From the team hotel to the post-game locker room, SI.com's Luke Winn spent 12 hours with the Wisconsin Badgers on Wednesday to get an inside view of life on the road with a top-five team. The public could only see UW's 8 p.m. game against Penn State, which the Badgers won 71-58, but there was plenty more action behind the scenes.
10:55 a.m.: Web Work And The Hambone
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. -- The lobby of the Toftrees Resort does not feel particularly resort-like. The hotel's front desk takes up about a third of the small room and a leather couch, two chairs, a TV and a computer desk occupy the remainder of the space. When I first walked through the revolving door on Wednesday morning, there were a few people milling about, and one guy in a gray hoodie and baggy black shorts silently hunched over the computer's keyboard, staring at the screen.
The computer guy -- once he pulled his hood back to reveal his identity -- happened to be one of the frontrunners for the Wooden Award, Wisconsin's Alando Tucker. The senior forward has led the fourth-ranked Badgers to a 23-2 record and a tie for first place in the Big Ten, and had a game against Penn State in slightly more than nine hours. His main concern at 10:55 a.m., though, was taking care of some pressing business on Facebook.com. And the lobby was the only place in the hotel that had access to the Internet.
"I'm trying to remove my profile," Tucker said while hunting for that option with the mouse. "I've already taken it down once, but a friend told me he put it back online, and I really don't like to be on there."
The reason? "It's just gotten a little too chaotic."
Too many Facebook requests and messages is too much to manage when you're burdened with the increased attention of being the star of the nation's No. 4 team. Such is life for Tucker these days, as he and the Badgers have ascended from the ranks of Big Ten contenders to national title contenders. The cover of Sports Illustrated, he can handle. Appearances in games on ESPN and CBS, he can handle. Properly maintaining a Facebook page, he cannot. A man must draw the line somewhere in order to preserve his sanity.A few minutes later, Tucker and Kammron Taylor, UW's starting point guard and second-leading scorer, were standing in front of the lobby's TV, viewing a taped interview with head coach Bo Ryan that was airing on ESPN2's Cold Pizza. The two seniors watched silently as Ryan stated that if Tucker wasn't the player of the year, he was "the person of the year" for his leadership skills -- and presumably also because, other than on Facebook, he has remained an extremely approachable, engaging star. (For instance, the kind of star who was more than happy to interrupt his 'net time to talk to an SI reporter about everything from hoops to the Magazine Writing class he took last semester.)
Only after Cold Pizza aired the now-famous clip of Ryan singing and dancing the Hambone at Illinois' Assembly Hall, did the duo speak. Or rather, sing:
Hambone, Hambone have you heard? Papa's gonna buy me a mockingbird
Watching TV in the lobby with them was Ryan's freshman-year (1965-66) roommate at Wilkes University, Ed Witczak, who had driven from his home in New Jersey to attend Wednesday's game. Witczak, who was a wrestler while Ryan played point guard on Wilkes' basketball team, went on to be a volunteer trainer for the Philadelphia Eagles for 20 years. "I dealt with all types of personalities -- plenty of them difficult -- in that job," Witczak said later. "But Tucker, he doesn't know me from Adam, and yet he introduced himself and shook my hand. I can tell Bo has some good kids on this team." [READ MORE]
Politics
Edwards Decision To Keep Bloggers May Risk Catholic Vote
So yesterday we related to you the story about John Edwards firing two bloggers from his campaign because of some of their controversial comments. Well it turns out Johnny Ed is pulling a John Kerry and changing his mind now. But will it risk him some of the Catholic vote? Melinda Henneberger of the Huffington Post writes:
WASHINGTON - Inside the Edwards campaign, there was what politicians like to refer to as a healthy debate over whether or not to fire two bloggers who had written about Catholics in ways that the candidate said "personally offended me."
One of the bloggers, Amanda Marcotte, wrote on the blog Pandagon on Dec. 26, "The Catholic Church is not about to let something like compassion for girls get in the way of using the state as an instrument to force women to bear more tithing Catholics."
In the end, Edwards decided to keep Marcotte and Melissa McKwen on staff. But "it was a tough decision," a campaign adviser said in an interview today, "and there was a lot of back and forth. It was certainly tough balancing what they've said in their private lives with how we want the campaign to be represented." [READ MORE]
Entertainment
Inventory: 15 Pop Songs Owned By Movie Scenes
Onion AV Club
1. Stealers Wheel, "Stuck In The Middle With You," Reservoir Dogs (1992)
In liner notes penned for a double-disc edition of the Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction soundtracks, Quentin Tarantino introduced the notion that sometimes songs become so linked to films that the films essentially own them from there on out. So it's only fitting to begin this list with the perfect example: Prior to Tarantino's 1992 debut film, it was a pleasant bit of Beatles-inspired '70s pop. Now it's the sound of bondage and mutilation and there's no going back.
2. Derek And The Dominos, "Layla," Goodfellas (1990)
From as early as Who's That Knocking At My Door? and Mean Streets, director Martin Scorsese has been a great innovator in using pop music in films—sometimes in an ironic context, other times to bring a certain period or emotion to life. The piano coda to Derek And The Dominos' "Layla" comes at a time of reckoning in Goodfellas: The audacious Lufthansa heist, such a boon to the gangsters who pulled it off, has completely unraveled because the people involved have spent their money conspicuously. As a boy heads off to retrieve a stickball, he discovers the first bodies in a pink Cadillac, and the song starts to play as more bodies are discovered in a pile of garbage and a meat truck. It's the morning Joe Pesci becomes a made man, and the mood is ominous.
3. The Mamas And The Papas, "California Dreamin'," Chungking Express (1994)
One of the world's premier pop stylists and an incorrigible romantic, Wong Kar-wai often draws on a single song to set the tone for his movies, like Nat King Cole's "Quizás, Quizás, Quizás" in In The Mood For Love or the semi-ironic title song of Happy Together. In the second half of Wong's Chungking Express, the charming pixie girl Faye Wong plays The Mamas And The Papas staple wherever she goes, whether blasting it at full volume behind the counter at a street-food vendor or sneaking into a flat owned by Tony Leung, the apple of her eye. Wong's whimsical charms are certainly enough to make viewers fall in love with her, but when Leung plays the song back to her later in the film, it's like her feelings are reciprocated...[READ MORE]
Music
TGIF Mixtape
Radiohead - "Killer Cars (Live-Itch EP)"
Gnarls Barkley - "The Boogie Monster"
Magnetic Fields - "Dustbowl"
Sufjan Stevens - "Lift Up Your Weary Head" (Live in Portland)
Sonic Youth - "Plastic Sun"
Danielson - "Daughters Will Tune You"
The Fiery Furnaces - "Single Again"
Micah P Hinson - "The Leading Guy"
NOFX - "Seeing Double at Triple Rock"