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Deaths Of Notable Sports Figures (R.I.P.)

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Former Ohio State Kicker Bob Atha Dies at 65

Former Ohio State kicker, punter and quarterback Bob Atha died Tuesday after a years-long battle with cancer. He was 65.

A Worthington, Ohio, native, Atha served as a backup to quarterback Art Schlichter and placekicker Vlade Janakievski from 1978-80. As a senior in 1981, he took over as the Buckeyes’ starting placekicker while also backing up Art Schlichter at quarterback. Atha led the team in scoring that season with 88 points, converting 13 field goals and 43 extra points while also scoring one touchdown.

Atha’s best game as a Buckeye came on Oct. 24, 1981, at Ohio Stadium, when he set a school record with five field goals in a 29-10 win over Indiana. He still shares that record with Mike Nugent (against NC State in 2004), Josh Huston (Texas in 2005) and Devin Barclay (Miami Hurricanes in 2010).

One of Atha’s most memorable moments nearly came three years earlier in the 1978 Gator Bowl. As he later recalled to The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio State was driving deep into Clemson territory when Woody Hayes called for “that freshman kicker” from Worthington. Atha was set to attempt a go-ahead field goal but never got the chance. Clemson defensive tackle Charlie Bauman intercepted Schlichter with two minutes remaining. Hayes punched Bauman on the sideline, which would eventually lead to his dismissal, and Ohio State went on to lose, 17-15.

After his Ohio State career, Atha played in the NFL with the Miami Dolphins and St. Louis (now Arizona) Cardinals. He later returned to Worthington, where he spent several decades working in his family’s oil and gas business.

R.I.P.
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What song are you listening to right now

Here's another music memory. My sophomore year of high school I made varsity baseball and our first road trip was a tourney in Phoenix. We get to our motel and all of the other teams are staying there. Yes, we were all 15-18 years old but it was a giant Keggar. Beer was flowing freely, there were groupies and the coaches were the right in the middle of it. It was my first time and I was sort of a Forrest Gump laying on my bed, reading my history homework, trying to block it all out when one of the groupies who had showed up was suddenly straddling me and rubbing what must have been EEE boobies in my face as everyone else, including my coaches, laughed their asses off. This song was playing at the time

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Indiana Hoosiers (2025 National Champions)

Expected No. 1 Fernando Mendoza puts on show at Indiana pro day​

Fernando Mendoza warmed up with his college roommate Wednesday while nearly two dozen college teammates took turns running the 40-yard dash.

Then the Heisman Trophy-winning Indiana quarterback did what he always seems to do: deliver another impressive performance.

All 32 NFL teams sent scouts to Indiana's campus, more than 100 media members were credentialed and dozens of family members and friends of ex-Hoosiers showed up for a pro day unlike any other in school history. Most came to see the guy expected to be the first pick in this month's NFL draft, and Mendoza didn't disappoint, using his platform to potentially help his ex-teammates improve their draft standing.

"I feel like it went great," Mendoza said after throwing the last of his roughly 56 passes inside the John Mellencamp Pavilion. "You know quarterbacks have passed, have done shorter pro days than that. However, I just wanted to make sure everybody could showcase their abilities in front of all 32 NFL teams and really run routes that are applicable to the timing we're going to be running in the NFL."

Mendoza threw short, deep and medium-range passes, targeting receivers to the left, right and over the middle. He also threw on the run.
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But Mendoza also said he's far from a finished product.

"I'm putting all of my efforts toward just trying to be the best quarterback possible for the season," he said. "But I know at the next level, there's going to be a lot more snaps under center, and that's a big adjustment. I need to get used to that and just the nature of the game. Not only that, the hash [marks] are more condensed and the speed of the game is faster. So, all those things I look forward to learning."
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tldr: fuck him. I'm glad Castro took great grandpa's casino away.
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2025-2026 College Basketball General Discussion

Big 12 and ACC have been pushing to expand the NCAA tournament, currently totaling 68 teams. They are apparently going to move forward after the conclusion of this year's tournament and approve an expansion to 76 teams. The new format is expected to include 24 teams in the "play-in" phase of the tournament - there were 8 before, and now the last 8 that were "in" before will be demoted to the play-in, and the 8 expansion teams will also be there. They will have 12 play-in games spread over 2 sites, Dayton being one of the two.
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2026 NCAA Tournament General Discussion

Would you rather Michigan win it all or a non-Big Ten team take the title?

Look, if I don’t have a dog in the fight, I will always root for the Big Ten team, if for no other reason than why the hell not. But I am not one of those people who believe in conference pride, and I will never unironically cheer “B1G! B1G! B1G!” in a public (or private) setting.

So, for me, this is an easy question. I want nary a good thing to ever happen to Michigan athletics or its fanbase. Not only would it give them something else to puff their chests out about, but I just can’t stand anything or anyone in Maize and Blue. So, it’s easy, if it’s Michigan or a non-Big Ten team, I will happily hand either UConn or Arizona the scissors to cut down the nets in Indy.

Just sayin': No shit, anybody else; just not scUM.

