For those of you outside the Gazoo's reach, Marc Morehouse wrote quite a fine article about Mitch King, Iowa's finest DT since Jared DeVries (as long as he's better than Matt Kroul, of course, but we think this season put a bit of a gap between the two). He's also the biggest character since Matt Roth, and before that... who knows. 

Here's the link; carve out 20 minutes of self-time, and give this one a read. It's well worth your time.

Our favorite part:

“I wanted to be the guy to get everybody pumped up,” he said. “At that point and time, I’m usually pumped up and things. I just wanted to express how important each and every game was.

“A lot of it wasn’t chanting and me hurrah-ing. It was more just me talking and trying to get the guys focused and into understanding what the importance of the game was and what it meant to us as players and us as a program.”

It all looks pretty much 100 mph. What’s going through your mind?

“A lot of things I don’t ever really think about before they come out of my mouth,” he said. “That goes good and bad. Sometimes I don’t really express what I really want to, but the guys on the team understand that I’m pumped up. They understand the gist of it. I don’t really think about it much before it comes out.”

Probably something you can’t rehearse.

“Even if you do, it’s going to change on the whim,” he said. “It’s going to change when you do it. You’ve got to be in the moment.”

Can you remember anything specific?

“I don’t remember the game, but I was pretty much just stuttering,” he said. “Well, not really stuttering, but I’d say things backwards and I’d miss words. I don’t remember the game, but it didn’t come out exactly the way I thought it would.”

Did anyone ask what you were trying to say?

“They all laughed and got excited and got amp’d up because I was so amp’d up.”

"Amp'd"? These guys? Where's the copy editor on this one?!

Anyway, great article. Morehouse missed the primest of prime opportunities to bring the phrase "Kroul and Unusual Punishment" into the mainstream, but fine. Really, the biggest shame is that we've only got one game left of Mitch King.

Now go have a Merry Christmas, people.