You didn't think we'd end with anything other than an "Alison Brie type of day" did you?

More Alison Brie photos can be found here. And of course, my favorite screen capture from the show Community. Please watch that show so she can stay on my TV. Doubt the power of Ms. Brie? Watch her transformation at the 1:40 mark of this video. This site is pretty awesome too.

One final reminder: SportsBubbler will still be around for several more days but I need to focus on getting that done, rather than blogging. So please come back to Bubbler to read the blogs that do a better job than I do.

"Lost" had me saying 'What the F' is going on?" several times, but that's what makes it such a damn fine show.

iPad Equals Nachos.

More on Rip Torn.

Today is also the day that music died.


Tom Izzo said it best, last night was "An old-fashion whooping." The well rested Badgers who had been shooting poorly over the last 3 games, were on fire last night. The Badgers took control right from the start and never looked back. Bo Ryan owns Izzo at the Kohl Center and Izzo owns Ryan in Final Four rings. (Really, as a Marquette grad you really think I wouldn't take at least one pot shot at Bo on the way out?)

Kudos to Yooper Nick Baumgartner from Iron River who is headed to the Olympics. (via the Polish Pickle)

Here's my attempt to not sound like Stuart Smalley.......

First off, I've been working for Journal Communications now for 12 years. I started off as a overnight weekend DJ at WKTI when I was still in college at Marquette. Then I moved down the hall to work at TMJ and produced Jeff Wagner's radio show for many years. People still to this day know me as "Young Dan". Jeff is truly the nicest guy in radio. I also produced the Packers radio game broadcasts on Sundays for many years. It gave me chance to work with some of the best in the business like Dennis Krause and Wayne Larrivee. Several years ago at a Journal Christmas party Wayne Larrivee told me about this website called "WithLeather.com" and I was quickly hooked on sports blogs.  I then went into sales at WTMJ until someone asked me, "What do you do when you're not selling?" I responded with the obvious answer of "sports". Hell, I even sent a picture I took at the College World Series to With Leather that got posted.

Now backtrack a little bit, so a couple years prior I got this. Because of the high survival rate and my young age I wasn't terribly worried, but still, the word 'cancer' in any form scares the bejesus out of me. So, I wanted to try something work related to what I love to do with my friends, talk about sports. But I didn't want to be a beat reporter. They're a dying breed. I'm a huge sports fan and as someone who loved Deadspin, With Leather, the now-defunct Daily Quickie on ESPN and the now-defunct Wisconsin Sports Bar. I felt that road would be an interesting route to take and luckily for me the Journal was in the works of building a site like that. I was also amazed at the creativity of Dennis York that I thought we could try pull something off like that too. Speaking of which, I'm having beers with Dennis York tonight at the MU game.

We did a lot of things pretty well, but obviously we did plenty of things wrong too. The guy who I worked with to build this site, Jim Ganzer, had a good idea. Take the Scout.com philosophy and make it localized for all the teams in Wisconsin. Sure we disagreed at times, I wanted it more to be like a blog and he wanted it as a news-y  with postgame stories site. In the end, I had the Daily Drink and we worked together on the rest. Did we try to do too much too fast? Maybe. I still think together we did a damn fine job considering how we had one arm tied behind our back.

I'd by lying if I didn't say I felt that some in this building were rooting for our failure. We had to fight too hard just to get the simplest things done, way too many e-mails went unanswered and the failure of some to even acknowledge our existence in this building was beyond frustrating. We did what we could, but in the end, it didn't matter. The site wasn't making money and the economy didn't help our cause. When your website is the 3rd or 4th option for a sales person, it isn't going to get done.

We also started up this site at a time when the big dogs starting limiting how much you can cover online. The NFL, MLB and NBA have really cracked down on what websites can do content wise, with limits on audio and video that are ridiculous. I think the MLB policy is you can't have postgame audio posted for longer than 24 hours from when you recorded it. So the media goes into the locker room and asks the questions, but since it's on stadium grounds, reporters don't have a right post that audio. Instead of all their info coming via the news outlets like Journal Sentinel or Wisconsin State Journal, the teams are now becoming the news source. The Brewers want you to come to Brewers.com and the Packers want you to come to Packers.com for all your news and information. They don't want you going anywhere else for your news. They set limits on what others can do with video and audio and then they post it all on Packers.com, even though its the reporters who are asking the questions. I don't like that policy one bit.

