The long and winding road

So. Last week was Memorial Day, which means the first of my two semi-annual trips to Virginia to visit friends from college and beyond. (Some of us have been friends for almost 25 years. Ponder that.) However, it was also Harvard's commencement ceremonies, and because my brother was graduating on the Dean's List, I thought perhaps I should go and see him.

Unfortunately, it took me a while to figure out that these two events were not in separate months or even weeks, but rather in the same week. Inconvenient with respect to flying, to say the least. I dislike the TSA immensely and will do just about anything to avoid them, so I'm not inclined to fly if there are other means of travel. (I enjoy flying itself, just not what they've done to it.) And a three-legged trip is harder to pull off than a two-legged trip, especially if a) the first leg is really important and b) it's in an expensive city. So I could try to arrive a day early and pay for two days in a hotel, or I could try to arrive on time and risk the airlines completely screwing me over. Right.

So it was by car instead. No, it wasn't all at once. Don't be silly.

Now, I'd never been to Boston as an adult, so I needed Google to help me find the first two legs of the trip ... Richmond to Fishers I knew all too well. (Actually, Google came up with a shortcut for that one. US-35 is pretty good except for the remaining two-lane stretch in WV that they are slowly improving. It beats hell out of the AA in Kentucky, the road that ate my car.)

Google said sure, want to drive it all at once? How about I-70 to I-71 to I-80, then I-81, I-84, and I-90? There was no place halfway between here and Boston on I-80 to stay. So I said no, let's take I-70 instead. I guess Altoona will do.

For the Boston-to-Richmond leg, of course it pointed out that I-95 runs, well, from Boston to Richmond. I pointed out that it would be Friday of Memorial Day weekend, and if it thought I was driving to the coast from Boston and then through New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, it was nuts. I just grabbed all of that route and dragged it back inland, retracing my steps to Wilkes-Barre and then heading south on I-81 to I-64. (My GPS later convinced me to take I-81 to Winchester and then head over on US-17 to I-95.)

Day 1: Fishers to Altoona, about 450 miles

Very uneventful. I left around 11, I think, realizing there was no hurry. I had 8-9 hours ahead of me and didn't need to arrive early in the evening. I actually forgot I wasn't passing through Pittsburgh; if I had, it probably would have been right around rush hour. I stopped about once an hour at rest areas to keep my alertness up, and I made my way through some of the food and juice I brought, picking up soft drinks on the way. By the way, there was one rest area in Ohio (boo) along I-70 that had a novel idea: restrooms and vending machines in a single, air-conditioned building. Yes, you may be thinking that this is common sense, but look next time you drive. How many times do you see the vending machines in a completely separate area? How many rest areas are still the old kind with open doors?

I got to the hotel and was pleasantly surprised to find a refrigerator with two free bottles of water and snacks (granola bar and popcorn). Bottled water on a trip? Outstanding!

Logged on (wired connection, no big deal though), posted an update, ran through Castle Age stuff, showered, went to bed. (Travel tip: shower in the evening when you have more time and have hours of road on you. Not recommended for those traveling with a significant other with a sensitive nose.)

Day 2: Altoona to Boston, about 470 miles

All new territory to me. Got up at 6, cleaned up, packed, hit the road by 7. (My brother's graduation would be over, but I wanted to hit the get-together as early as possible.) Again, traffic wasn't bad, although there was a lot of semi-construction in Pennsylvania. You know, the kind where they have signs and stuff up but aren't doing anything? Got through the toll booths just fine (although I nearly picked up an EZ-Pass at an oasis on the Massachusetts Turnpike, I think).

Traffic wasn't bad until I cleared the toll booths leaving I-90 for I-95 ... apparently everyone is going south today, which means everyone is getting into one lane to head south on I-95. Immediately after a toll plaza. With traffic merging from both directions from I-90. not fun. All that for about a 500-yard drive on I-95 to the first exit. A zig, a zag, and I was at my hotel.

Good news: it's walking distance from Riverside Station. (Literally next door.) That is why I picked it: no sane person drives in Boston. Also ... yeah, nothing else.

