A historic Super Bowl

Over the past few days, so much has been made about this years Super Bowl matchup between the Chicago Bears and the Indianapolis Colts. Besides Peyton Manning finally reaching the big game attention has been brought because of the coaches.

Chicago coach Lovie Smith and Indy coach and Jackson native Tony Dungy became the first two African-American coaches to reach the Super Bowl. I'm impressed with the duo making history and being a part of what is being called the "All-Black Super Bowl" I think its great for football and also believe it will open more doors for deserving coaches that aren't your stereotypical football coach.

Smith and Dungy have both experienced a tremendous amount of success with their coaching careers. Dungy helped turnaround the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and has won four division titles in his six seasons with Indy. Smith has won back-to-back NFC North division titles with the Bears and helped them have the best record in the NFC. Other black coaches have had success in the NFL, like Marvin Lewis, Dennis Green and Art Shell.

While the race of the coaches in the Super Bowl has drawn most of the attention, it would be kind of nice if it wasn't necessarily a big deal that they were black coaches and that the focus was more on their accomplishments and teams. In other sports whenever a coach that is non-white makes the championship series/game it isn't a big deal at all and that shows football has a ways to go still when it comes to dealing with race.

For now though I'm impressed with the job Smith and Dungy have done and think they are both class acts and are nothing but great for the NFL.

Damn Delfino

Freakin Carlos Delfino had to ruin it for the Pistons last night. I was at the edge of my seat in the final seconds at the game is Chauncey Billups hit a big shot to make the game close. The Pistons ended up tying in the game and the contest was poised to go into overtime when Delfino fouled Darrell Armstong with less than three seconds left in the game. Armstrong missed the first free throw but made the second as the Pacers got the win.

That was probably the first time I've been to the Palace when the Pistons have lost. It was still a great game though and the Pistons should have won - they were up by 15 in the first half but let things slip away. Besides the Pistons losing the other bad thing about the game was that Billups was hurt and looks like he could miss some time

Before the game my sister danced on the court with her dance troupe so i got to see that. I also had a good time at the game with Sarah, Nat, my sister's boyfriend and her brother. It was kinda hard b/c my sister's man is a Pacers fan but it was all good.

At the game I did get a Nazr Mohammed bobblehead which was the giveaway that night. I also got a Pistons fleece blanket.

A trip to the zoo

Pics from a trip to Toledo to see the lights before Christmas

new game

Other than today being a typical Tuesday meaning that i want to Frickers for 25 cent wings with sarah and sean, i also hooped at Siena for a couple of hours and purchased a new video game that should keep me occupied throughout the winter months

i got the new College Hoops 2k7 and so far it seems pretty cool. It is the first game that I've ever purchased that actually has Eastern Michigan's real fight song in it. The game seems to have pinned their talent level well as i can't make a basket for the life of me. Tonight i started to update some of the rosters with the actual name of players and then began a dynasty which i will play with Michigan and EMU.

For anyone looking for a college hoops game I definitely recommend it.

gobble, gobble

last night i bowled my first turkey in eons and was one pin away from getting a fourth straight strike. regardless it was a pretty decent way to end the night bowling and helped me beat lance and JJ. I bowled a strike in the ninth and w/ my first two roles in the 10th and then finished the game by hitting nine pins. the night started out shitty as i rolled 100 my first two games before getting a 120 in the third game.

After bowling with the fellas I played a few games of euchre w/ sarah, tina and nat before calling it a night.

yesterday afternoon i also went to the siena hoops game to see lieto aka baby iverson play.

not too much happened the rest of the weekend. I did pages on Saturday and friday morning and covered a hoops game on Friday night.

my day

Today ive just been enjoying a day off. I played a little bit of basketball at Siena with a few people from work and a couple of Sarah's teammates. After that I took csre of some bills and did a little grocery shopping. Nothing too thrilling.

Other than that I surfed the net and saw that a former EMU baseball player (Ryan Goleski) was the top pick in the MLB Rule 5 draft. And the other thing I saw EMU related was that ESPN.com had their football team rated as the sixth-worst in the nation in their bottom 10. Way to go Eagles! but i guess thats what a 1-11 season does to you.

my fantasy football week begins this week because of the Cleveland-Pittsburgh game starts Week 14 of NFL action. The week beginning means the playoffs start in my two ESPN leagues. In the telegram league i finished 7-5-1 and had the No. 4 seed for the playoffs and play Sean who is the top seed. In my other league I went 12-1 and have the top seed.


