This is part two of five in an attempt to create a working compendium of Bull Run terms and dictionary entries in advance of the 2014 season. Catch part one here:
The Essential UB Bull Run Glossary: Ed. 1 Vol. 1 - Bull Run
SWATT - Once upon a time, before Javon McCrea and the Kraken, UB's star power in the frontcourt came from Arizonan Mitchell Watt. The 6'10" center recovered from a rare case of Guillan-Barre syndrome early in his career to become UB - and the MAC's - premier defensive force at the rim. While he was named MAC Player of the Year in his senior season for his all-around game, Watt's signature was thundering blocks that swiftly flipped possession and momentum. He finished with 195 in his UB career, and averaged 2.2 a game over his final two seasons.
FLECK / SHAQ - Half holdover from UBfan, half Bull Run innovation, these words are simple substitutions for common vulgarities. On UBfan, as with most fan forums, there's an autofill system where certain words are subbed out for others. These systems are primarily used to keep boards family-friendly, but can also be used to humourous effect. In some places you can't type "Kent State" without it being autocorrected to "Can't State."
It's cooler in practice, I swear.
Anyway, at Bull Run we don't have those auto filters, but we do have a bit of a mandate from SB Nation powers that vulgarity maybe isn't the best. So 'shaq' is a substitute from UBfan, and Fleck is one of our own, an homage to the MAC's Court Jester in Charge at Kalamazoo.
DREW-WILLY-SOMETHING-SOMETHING-SOMETHING - This is one that until now has only been in use among the editors. A few weeks ago Conrad started a piece on Drew Willy, only to let it sit for a couple days until he was able to finish it. In that time, however, he forgot that he hadn't specified a URL, instead just leaving some placeholder text.
Some background on our platform here: typos within the body of the text can be fixed really easily. Ones in headlines can be fixed but often the damage is done for Google search result purposes. URLs cannot be changed ever. So in this great post about Drew Willy's pro career:
Drew Willy's Relentless Drive to CFL Stardom - Bull Run
You'll find the URL doesn't speak to CFL Stardom, but rather drew-willy-something-something-something.
drew-willy-something-something-something: Bull Run jargon for technical difficulties editor error.
NYBI - The NYBI - New York Bulls Initiative - is a blanket term for ADDW's efforts to raise the profile of UB to the stature it deserves as the largest public institution in the state. NYBI has been a chance for everyone to weigh in with their opinion and show their biases. Plenty of folks who have never really invested that much in the Buffalo Bulls are suddenly very upset about any attachment to New York. After a rocky start in which ADDW had to do a lot quickly to get a very heavy ball rolling, certain results are undeniable. There are more butts in seats, dollars in bank accounts, and Bulls on TV.
For a more comprehensive look at NYBI, check out these two pieces, separated by a year, but both offering a Bull Run perspective on the Initiative:
NYBI 101 - Everything You Need to Know About the NYBI - Bull Run
The Business Behind the "New York Bulls" - Bull Run
THE TRACK AND THE WATERTABLE - So UB Stadium has this track around the football field that pushes the seats back from the gridiron a bit. It's not a common feature among D1 stadiums, and generally it receives a ton of criticism. In an ideal world, UB has a stadium without a track, but given that the facility was built for the World University Games, there's no stadium at all if not this one.
Every couple months there's a new burst of discussion around the track, especially during out of conference play when new fanbases see our field, and late in conference play when we get more TV time. It's become urban legend among UB Fans that we can't just lower the field and build seats below the current 100 level because the water table on the Amherst Campus is too close to ground level.
ANDREW ATMAN AND CHRISTIAN SCHMIDT- Maybe these guys don't deserve an entry, but I'm making the list and they're significant to my personal history with UB Basketball. In Atman and Schmidt we have two big recruiting misses: Schmidt came along shortly after Yassin Idbihi. He was supposed to be a 3/4 swing with sharpshooter touch from the corner, but never really found the floor for the Bulls. Atman, though he stood a full seven feet, was a more accomplished volleyball player than hoopster out of Western PA and is a living example that not all really tall guys are great at basketball.
COACH JACK - Felisha Legette-Jack is the current coach of the UB Women's Basketball team. She is awesome, and I generally re-read much of what I write about her because I swing way too homerish. I'll once again defer to a past post, from the beginning of last season:
Coach Jack starts her second year at Buffalo with a ton of momentum, as the Bulls finished 8-8 in the MAC after a 2-11 nonconference slate. Coach Jack is not the type of coach you usually see in Mid-Major-dom, as she has coached successfully at Indiana, with three seasons of 18+ wins, after leading Hofstra to some of the best years in its history. Jack has experience as an assistant at Michigan State and her alma mater, Syracuse. She also has worked with USA basketball and has served as the recruiting coordinator at both Syracuse and Michigan State before becoming a head coach.
In her time at UB, Coach Jack has proven to be a passionate coach who looks out for her players and is excited to be in Buffalo. We hope she stays forever.
COVER A DAMN KICK - Know what's annoying? When you get some points on the football field and immediately give up a long return and chunk of the precious momentum. COVER A DAMN KICK comes in all caps no matter what, even when it's not a special entry in this post. Coined by longtime commenter BRJ, it's a response to what is frankly a bit of a rash over the last few years of special teams brain farts.
