K-State Q&A: What to watch and eat without basketball. Plus thoughts from Gene Taylor
I spoke with Kansas State athletic director Gene Taylor for a few minutes Thursday night.
Before we dive into your questions, here are the highlights he shared with me about all the sports cancellations that are happening across college athletics and beyond in response to growing concerns over the coronarvirus:
1. The K-State men’s and women’s basketball teams shed some tears when they were informed the Big 12 was canceling its tournaments. Taylor broke the news to the women’s team in the middle of a practice. Executive associate AD Casey Scott told the men’s team its season was over.
“They were pretty upset,” Taylor said. “I told the women and they were broken up. Casey told me the same thing. There were some tears in the room and some frustration. The men’s team had just won and wanted to keep playing. They thought they could keep going. The women’s team didn’t see it coming. It was hard.”
2. Taylor hopes K-State can continue playing baseball games this season. That might not be practical, considering the Wildcats have suspended games and practices until March 30 and the NCAA has canceled the College World Series, but if things improve and it’s safe for games to resume in April he thinks there would be a desire to return to the field and see if some type of modified championship could be held.
The Bat Cats have a strong pitching staff and were optimistic about their chances in Big 12 play before games started getting canceled.
3. K-State spring football practice might still happen.
“It’s a possibility,” Taylor said.
Taylor is hopeful the Wildcats can hold 15 practices in April or May. Practice was scheduled to begin on March 17, but things might merely be postponed. Taylor suggested possibly practicing for 15 straight days in April or holding 10 spring practices instead of a full 15. That is all to be determined.
4. The NBA deciding to suspend its season accelerated all of the college cancellations. As soon as that happened, the conversation among Big 12 athletic directors shifted from playing games in empty arenas to not playing games at all.
5. Some have suggested that seniors will be granted another year of eligibility because of these cancellations. Taylor thinks that idea will get lots of support for spring athletes like baseball players who barely got to play this season. But he doubts any special rules will be made for basketball players or wrestlers, who went through an entire regular season and only missed out on the postseason.
6. It is too early to tell what kind of financial impact calling off the Big 12 Tournament and NCAA Tournament will have on schools like K-State.
“I don’t know what will happen,” Taylor said. “We were all expecting big checks from our conferences. I don’t know how different those checks will be now. I’m not sure if there are insurance policies that protect the schools. That is going to be a conversation we have at some point.”
And now, it’s time to get to your questions. Well, it’s almost time.
I have also been toying with the idea of starting to share a streaming suggestion during this weekly mailbag, and now that there are no sports to watch I feel like it’s appropriate. I’ve got two for you on this Friday: Narcos Mexico and Altered Carbon. Both series recently came out with their second seasons on Netflix and they are highly entertaining. They’re so good I’m considering going back and watching season one of both again.
Well, the team that wins the final basketball game of the season traditionally gets to hang a national championship banner. This season, that team was K-State.
At the very least, K-State can claim a Big 12 Tournament co-championship along with every team in the conference other than Iowa State and TCU.
What a strange season it was for the Wildcats. In the same year that they set a single-season record for losses with 21 we also have questions about them having an argument being made for them claiming a national championship.
K-State finished the regular season as the nation’s No. 1 ranked team in 1959. The Wildcats entered the NCAA Tournament at 24-1 after going 14-0 in the Big Eight that year. Their only loss came early on at BYU.
They lost in their second game of the NCAA Tournament to No. 5 Cincinnati.
Had a pandemic canceled the NCAA Tournament back then, K-State could have claimed that national championship like KU might try and do this year.
You can’t miss the NCAA Tournament if there is no NCAA Tournament.
Bruce Weber knew he was rebuilding with this team all season long.
I feel worse for anyone who decided to get a jump on things and had that specific procedure done earlier this week in order to sit on the couch and watch the conference tournaments.
Also: I imagine there are some people out there who had vacation plans arranged to fly to Las Vegas and watch all the NCAA Tournament games there. That is something I have always wanted to do. It’s got to be a huge bummer for something like this to cancel those plans.
Problem is, no basketball official is going to call a charge without the defender first falling to the ground and selling it like he was just run over by a freight train.
Levi Stockard tried to draw several charges without falling down this season and he was predictably whistled for a block dang near every time.
It’s a weird dynamic, because basketball officials tried to crack down on flopping this season.
It would probably help Oklahoma State a whole lot if the Cowboys could both retain their senior class of Cameron McGriff, Lindy Waters and Thomas Dziagwa as well as adding one of the best recruiting classes in the nation.
Kansas would also be very good again if Udoka Azubuike decided to return for a fifth year.
I’m sure Oklahoma would also love to have Kristian Doolittle for another season.
But some of those seniors might be ready to give professional basketball a try, even if they get extra eligibility.