In other things:
- I got two Christmas cards in the mail yesterday. makes me realize Christmas is closer than I think it is.
- The Adrian-Siena game went down to the wire with Siena winning the cross-town battle by three in last night's game.

My bowl picks

Tuesday, Dec. 19
Poinsetta Bowl
TCU (10-2) vs. Northern Illinois (7-5) - NIU

Thursday, Dec. 21
Las Vegas Bowl
BYU (10-2) vs. Oregon (7-5) - Oregon

Friday, Dec. 22
New Orleans Bowl
Troy (7-5) vs. Rice (7-5) - Rice

Saturday, Dec. 23
PapaJohn's Bowl
South Florida (8-4) vs. East Carolina (7-5) - South Florida

New Mexico Bowl
New Mexico (6-6) vs. San Jose State (8-4) - San Jose State

Armed Forces Bowl
Tulsa (8-4) vs. Utah (7-5), 8 p.m. - Utah

Sunday, Dec. 24
Hawaii Bowl
Arizona State (7-5) vs. Hawaii (10-3) - Hawaii

Tuesday, Dec. 26
Motor City Bowl
Central Michigan (9-4) vs. Middle Tennessee (7-5) - Central Michigan


Wednesday, Dec. 27
Emerald Bowl
Florida State (6-6) vs. UCLA (7-5) - UCLA

Thursday, Dec. 28
Independence Bowl
Oklahoma State (6-6) vs. Alabama (6-6) - Alabama

Holiday Bowl
California (9-3) vs. Texas A&M (9-3) - California


Texas Bowl
Rutgers (10-2) vs. Kansas State (7-5) - Rutgers


Friday, Dec. 29
Music City Bowl
Clemson (8-4) vs. Kentucky (7-5) - Clemson


Sun Bowl
Missouri (8-4) vs. Oregon State (9-4) - Oregon State

Liberty Bowl
South Carolina (7-5) vs. Houston (10-3) - South Carolina

Insight Bowl
Minnesota (6-6) vs. Texas Tech (7-5) - Minnesota

Champs Sports Bowl
Maryland (8-4) vs. Purdue (8-5) - Purdue

Saturday, Dec. 30
Meineke Bowl
Navy (9-3) vs. Boston College (9-3) - Navy

Alamo Bowl
Iowa (6-6) vs. Texas (9-3) - Texas

Chick-fil-A Bowl
Virginia Tech (10-2) vs. Georgia (8-4) - Virginia Tech


Sunday, Dec. 31
MPC Computers Bowl
Nevada (8-4) vs. Miami (6-6) - Nevada

Monday, Jan. 1
Outback Bowl
Penn State (8-4) vs. Tennessee (9-3) - Penn State

Cotton Bowl
Auburn (10-2) vs. Nebraska (9-4) - Auburn

Capital One Bowl
Wisconsin (11-1) vs. Arkansas (10-3) - Wisconsin

Gator Bowl
Georgia Tech (9-4) vs. West Virginia - West Virginia

Rose Bowl
Southern Cal (10-2) vs. Michigan (11-1) - Michigan

Fiesta Bowl
Boise State (12-0) vs. Oklahoma (11-2) - Oklahoma


Tuesday, Jan. 2
Orange Bowl
Wake Forest (11-2) vs. Louisville (11-1)- Louisville

Wednesday, Jan. 3
Sugar Bowl
LSU (10-2) vs. Notre Dame (10-2) - Notre Dame

Saturday, Jan. 6
International Bowl
Cincinnati (7-5) vs. Western Michigan (8-4) - Cincinnati

Sunday, Jan. 7
GMAC Bowl
Southern Miss (8-5) vs. Ohio (9-4) - Ohio

Monday, Jan. 8
BCS National Championship
Ohio State (12-0) vs. Florida (12-1) - Ohio State

an update

Yesterday was the opening night of the high school boys basketball season for most teams and two of the games we ended up covering were drastic blow outs decided by 40 points or more including the game I covered. looks like it could be a long season for some teams in the county.

other than that not much is going on. tonight is the big Adrian College-Siena Heights men's hoops game in the battle for the milk jug. Three of the last four meetings have been decided by three points or less so that should be interesting.



