K-State Slate: 6.18.15 - Who lost the realignment lottery?

Previously on BotC...

80 days and counting! That's less than three months for those of you with better math skills than mine. BracketCat marked the day with the latest edition of his roster countdown and #80, tight end Cody Small, who hopes to walk in the footsteps of another #80 who did big things at Kansas State, i.e. Travis Tannahill.

Meanwhile, ichacat tries to tie all the loose ends together in our weekly nerdfest and does a better job than the showrunners: Fandom Final-Desperation, Retribution, Atonement.

Now back to regularly scheduled football-themed programming...

In his Big 12 mailbag for FoxSports, David Ubben tackles a number of issues, including the Big 12's national title drought, and West Virginia's status post-realignment. The specific questions about the Mountaineers were keyed by Ubben's colleague Stewart Mandel calling West Virginia one of the big losers of the random game of Russian roulette that is realignment. While the criticism seems overly harsh on its face, it's also difficult to really disagree. The kindest comment here may be that West Virginia had limited options and took the best one. It's a strategic move that has not paid off, but certainly could in the next few years.

Fansided's Chip Rouse, writing for an Oklahoma blog, picks the Sooners' five biggest games of the season. Kansas State does not make the list, although there is a passing mention that Oklahoma will get the Wildcats best shot. Personally, I think this game could be very interesting as a potential trap game for the Sooners, i.e. a road game played right after their annual throwdown with Texas.

Speaking of Texas, the school has announced it will sell alcohol (beer and wine) at football games (Todd Davis, Dallas Morning News). Since everything that happens in Austin has some ripple effect on the rest of college football, I guess this is a big deal. Let freedom those cash registers ring! (Jokes aside, there's some evidence that parsimony (among other issues) is now a thing at Texas, which is almost as unfathomable as anything else in college football (Chip Brown, Horns Digest).

Finally, in other news...

Are the Olympics, the World Cup, and other mega sporting events dying? The mothership's Andi Thomas, reviewing Andrew Zimbalist's Circus Maximus, takes a closer look.