Muck Fizzou

5 star recruit, Ben McLemore, from St. Louis announced his decision to take his skills at Kansas over the nearby Missouri, despite the fact that his mom is an avid Mizzou fan.

To top off the local slight, McLemore wore a Mizzou t-shirt to the press conference to announce his decision only to take if off when he announce that it was Lawrence was where is wanted to be, not Columbia.

His mother, Sonya, a hardcore Missouri fan said it was the visit to Lawrence that started to change her mind about Kansas.  “It was great. The love was there. The excitement was there. I felt it is where he needed to be,” Sonya said of KU. “The crowd was nice. The people were nice. It felt comfortable.

In reality it was a no brainer to pick  perennial power house program with great exposure over a struggling basketball team with coaching issues.

Link: St. Louis Prep Ben McLemore Commits to Kansas | Lawrence Journal World

A lot of people have reacted to Mizzou’s panic hire of Frank Haith. Here’s a look at what is being said.

“It is unbelievable. Frank’s a nice guy. But it is unbelievable. You couldn’t guess that name.” – Anonymous Missouri Booster | FanNation.com

“instead of a hot mid-major coach, the Tigers wound up with someone from a major program who wasn’t even lukewarm.” – Mark Bradley

“Mizzou fans, much like their administration, greatly overvalue their athletic teams. This was no more evident than when Mizzou tried to bolt from the Big 12 to the Big 10 last year, only to find that they were not wanted. Now, Mizzou makes a questionable hire for a men’s basketball program that has never been to a Final Four. The Mizzou basketball job is a decent one at best.” Comment on CollegeSportsBlog

David Wasinger, a member of Missouri’s Board of Curators, added that he was “aware of disappointment and disapproval being expressed about Haith, who has a reputation as a strong recruiter but took Miami to the NCAA Tournament just once in his seven seasons as a head coach.” STLToday

selection of Haith — in contrast to Missouri’s ill-fated courtship of Purdue coach Matt Painter last week — was like “going from a Mercedes to a Prius.” – MU Alumnus, Tim Hyder | Kansas City Star

“I thought we were stepping up,” said Dennis Harper, founder of the iconic Harpo’s bar and grill franchise. “It sounds like we’re stepping down.” – Kansas City Star

MU students were considering staging a protest outside the curators meeting as a “peaceful but adamant rejection of Frank Haith.” – Kansas City Star

Here’s a resume of Mike Alden’s coaching hires at Mizzou.

The fact that Missouri was a slave state does not excuse the continued behavior of it’s students. Mizzou has once again failed to grasp that we are not in the Civil War days and that everyone has a right to an education. For the second straight year Mizzou has shown it’s true colors during Black History month with racially driven vandalism.

Last year cotton balls were scattered across the lawn of the Black Culture Center. Now a Kansas City Star article reports “In the early morning hours, a student painted a racial slur on a sculpture outside of Hatch residence hall.”

The student (below) Ben Elliot ironically enough has dreadlocks, but I’m sure that fact is lost on him.

More coverage: at the Huffingfton Post

For some reason I found myself wondering what ever happened to those Magic Eye books from my Elementary School career. After a little research I was able to find a Flash site that creates Magic Eye style stereo graph images. It was a little limiting in that I has to use my mouse to draw out the text that is embedded in the image, but in the end it came out pretty clean.

The above shot is a miniaturized version of the actual image, so the effects might be skewed by the scaling. See the full image here. There are instructions in the lower right if you are having trouble seeing the image.

Feel free to send and forward to your Fizzou “friends”.

The Kansas City Star’s photo essay of the top photographs from 2009 includes this beauty (phot0 #10) of Kerry Meier catching a TD in front of the MU cheering section.