Ok back to Bubbler. We found some great writers and built some great fan blogs. I'm incredibly proud of the work we've done and I hope you've enjoyed some of the writers we've found. Our top blogs, Railbird Central, Bernie's Crew (with help from Junkball Blues and Between the Green Pillars) and Admirals Short Shifts are going to continue on at the new JSOnline page that's I've built. Others you can find on their new locations like BobBoozerJinx.

I've never been a great writer, but that wasn't the point. My goal was to entertain and provide an outlet to fans to discuss the topics of the day - sports and/or entertainment. I hope I was able to do that. I've meet some great people along the way like klwillis45 (the DD's first 'fan') and people I feel I at least know a little about, crichar3, BrewTownBoozer, brbutler, burniebrewer. rdeglow, coach and MushroomCloudMoFo (a great name) and many others I'm probably forgetting. Post-it Note Paul was a huge help as he knew more about sports blogs than I did and told me what I was doing right or wrong. Plus he kept telling me, "you gotta have more babes with big knockers on the site" So you can thank him for that. And thanks to all the readers who never commented, but showed up on my pageviews count. Your readership was greatly appreciated.

Thanks to all the writers who raised the bar for content in the Drink such as: Winks, Christian Schneider, Stix, Brew Town Beat, Rattler Radio, Chuckie Hacks, Right Field Bleachers, Railbird Central and Brew Crew Ball.

For the time being, the best place you can find me now is on Twitter @SportsBubbler. If I end up writing somewhere else, that's where you'll find out. I'll be posting links and such on my twitter account on a daily basis. Don't get me wrong, I'm going to miss doing this, but I won't miss getting up at 4am anymore. Who will fill the speck of a void that the Daily Drink leaves? I'm not sure but I know the guys at PocketDoppler.com are going to give it a shot. I hope they can pull it off.

For those wanting to know where I get most of my stuff, here's my links: BuzzFeed, Fark, Warming Glow, Film Drunk - the rest just came from readers like Safford and Son sending me good stuff. All my sports links will be posted on the new JSOnline page I've created.

As always we close with a music video but unfortunately I couldn't find a embeddable version. So, I just have to send you link to a very fitting closing song.

One last note - Life is too short to drink shitty beer. Find a good brew and enjoy. You can always find me at halftime of MU games at the Irish Bar by section 208 drinking a Smithwicks or a Guinness. Stop on by.

I'd be sleeping on the couch tonight if I didn't thank Mrs Daily Dink for putting up with me looking at half-naked women and watching sports all the time for the past 2+ years. It's gonna be nice going back to just watching games and not wondering how I'm going to write about it the next morning.

The lovely interwebs is much like TV in the 50's, it has a chance to be great.



Ahhhh who the hell am I kidding. This is what you came for - b00bs, b00bs, b00bs and b00bs.

This is very true


Stix said it better than I will tomorrow. (although he was too kind to me)

Hottest women of Super Bowl media day.

Dammit, Brett Favre will be in the Super Bowl.

Another preview of MSU-UW tonight.

Fox Sports graphic has UW a #3 seed and MU a #12 seed.

The NFL is a TV ratings giant.

10 biggest Olympic blunders.

Line of the Day: Rock n roll without the sex isn't rock and roll anymore. It's just Nickelback. Read more here.

Your Oscar nominations.

Life Lessons from Mr. T.

WTF is this?

No, this doesn't seem like a terrible idea at all.

Random Music Video: Since this is the last Afternoon Delight, we'll do one of my favorite songs about death.

Two for Tuesday

Caption A: D-Wade from last night against the Bucks



Caption B: Peyton at Super Bowl media day



Leave your last clever caption in the comments.

In setting out to write my final Bubbler column, I hoped something witty would come to mind. Something I could consider the best thing I've written in my too-short time writing columns for the Bubbler.

Of course, I drew a massive blank. That's just what happens when you write. Sometimes you just draw a blank. I don't know, maybe my brain is fried from talking too much about Brett Favre, and now there's nothing more to talk about regarding him. Who knows?

