I am rooting for the Oregon Ducks in the 2010-2011 BCS Championship Game. That's just how I roll.
That two-point conversion was just kind of awesome, btw.
Just wanted to make that clear here before the end of the game.
For historical purposes, when I'm looking back at posts, they were playing Auburn, about which I have no particular feelings, positive or negative.
post game edit: You can't say Oregon didn't give Auburn a good game or that they didn't have a great season. Way to go, Ducks!
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Showing posts with label sports. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sports. Show all posts
Monday, January 10, 2011
Monday, December 6, 2010
I am pretty sure you won't finish reading this meandering blog post
It would be bad form to not have a post ready for a Monday, but I'm kind of running dry at the moment. Bear with me.
The weekend
The holidays are here, and that meant Saturday we were able to attend a lovely get together at Matt and Nicole's place. Sweaters were worn, cocktails embibed, and a cold front hit just before the party, so it didn't feel odd or unseasonal.
I learned a lesson in trying to be a safe driver: if you're planning to cab it around town - do not decide its time to call a cab at 2:00 AM on Saturday night/ Sunday morning during the middle of holiday revelry. They will never, ever show up. And you will spend an ugly hour regretting that last cocktail with SyFy Channel on mute showing some horrendous movie with Alan Cumming painted blue, and Jamie just staring at the window and repeating "where are they?", only to give up and force a sober Nicole to drive you all the way back to your house at 3:10 AM.
Today was fairly lazy. Played with the dogs. Read. Cleaned up a bit. Walked the dogs. Fixed the fence. Slept for a while in the afternoon, facedown on the sofa. Denied the fact that I need to go to Lowe's and do a few last bits of Christmas shopping (I am way, way out ahead on Christmas shopping). Met up with Matt and Nicole at a sort of Italian bistro near Nau's, ran into Keora and Laura (wife of SimonUK).
And now I'm sitting in front of the fake fire with sleepy dogs.
Big 12 and Longhorn Football
OU won the Big 12 Championship, which is secretly good news to me (as OU is my second favorite college team, but we do not say such things in Austin).
And it looks like UT's long-bemoaned Offensive Coordinator, Greg Davis, will be leaving UT's coaching staff by hook or by crook early this week.
I don't know much about Davis. He doesn't get in front of the mics or cameras very often, but I know that in a city that screeches to a halt on game days, I have never heard one person who didn't second-guess or immediately leap to chip in to question Davis's coaching and play calling. That's not an exaggeration for dramatic effect, that's a fact. And it seems that UT's great recruiting of the past 10 years finally wasn't able to overcome the deficit in offensive coordination. At some point, you can't have 100K people in the stadium all slapping their foreheads, and everybody but the Offensive Coordinator knowing that the play called was not going to work.
That's not to say people aren't warily eyeing Will Muschamp (UT's Defensive Coordinator), his millions per year and the fact that UT oddly already anointed him Mack Brown's successor despite the fact that Brown isn't scheduled to retire or leave Texas. I don't think Muschamp is on the chopping block quite yet, but if UT is giving up as many touchdowns next year as they did this season? That sweetheart deal is going to dry up pretty fast.
Anyway, strange days for Texas football.
On the positive side: Looks like Oregon will challenge Auburn for the National title spot! Very happy for our man in Oregon, Fantomenos. The Ducks have been building to this point for a while, and I'm personally planning to dress in green and watch that one.
Jackie Chiles returns
Back in the 1990's Seinfeld was (and still remains) one of my favorite shows. Many will remember the OJ-case inspired character, Jackie Chiles, loosely based on now-deceased showboating attorney Johnny Cochrane.
A colleague of The Signal Watch is a contributor to award-winning legal blog Abnormal Use, which recently swung an interview with the actor who portrayed Jackie Chiles, Phil Morris. We encourage you to read the interview.
I confess that, yes, I do still watch Smallville on the CW (I'm quite a fan of Ms. Durance who plays Lois. Rowr.). For the past few years, Morris has guest-spotted on the program as J'onn J'onzz/ John Jones (aka: The Martian Manhunter), and he's been a real highlight in a show that I usually enjoy semi-ironically (because, man, Smallville...). I figured it was too much to ask that they spin the character off into his own, better show, so I take what I can get.