One team I don’t see that helping much: K-State. Xavier Sneed seems ready to move on and fans seem ready to watch someone other than Makol Mawien patrol the paint.
Is it bad that my mind immediately jumped to smoking a brisket on my backyard when I learned that the NCAA Tournament was going to be canceled?
After covering some combination of K-State, KU and Wichita State in each of the past 10 NCAA Tournaments, I was kind of looking forward to kicking back on the couch and watching all the games at me leisure. When you’re following a specific team at a specific site, you’re trapped in an arena all day and are focused on other things than what’s happening at other tournament venues. There’s not a ton of time to watch every 5/12 game to see if an upset happens.
This March was going to be different. Now it’s going to be really different.
One thing I plan to do without sports on TV is to smoke some meat. It’s been a while since I have spent the money on a brisket. It’s been all pork shoulder, sausage, chicken and ribs around my house lately. But now a brisket seems appropriate. There will be lots of leftovers.
To answer your question, the best survival meat is probably pork. You can get large amounts of it without spending a lot of money. And it’s easy to smoke. There’s virtually no way to mess it up. It always comes off the smoker or grill tasting good. Anyone who buys pulled pork at a barbecue restaurant is a sucker.
But if you’re really worried about the end of the world, I would stock up on hot dogs. You could buy a year’s worth of those things for around $100.
I will be surprised if it happens.
There won’t be any in-person classes at Kansas State next week and everything will be online after that. Will there even be enough students in town to dress up in green shirts and drink cheap beer?
The city of Manhattan canceled its St. Patrick’s Day parade this weekend, and that is a huge deal for this community. No one can stop people from drinking a beer in Aggieville, so I’m sure some will still celebrate the fake holiday. But I can’t see it being as big as usual.
Any Given Sunday: The movie has its flaws. I don’t need to be reminded of them. But this is the sports movie I watch more regularly than any other. I love the football visuals and some of the candid scenes with the Miami Sharks football players, especially on the Director’s Cut version. I know all the words to “My Name is Willie.” The Sharks are by far my favorite fictitious sports team. I will never forgive them for letting Willie Beamen and Tony D’Amato get away. This is also the best, and possibly only, acting of Cameron Diaz’s career.
Major League: I dare you to watch this movie and not immediately also watch the sequel. It can’t be done!
Happy Gilmore: It’s been 24 years since this Adam Sandler classic was released in theaters, and I still quote it almost daily. One of my favorites: “I don’t know what it is about the city of (insert name). Every time I come here it gets harder to leave. I bet you put something to the water.”
This is a popular question this week. No one knows what to watch without basketball right now!
A few honorable mentions:
Semi-Pro: Jackie Moon is the best owner/player/coach I have ever seen.
Blue Chips: This movie does a great job with its basketball scenes, because it cast real basketball players for every scene.
Goon: I love the plot of a local tough guy becoming a pro hockey player without even knowing how to skate.
The Replacements: One of the best bad movies you will ever see.
Varsity Blues: Never gets old.
The Rookie: Gives me hope that I can still make it as a pro athlete despite my age.
Playmakers: It’s not a movie, and you might not even remember that it existed, but this short-lived ESPN drama about a professional football team was way ahead of its time. The NFL knew what it was doing when it forced ESPN to cancel this show, because it accurately predicted a lot of issues that are now relevant.
I would love to be one of those people that gets paid to travel to exotic locations, stay in five-star resorts for a week and then write about the experience.
Unfortunately, travel isn’t exactly en vogue at the moment, either.
I could also see myself as a food writer or a movie/television critic. Everyone needs to eat and watch stuff. No virus is going to stop that.
Either way, my Q&A would live on in a new form.
I’m here for that kind of power move, especially as a revenge tactic after the Pac-12 tried to gut the Big 12 during the height of conference realignment.
But once you take the emotions out of it, I’m not sure it’s a great idea for the Big 12 to add teams from the West Coast.
Having West Virginia in the conference is already a travel pain. Adding teams from Los Angeles will only make things worse.
It seems like Bob Bowlsby and the rest of the Big 12 are comfortable with their current 10-team setup. The conference doesn’t make as much money as the Big Ten or the SEC, but it isn’t getting lapped by those leagues like the Pac-12. Its long-term security as a league doesn’t appear to be in danger. With so much doubt surrounding the future of TV rights deals, are we sure adding teams like USC and UCLA will bring a financial windfall?
Adding teams from the Pac-12 would create mismatched schedules in football and create a logistical nightmare in other sports. A mega conference of 16 teams sounds cool, but I’m not sure how it would be run.
Maybe there’s a way the Big 12 could add two schools and return to its previous North/South setup, but which two teams? Are any Pac-12 schools even interested in joining the Big 12?
It’s fun to think about, but I don’t see it happening.