So, in trying to think of what the heck to write, I went back to a conversation I had at a bar with a buddy of mine a few years ago. Being a sports journalist and somewhat frustrated with the way the industry was heading, I mentioned to him that perhaps the shifting paradigm of the industry was lending itself to an interactive Web site. What if there was a site, I remember pondering as I ordered a third or fourth or seventh beer, that was totally interactive and focused all on Wisconsin sports? Like a two-way street where fans and journalists alike could interact, where fans could BE journalists, yet still had at least a few trained journalists covering everything in Wisconsin sports from the professional down through the high school level.

This is a true story, but I'm not telling it to brag about my idea. I'm certainly not the first one to have that idea. And I definitely didn't have the resources, the talent or the motivation to pull it off. But there was a group of people that did, and SportsBubbler was basically the exact creation, more or less, of what I had in mind when I talked to my buddy that night. Of course, I'm sure Dan Walsh, Jim Ganzer and the fine people who created SportsBubbler had the idea well before me, and they pulled it off. I thank them for this site and how much time I've enjoyed on it. Now, at least, I won't hear my wife say, "Are you on the Bubbler AGAIN?" five times a day.

So this is what I decided I wanted my last Bubbler column to be about. My last Wisconsin sports topic of discussion on the Bubbler is SportsBubbler itself.

I want to make my point clear: It is a genius Web site, far ahead of its time, if you ask my opinion from a sports journalist standpoint. If there's a better localized sports Web site out there, I haven't found it.

I am dead serious about this. I am not sucking up or being sentimental. I mean this.

Dan and Jim and whoever else helped run the Bubbler during its stint, in addition to every single blogger and everyone who cared to elucidate their thoughts on the message boards, put together a product that's the future of sports journalism, a future that can be a great one if the model of the Bubbler is followed. See, sports journalists like myself are a little frustrated with "citizen journalism," the current school of thought that says everyone needs to have a voice, no matter how ill-informed, and sportswriters are becoming little more than vessels to promote each and every citizen's opinion on sports.

On the surface, that's what the Bubbler would appear to be. A site for the fans, by the fans, right? Yes, it has been that, but it's also been so much more. Sure, the message boards provide ample space for fans to bicker and debate. Lord knows I've spent enough time doing that, as my almost 10,000 posts attest. But the site also featured so many blogs by so many talented writers who proved that you don't need to hold a degree in journalism and don't need to be in the locker room to disseminate intelligent opinions on sports (and other things).

Freedom was encouraged with the blogs, creating a wide array of everything from sarcastic/philosophical/satirical blogs (like mine or Wink's Thinks) to blogs filled with deeply intellectual statistical analysis on baseball (Radio Silence's wonderful Junkball Blues) to blogs aimed at gathering displaced Wisconsin fans to get informed on and discuss the Packers (Brian Carriveau's Railbird Central). Of course, I cannot cite every blog here, and I apologize for the ones I left out, but they all brought something unique to the table. That was the benefit of us being encouraged to use our own style.

And the Bubbler did feature some first-hand, old-school beat reporting in the form of Jim Ganzer's wonderful reports on Wisconsin hoops to Paul Imig's Bucks Beat. If the Bubbler did come back, one thing I would hope for is some more beat reporters exclusive to the site. This brings the fans even closer to the media, which will always have the best access to the athletes and sports we discuss, bringing an even more free-flowing, informative, two-way conversation to the table.

Whether us sports journalists admit it or not, that's the way the business is headed. It's a two-way street now. Fans have a voice. It's not reporters reporting and fans reading anymore, and it will never be that way again. But what the Bubbler did was facilitate a forum where fan interaction could be constructive and informative, not just a bunch of shouting and screaming (or what I like to tag with the negative moniker "citizen journalism," something newspapers are frustratingly and relentlessly obsessed with). The blogs, the intelligent conversation that I rarely saw on message boards elsewhere and the repeated links to the articles of sports insiders and beat reporters all proved that the Bubbler's model was certainly working. It wasn't just "citizen journalism." It was much better than that.

In closing, I would especially like to thank Dan Walsh for giving me this forum. It's been a blast writing these columns, and I'm hoping to start my own blog that will be linked to from JS Online. I hope I've gained at least a few readers. And if not, you'll see me all over these message boards, no doubt.