Bad news: the hotel sucks. "Parking" is simply a semi-covered lot in the back of the hotel with narrow lanes for exiting and entering. It was designed poorly, that's for sure. $7 a night, too. Again, sucks. The desk chair couldn't be raised, there was no refrigerator (which meant no cold juice on the drive to Richmond), the shower (no bathtub) had a fancy glass door without a good seal, which meant water got on the floor easily, and the AC was crap. I turned it down to 68 and by morning, the room was at 74. woo. It was tolerable, though, considering I needed it for about one waking hour and six sleeping ones.

Unpacked, updated status, changed clothes (expecting a cool night, I was wearing jeans and a hat), and headed to the station. There were three machines that allegedly allowed you to purchase Charlie Cards or Tickets for the T. I say "allegedly" because one of the T people was there to show people how to use them, but with very little success, and I don't mean because he couldn't explain it or because the people couldn't follow directions. I eventually made my way to the front, slipped up to a machine while the T man was helping someone else, put $10 (5 rides – always buy more than you need) on a ticket, and headed up to the platform. (Bonus: Riverside is the end of the Green D line, so I couldn't get on the wrong way. lol.)

The T, by the way, is the oldest subway system in the US, and you'll know this as soon as you ride it. It's still getting me around without using my car, so I was happy enough. Got off at Park Street to transfer to the Red Line, eventually found my platform, and waited for the next train.

As I waited, two separate people stopped to ask me questions about the T. One wanted to know at which end of station X the escalator was (some stations apparently only have an escalator at one end), and the other wanted to know if the train was heading to Cambridge. I couldn't answer either question, and in fact, someone else had to answer the second one while I was puzzling it over. I mean, I've ridden the T once in my life, and that was to get to this station. I'm wearing a Portland State Vikings hat and a Michigan Hockey T-shirt. What gives the impression that I know what I'm doing? (Neither, obviously. I simply wasn't sending the leave-me-alone vibe that most veteran train riders seem to have.)

I get on the train, get off at Porter Square, and head for the exits. I get past the initial crowd and head up the stairs, slowly at first, then two at a time. Woo! It's a workout! I'm passing people consistently as I go up flight after flight of stairs, until finally I triumphantly reach the top and turn to my left ... to see another flight of stairs. Oops.

I walk toward my brother's apartment, and I discover another reason not to drive in Boston. There are no street signs. (Almost none, anyway.) Either you know where you're going or you don't need to get there. I remember the car wash that's opposite his street, climb the hill to his building (of course there's a hill), buzz the door, and wait for his dad to come down to open the door. I can tell it's him because of his walk. (He's my ex-stepdad, my mom's second husband, so I know him well.) Of course he's not used to apartment living, so he doesn't realize he can buzz me in, which is why I have to wait for him, and why I'm surprised he comes down the stairs.

Up we go to the third floor (naturally, more stairs), where I meet my mom (sigh), my uncle, my graduating brother and his fianceé, another brother, my not-sister, my brother's uncle, and my ex-stepdad's wife. (Not-sister because my graduating brother is actually a half-brother, the not-sister is his half-sister, and we share no parents.)

We hang out, eat chips and guacamole and BBQ and cornbread and cake and pie, discuss Tolkien and Galileo thermometers and suddenly cool weather (thankfully, the heat wave broke once I got to the apartment) and why my mom is still crazy.

My brother finally calls it a night around 9:30, which is great because it means I get back to the hotel at a somewhat decent hour. My mom and my uncle drove, so they head to their car, and the rest of us go back to the T. My California brother leaves first, then I hit my stop and go back to the Green Line the other direction, encountering the same problems with platforms. Once again, we wait for the T.

This time, it's interesting. A train arrives with D Line: Riverside on it, but it's not on the right platform. We all look at each other. Is this right? Shouldn't it be on 6, not 5? We get on anyway, and it turns out to be the right train. (It actually works out because all Green Line trains go through the same few stations in town; they branch out after that, so we could start on the "wrong" platform and still use the right track.) Back to the hotel, sign on, off to sleep in the heat. boo.

Steve Jobs does too know what century this is

Friendly advocate blog Consumerist tells us that Apple has apparently had an epiphany: ceaselessly mocking customers you'd like to win over is not a good thing. Yes, the obnoxious "I'm a Mac" ads are finally dead, hopefully being replaced by something that actually tells you why you should buy a Mac.

Next thing you know, Apple will do something else crazy, like make an iPhone that lets you replace the battery.

