Weekend Onions!

Ok, this is just unacceptable. THREE weeks without "Weekend Onions!"? All I can say for myself is, like Mark McGuire, I'm not here to talk about the past.

Moving on, two weekends ago, the "Mangenius", Cleveland Brown's head coach Eric Mangini, decided to break into the weekend onions report with a delicious fake punt.

Let's set the stage for the Mangenius' trickeration:

• Leading the New Orleans Saints 10-3 in the 2nd quarter, the Browns are facing a 4th and 6  pinned back on their OWN 23
• With only 5:32 left in the half, the conventional wisdom says kick the punt and play defense
• The Mangenius bucks conventional wisdom and goes for the final move to complete the road upset: a huge play on special teams
• The end result: this 68-yard run by the punter Reggie Hodges right down Main Street to the New Orleans 9

The ensuing drive only resulted in a field goal  for the Browns (and a 13-3) lead, but the Browns showed their intentions and eventually won 30-17. No, we're not gonna go drop the Browns off at the Super Bowl, but congratulations to the Mangenius and the Browns for an Onions! play call

Also, I would be remiss if I did not mention the Onions! decision by LSU head coach Les Miles a few weekends ago (October 9th 2010) against the Florida Gators.

Not too long ago, Disney remade Alice in Wonderland (I didn't watch it, so I'm gonna exercise this thing I'm learning about called "self-restraint" and keep all opinions of this movie to myself). I only bring this superb demonstration of cinematic brilliance (tongue firmly in cheek) because of the character the Mad Hatter. I don't know why the executives at Disney sent out a casting call for the Mad Hatter. The real life Mad Hatter resides in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and "coaches" the Louisiana State University Tigers. I use the term "coaches" loosely here because what Miles does on the sideline is closer to letting a drunk fratstar in Las Vegas with his dad's black card than the contemplative, rationale exercise I presume coaching to be.

I'll set the stage for the Mad Hatter's return to glory

• 35 seconds left in the game and LSU trails by 3 points 
• The Tigers face a 4th and 3 from the Florida 35 yard line and need a 53 yard field goal to send the game into overtime
• Field goal kicker Josh Jasper needs to nail this kick, a career long in distance if it happens
• Les Miles has better ideas than leaving this game in the hands (er, feet) of a kicker and reaches into his bag of crazy and produces this magic

Let the record note that the ball BOUNCED on the NO-LOOK heave over the shoulder by the holder before the kicker picked it up (noted). Les Miles knows Onions! A few years ago we did an x-ray of Les Miles and found this:



No wonder this guy is a favorite here at Gimme Some Onions!

(Ok, so we didn't actually do this x-ray, it was made by LSUfreek for one of our favorite blogs "Every Day Should Be Saturday". Original post from EDSBS can be found here)

Also, this isn't the first time that Miles has called this particular fake field goal. Against South Carolina in 2007, Miles dialed up this play call and things ran more smoothly. The kicker received the no-look toss perfectly and ran into the end-zone untouched. Check it out here. To paraphrase one of my favorite lines in Forrest Gump, "Crazy is as crazy does"

Weekend Onions!

This weekend treated us to two play calls that demanded Onions! recognition.

Let's set the stage for Notre Dame @ Michigan State:

• In their half of the first overtime, Michigan State needs a field goal to extend the game into a second overtime and a touchdown to win.
• QB Kirk Cousins is sacked for a 9 yd loss on 3rd and 5. MSU faces a 4th and 14 on the ND 29 yard line.
• Enter evil genius head coach, Mike Dantonio.

So what looks like a routine 46 yard field goal ends up going down like this.

Mike Dantonio you get to do the patented Sam Cassell "Balls Dance" demonstrated here by Kobe Bryant (calm down Kobe haters, I couldn't find Cassell actually doing this dance online so I went with Kobe Bean. If anyone finds Sam doing this dance, I'll gladly swap links since Sam did invent the dance).

