Kansas Jayhawks Links
Kansas Baseball head coach Dan Fitzgerald is once again named Big 12 Coach of the Year:
Fitzgerald is the first back-to-back Big 12 Coach of the Year since Augie Garrido did so at Texas in 2010 and 2011. Fitzgerald and the Jayhawks won the Big 12 title outright after a 39-16 regular season and a 22-8 mark in conference play.
The Jayhawks also had 7 players earn conference honors this year:
Tyson LeBlanc and Boede Rahe were voted to the All-Big 12 First Team, Cade Baldridge, Josh Dykhoff and Dominic
Voegele were selected to the All-Big 12 Second Team and Brady Ballinger and Mason Cook earned All-Big 12 Honorable Mention.
The unlikeliest powerhouse in college baseball features a lineup with eight junior college transfers and a ninth from Division II Minnesota Crookston. When Dan Fitzgerald arrived at the University of Kansas three years ago to take over a program defined by its perpetual mediocrity, he did not intend to build around the overlooked and underappreciated. It just came naturally.
Through the Phog says Cam Pickett is the Jayhawk with the best chance to earn All Big 12 honors in the fall:
You see, everyone knows that without longtime quarterback Jalon Daniels under center, either Cole Ballard, Chase Jenkins, or Isaiah Marshall will be employed as QB1. The problem is, none of them have valuable experience in the Big 12, which means they will all need their outlet. Pickett can serve as exactly that.
Self knows he won’t be able to coach forever, but retirement may not be as imminent as many had previously thought it would be for him.
Lance Leipold lands a commitment for the 2027 class in safety Braiden Graves:
The 6-foot, 190-pound prospect from Cypress, Texas, is ranked as the No. 49 player at his position and the No. 71 recruit overall in the state of Texas, according to On3.com. He chose KU over offers from Texas Tech, SMU, TCU, and others.
Bill Self makes an offer to 2028 7 footer Yann Kamagate:
Their scouting report states Kamagate is “a ridiculous athlete for a 7-footer with awesome movement skills and elite tools. Is just starting to put it all together on the court and shows immense upside.”
Other Links!
Bringing in outside interesting links used to be something I really looked forward to each week but it’s tough these days. Seems like it’s bad news, depressing news, or some junk about AI. Heck, one of the highlights of social media this week has been seeing speakers at graduations get booed when droning about AI and the future.
Speaking of AI, here’s a fun one to read as Playboy asks Why Can’t ChatGPT Be Sexy?
A few weeks ago, I noticed that my search box on my phone had changed. All of the sudden, it wasn’t just a box but it was an expanded box with a plus sign at the end. What was I supposed to do with that? TechCrunch explains the change:
With the revamped Search experience, the new search box simply expands to accommodate longer, more conversational queries, rather than making you decide what type of search experience or mode you want to choose at the start of your query. It will also have a new AI-powered query suggestion system that goes beyond autocomplete to help people craft more complex and nuanced queries, Google says.
With Senator Bill Cassidy losing his primary race this week, Radley Balko shared an old piece he wrote when Cassidy sold his soul:
This is why Cassidy — someone who knows better — had an ethical and professional responsibility to oppose Kennedy, to use his moral authority as a physician to stop this dangerous movement from taking over the agency that would empower their hysteria.
He did not. Instead, Cassidy gave an embarrassing speech on the floor of the Senate in which he offered himself up as the dewiest-eyed chump ever to chair a committee. He did deploy his moral authority as a physician, but did so to justify his vote in favor of Kennedy — to say, “Hey, you can trust me. And I trust Kennedy.”
Seriously, that whole piece is worth reading but you may have to take a walk afterwards.
The last link of the week is from Spencer Hall and Holly Anderson’s Channel 6 Newsletter titled You Are Not Scalable. It’s worth signing up for the newsletter just for this piece but signing up gets you even more stuff to read that’s not slop which will get even harder to find with the changes mentioned above from Google.
The question capital would ask here is: What’s your growth plan? And the answer, to be brutally honest, is that there is no plan that includes infinite growth, because the lie of infinite growth is a one-way ticket to misery. A site like Channel 6 grows a little every year, like a tree. Capital wants the immediate return of weeds, and considers trees fungible assets to be cut down or converted into more lucrative end products.
QOTD: I went back and watched Old School about a month ago with my wife and surprisingly found it to hold up very well. Sure, there are some silly jokes and other things that don’t age all that well but what really struck me is the pacing. Each scene lasts just the right amount of time (until the end with the gymnastics) and the scenes aren’t overloaded with jokes. The final cut really allows each actor to get their joke in and then it moves on without forcing more in your face. Not an easy task when the movie features Vince Vaughn and Will Ferrell. Do you have any older media pieces that you remember being pleasantly surprised at how well they hold up?