Went bowling on Sunday and had a decent night rolling a 154, 122 and 146. Didn't lose a game at all to anyone I bowled against. Been balling a lot the last week and actually getting in some kind of shape which has been good for me. Hopefully I'll return to the court tomorrow and rediscover my jump shot so i don't have to constantly drive to the basket. although i couldn't have shot worst than what the University of Michigan men's hoop team did when they lost to NC State in the ACC-Big Ten Challenge last week. It seemed like they couldn't hit any kind of jump shot whatsoever.

Anyways thats all I've got for now

Snubbed

I was hoping Michigan would get a rematch with Ohio State after USC's loss but after Florida defeated Arkansas in the SEC championship game I figured they were screwed and I was correct. But it was unfortunate because I would have liked to see how that game would have been played on a neutral setting.

ESPN.com's Gene Wojciechowski had a good column in support of Michigan. His column was trying to figure out how the Wolverines got snubbed.

Here are some points from the column:
• It didn't win its conference.

No, it didn't. But did you see who did? Team by the name of Ohio State. Maybe you've heard of the Buckeyes? Undefeated. Ranked first in the country. Beat Michigan in Columbus by the grand total of three whole points.

And feel free to show me in the BCS handbook where it says you've got to win your conference to play in the championship game.

• Nobody wants to see a rematch.

Just asking, but how did Ali-Frazier II and III work out? Or that Georgetown-Villanova Final Four?

I know Florida's Urban Meyer doesn't want to see a rematch, but he's not exactly an impartial observer, is he? And if Meyer were in Carr's Nikes, I guarantee you his objections to a second Ohio State-Michigan game would have disappeared.

A rematch, this time on a neutral field, would have been a game for the ages. And if you threatened to take away his precious sweater-vest if he didn't tell the truth, I bet you Buckeyes coach Jim Tressel would rather play Florida than have to face the Wolverines again (Tressel declined to vote in the final coaches' poll).

• Florida played a tougher schedule.

Agreed. But strength of schedule is part of the equation, nothing more. Tuberville's 2004 team had the strongest strength of schedule, but didn't make it.

You want to give the Gators the edge based on scheduling? Fair enough, though you could argue that Florida didn't exactly beat vintage Alabama, Georgia and Florida State teams this year, and Central Florida and Division I-AA Western Carolina were dreadful.

And look at the one loss each suffered by Florida and Michigan on their schedules. You tell me which defeat was more impressive: the Gators' 10-point road loss to an Auburn team that finished the season No. 9 in the BCS standings? Or the Wolverines' three-point road loss to an Ohio State team now favored to win the national championship?


• The BCS system rewarded Florida for finishing its season with wins at FSU and against Arkansas at the SEC championship in Atlanta.

And the BCS penalized Michigan twice for being on the wrong end of the calendar: once when USC moved to No. 2 after beating Notre Dame (even though Michigan beat the Irish worse), and now, when Florida overtook the Wolverines (even though U of M's season ended two weeks ago).

How can you call this a "system" when Florida belongs to a league that plays a conference championship, and Michigan doesn't? How can you call it a quasi-playoff when Michigan drops twice in the standings without losing a game?

• Florida has earned the right to play Ohio State.

Absolutely true. But so has Michigan.

Ask the coaches at Vanderbilt (the Commodores played both Michigan and Florida this season) who is the better team, and the consensus pick -- privately, of course -- is the Wolverines. Florida has more speed and a handful of players to die for, they say, but Michigan is more physical, would control both sides of the line of scrimmage, has wonderful wide receivers, and is led by a quarterback who doesn't make many mistakes.

Ask them who would give Ohio State the better game, and you'll get the same answer.

Tuberville voted Ohio State, Florida and then Michigan on his final ballot.

"But I watched Michigan this year," he said. "Heck, I think they could beat anybody. But that's the way the system is. It's a screwed-up system."

But none of that matters now. Instead, Carr is taking his Wolverines to the Rose Bowl presented by Citi to face a USC team that had one loss on Saturday -- and controlled its own BCS destiny -- but two losses by Saturday night.

Michigan never had that chance. It was 11-1 on Nov. 18. It was 11-1 on Dec. 3. But between then and now, the Wolverines apparently became the cellulite queens and somehow lost the swimsuit portion of this ridiculous BCS beauty pageant.

