rgbilliken

No worries, for the most part it’s a safe assumption that most people posting here are dudes, and very rarely is it relevant regardless. This is why I changed my picture to an actual picture of myself though so as not to have to explain it all the time lol

I feel like my best shot is if this thing comes either a week early or a few days late. I plan to buy tickets, but I'm going to need one of the board members who's a doctor to come to the game too, in case I go into active labor from screaming at the refs.

This is the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.

This is awesome but on a personal level I'm so p!ssed. I live in KC so would have loved to go, but I'm having a kid due December 20th. At least I'll have something to watch in the hospital...Are you allowed to drink bourbon 24 hours after giving birth?? Asking for myself.

I follow a lot of people who live tweet the show. Most people just react and make jokes. I posted my reaction on here because I was bored waiting for people to join my conference call. It would not surprise me, however, to know that there are a lot of people out there who take it too seriously, like everything else in life.

It's just for fun dude

The bad: I'm in the camp that thought the Dany-mad queen heel turn didn't really make sense. It could have, if they would have set it up more, but I guess there wasn't really time to show her descent into madness. The closest they came on this was her (correct) paranoia about Sansa, her stupidly just going down to King's Landing like, the day after losing half her army, and her anger at losing another dragon and Missandei. I get that Varys' shtick is that he wants the ruler who'd be best for The Realm...but I still have a hard time believing that he'd (a) think that person would be Jon Snow and (b) be stupid enough to get killed for it. The good: Cleganebowl lived up to the hype imo. No better way for Sandor to go out than facing his largest fear while accomplishing his life's goal. I laughed when Qyburn died. Hilarious cosmically fitting death. Also, Cersei just quietly leaving The Hound/The Mountain to it like "uhhh ... this doesn't seem to have to do with me..." I do love me some dragon-induced destruction. This episode was visually stunning. Agree with everyone who said it was a great episode of TV from an action standpoint. Musings: Is that *really* how Cersei dies? I'm surprised if so. Still think there is a chance that Jamie saves her life by sacrificing his own body so she won't be crushed. I never believe someone is dead on TV unless they physically show them dying. This is Game of Thrones. Would they really miss a chance to show one of the most-hated villains of all time be gratuitously crushed? Are we done with Sansa/Bran/Brienne/everyone else in the North?? Someone on Twitter said something to the effect of "Bran called a horse Uber for Arya." I like the idea that Bran warged into that horse to get Arya safely out of the city. Someone else posted this re: how Jon Snow felt when Dany started torching everything:

The bad- Hard to have much suspense when there are three episodes remaining. Obviously, the Living had to win, unless they planned to have the rest of the series be a flashback/flash-forward/shots of zombies walking around. It's also really weird if that whole storyline is just...done? Like...OK, now back to our scheduled programming of fighting over a Throne which half of the people in the show now *should* have the perspective to realize doesn't...actually matter, having looked death in the face? Episode was so poorly lit it was damn near impossible to tell what was going on for major swaths of the battle, even with the lights off and a pretty nice TV. The good- Everything Arya/Hound/Red Lady/Beric-related was awesome. "What do we say to the God of Death?" / "Not today." (At this point if I lived in Westeros I'd totally be converting to Lord of Light religion, lol) I was glad Theon got his redemption/forgiveness story. All the Sansa/Tyrion scenes were great. Is it gross that I kind of ship them now? Musings- Has Arya killed anyone with green eyes yet? Still think there's a chance that *if* we do get to find out the origin story of the Night King, it'll be revealed it's some Bran-time-loop-warging-into-First-Men kinda thing. Still a chance for Cleganebowl. I'll actually be disappointed if they've kept the Hound alive all this time and made the "scared of fire because of his brother" thing such a big part of his character and he doesn't even fight him.

Good call. Children of the forest stand to gain a lot from the extinction of humans for sure.

Coming here to propagate the fan theory that Bran is actually the Night King (he went back in time and warged into one of the First Men to try to save the world and it backfired).

Agree with @billikenfan05that it seems like the biggest sticking point that some view scholarship, room and board, etc. as sufficient payment and some don't. I think part of it is that a college degree is worth a varying amount to various people. For example...To Jayson Tatum, a college degree is not worth much (money wise...though one could argue that an education has inherent value, regardless of the return on investment) and would have negatively impacted him financially, if anything, had he stayed longer than a year in school. To someone like..idk, Welmer (i.e. someone who will never play professional sports of any kind), a college degree is worth a great deal. Actually agree with @billiken_roythat a lot of this would be solved by getting kids for whom a college education is of very little value out of college sports. I still think it is unacceptable that the NCAA tournament brings in close to a billion dollars each year and players don't see financial compensation. Someone on here brought up giving the players the full value of their scholarship and room and board, etc, in cash and then let them pay it back and have it taxed as income. I actually like that idea as a thought experiment: It would be interesting to give kids a choice of the value of their scholarship and all of that in cash, but have it taxed as income, and maybe you have to take out a loan vs. having everything paid for and you don't get paid. If you're a lottery pick you take the cash and pay back your loan next year when you get your signing bonus. If you're the majority of athletes who won't ever play pro, you take the scholarship. Obviously that would never happen but interesting to think about.

My problem with the first question is as follows: The NCAA tournament brought in $1bn in 2017 in revenue (the last year for which I could find data). Coaches of big programs make mid six figures per year at the very least. AAU coaches, schools, players' families, and shoe companies are all exchanging money and taking their cuts. My problem isn't that the players of revenue sports are practicing and playing in games without pay, as the rest of college athletes do...My problem is that they are doing so, and not getting paid, while generating profit for so many other people. And to top it all off, they're not even allowed to make one cent when the school sells jerseys with their numbers on them, or endorse a shoe brand, or a local restaurant, or sell their autographs, etc. As to the second question, hard to argue with that. But the questions are two sides of the same coin: (1) what's best for the NCAA? and (2) what's best for the players? Answers to each of the above questions are very different.

Anyone remember Ben McLemore who was from STL, ended up at Kansas, had to sit for academic reasons, played a year, then was drafted by the Kings 7th overall? My sister in law was good friends with him when she was at KU and I remember her telling me about his mom's heat getting turned off while he was playing for one of the highest grossing NCAA programs, for one of the highest-paid coaches in america--and not getting paid himself--at Kansas. Oh yeah, and his AAU coach was paid $10,000 by a "sports mentoring organization" to "steer McLemore" toward them. This is like, just my opinion, man, but I just...think that's wrong. Ben was generating revenue for KU, and not getting paid for it; meanwhile, the NCAA, Bill Self, KU as an institution, and his AAU coach are all making profit off of his free labor. Articles below about the level of poverty that Ben grew up in, and about his AAU coach getting paid: https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaab/big12/2013/02/27/big-12-mens-college-basketball-kansas-jayhawks-ben-mclemore/1947401/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaab/big12/2013/05/04/kansas-jayhawks-ben-mclemore-darius-cobb/2131775/

Lmao this is the exact type of Content billikens.com needs more of. (I was thinking more along the lines of Evans, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder I guess.)

Mine is simple: Always been a fan of Jesuit teams who wear blue (grew up going to Creighton games during the Dana Altman/Kyle Korver era). I went to SLU during one of the best times to be a Billiken fan (Fall 2008 to Spring 2012). Also, since I've been following them, there's always been some eye candy on the team, which doesn't hurt. Am I right guys???