sutomcat
No recent Cali or Iggy awards; Mr Irrelevant
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- Aug 15, 2011
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Welcome to National Cheese Pizza Day!
National Cheese Pizza Day is dedicated to the pie shaped flatbread with toppings, first eaten in Naples in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. At the time, this coastal city was not part of Italy, but its own kingdom. The working poor, or lazzaroni, lived outside or in small homes, and needed cheap food. Pizza consisted of flatbread with toppings such as tomatoes, garlic, cheese, oil, or anchovies, and it was sold by street vendors and informal restaurants, and eaten for any meal. Naples became part of Italy in 1861, and in 1889, Queen Margherita and King Umberto visited Naples and tried pizza. Legend has it that she loved mozzarella pizza, which included mozzarella cheese, red tomatoes, and green basil—the colors of the Italian flag. The pizza then took her namesake. But, pizza didn't end up becoming popular in the rest of Italy until the 1940's.
SU News
For Syracuse football to be relevant, it’ll have to play teams that are actually up to its level (DO; Gutierrez)
Two things don’t add up: Syracuse’s vision to become a big-time football program and its early season schedule.
To step toward bowl eligibility, and its first winning record since 2013, Syracuse needs to look no further than its own schedule. Playing schools in the Football Championship Series — the league below Syracuse, which is in the Football Bowl Subdivision — will do nothing to help Syracuse (1-0) climb up from the bottom of the ACC, let alone anywhere near where the program was in the 1990s or before that.
Friday night provided another example that Power 5 schools like Syracuse have no business playing fledgling FCS programs like Central Connecticut State. There are many reasons why.
First, players are at an added injury risk with little reward. Just ask redshirt junior defensive back/punt returner Antwan Cordy, who missed most of 2016 due to injury, then exited Friday’s game in the first quarter with an apparent right leg injury sustained while making a tackle. His status is now unclear.
Second, attendance is mediocre at best. That contradicts one of SU’s biggest goals: putting people in seats. A generous estimate of 30,274, including players and employees, attended the 2017 season opener, the lowest Carrier Dome attendance since Oct. 24, 2015 and the fifth-lowest home-opener attendance in the history of the Dome, which opened 37 years ago.
Meanwhile, the last time Syracuse hosted another Power 5 nonconference opponent, Louisiana State in 2015, 43,101 fans showed up. That was the most-attended game since October 2014, when No. 1 Florida State and reigning Heisman Trophy winner Jameis Winston visited the Carrier Dome. Better teams attract more fans.
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Babers on board with FBS-FCS matchups in college football (twcnews.com; video; Goldberg)
SU football coach Dino Babers says David-and-Goliath games gives smaller schools the chance to make history and an opportunity to make money.
ACC football gets off to slow start but it could have been worse (newsobserver.com; Giglio)
Well, at least that wasn’t a total disaster for the ACC, thanks to Virginia Tech.
It also wasn’t the start the ACC had wanted.
Florida State (24-7 to Alabama) and N.C. State (35-28) lost the ACC’s high-profile matchups with the SEC on Saturday and North Carolina lost to a Pac-12 team (Cal) at home (35-30).
To make matters worse, Florida State — the preseason favorite in the ACC — lost quarterback Deondre Francois for the season to a knee injury.
The only real bright spot was Virginia Tech’s neutral site win (31-24) win over a Big 12 team (West Virginia). Georgia Tech, which plays Tennessee on Monday night, could still help the ACC’s cause but 2017 did not start how 2016 ended for the ACC.
The ACC went 9-3 in the postseason, including a 4-1 mark against the SEC, to stake its claim as the best conference in the land. Such bragging rights come with an expiration date and the only real path to supremacy is consistency.
That’s how the SEC got to where it is, not with one good season but several strung together in a row. There’s still time for the ACC this season, of course. Clemson hosts Auburn on Saturday and there are the five traditional rivalry games with the SEC to end the regular season.
But as far as starts go, that was about as bad as it could get for the ACC.
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Other
Did you see 'Game of Thrones' actress at NYS Fair in Syracuse? (photos) (PS; Herbert)
One of the biggest names in Westeros came to Upstate New York over the weekend.
Sophie Turner, best known for playing Sansa Stark on HBO's "Game of Thrones," was spotted at the 2017 New York State Fair in Syracuse on Saturday, when her boyfriend Joe Jonas' band DNCE performed at Chevy Court. The pair were spotted walking around the fairgrounds, occasionally posing for photos with fans, and also reportedly got coffee at Cafe Kubal in downtown Syracuse.
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