In fact, this play call required Dantonio to summon so much power from his onions that he actually had a heart attack, everyone knows that when you go use Onions! it's a physically taxing event (kind of like having sex with Fat Bastard). Now doctors with all their "fancy learnin" and "degrees" will try to tell you that things like "heredity", "diet" and "physical fitness" were responsible for Dantonio's heart attack but we hear at Gimme Some Onions! know the real story. We wish coach Dantonio the speediest recovery and hope that there are more Onions! plays like this in the future (minus the whole heart attack situation).

Our second Onions! call of the weekend came courtesy of the Houston Texans.

The Texans who regularly never start their season 2-0, improved their record to 2-0 for the first time after head coach Gary Kubiak decided that he was going to do his best Blazing Saddles impersonation and went for broke late in the 4th quarter.

"First downs? We don't need no stinkin first downs, we need TOUCH DOWNS!"

I'll bullet point summary this one too:

• After 3 straight incompletions, the Texans face a 4th and 10 from the Redskins 34.
• Trailing 20-27 with just over 2 minutes left, the Texans have to go for it here or it's game over
• Time-out, Texans. Gary Kubiak eats his mushrooms and grows some Onions!
• Next play, Matt Schaub (38/52, 497 yards and 3 TDs) launches a 34 yard strike to WR Andre Johnson and this game is headed into overtime.

We here at Onions! know that Onions! equals victory, and the Texans prevailed 30-27 in overtime after some overtime shenanigans of their own (discussed below).

This game had a cameo from the sweet/vengeful karma gods. Resident  NFL coach d-bag, Mike Shanahan,  inventor of one of my least favorite plays in football had his comeuppance with karma (try to read what I assume is his self-authored bio. If you feel like you will get overwhelmed with the desire to gouge your eyes out and stop, I will understand.  Shanahan must be feeling himself like he lost his keys. How else do you explain him remembering, to a tenth of yardage, how many yards per game the 1977 North Arizona Lumberjacks averaged when he was only the BACKFIELD COACH???). You know what play I'm talking about, the one where the kicker thinks that he's hit a game winning field-goal, but the rival head coach has actually called a time-out with one second left on the clock. That way, there is not enough time to stop the play from happening so the soon-to-be aborted play continues as planned, but the game winning field-goal will have to be attempted again. Well, this time, karma reared its beautiful/ugly head when Kubiak used this method to nullify what would have been a game winning 52 yard field-goal by Redskins kicker Graham Gano in overtime. That's right Shanahan, karma is a bitch and apparently that bitch has it out for you...

College Football Season Preview (Part 1)

Aaaand because I'm lazy and waited until the end of the season's first week, this is going to be a review as well...

Let's kick things off with the preview:

But before we do, I wanna get this off my chest:

This season marks the end of an era in many ways. Big-time players that you either hated or loved (Tim Tebow, Colt McCoy, Jimmy Clausen) are gone and the turnover from underclassmen entering the draft means that many traditional names that "reload and don't rebuild" (Texas, Alabama, Florida, etc.) are starting guys who were riding pine the last few seasons or are freshman. It’s going to be a wide open year and I can’t wait to be a part of all the ridiculousness. And by be a part of it, I mean the illegal work that I did with a sports agent to get a ton of players suspended (here’s looking at you UNC, South Carolina and Alabama)

Also, this FCS - FBS division thing  is a joke, Gimme Some Onions! articles are going with the (if it ain't broke, don't fix it) names of Division I, II, and III. That's right, we're gonna talk about Division I football, this ain't intramurals brother...

Players to watch (not in any particular order, this list is a combination of players I expect to be very entertaining/productive. This is not a Heisman (easily the most overrated award in sports) watch list or something similarly boring. Go ahead and check out the list of Heisman winners, I wouldn't wish that award on players I hate (I'm looking at you Terrelle Pryor)

Kellen Moore, QB, Boise State
Not the most physically gifted or athletic quarterback in Division I, but he just gets the job done. He's the anti-Jake Locker. Instead of impressing with his 6' 5" frame and rocket-arm, this kid goes out there and wins football games. Original, huh?

Denard Robinson, QB, Michigan
"Shoelace" will undoubtedly be one of the most exciting players to watch all year. Not quite sure how many wins that will translate into, but it seems that Rich Rodriguez has found his rich-man's poor-man's homeless-man's Vince Young or to keep it simple, his Pat White at Michigan.