You can also see Morris in new clips as Jackie Chiles on Funny or Die!
Congrats to Abnormal Use for a great 2010!
Spider-Man play suffers another injury
An actress playing a major role as a villain suffered a concussion when a rope smacked her in the head. This same actress has to sit in her harness 6 hours per day.
I really do think people will turn up to watch the show, but its for the same reason you go to NASCAR races: horrendous accidents.
Never Assume
You people can enjoy the malarkey that is The League in small, bite sized chunks and opt in or out of dealing with me as you please. Even Jamie has the option to tell me to shut it, and/ or leave the room. But there is a person who does not have any options. 8 hours per day, 5 days per week, my officemate (who also reports to me in the org chart) has to sit and listen to whatever I say. And I kind of just talk. And talk. And talk and talk and talk and talk and talk all day every day.
And its kind of unfair. Literally nobody else on the planet has to put up with my monologuing or fear for their livelihood. And so it came to pass that I was completely under the impression that my officemate and I were on the same page that KANYE WEST IS THE GREATEST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED, EVER.
Apparently, not so. So, if anyone else has some ideas for what to get an officemate for Christmas that isn't the new Kanye West album, please let me know.
The weekend
The holidays are here, and that meant Saturday we were able to attend a lovely get together at Matt and Nicole's place. Sweaters were worn, cocktails embibed, and a cold front hit just before the party, so it didn't feel odd or unseasonal.
I learned a lesson in trying to be a safe driver: if you're planning to cab it around town - do not decide its time to call a cab at 2:00 AM on Saturday night/ Sunday morning during the middle of holiday revelry. They will never, ever show up. And you will spend an ugly hour regretting that last cocktail with SyFy Channel on mute showing some horrendous movie with Alan Cumming painted blue, and Jamie just staring at the window and repeating "where are they?", only to give up and force a sober Nicole to drive you all the way back to your house at 3:10 AM.
Today was fairly lazy. Played with the dogs. Read. Cleaned up a bit. Walked the dogs. Fixed the fence. Slept for a while in the afternoon, facedown on the sofa. Denied the fact that I need to go to Lowe's and do a few last bits of Christmas shopping (I am way, way out ahead on Christmas shopping). Met up with Matt and Nicole at a sort of Italian bistro near Nau's, ran into Keora and Laura (wife of SimonUK).
And now I'm sitting in front of the fake fire with sleepy dogs.
Big 12 and Longhorn Football
OU won the Big 12 Championship, which is secretly good news to me (as OU is my second favorite college team, but we do not say such things in Austin).
And it looks like UT's long-bemoaned Offensive Coordinator, Greg Davis, will be leaving UT's coaching staff by hook or by crook early this week.
I don't know much about Davis. He doesn't get in front of the mics or cameras very often, but I know that in a city that screeches to a halt on game days, I have never heard one person who didn't second-guess or immediately leap to chip in to question Davis's coaching and play calling. That's not an exaggeration for dramatic effect, that's a fact. And it seems that UT's great recruiting of the past 10 years finally wasn't able to overcome the deficit in offensive coordination. At some point, you can't have 100K people in the stadium all slapping their foreheads, and everybody but the Offensive Coordinator knowing that the play called was not going to work.
That's not to say people aren't warily eyeing Will Muschamp (UT's Defensive Coordinator), his millions per year and the fact that UT oddly already anointed him Mack Brown's successor despite the fact that Brown isn't scheduled to retire or leave Texas. I don't think Muschamp is on the chopping block quite yet, but if UT is giving up as many touchdowns next year as they did this season? That sweetheart deal is going to dry up pretty fast.
Anyway, strange days for Texas football.
On the positive side: Looks like Oregon will challenge Auburn for the National title spot! Very happy for our man in Oregon, Fantomenos. The Ducks have been building to this point for a while, and I'm personally planning to dress in green and watch that one.
Jackie Chiles returns
Back in the 1990's Seinfeld was (and still remains) one of my favorite shows. Many will remember the OJ-case inspired character, Jackie Chiles, loosely based on now-deceased showboating attorney Johnny Cochrane.
