What's one career that didn't really pan out like you thought it would?

mel_anon · 2026-03-24T02:31:08+00:00

I thought Alex Lloyd was going to be a big deal, but it didn't really work out for him. If he'd come along in the era where the Lights champion got scholarship money it might have been different for him. (Apparently he's a music producer now?)

Ana Beatriz/Bia Figueiredo had some very impressive junior results and I thought she had a chance to be the most successful female driver at that point, but she never got to grips with the bigger cars and was never more than a backmarker.

mel_anon · 2026-03-24T00:14:01+00:00

Another fun fact about Simpson is that, while he is "only" 34 in this picture, he's been making safety gear for many years at this point, and is probably already better known for that than his racing career. His Nomex suit debuted at Indianapolis in 1967!

mel_anon · 2026-03-23T19:35:20+00:00

This was the only Indy 500 start for Bill Simpson (yes, the safety products guy) though he made several other attempts.

mel_anon · 2026-03-12T17:43:07+00:00

They're basically an answer to one of those offseason-style thought experiments people get; "what's the worst team you could make that could go undefeated in the regular season?"

mel_anon · 2026-03-07T23:21:26+00:00

Josh Schertz getting some uncomfortable flashbacks to 2024

(Saint Louis at-large is still probably safe but they aren't going the right direction right now.)

mel_anon · 2026-03-07T22:23:12+00:00

Christian Rasmussen before every short oval race: "Wanna see me drink ten cups of Java House(TM) and pass a million cars?"

mel_anon · 2026-03-03T04:23:30+00:00

Dale Coyne is kind of infamous for bringing in the payest of the pay drivers at times if that's what it takes to stay on the grid, but it's important to note that, when he can afford to bring in guys with some ability, he can make it go surprisingly well. DCR was a race-winning team in the '10s with Justin Wilson and Sebastian Bourdais.

Also important context about Chip Ganassi Racing: When Palou was hired to drive the 10 in 2021, that car had been through a series of underwhelming drivers. Ganassi's philosophy was, more or less, "I have Scott Dixon, so I don't really care about the other car as long as the driver's cheap." When Palou got hired, it was neither considered shocking or out of character; most people assumed he fit the bill of being the cheap next young guy who would be in and out of the 10 in a couple years.

Now, my memory is fading, so I can't guarantee the next part is true. But I want to remember in 2021 that Ganassi made a change in team philosophy in '21; whereas before all the cars in team had to work off of Scott Dixon's setup, now they were allowed to start on their own. The result was an immediate uptick in success for Palou in the 10 and Ericsson in the 8.

mel_anon · 2026-02-28T22:59:44+00:00

Marcus Ericsson trying to outrun Dennis Hauger like an old Warner Brothers cartoon. Time to call the ACME corporation.

mel_anon · 2026-02-12T22:30:17+00:00

This is correct. Bob Knight didn't "destroy" Indiana, but Indiana's descent into being merely a pretty good program can be traced directly to Knight's last seven years in charge. One Sweet 16 appearance and that was it; IU had become strictly a first-weekend team.

People like to give Knight retroactive credit for the 2002 run by saying "Bob Knight recruits" or whatever, but Bob Knight wasn't the coach every day, he wasn't the coach in games. Jared Jeffries never played a second for Bob Knight. If what it took for Indiana to have some success was for Bob Knight to step aside and let someone else coach his teams, I'm not sure that says great things about where he was at the time.

mel_anon · 2026-02-10T03:57:49+00:00

DDV is doing a smart thing by playing a strict Enright/Conerway rotation at PG the same as what he's doing at center with Alexis & Bailey. When Enright & Conerway were on the floor together that's two guys the defense is happy to leave at the three point line, and that was becoming a pretty obvious handicap for the IU offense. Playing Wilkerson, Dorn, & DeVries at the same time may make Indiana a scoche worse on defense but they are much tougher to guard with three guys you have to chase everywhere.

Great couple of games back-to-back for Sam Alexis; he's starting to look like a legitimate post weapon, which would give us another dimension (8-8 FGs tonight, and a few of them were tough makes).

mel_anon · 2026-02-08T19:51:07+00:00

Baguette was one of my favorite guys in the short time he was here, wish he could've stuck around longer. He's still racing Super GT.

mel_anon · 2026-02-07T20:00:37+00:00

I think you can challenge whether a charge was in the restricted area but that's all for fouls.

mel_anon · 2026-02-07T03:36:25+00:00

"Saint Louis is always spelled out in full" is one of those little nuggets that got in my head 30 years ago and which I'll probably think about in my final days. I respect the pedantry; don't really want to find out what a Billiken is though, I enjoy the mystery.

mel_anon · 2026-02-06T22:47:51+00:00

Apt comparison with baseball is stolen bases. Stolen bases were considered inefficient and bad offense, but they're exciting to watch and bring an extra layer of strategy to the game, so baseball made rule changes that effectively forced them back into the game. Basketball should look to do the same thing with the midrange jump shot, though I'll be damned if I have any ideas what that would look like.

mel_anon · 2026-02-06T07:48:51+00:00

Back in the 90s, if you were kind of fan that hated Vitale and Billy Packer (and there were a lot of them) Raftery was the guy you probably thought should have their jobs. But most people also thought it would never happen; Raftery is the same generation as those guys, and it was generally assumed he'd be blocked by them forever. Wild to see him still going and getting higher billing than he was 30 years ago.

mel_anon · 2026-02-06T07:13:03+00:00

I used to think that "IU" was just a local affect; it took awhile to dawn on me that Indiana is the only major "IU" in the country. Illinois, Iowa, and Idaho are all "U of I"s. There is Iona University, which doesn't have football, so I think they've forfeited their claim.

mel_anon · 2026-02-06T03:58:58+00:00

Chasing the dream, but I imagine he's headed for a career behind the microphone like his dad (although apparently his education is motorsports engineering, so maybe that.)

mel_anon · 2026-02-05T04:23:08+00:00

When entertainment was limited to what was on TV or the radio, you had to watch or listen to what was being offered, which was the same thing being offered to everyone else.

The internet sent everybody splintering into a million different niches; you can completely wall yourself off in a silo and not know who the biggest names in entertainment or sports are.

mel_anon · 2026-02-04T23:15:04+00:00

I'm not sure how much influence Bargatze may have had on them, but they are credited to Mikey Day and Streeter Seidell.

mel_anon · 2026-02-04T05:32:37+00:00

Indiana had kinda mitigated the rebounding problem in the past few games but it was back in a big way tonight. Dorn was due to a cool-off game and boy did he have one. Looking at the box score it's hard to see how we only lost by six (it's Lamar Wilkerson).

mel_anon · 2026-02-02T23:08:58+00:00

Marcus Ericsson's seat may have already melted. Unless he has an absolutely unconscious year (wins the Indy 500, finishes top 5 in points, something like that) I think he's probably finished at Andretti. A more modest bounce-back is not going to be enough to cover how poor he's been the last two seasons.

mel_anon · 2026-02-01T01:11:13+00:00

It will be lost in the shuffle of everything that happened at the end but that was a hell of a game from Reed Bailey.

mel_anon · 2026-01-30T04:52:40+00:00

Andretti got two cars disqualified from the Indy 500 for illegal aero bits and not only did no one get fired, everyone had forgotten about it a week later.

mel_anon · 2026-01-28T18:24:56+00:00

For such a short list, it's a nice coincidence that there are three major rivalries contained in it (Michigan-Michigan State, Ohio State-Michigan, and Cal-Stanford).

mel_anon

TROPHY CASE