Of course it's not all fun and smart moves in the Apple world, at least not for their partners. AT&T had the great idea to increase their early termination fees for iPhones (and apparently all other phones). To clarify, by "great" I mean "great if your ultimate goal is to make sure Congress feasts on your stupidity next."

In related news, Verizon and Sprint execs could not be reached for comment ... apparently they're off in the Bahamas figuring out how they're going to spend all the money they'll be getting from pissed-off AT&T customers. (Nobody caught the Verizon guy in time to tell him that his ETFs are still astronomical, but it doesn't matter that much. Anger at AT&T has been building from the moment they overcommitted to the iPhone.)

Hockey? Hockey!

The NFL draft has passed, nobody cares about the NBA any more, the baseball season is just getting started, so it must be hockey season! Yes, even as a Red Wings fan, I acknowledge that the season does continue even after they have been eliminated. (Remember, I'm old. I learned about hockey when Detroit was the team from the Norris that didn't make the playoffs. See what I mean? Yeah, that long stretch in the '70s and early '80s where their only series win was a best-of-three over Atlanta.)

Besides, it's a good year to be watching hockey. There have been some outstanding games so far, and there are likely some better games on the horizon, or at least more significant games.

For example, Philadelphia and Boston are playing Game 7 tomorrow night. Oh, by the way, Boston had a 3-0 lead in this series. If you're watching, you'll hear "1942 Maple Leafs" and "1975 Islanders" quite often, because they are the only NHL teams to come back from a 3-0 deficit (the Leafs are the only team to win the Cup that way). Most teams don't even force a Game 7.

Of course, the Red Sox are the only non-NHL team to win a series after being down 3-0, and if you think this is karma coming back to haunt Boston fans, you may not be familiar with the sports dynamic in the East. From what I understand, there is no way it would carry over. Boston is much like the Blackhawks were up until a few years ago (until their cheap, stupid owner died and was replaced by his son, a much better owner), plus with hockey being much less visible in most of the US, there are many fewer people who are even aware the Bruins have been suffering lately. (Also, it's a much shorter drought. So far.)

If you're a hockey fan, you'll be rooting for Boston. Not just because Bruins fans don't deserve this, but because it would mean three of the four teams left would be Original Six teams. (San Jose spoiled it for everyone. Darn that talent. Anyway, it hasn't happened in the modern era.) And because Philadelphia is, essentially, the dirtiest team in the league. Second-most penalty minutes, most major penalties, one of only four teams to have a player receive a match penalty. They have, as near as I can recall, always been a thuggy team, and unfortunately the NHL's version of discipline is worse than probably all three other leagues combined, so they keep doing it because no one will stop it. That kind of play doesn't need to be rewarded. Go Bruins!

You may also have read about ZOMG Montreal! because of their impressive run so far (knocking out top-seeded Washington and defending champ Pittsburgh in seven games each). Of course, the MSM had a field day with this, the first time a team has ever beaten the President's Trophy winner (for best record in the league) and the defending champ in consecutive rounds. Well, since 1994 (when the league switched from playoffs within divisions first to playoffs within conferences). How many times was it possible? Doesn't matter. "First time evah!" is more important.

Naturally, I (and anyone else with a brain and a decent memory) immediately thought "Oh, you mean like the North Stars." I knew just about exactly when it happened: the early '90s, right when Mario Lemieux was leading the Pens to their first-ever Cups. Sure enough, in 1990-91, the North Stars were fourth in their division and had a losing record, but managed to knock off the top two teams in the Norris and the surprise winner of the Smythe playoffs (Gretzky-less Edmonton) before falling to Pittsburgh in the finals. (I did remember incorrectly, though: Vancouver actually had a worse record, so they would have been the eighth seed in a modern playoff setup, and the Canucks were bounced in the first round.) Still, it's basically the same thing.

Except that Minnesota had never won a Cup, and the franchise that is now in Dallas has only won one. Montreal has won 24 times. Granted, they haven't won since 1993, but that's nothing compared to the remaining teams. San Jose's first season was 1991-92 and they have never won ... the Flyers haven't won since 1975 ... the Bruins haven't won since 1972 ... and Chicago hasn't won since 1961. So new fans might be cheering on the underdog Canadiens, but long-time fans outside the Montreal area will probably be rooting for someone else.