A colleague of The Signal Watch is a contributor to award-winning legal blog Abnormal Use, which recently swung an interview with the actor who portrayed Jackie Chiles, Phil Morris. We encourage you to read the interview.
I confess that, yes, I do still watch Smallville on the CW (I'm quite a fan of Ms. Durance who plays Lois. Rowr.). For the past few years, Morris has guest-spotted on the program as J'onn J'onzz/ John Jones (aka: The Martian Manhunter), and he's been a real highlight in a show that I usually enjoy semi-ironically (because, man, Smallville...). I figured it was too much to ask that they spin the character off into his own, better show, so I take what I can get.
You can also see Morris in new clips as Jackie Chiles on Funny or Die!
Congrats to Abnormal Use for a great 2010!
Spider-Man play suffers another injury
An actress playing a major role as a villain suffered a concussion when a rope smacked her in the head. This same actress has to sit in her harness 6 hours per day.
I really do think people will turn up to watch the show, but its for the same reason you go to NASCAR races: horrendous accidents.
Never Assume
You people can enjoy the malarkey that is The League in small, bite sized chunks and opt in or out of dealing with me as you please. Even Jamie has the option to tell me to shut it, and/ or leave the room. But there is a person who does not have any options. 8 hours per day, 5 days per week, my officemate (who also reports to me in the org chart) has to sit and listen to whatever I say. And I kind of just talk. And talk. And talk and talk and talk and talk and talk all day every day.
And its kind of unfair. Literally nobody else on the planet has to put up with my monologuing or fear for their livelihood. And so it came to pass that I was completely under the impression that my officemate and I were on the same page that KANYE WEST IS THE GREATEST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED, EVER.
Apparently, not so. So, if anyone else has some ideas for what to get an officemate for Christmas that isn't the new Kanye West album, please let me know.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Big 12 Shake-Up/ Shake-Down
I knew eventually I would need to start talking about Longhorn football, but I am a bit amazed/ down that my first post on football will discuss the much discussed (in Texas, anyway) goings on with the Big 12 conference. Honestly, I planned on my first post on sports to be about World Cup soccer (or as our friends from across the sea call it "football", but they are wrong).
Sports talk radio, non-stop-ESPN, etc... aren't so much my thing, so if the rumblings of the fall of the Big 12 were building, I had no idea. I'd been checking college baseball scores to see how Big 12 teams were doing, but otherwise tuning out.
For those of you catching up, my alma mater is home to The University of Texas Longhorns, who were the #2 football team and volleyball team in 2009, and won some unbelievable number of baseball games this year (I'm hoping they place first in the College World Series). Both our men's and women's basketball team made it to the tournament, etc...
The Longhorns belong to the Big 12, which is a fairly respectable and competitive conference. While I enjoy the rivalries, I actually wind up watching a lot of Big 12 football, from all the schools.
The Big 12 had a not-great contract with media outlets, but the schools had large and loyal fanbases, and college sports, particularly football, are big money. So, conferences The Big 10 and the Pac-10 have been trying to meet with Big 12 schools to try to move them over with their superior contracts.
Read more about this thing here.
Anyway, I'm a little bummed that (a) the Big 12 may be no more by the end of next week, and (b) the extra revenue could disrupt traditional and regional play.
I understand the schools supposedly make money from shaking things up and say, a few schools joining the PAC 10, but... this is the Pac 10 we're talking about. I'm a romantic and an optimist in some ways, and so I like to think that regional relations make a difference in these cases. Joining the Pac 10 just seems so... calculated. It's like the rich, dopey kids asking if you want to hang out because they know you've got a new Sega Dreamcast, not because you've been hanging out for the past 100 years (sorry, Oregon and Oregon State. You guys are cool. Why do you hang out with those jerks, anyway? You're better than that.). So what happens when the DreamCast gets outed by the XBox?
Sure, there are some logistical issues and budgetary issues for sports that draw in smaller audiences, but I tend to think that the Texas/ Oklahoma powerhouse is big enough to work with the region and get a better contract.
Further, the biggest d-bag of them all, USC, just pulled an SMU and is totally dealing with his comeuppance. Dad just took away the entitled little twerp's Porsche keys. But, hey, if we notice that we had friends in our own backyard all along....
