WhistlinDixie

The Maurice Clarrett Saga Gets Funnier

This just in from ESPN: the Denver Broncos are going to cut Maruice Clarrett tomorrow morning. The saddest part about this is that the Broncos are probably the best team in the league when it comes to taking sub-par running backs and making them big producers. What was even funnier was Maurice’s contract that he signed. He was originally offered a contract with a signing bonus. He instead opted to negotiate a contract with no signing bonus and instead laced with performance-based incentives. That means that he will get exactly $0 from the Broncos. Who knows, he might actually get an NFL paycheck one of these days. All I can say is that he had it coming to him.

Finally, Some Respect

I’m sure that most of you probably remember all of the OSU bashing that ESPN has been airing since we won the national championship in 2002. Always saying how we didn’t deserve it and how Miami actually beat us and we just got lucky because of an official’s call. Then they started talking about Maurice and how stupid he was and then all of the allegations against us for the alleged academic affairs of our players (none of which ended up turning into anything).

Well, it appears that it might be coming to an end. I was watching the College GameDay season preview special yesterday morning and, as usual, the hosts did a pole of Heisman hopefuls and conference favorites and who would go to the national championship game (the Rose Bowl this year). I was a little peeved when they barely mentioned Ted Ginn at all. About all they said is that if we lose to Texas, he’ll be out of the running. When it came to national title discussion, I expected USC and U of M to dominate discussion since a lot of the people were high on Chad Henne (QB) and Michael Hart (RB). As I expected, everyone had USC making it to the title game, and I believe that they all said that they would come in with a perfect record. The surprise came in when, first off, U of M did not come out of any of their mouths. Instead, both Lee Corso and Kirk Herbstreit put OSU in the title game. Not only that, but they also said that OSU would win and end the evil West Coast/USC empire! It’s nice to finally get some much deserved attention. Of course, the other two guys, Mark May and Trev Alberts, both looked at them like they were idiots. What else do you expect? They were the two that came down on OSU the hardest over the past few years.

BTW, sorry about being so silent the past few weeks. I’ve been busy doing other things, like homework. I’ve also been messing around with a program called MoveableType (used by LiveJournal) that I might employ in my blog so I don’t have to hand-edit the code for my web page every time I want to make an update. Not only that, but it would give me the ability to edit it from anywhere that had a web browser, instead of being anchored to my laptop.

One last thing. I will be coming home over Labor Day weekend, so if you want to get together, give me a call.

From First to Worst

It’s amazing how much things can change in a year. Last year, the CIA intramural soccer team took first place in the recreational league tournament. Tonight, our season ended a little prematurely. You see, we didn’t win a single regular season game this year. In fact, we got outscored 7-1 in the three games that we played. Our worst loss of the season was a 3-0 decision against Fiji (the brothers of Phi Gamma Delta). Guess who we, the last seed in the tournament, got paired up with? That’s right, Fiji, the top seed. (Don’t you just love the standard tournament format?) Needless to say, we lost. The margin by which we lost was what surprised me: 7-0! What was really bad was that tonight was the first night that we fielded a full team (nine players) from the beginning of the game. Up till now, we usually spent the last minutes before the game started frantically calling people and begging them to come out and play with us, so we could have the minimum of seven players to avoid having to forfeit. Tonight, we even had an extra offensive weapon that we had been without this season.

That puts me O-fer in the tournament win category since soccer last summer. I guess that your hopes can be easily inflated by having German foreign exchange students on your team. I guess that’s what we’ll have to do before next summer, persuade German foreign exchange students to come to Kettering just so we can have an awesome soccer team again. I can dream, can’t I?

The Downward Spiral

Boy, things just have not been going my way recently. First, CJ calls off his trip up to Chicago to visit me in June. Then, our group trip to visit Mme next weekend got dumped. Then, I found out that we would again be using MasteringPhysics in physics class to handle homework. Then, I decide that I like a girl here, only to find out that she is currently taken. Then, tonight, I go to play my first game of soccer for the season, only to have to forfeit it because we only had three people show up. Guess we did better than our softball team, who only had a spectator show. This means that if any of us want to play any intramural sport this season for CIA, we will have to fork over the $20 readmission fee to get the team back into the league. The only reason that this evening was half-way bearable was that I still got to play soccer. The team that we were going to play decided that they were going to scrimmage among themselves. (They brought almost 20 players!) They let Mike and myself join them. Luke decided that since there was no game, there was no reason to stick around. My team lost, but at least I got to have a good time.

To Much to Sum Up In One Line

First off, I’d like to say goodbye to Reggie Miller of the Indianapolis Pacers. His career ended last night in a loss to the Detroit Pistons. His 27 points were the fifth highest in a player’s last career playoff game. He retires as the twelfth highest scorer in NBA history. He made it to the Finals once and lost. He gave the Chicago Bulls a run for their money a few times in the playoffs in the late nineties. Unfortunately, he ran up against Michael Jordan, possibly the greatest basketball player of all time.

Now, about me. This week has just been a little weird. I had to come in to work half an hour early two days this week. Craig, the guy who previously worked on my project, finally called me after two weeks of playing email tag (he works night shift now). Today, I got volunteered to work in a car wash fund raiser for United Way. Not a problem: I get to stop work an hour early and go wash cars for an hour. Unfortunately, as I get ready to leave, I noticed that I had lost my ID badge. I went back and checked under my desk, under the table where I ate lunch, and in the restroom. It was nowhere to be found. I took a five minute walk over to Security in the mezzanine, only to find out that my badge had not been turned in there. I then took a walk back over to the Outbound 4 office and asked the people there if any one had turned in an ID. Again, no luck. I finally made it up to the car wash half an hour after I was scheduled to start. Even though no one was keeping track, I still stayed an extra half an hour to make up the time. Next week I’ll have to get a temporary ID so I can still get in and out of the facility. If my badge doesn’t show up in four days, I get the privilege of paying five dollars for a new ID.