I'm a little disappointed that the Wings' season is over, but San Jose has a very good team, Detroit didn't take advantage of the opportunities they had, and after all, they've been very, very successful, both in modern times and overall:

• 24 Finals appearances, second only to Montreal;
• 11 Cups, third behind Montreal and Toronto;
• 6 Finals appearances and 4 Cups since 1995, both best in the league (the Devils have 4 appearances and 3 Cups, no other team has more than 2 of either in that time).

Yes, they went 42 years between championships, but that is history, and I am grateful that I've been able to see them be so successful for so long. (They've made the playoffs each of the last 19 seasons, the longest active streak in the NHL or NBA, the two leagues with similar playoff structures.) I wish luck to fans of four of the five remaining teams ... maybe one of them is yours.

Completely unrelated things

Virtual me: I finished out the 2011 season at AAA New Orleans, dropping under the .200 mark again, and have been sent down to AA Jacksonville for 2012. Still a backup 3B. I'm not sure this version will ever make it to the bigs. We'll see.

I exhausted my trainer in Wii Fit Plus today. I did the first two levels of the Plank Challenge (20 and 40 seconds) and went to do the Jackknife Challenge (don't remember where I am on that, probably 50). She declined: said she was a little "off" today. I think that was Wii Fit's way of saying "too much today". w. So I did my jackknives through the regular menu instead. Wii Fit Plus is nice. I like that it carries everything over from Wii Fit so that you aren't starting from scratch, and some of the new activities are definitely fun, although some are challenging too.

Tecmo Super Bowl is now available for the 360 as Tecmo Bowl Throwback. Unfortunately, it's not the NES version, which I know to be totally awesome. This is the SNES version. It's been getting good reviews, so I'll have to check it out. After all, there is a thriving community of TSB fans out there ...

EA: Bringing you mediocre sports games for over 20 years

Playing Madden tonight just because I'd like to see a decent Lions team, which means I need at least two more drafts. Three plays in this game typified the Madden series:

1. The Vikings, up 17-14, attempt a 58-yard field goal. It's "blocked" and we get the ball. Well, actually, it wasn't blocked. The stupid right guard, seeing that no one was coming through his position but that there were people coming around the left side, pulled back as if to block on that side, and the ball was kicked right into him ... except it somehow stuck in his body and he was tackled in the backfield. There are about 10 things wrong with that play.

2. On second down, I hit Pettigrew coming back toward the line of scrimmage. Every veteran Madden player knows why you don't do this: the programmers didn't bother to look up NFL rules on forward progress and don't care. You're down where you're tackled. So of course I lost two yards instead of gaining six.

3. I tried a long field goal that was short, I guess. I couldn't really tell because the camera angle was excruciatingly bad. (Maybe it was a CBS camera.) EA wasted all this time on "presentation" to make the game look like TV coverage. Too bad nobody wants it.

Random thoughts

Apparently the channel formerly known as SciFi will soon have its own cooking show that has nothing to do with science or fiction. (The channel's name was changed because it wasn't dumb enough, and it needed to be dumb to match the new programming they're showing now.)

Don't watch Syfy? Don't worry, pretty much no one does any more. This show won't help.

The NCAA tournament is expanding, but to 68 rather than 80 or 96. The AP reports that the NCAA hopes to "eliminate the stigma of a what outsiders have dubbed the tourney's 'play-in' game".

News flash: having eight 16-seeded teams playing instead of two is not going to remove the stigma. Nice try. (At least they didn't screw up the whole thing.) Also, all games will be televised at once (as opposed to only one per area). Yes, it took CBS about 25 years to figure out you should televise every game. Why does the NCAA continue to waste time with over-the-air networks? Anyway, it'll be interesting to see what this does to DirecTV's March Madness package. If you get the four networks showing games, in theory you wouldn't need a pay package ...

Remember back when Apple was the little guy and Microsoft was the big bad wolf? Yeah, Microsoft still is the big bad wolf, but there are probably plenty of you out there who don't remember when Apple really was The Little Company That Could. (Of course, technically this was before Microsoft was big ...) Those days are long, long gone, as Steve Jobs is so happy to prove on a regular basis.

Why can't you use Flash on Apple portable devices? Because he says so. Of course, everything he says is partly or totally wrong, and as Lifehacker points out, most of it is true of Apple as well. Yeah, if you were one of those people in the '80s saying "If Apple were ever that big, they'd NEVER do anything like that!", well ... you're wrong too.