More than anything, I hope nobody thinks that SportsBubbler failed. I as well as anyone know the unfortunate circumstances surrounding the sports journalism industry right now. Everything costs money, and there's just not enough funding. But just because something succumbed to forces beyond its control does not mean it failed. Rather, in my humble opinion, the IDEA of SportsBubbler absolutely worked, making the Bubbler an absolutely unmitigated success.

I hope to see it back soon.

With "Lost" back on TV tonight, it's an Evangeline Lilly type of day.

The final Statis-Stix comes your way at 10am, he talks the concept and idea of SportsBubbler. I'm amazed at how some get it (stix) and others don't. Caption contest at Noon and then A.D by around 2pm.

Top Ten 'Lost' Episodes. (more primer here)

An interesting take on the Tim Tebow ad controversy. (via Christian Schneider)

Hot new babes of Hollywood.

Of course he mistook the bank for his home, who doesn't?

Bizarre story #1 and Bizarre story #2 (both via fark)

Versus is going to try and compete against SportsCenter.

New pics for fans of Christina Hendricks.

Dog shoots hunter. 'nuff said.


Housekeeping notes: Last day for the Daily Drink is tomorrow morning. I've got a big fat post ready for tomorrow morning. Make sure to check it out. SportsBubbler will still be around for a couple more days but I need to focus on getting that done, rather than blogging. So again. Daily Drink finishes tomorrow and the site will hang around for a couple more days after that. One of these days, when you type in SportsBubbler.com you'll get redirected into a page on JSOnline.

Oh boy, the Onion killed it once again


Packers Fan Announces He Will Return To Drinking For Another Season

The Bucks beat the Heat last night for the second time in 3 days and Carlos Delfino is still handsome.

Based on the numbers, it appeared not to many of you read Afternoon Delight yesterday. One of the links was about the NCAA expanding the basketball tournament to 96 or 128 teams. Personally, I think it's a terrible idea. But loyal DD reader Basque sent over this thought:

I saw the article about going to 96 teams.  Interestingly, Creighton's AD has been pushing a proposal (I don't know if this will be a modified version of the 96 team proposal or not) where you have a 128 team NCAA field, you play the first round, and the winners play a second round that weekend, while the losers of the opening round all get dumped into what becomes the new NIT tournament.  Then you have the regular 64 team tournament for the NCAA's, with a 64 team tournament in the NIT (given three separate post season tournaments outside of the NCAA's anyway, it comes out to almost 64 teams anyway).

I have to admit, I actually sort of liked that proposal.  I think the tournament was ruined the moment CBS took it over. I think the idea for the final four, then, since there's an extra round, is that your finals weekend would be the final three rounds--Elite 8 on, say, Thursday, Final Four on Saturday, and final on Monday night.  Something to that effect.  It really wasn't that bad an idea as far as I'm concerned.

Is Basque on crack or is he dead on? Expand the tournament or leave it as is?

The rumor is, we might be calling MU head basketball Buzz Williams "afroman" soon.

Yahoo has a one-on-one with Buzz Williams.

Badgers host Tom Izzo and the Michigan State Spartans tonight at the Kohl Center looking for revenge from an earlier 54-47 loss in East Lansing. Again, if Jon Leuer is playing, I'd take the Badgers. Since he's not, I just think Izzo's team is too strong this year. Bo Ryan and Tom Izzo are very similar.

Seth McClung could only get a minor league deal with the Marlins? He needs a better agent.

Ryan Miller, not from Admirals Short Shifts, but from the Buffalo Sabres has a pretty cool goal mask for Team USA Hockey.

The NFL, fearing more public back-lash, appears to have found common sense on the "Who Dat" T-shirt controversy.

Gilbert Arenas writes: Learning to be a better role model.

Martz & Cutler, this should be interesting.

If you're ever looking for Onion-esq humor directed towards Chicago sports, I highly suggest the Heckler.

Expect to hear this over the weekend at least once.

Not enough links for you? FilmDrunk has you covered.

Random Music Video: Alternate Routes  - The Toolbox Song!



If you don't like that one, at least give this one a try