REGGIEBALL - Broadly, the style of play of the Men's Basketball team under Reggie Witherspoon. More specifically, Reggieball is composed of four identifiable qualities.
1) An offense built on moving the ball around the perimeter that gets the ball into the post thanks to high-low work in the key or strong offensive rebounding and suffers when those perimeter players don't keep moving.
2) A strong zone defense that is best when one shutdown guard is able to tail the opposing team's point.
3) Long, 7 to 10 minute droughts of scoring that come and go without warning and suck all the air out of a game.
4) An utter inability to solve Bowling Green's zone defense.
smALBANY / SUx / BINGHAMTON BASKETBALL - Just some names for other athletics programs in New York. Our beef with each is slightly different, but none deserves its own entry.
smAlbany is simple. It's pretty easy to find Albany folks out there who believe because of their basketball success in the America East conference and recent lacrosse success that they have legitimately passed UB as the premiere SUNY school. But America East doesn't approach the MAC, the Dane's new football stadium is too small for a FBS program, and the recent spinoff of nanotechnology money has damaged Albany's academic clout.
SUx is Syracuse. Don't need to go into detail there.
Binghamton Basketball. If you make a habit of missing the forest for the trees you could say that Binghamton has made the NCAA tournament and UB hasn't, and that is very, very meaningful. But the Bearcats did it by recruiting a ton of criminals and a huge scandal erupted. You'll be hard pressed to find a sane fan who would take Bingo's situation over ours.
HALFTIME THOUGHTS - A Bull Run game thread tradition. A chance to let the good times roll when we're winning or blow off some steam in tougher games, Halftime Thoughts is essentially a caption contest that takes place in the middle of each game.
ROW THE BOAT - This in fact not native or unique to Bull Run. Court Jester in Chief PJ Fleck rolled into Western Michigan and immediately started acting like that kid who shows up to freshman year of high school with five nicknames, all sorts of swagger, and about 5 feet nothing of height. Row the Boat is just the most incredible of the many 'traditions' he tried to start with the Broncos. In theory, it makes sense: a crew of eight must work in perfect tandem to success. In practice, it's the work of a smooth talking blowhard who is a laughingstock not just here but around the MAC blogosphere. It even has a dance. It's no good.
POWDER HORN - Another Tim Riordan / Bull Run special. While many of the Ohio schools have natural pairings and rivalries that existed well before UB joined the MAC in 1999, UMass is newer to the block and seemed a good pairing for UB. Given that both teams compete in Amherst, there's a little more connection there than just 'hey, we're both single.' The Powder Horn, like the Ontario Sandwich, is a fictional rivalry trophy that commemorates contests between the easternmost schools in the MAC.
TROMBONIST ON A UNICYCLE - Danny White has made clear that in addition to the quality of competition on the field, he wants to improve all aspects of the gameday experience. The band has improved in recent years, but some longer posters won't ever forget the halftime show five or six years ago now that featured no drum core marching the group onto the field and a trombonist playing while riding a unicycle as the featured solo.
SAFETY FROM THE 4 YARD LINE - This one is pretty recent. in 2013, in the midst of a game that ended up a 30-3 victory for the Bulls, a very, very poor referee decision awarded a safety to UB thanks to a Tyler Tettleton intentional grounding penalty. Unfortunately for all involved, Tettleton was roughly four yards from the endzone when he let go of the ball. To make matters worse, penalties are nonreviewable, and we all had to live with it.
Fortunately, Ohio fans to this day understand that the safety was merely two points in what ended up a 27 point differential and have moved past what was ultimately one play in the middle of a long game and a long season.
OSTROWSKI'S BROKEN LEG - Among the many reasons that 20XX became 20XX is the season-ending injury that Matt Ostrowski suffered in the third game of the year against Central Florida. At the time of the injury, UB was hanging with Jeff Godfrey and UCF, but the broken leg threw the offensive line into flux for the rest of the year and cost the Bulls their most experience and polished lineman. I maintain that this injury was more costly than Starks' torn labrum or any other in UB's Division 1 history.
NEXT BULL IN - Next Bull In : Jeff Quin :: Row the Boat : PJ Fleck. The happy difference is that Jeff Quinn has graduated from middle school. Next Bull In is a philosophy for the whole football program: no matter what happens, if there's a need to be filled, the Next Bull In will step up and create success.
QB leaves to follow his stepbrother's coattails? Next Bull In. Old coach's recruits follow him to Kansas? Next Bull In. Neutz is cheapshotted by a UMASS DB? You get the idea. Early on in the Quinn era, Next Bull In was an easy punchline, but has since become more benign as it becomes more and more clear that the players and recruits think highly of and find success in Quinn's family-like atmosphere around his program.
AT ORACLE GIF ME - This is an SB Nation thing more than UB, but it's something you should know about the comments here. If you type "@oracle gif me xxxx" in the subject line of a comment, a robot will come and give you a random gif from the SB Nation libraries. There are specific key words, like 'pathetic' and 'victory', that will draw from a curated pool of gifs, but it's almost more fun just to play the random game and see what comes up. It's a good time.