Strahan's rant

man Michael Strahan needs to keep his mouth shut considering he said these comments on his own radio show

Good for Joey and my poor car

This Lions team is clearly not the ones of old that were led by Wayne Fontes. I remember them always having a losing record heading into November but getting hot and finding some way to make the playoffs. Now a days there seems to be no hope especially after yet another loss on Thanksgiving to the Dolphins.

I was glad to see Joey Harrington do so well against his former team. I actually liked Harrington and purchased his jersey during his rookie year. I thought he was wronged in Detroit and the evidence has shown up in the standing.Harrington is on a four-game win streak with the Dolphins while the Lions only have two wins.

Other than my rant about the Lions a few other things over the past few days
- I was home for Thanksgiving which wasnt bad. Arrived home on Wednesday and got to eat some chinese and chill at home with my grandpa, sister and mom. Seemed my grandpa spent most the time taking cat naps during his visit over the few days
- My car got hit on Wednesday as i was leaving the gas station. I pulled up waiting my turn to pull out of Speedway when a guy driving a van with Ohio plates backed into my car and put a dent into my fender. Argh!

Crossing enemy lines

Besides The Ohio State University, there is no school I like to hate more than Notre Dame - although I was hoping Notre Dame would come back to beat Michigan State earlier this season which they did.

But thats beside the point, because this weekend I will be rooting for the Fighting Irish when they take on USC. Why? A win makes a rematch with Ohio State more likely for the maize and blue. And I would love to see Michigan get another chance to knock off the Buckeyes and shut their fans up. More so, I would just like to see who would win that game on a neutral setting since this weekend's game was so entertaining and lived up to the hype.

Other than disappointed about another Michigan loss to Ohio State, I've been doing pretty good lately.
Last week I was out in Jonesville twice covering the opening round and semifinals of a Class C girls basketball district. Also did a reaction piece for the paper on
Bo Schembechler's death since a few local residents actually played for him.

Today as I was going into work to do pages I was playing with my phone and hit the web button on it and a screen popped up where I could get ringtones and stuff for my phone. It was weird that happened since my mom and i were just talking about internet for our cells. Anyways I decided to purchase a ring tone since I lost all my ring tones when I got a new phone last month.

Also I've had two fantasy basketball drafts recently. When the season began I had no intent of playing fantasy hoops but now I'm fully involved in it. Now I have a lot of lineups to change, especially on the weekends now since I have four fantasy football teams.

Fantasy football seems to be going all right as of now. In two of my leagues I entered this past weekends games in first place. In one of my ESPN leagues I had a 9-1 record and in one of my yahoo leagues I am first with a 6-3 record. In the league I'm in with people from work I'm 4th out of eight teams with a record of 5-4-1

a trip north

After lunch with Sean I decided to make a trip to the Ann Arbor area to pick up my mom's birthday present. Her birthday is today so I'm a little late - oops.
But before heading back to Adrian to do a few things for work, I decided to check out the new student center at Eastern, which had its grand opening today.

After checking it out, it made me wish I was still in college. Casey met me at the student center and gave me a tour of the facility which is a heck of a lot nicer than McKenny Union ever was. the new student center has a gaming room with several xboxes, dance dance revolution and several other video games available for students to use. when i walked in there several peeps were playing halo. i can already see people skipping class to play video games

besides that, theres a 24 hour computer lab (a first for EMU), new restaurants like KFC, subway and starbucks, a way better bookstore and a lot of nice meeting rooms. The student center is way closer to the residence halls and has windows overlooking the park. neeedless to say i was pretty impressed. i could probably rant more about the student center but ill choose not to. but one of the opening events for the center is a night with Joe Dumars next Monday that is free to the public. So that will definitely be pretty cool

while at EMU i picked up the echo and saw a story in the paper pretty much saying the football coaches honeymoon should be over and that he shouldnt have his contract rolled over. thought it was an interesting story that brought up several good points.
http://www.easternecho.com/cgi-bin/story.cgi?21502

anyways im off to watch the pistons

bowling

Last night was a busy night of bowling. Sarah and I met Nat, Lance and Tina to take advantage of the $1 games night at Ten Pin and ended up bowling five games. Kinda in competition style Lance and Nat bowled against me and Sarah and Tina just watched. while me and sarah lost each of the games - it was still pretty fun. nat beat lance in at least one of the games and sarah bowled the game of her life and beat me once and beat me another time when i had an off performance.