Apparently someone "lost" one of the new new iPhones (still in testing, not ready for release), and of course Apple fumbled that one as well. Not that it takes much to get lambasted by Jon Stewart, but still ...

And of course you already know that Apple will reject some apps for the App Store just because they want to. Steve Jobs saying anything about a "closed system" ... whoa, I nearly got hit by an irony train. Yeah, they're willing to reverse themselves when publicly embarrassed, but only after that point.

And that's really why Jobs won't allow Flash on the iPad. Because he can make that decision. Apple is big enough now to make stupid, unilateral decisions that are difficult to reverse, and they still have enough brand loyalty that most people won't question them publicly or consistently. But the mistakes they're making are bigger, costlier, and more visible ... when something happens to the iPad, whether it's sudden, sweeping changes to the App Store, incompatibility with popular websites, or some other issue that is bound to pop up, expect the same thing to happen in Cupertino. Apple will deny all responsibility until their face is rubbed in the problem.

No, they wouldn't be just like Microsoft. They're worse, because for a long time, they were fighting Microsoft, and they should know better.

More sports

You may have heard about this draft thing. Not sure that I agree with the move to split it across Thursday and Friday nights – really, honey, I'd love to go see Worthless Remake 2, but the draft's on – but here is it. Ndamukong Suh is a Lion (yes, I spelled that without looking it up, and you'd see my victory dance if I actually danced), Sam Bradford is the #1 pick, and Tim Tebow is in Denver, which means his career and Josh McDaniels' should end at approximately the same time, and I don't mean 2020. The Raiders did not take a WR, which means Al Davis has been officially declared dead. New England appears to have used their own first-round pick, so maybe Belicheat is growing soft in his old age.

And apparently Detroit has acquired Minnesota's first-round pick, trading up to pick up Jahvid Best. Sounds good, except that he had a big concussion last year. (Remember Ernie Sims, the guy basically shipped out for TE Tony Scheffler? Yeah, same deal. Concussion history.) I hope it's behind him.

Ben Roethlisberger has been suspended six games for possibly sexually assaulting another woman, this time in Georgia. (I'm not really sure how best to put it. He's been accused twice, let's put it that way.) The Smoking Gun has some details, and they're not pretty. As the cliche goes, we may never know what really happened, but what things we do seem to know indicate a couple of things. One is that the QB is getting some horrific advice in terms of what to do with his spare time. (He's not getting advice? He damn well better get some.)

The other is that he's a shit. Let's leave out what may have happened in the hallway: what we can learn without much effort is that Roethlisberger likes to get drunk women really drunk and then lead them away from their friends. Look, asshole, you're an NFL quarterback. If it's about sex, you don't need the alcohol and you don't need force. Hang out in the right places and just be yourself. (Of course, sexual assault really isn't about sex, it's about force, power, control, whatever, and that certainly seems to explain why we keep seeing male athletes charged with sexual assault.)

Commissioner Goodell says the Pittsburgh QB "made some bad choices" and "has a tremendous amount of remorse." Yeah, we've heard that BS before. What the athlete usually means is "I'm sorry I got caught" and "I'm sorry you read about it." If he meant what he said, he'd be making restitution to the victim right now (she may or may not be a victim of sexual assault, but she certainly seems to be the victim of something), and he'd leave his comments about what happened to something like this: "I did some really stupid stuff. I was way out of line. I know you hear about this a lot these days, and the only thing I can do is shut up about it and change my behavior."

And if he's in the same situation again, the Steelers should cut him. Immediately. As in "dump his stuff outside Steelers headquarters."

End rant.

The NCAA is going to expand to 68, not 96. Apparently the conversation went like this:

CBS: Hey, we lost some money on this deal. I don't like it so much.
NCAA: MORE MONEY! MORE MONEY! MORE MONEY!
ESPN: You know, if you let us show the games, we can handle more, maybe as many as 96 teams.
NCAA: MORE MONEY! MORE MONEY! MORE MONEY!
CBS: Hey, did you know we lost money this year? With more teams, you're not going to be making more money. You know that, right?
ESPN: You're just saying that.
NCAA: MORE MONEY! MORE MONEY! MORE MONEY!
CBS: No, srsly. But go ahead and bid it up if you like.
ESPN: No, that's cool. You might be right. I mean, we dropped the NHL because their ratings suck. Notre Dame-Illinois probably would draw about as well as Chicago-Columbus.
CBS: Right. So, you out?
NCAA: MORE MONEY! MORE MONEY! MORE MONEY!
ESPN: Yeah. You guys got it?
CBS: Sure. Hey, NCAA. How about filling out the opening-round games, one per region?
NCAA: MORE MONEY! MORE MONEY! MORE MONEY!
CBS: Well, a little more, but that's it. And you better help us make money this time!
NCAA: MORE MONEY! MORE MONEY! MORE MONEY!!!!!!!!