Trent Richardson, RB, Alabama
Richardson, a sophomore, is by all accounts the best running back on a team which includes last year's Heisman trophy winner Mark Ingram. It's gonna get awkward when (if?) the Alabama coaching staff realizes this...

Patrick Peterson, CB/KR, Louisiana State University
This list was getting little QB/RB heavy and Peterson is the perfect guy to break that trend. He is the best CB in the country right now; also, as North Carolina learned routinely discovered last weekend, he's a lethal KR too. We might not see too many explosive plays on that side of the field for Peterson when teams start kicking it away from him...

P.s. Is the strike-through throwing anyone off? Didn't think so...

Jacory Harris, QB, Miami
The swagger of the U is back and no one does it better than Jacory Harris. I want Harris invited to the Heisman ceremony just so we can see if he's going to stick to his word and wear a pink suit and have a pimp cup (I know the Heisman sucks, but that doesn't mean the ceremony has to). Personally, I think Harris should dress like Deion Sanders when he got off the plane to sign his contract with the Atlanta Falcons, but I have a thing for jheri curls and gold chains.

Game of the Week: 
Boise State (33) over Virginia Tech (30)
Apparently, you do save the best for last if you're talking about week 1 of this College Football Season. This game was closer than the score suggested with Boise needing a 5 play 56 yard drive in the final 2 minutes to take the lead and win. This extends Boise's winning streak to 15 games in a row, mostly against the uber-dominant WAC *Kanye shrug*


Game that you would have preferred stapling your hand to the wall than watch:  
Oregon (72) over New Mexico (0)
Yep, you read that correctly, Oregon dropped a 72 spot on the Lobos. They beat New Mexico like they stole something. Not sure who was owned worse: New Mexico this year or Byron Hout's face last year

Onions! Call of the Week:

Navy, trailing Maryland 17-14 in the 4th quarter (37 seconds to go) faced a 4th and goal on the Maryland 6 inch line. Navy coach, Ken Niumatalolo, reading from the Frank Solich "F*ck a tie, I'm going to win this thing" playbook showed some serious Onions! by sending his offense back on the field. Although they were stopped short by Maryland and ended up losing the game the Gimme Some Onions! staff applauds the boldness of Coach Niumatalolo

Onions!

Hey readers,

Our blog, "Gimme Some Onions!" is named after the famed college basketball announcer, Bill Raftery. Watch the first 10 seconds of this clip to see Raftery in action. We want to talk about all things sports as well as some cultural, social, and political issues that affect sports. We'll err on the humorous side of things, this is not the place to read lengthy diatribes about issues like how Tiger Woods' infidelity damages the institution of marriage (in fact, this is the place to find out why Tiger Woods' infidelity makes him awesome).
We’re a collection of college grads/current students scattered across both coasts and two continents and we’re excited to write about topics that will make you think/laugh/keep coming back for more. Let us know what you really think with your feedback (we have tough skin, and if we don't like what you have to say, we'll find you...) Hope this is the first post of many

gimme some onions staff

Check out this quick blurb on where Raftery came up with "onions!" and what it means:

(This is taken from an interview with Ian Eagle, Raftery's CBS broadcast partner. The whole podcast with Eagle can be found here)

Eagle: “I remember it vividly. It was my first year and the Nets were playing a game down in Miami. And Kevin Edwards hit a big three from the corner to give the Nets a one-point lead late in the game. I had the call: ‘Edwards from the corner, three is GOOD.’ And Raf goes, ‘OOOOH, ONIONS!!!!’
And I turn to him, and I knew Raf’s (Raftery) Raf-to-English translation like the back of my hand. I was able to provide listeners with the track that they needed to follow along. But I had no idea what he was talking about. So I turn to him during the break and say, ‘Bill, Raf, I don’t get that, what is that? Onions? What, it was so good that you cried?’ He said, ‘Hey Bird (Raf’s nickname for Eagle) ... BIG BALLS.’ And that was it. That’s when ONIONS was born.”