other than that yesterday I took care of a lot of phone calls as i talked to my aunt, mom and grandma and watched the lions keep mike vick in check and beat the falcons

Ballin on the football field

so far this season, this has become a trademark around the league and especially with the New York Giants. Most people tend to hate it but I think its pretty cool. Sad thing is its only a matter of time before the league will probably crack down on this

the weekend

With the weekend off from work, I decided to venture to EMU for homecoming on Saturday. I really wasn't expecting to see too many people there but to my surprise I ran into a lot of people I knew in the student tailgate areas. Saw several people that I came in with my freshman year and a lot that I hadn't seen since graduation in April of 05.



After spending a good amount of time catching up with people, I headed over to the game with my good pal Casey and her roomie Bryan who is better known as B-Way. We were over in the student section and I chilled with them until halftime before taking off to run a few more errands around Ann Arbor/Ypsi. Eastern was winning 9-0 at half and ended up gettin a 17-13 victory to get their first win of the season.

While up in Ann Arbor I also went to the mall and checked out the massive World Series gear they had at Champs and ended up picking up a shirt for myself. I headed home at a reasonable time so I could beat the traffic from the Michigan game and ended up hanging out with Sarah after she got off work and watched Game 1 of the World Series. The Tigers scored first, but the Cardinals ended up winning 7-2.

Yesterday I didn't do too much exciting other than go bowling with Sarah and some of her teammates and their boys. I bowled much better than I did a couple weeks ago when we all bowled at ten pin. while bowling we caught the final five innings of the tigers game and watched todd jones almost give the game away in the ninth. fortunately for us tigs fans it was a typical rollercoaster inning that jones somehow found a way out of and the tigs won 3-1 to tie the series at 1.

Dennis Green Goes Nuts

this possibly has to be the funniest coach rant ever

World Series!!

Man was I excited as ever to see Magglio's walk off homer in the ninth inning send the Tigers to the World Series. Who would have thought this was been the year? We had the game on at work watching at and I remember as soon as the ball left his bat me, Sarah and Marc and a few others in the newsroom being excited about what we just witnessed. The Tigers clinching the AL pennant with a 6-3 win over the Oakland A's and a 4-0 series sweep in the ALCS.

its a small world after all

Saturday I was out talking to fans at Adrian College trying to get quotes for a reaction piece about the new Performance Enhancement Stadium on the colleges campus. It was the first football game in the stadium that night and there was a big crowd. While interviewing a man from Toledo, I noticed this guy by me had stopped and was kinda listening in so I approached him after I got done and before I started to ask him questions, he was like hey your Brian, right.

Yes I replied and right then and there I realized that it was my high school history/economics teacher Mark Morris. Very stunned to see him there, he then told me he was at the game because he is an Adrian College alum and former football player. Apparently he was the team captain his senior season and a running back who earned MVP honors. I was pretty impressed to find that out and still couldnt believe that I ran into someone from Coloma out in Adrian.

By the way, the stadium was very nice as was the press box. Very similar to one Ive been into at Western Michigan's Waldo Stadium.

As for the game, Adrian lost 10-0 to Defiance. There actually were two soccer games at the field prior to the football game and Adrian lost both of those as well. So in essence they opened their new field with an 0-3 record - kinda sucky. If it was me, I'd be scheduling some teams I know I would definitely beat to open a new stadium in - but oh well.

Prior to working Saturday I got to see a good portion of the EMU-Michigan State game, and flipped between the Game 5 of the WNBA finals in the second half to only see the Shock clinch the title.
But anyways as far as the football game was concerned, I was glad to see Eastern put up a fight and I actually had hope for them the way they started the second half. Its too bad they couldnt tie the game at 24 after recovering a fumble on the second half kickoff. Oh well, but I think they have a decent shot at beating Northwestern on Saturday.

strike

So its the third day of classes at EMU and there is faculty that is still striking. Man i'm jealous. How come this didn't happen my senior year when the faculty was very close to striking before an agreement was reached the night before classes

Link to story from the student newspaper: http://easternecho.com/cgi-bin/story.cgi?11411