Fuck Michigan


Who knows, maybe Chief Illiniwek can make the B1G proud and pull a Natty out of his ass this year.
Fuck no. Literally rooting for any of the other three.
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UConn Huskies

Great "feel good story" about Braylon Mullins, someone could make an actual modern day true to life "Hoosiers movie" here:

Braylon Mullins’s Shot Was a Lifetime in the Making

“You better be able to shoot”: How small-town Greenfield, Ind., shaped the UConn freshman to step up on the biggest stage in March Madness.

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There is a black Dodge police cruiser parked in front of Greenfield-Central High School, and it’s not difficult to deduce who drives it. The Connecticut Huskies license plate on the front is the giveaway.

Inside the building, school resource officer Josh Mullins is trying to get back to work, but the interruptions keep coming. A stunning college basketball scramble play in Washington, D.C., Sunday tilted life here in Greenfield, a town of about 25,000 located in the flat farmland terrain that stretches out east of Indianapolis. Mullins’s oldest son became a March legend in that instant, and the smile remains plastered on his face.

“Enjoy the moment, man,” officer Mullins says. “These things don’t happen to everybody.”

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This thing happened to a basketball family with deep roots in this community—a family that rejected the nomadic lifestyle of modern prospects and stayed home. This thing was the fulfillment of a recruiting pitch by UConn coach Dan Hurley, and a mother’s wishful Instagram prophecy nearly two years earlier. This thing was the realization of a gym rat’s dream, a live-action monument to a lifetime of practice shots, a distillation of all that work into one fundamentally flawless wrist flick.

“If you’re from Indiana,” Josh Mullins says, “you better be able to shoot.”

Freshman Braylon Mullins’s 35-foot swish beat the buzzer and Duke in the NCAA men’s tournament East Regional final. It propelled UConn to yet another Final Four, and it poetically brings the freshman who launched it back home, where his thunderclap of a shot echoes loudly. The electronic sign in front of the school on North Broadway celebrates the event: “Congrats UConn. GC is proud of you Braylon.”

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The shot came at the confluence of opportunity and preparedness. And the preparation stretches back through time in Greenfield: to Christmas mornings in the high school gym; to a floodlit backyard court on Fifth Street; to a childhood friendship turned teenage courtship turned lifetime partnership. This all-time March moment was generations in the making.


Josh and Katie Mullins met in second grade at Harris Elementary, classmates well before soulmates. After matriculating half a mile down the street to Greenfield-Central, which houses both the middle school and high school, they eventually became best friends. On Valentine’s Day 1998, when Josh was a standout basketball player for the Cougars and Katie was a cheerleader, they went on their first date.

Katie’s family had been in Greenfield forever, establishing a farm outside the city limits that is nearly 150 years old. Josh’s grandparents moved there from Kentucky and never left. This place, about 25 miles outside Indianapolis but not to be confused with affluent suburbs like Carmel or Fishers, is all they knew. Katie’s uncle, Guy Titus, is the mayor. Josh’s cousin, Gary Achor, is running for sheriff.

“We’re just little townies that have always been here,” Katie says.

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They actually lived elsewhere during college. Josh went to Lincoln Trail Junior College in Robinson, Ill., to play basketball, and Katie followed. But she was driving 2 ½ hours home nearly every weekend to work at a tanning salon, and after graduating from Lincoln Trail opted to attend nearby IUPUI (now known as IU Indianapolis) to get her four-year degree. This time, it was Josh’s turn to follow Katie—he signed with the Jaguars, becoming a starter and double-digit scorer on their only NCAA tournament qualifier in 2003.

They got married after college and, naturally, settled in Greenfield, a town bisected by U.S. 40 and dotted with American flags and driveway basketball goals. (Knightstown, site of the gym used in the movie Hoosiers as the home of the Hickory Huskers, is 12 miles away.) Josh became a police officer and the couple had three boys—Braylon and twins Cole and Clay, who will play at Division III Franklin University next year. Basketball was an inevitable family bonding element.

Katie remembers Braylon pushing around basketballs before he could walk. By the time the boys were old enough to play, the family lived in a modest house where Katie grew up on West Fifth Street, with a backyard court that became the launching pad for all that followed. Other kids flocked there to play with her boys.

“It was the go-to place in the neighborhood,” Katie says.

But the standing game was Josh and one of the twins against Braylon and the other twin. The rules to keep it relatively fair: Josh had to wear flip-flops and could shoot only three-pointers.

“We would go out all the time,” Josh says. “We played under the lights. It was one of those things where you want your kids to do the same thing as you until they tell you they hate it. [Braylon] never told me that. We put a ball in his hands and it just never left.

“It’s the difference being great and good. You just got to do extra things. And I gave him the ball at five and it just took off from there.”

By the time the boys were in middle school, Josh was on the Greenfield-Central coaching staff. That led to a family tradition—Christmas morning shootarounds in the school gym, Cougar Fieldhouse. Built in 1969, it had an original capacity of 4,620—huge by most standards, but not compared to some of the cathedrals in the state. (New Castle, about 25 miles away, seats 10,000 and is the largest high school gym in the nation.) The current Cougar Fieldhouse capacity is 3,100.

That is where Braylon really honed his shooting stroke and all-around game.

“I met him here every single morning at 7:15, an hour before school, for four years,” says Luke Meredith, the coach of the Cougars during Braylon’s tenure. “He shot by himself. We listened to music, just talked. There would be other guys that he would drag along with him, including his twin brothers. But he was the one constant.”



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