, who’s do you buy?

Hosmer. He’s the best player on the team, and it’s easy to forget this when you think about Scott Boras and what happened with Carlos Beltran or Johnny Damon but:

He’s under club control for six more seasons. That’s 2017.

How long do you keep t-shirts?

@J_Walker87 #TwitterTuesday if Peyton wins a SB w/ Den, is he the GoAT QB? Best stats + only QB to win with 2 teams

I’ve always been partial to John Elway as the best quarterback of all-time,^ and you make a good argument, but Elway also won two Super Bowls and dragged three otherwise eh teams to the Super Bowl and, in a way, now changes the game because who else could say they were responsible for TWO of the best five quarterbacks of all-time playing for the same franchise?

^ What I really mean by this is “best quarterback of my conscious lifetime as a fan,” so, basically, the last 25 years or so.

@kylejamescraig Sal Perez is down, Soria doesn’t look like Soria (2 yrs ago) and Getz at second?…anything positive coming from royals camp?

Nobody’s looked like Texas Chainsaw Massacre after fielding a ground ball so far.

@TheNumber65 What should I pay attention to this fall now that Manning is going to shred the AFC west? #crestfallen

Oh, come on. Things just got a lot tougher, but the NFL is a crazy minx. You never know what can happen. Maybe the neck doesn’t heal. Maybe the weather gets him. Maybe he’s not the same outside his Indianapolis comfort zone. Maybe Cassel turns the clock back to the middle 13 games or so of 2010.

But failing all that, you should pay attention to the hot fire coming out of our paper, this blog, and my Twitter feed.

I gotta eat.

@mmMOUF can I openly point and laugh at the Donkey fan base for billboards to start Tebow and then cheering his replacement months later?

I appreciate the hustle. Yes, you may. But you should also be prepared for them to point back and laugh if Peyton Manning’s killing it and the Chiefs start 2-4 or something.

@TheJeffReport would you like a video of me burning my Peyton Manning bobblehead in effigy?

Yes. Of course I would.

@AM_Hiles Top 5 candy bars. Go. #twitterTuesday #offtopic

Well, I’m a big proponent of freezing the candy bar. This is a must, although with Snickers, sometimes they can freeze too hard and you feel like you’re biting into a block of ice. But here goes anyway:

1. Peanut M&M’s (technically not a bar, but I’m counting on you to not be a jerk here).

2. Snickers.

3. Twix.

4. Skor (only if it’s frozen).

5. Reece’s.

@acoupstick earlier in the season I posted on FB I would have another kid and name after Self regardless of sex if he won the championship. Help!

Twitter is a weird place.

Comments

1. 

   Brian Jackson

   1 year, 2 months ago

   “When I’m at a game, most times a lot of people reading my columns watched the same game I did, so I try to bring something you couldn’t see or notice on TV.”

   I think this is why I like your work, Sam, and your tweets. What I don’t get is writers who tweet play-by-play.

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