For the Texas and Oklahoma schools, its not such a big deal that Colorado has split off, and Nebraska seems ready to go, too (whatsamatta, Nebraska? Texas and Oklahoma too much for you?). But its hard to imagine football in the fall without the UT, Texas A&M, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas Tech and other rivalries playing out as part of conference play. The thing is, by coming into other conferences, any of those schools could be peeled off. Already, Baylor is basically being told not to count on being a part of whatever happens. And that's a little sad.
So, if the Big 12 is croaking, here's my proposal for the Nu Southwest Conference (going classic, baby):
01. University of Texas
02. Texas A&M
03. Texas Tech
04. Oklahoma
05. Oklahoma State
06. Baylor (yes. Baylor. On principle.)
07. Texas Christian University (because those guys got good)
08. Kansas
09. Kansas State
10. Nebraska (fungible with any other corn-fed bunch of punching bags)
11. Missouri
12. University of Houston
That's right. U of H. Woot!
What do you guys think, because I think I just came up with a scheme that would make us all rich.
Sports talk radio, non-stop-ESPN, etc... aren't so much my thing, so if the rumblings of the fall of the Big 12 were building, I had no idea. I'd been checking college baseball scores to see how Big 12 teams were doing, but otherwise tuning out.
For those of you catching up, my alma mater is home to The University of Texas Longhorns, who were the #2 football team and volleyball team in 2009, and won some unbelievable number of baseball games this year (I'm hoping they place first in the College World Series). Both our men's and women's basketball team made it to the tournament, etc...
The Longhorns belong to the Big 12, which is a fairly respectable and competitive conference. While I enjoy the rivalries, I actually wind up watching a lot of Big 12 football, from all the schools.
The Big 12 had a not-great contract with media outlets, but the schools had large and loyal fanbases, and college sports, particularly football, are big money. So, conferences The Big 10 and the Pac-10 have been trying to meet with Big 12 schools to try to move them over with their superior contracts.
Read more about this thing here.
Anyway, I'm a little bummed that (a) the Big 12 may be no more by the end of next week, and (b) the extra revenue could disrupt traditional and regional play.
I understand the schools supposedly make money from shaking things up and say, a few schools joining the PAC 10, but... this is the Pac 10 we're talking about. I'm a romantic and an optimist in some ways, and so I like to think that regional relations make a difference in these cases. Joining the Pac 10 just seems so... calculated. It's like the rich, dopey kids asking if you want to hang out because they know you've got a new Sega Dreamcast, not because you've been hanging out for the past 100 years (sorry, Oregon and Oregon State. You guys are cool. Why do you hang out with those jerks, anyway? You're better than that.). So what happens when the DreamCast gets outed by the XBox?
Sure, there are some logistical issues and budgetary issues for sports that draw in smaller audiences, but I tend to think that the Texas/ Oklahoma powerhouse is big enough to work with the region and get a better contract.
Further, the biggest d-bag of them all, USC, just pulled an SMU and is totally dealing with his comeuppance. Dad just took away the entitled little twerp's Porsche keys. But, hey, if we notice that we had friends in our own backyard all along....
For the Texas and Oklahoma schools, its not such a big deal that Colorado has split off, and Nebraska seems ready to go, too (whatsamatta, Nebraska? Texas and Oklahoma too much for you?). But its hard to imagine football in the fall without the UT, Texas A&M, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas Tech and other rivalries playing out as part of conference play. The thing is, by coming into other conferences, any of those schools could be peeled off. Already, Baylor is basically being told not to count on being a part of whatever happens. And that's a little sad.
So, if the Big 12 is croaking, here's my proposal for the Nu Southwest Conference (going classic, baby):
01. University of Texas
02. Texas A&M
03. Texas Tech
04. Oklahoma
05. Oklahoma State
06. Baylor (yes. Baylor. On principle.)
07. Texas Christian University (because those guys got good)
08. Kansas
09. Kansas State
10. Nebraska (fungible with any other corn-fed bunch of punching bags)
11. Missouri
12. University of Houston
That's right. U of H. Woot!
What do you guys think, because I think I just came up with a scheme that would make us all rich.
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