Again, we can't have a I-A playoff because games in December would take time away from schoolwork, but we can expand the tournament during March because that doesn't take time away from schoolwork. 16 teams = too many. 32 extra teams = just fine. I mean, even ESPN.com readers know this. (At the time I write this, of 50,000 fans or so, only 13% picked the 96-team field as the best idea. The remainder were pretty evenly split between 65 teams and 68 teams.)

Off to watch the Tigers. Anaheim's starter is out of the game in the third. Woo!

Sports things

Apparently ESPN is not willing to increase its bid for the tournament. (I also read that CBS lost money on the tournament this year, which is good, because their coverage was abysmal.) Perhaps this means the NCAA has recovered from its temporary bout of insanity and will not expand the men's tournament to 96 teams ... then again, if they really do get 98% of their money from this tournament, it's hard to see them passing that up. Of course, they could easily raise a ton of money from, say, a I-A football tournament, but that's logical and so it won't happen yet.

NBC is still a terrible network for sports. It's painful to sit through an NHL playoff game and watch the same repetitive ads for the same repetitive shows I wasn't going to watch anyway. (Of course, the NBC promos fill sports that I suppose would otherwise go to things like the GEICO commercials. Could the NHL have found a worse partner than GEICO with its not-funny-five-years-ago cavemen? Besides Cash4Gold, that is.)

The Big Ten is really thinking about expansion, and I mean Really Considering It. Naturally, people fall into two categories on this: those who believe it should be Notre Dame or no one, and those who are making realistic assumptions. Yes, Notre Dame is an excellent geographic fit, yes, they already play a number of schools in a number of sports ... but have you seen this list? Notice who's not on it? If you think that doesn't matter, think again. The Big Ten is looking for schools who can, well, read. Schools with weak or nonexistent academic reputations need not apply. (Sorry, Cincinnati and Louisville.) Athletics are also important (sorry, Iowa State), but if the schools aren't good overall fits, they aren't getting an invitation.

Also, you may have noticed that the Big Ten has asked before. Several times. Each time, Notre Dame has said something like "oh hell no", except in a properly Catholic sort of way. (That's something else to remember: ND has more in common with Marquette and Boston College than with Purdue and Michigan.) Of course, that made sense back when people watched NBC and Notre Dame football wasn't a punchline. (Thanks, Charlie, for your decided schematic advantage. No one can replace what you brought to Notre Dame football.) With the advent of the Giant Big Ten Moneymaker (aka Big Ten Network), pretty much any school is in play. (Don't believe this? Keep in mind that Northwestern gets more money from BTN than Texas gets from the Big 12's deal, and UT gets more from that deal than any other school does. Some Texas football games are only on pay-per-view. All Indiana football games are televised. Don't think people in Texas don't know this.)

In the old days, yeah, it would have been ND, maybe Syracuse, maybe Missouri. Now, if positioned properly, the Big Ten could ask just about anyone, and they may expand by three (or even five?) rather than one.

I still think if they're looking at fourteen, it has to be Texas, Texas A&M, and one more. If you look at the list of non-Big Ten schools in the AAU, there simply aren't three "available" schools that would make a good package. Cal, Stanford, Colorado? Great idea, but not happening. If anything, Colorado would head to the Pac-X after the Big Ten expands. Pitt isn't a bad match, but there really aren't any other Big East schools that justify expansion to 14. Vanderbilt is a solid academic school that offers very little athletically, and there are doubts whether or not a school would even leave the SEC. Duke, North Carolina, and Virginia sounds nice, but Virginia is probably the only school that would care about leaving the ACC even the slightest, and I doubt you'd get them without Virginia Tech, who's not an AAU member and thus is off the list.

I guess we might find out soon ...