Episode III: Best Sports Movie Ever?

According to Kenny Mayne of ESPN’s SportsCenter, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith is the best sports movie ever. Better than Field of Dreams, Hoosiers, any of the Rockys, or Caddyshack, to name a few. His biggest disappointment was over the small number of football scenes. George Lucas, the man behind the Star Wars saga, said that originally they had a lot of football scenes in the movie, but they had to cut them because they were too gruesome for the theater. Now, Kenny only has to convince the original R2-D2 and Chewbacca.

Ok, way OT, but to continue on what I was talking about on Friday, IBM has announced that it will be switching to Firefox internally as the supported browser for the company. I’d just like to say, I’m pretty sure that with IBM’s track record, they can’t be wrong on this.

Exclusive Cable?

You know how at hotels, they are always like "check out our premium channels"? I got to thinking tonight, if we get two Showtime channels for free, why don’t we get ESPN2 or Comedy Central or Discovery Channel or History Channel? They would have to cost less than the two Showtimes, and they actually have programs that I would like to watch. What is really sad is that I couldn’t even see the Bulls game last night when it was being played in Chicago! Talk about being disappointed. I was really looking forward to seeing the Bulls in the playoffs for the first time since the Jordan era. Maybe I’ll get to see their next game since it is in Washington.

NFL Draft 2005 – Day 1

Day one is in the books. As many analysts have stated, not much has gone on that wasn’t expected. No big trades, Eli Manning-esque episodes, or large fights (err, wait, these weren’t the Vibe Awards). Only four things that I can see as really noteworthy: quarterback Aaron Rodgers of Cal dropped all the way to the 24th pick and went to the Packers; Ohio State place kicker Mike Nugent went to the Jets with the 47th pick; Ohio State safety Dustin Fox went to Minnesota at the 80th pick; and former OSU tailback Maurice Clarett was actually drafted in the first day, going at the 101st pick to Denver. Personally, I expected Clarett to go in the sixth or seventh round, or even go undrafted. I never imagined that he would go in the third round, even if it was the last pick of the day. A lot of people were surprised by this move by the Broncos. The only plausible explanation that I have found is that the Broncos didn’t think that he would be available by the time their next pick came up, so they picked him just in case. Oh well, I hope that I never have to taint my blog with that loser’s name again.

Procrastination

Well, I have a term paper to revise and a final paper (something like seven pages) to write for Humanities, all due on Friday. I really don’t feel like doing either of them. However, both are required to pass the class. That leaves me no choice… I must procrastinate!

I was just taking a break from my revisions to watch some March Madness. Unfortunately, my bracket is hopelessly busted already. Two of the four teams that I picked for the Final Four are already eliminated. I figured that a three and a four seed would make it pretty far. I didn’t plan on an upset by a 13 seed or a total collapse in all facets of the game either. All this means that, barring an upheaval of major proportions, there is no chance of me winning $10,000 from ESPN. There’s always next year.

Another thought on the tournament… Why did they do away with the easily identifiable regions (ie, East, South, Midwest, and West) and replace them with cities instead (this year we have Chicago (Midwest), Syracuse (East), Austin (South), and Albuquerque (West))? First of all, the old regions were a lot easier to spell. I believe that most Americans would have difficulty spelling Albuquerque. Also, the regions are hardly regions anymore. Now part of the Albuquerque bracket plays their games in Cleveland. Of course, we all know that Cleveland is right next door to Albuquerque, right? Actually, there are 1602 mi between the two cities according to MapQuest. Why do they even try to call them anything anymore? It is now nothing but a humongous bracket that has ties to nothing geographically. There are no more advantages to being placed in one bracket or another. No more "Illinois should have been placed closer to home that the West. The tournament committee should have recognized their accomplishments this season more." Now it really doesn’t matter which region a team is placed in, except for which teams are in the region with them (ie, the Syracuse region is considered by many to be stacked the year.)

Well, I guess that I better get back to Humanities. These papers will only get done if I work on them. All I can say is that the distraction was welcome. Maybe now I’ll crank my music to keep my mind occupied.

Of Dynasties, Football

By now I’m sure that all of you have probably heard the outcome of Super Bowl XXXIX. Everyone is going around, proclaiming the New England Patriots the newest dynasty in football. I beg to differ.

Have we all forgotten the Dallas Cowboys of the early 90s? They were a true dynasty. In consecutive Super Bowls, they easily defeated the Bills. The next year, they lost in the NFC championship game to the San Francisco 49ers, the eventual Super Bowl champs. The following year, they returned to the Super Bowl again, easily handling the Pittsburgh Steelers.

By now, you’re probably thinking, so, they both won three Super Bowls in four years, so why are the Patriots so illegitimate? I say because they barely made it to the Super Bowl their first two times, winning both on last second field goals by Adam Vinatieri. Meanwhile, the Boys beat the Buffalo Bills 52-17 and 30-13 in Super Bowls XXVII and XXVIII. The next year they lost 38-28 in the NFC championship game to eventual Super Bowl champs the San Francisco 49ers. In their off year, the Pats didn’t even make it to the post-season. The following year, the Boys won the Super Bowl 27-17 over the Steelers.

During the early 90s, no one wanted to have the Cowboys on their schedule. This is because they were a dynasty. On the other hand, while New England has been seen as a threat, they routinely get by with the skin of their teeth, and they even lost to the lowly Miami Dolphins this year. And by the way, that was with their normal starters in, not the rest everybody attitude that the Eagles took at the end.