Finally, A.J. Pierzynski is a cheater, which surprises absolutely no one. Unfortunately, he's not nearly the exception. Despite what some would have you believe, professional sports are not filled with fair play and sportsmanship. A lot of people will do anything they can get away with and more things they can't, which you can tell any time you watch a game. Blame Pierzynski for being a cheating cheater, but keep in mind that the home plate umpire let him do it.

MLB 10: Up to AAA

After a miserable year in AA, the Tigers kept me there in 2011. I was a bench guy, barely getting a plate appearance per series, until they traded me to the Marlins. I started to hit well in Jacksonville (unfortunately I can't see how well because it doesn't split your AA performance by team), and in August they called me up to AAA New Orleans. I'd guess I was probably hitting something like .270 in Jacksonville, considering I got my average up from .10x to .184 overall.

Lucky for me, the starting third baseman hurt himself, so I jumped straight into a full-time role. I was Player of the Game in my first game, going 3 for 5 with 2 doubles and a game-winning single. I doubt it'll all be that easy, but at least for now I'm moving ahead.

Butler 59, Evil Empire 61

First, the irrational stuff. Thanks to the refs for making this happen.

Section 4. Intentional Personal Fouling
Guidelines for calling the intentional personal foul are:
a. Any personal foul that is not a legitimate attempt to directly play the ball
or a player is an intentional personal foul.

Yes, that's what the rule book says, and no, this is not an intentional foul. Why not? Because.

Zoubek is a fouling machine, clearly commits his fifth foul, no call is made, and on the next possession, he scores a basket that turns out to be the final margin.

Okay, I feel better. Now for the real analysis.

For the fourth straight game, Butler clearly outplayed a team that was considered to be better than them. Once again, they did not play their bast basketball, and yet they still had chances to win. Despite the poor officiating (which I will grant was not totally one-sided: there was one sequence early in the second half where Butler was determined to commit fouls and the refs were equally determined not to call any).

With the exception of Zoubek's usual moving elbow picks and the thugging by Thomas, there weren't too many egregious calls or non-calls. Butler let this one get away by missing a number of open shots in the first half and by failing to drive well in the second. They had the right idea (to drive inside and keep picking up fouls on Duke's bigs), but the Devils played it very well and simply let them drive, waiting to block low shots or simply giving up uncontested layups, most of which were shot by off-balance players expecting contact.

Butler took more shots from the field, had more free throws, got more offensive rebounds, forced more turnovers, and shot better from outside the arc. I doubt Coach K will say it, but they got lucky tonight. Butler showed that they absolutely belonged here, that regardless of how they got here, they deserved it. This is no Hoosiers remake; Butler is more like, well, Duke.

Younger people may not realize that Duke was in a similar position in the early '90s, when they first made the transition from underdog to champion. The difference is that Duke is in the ACC and thus has access to much better resources (TV contracts, for example). Butler has no such leverage. They will have to work hard to retain what they have.

And retain it they should. Butler may be going to Houston next year ... now, a lot of good teams don't make it to the Final Four, if for no other reason than, well, only four teams can go, but the Bulldogs should have the talent on the court and the sidelines to get there.

It was a great season that nearly finished with a storybook ending. Weeks earlier, Evan Turner hit a similar shot just a few blocks away to pull out a last-second win in the Big Ten tournament, a game that ultimately meant nothing to the Buckeyes (who were still a 2 seed despite being regular season co-champs and tournament champions). How different things would have been if that shot had been the one that missed.

Finally, CBS did probably the worst job of covering the tournament in history, considering the advances in technology that should have made more things possible. Completely oblivious to said history, one of the talking heads made the statement that this final was better than others, even some of the overtime ones. (That's about as stupid as you can get. CBS? It's Rumeal Robinson on line 1. He'd like to speak to you about that. Oh, and Wilt Chamberlain is holding on line 2. I think Frank McGuire is with him.)

The new camera angles were, without exception, hideous. I can't think of a worse angle than one that shows the court top to bottom. Hello, CBS: we're watching on wide screens now. Jim Nantz doing the Final Four is kind of like Pam Ward calling it for ESPN. Nantz is a golf announcer. He can't do basketball. That's not his style. He has no idea how to get excitement into the game. I mean, this is the network that employs Gus Johnson, for goodness sake. You know, the guy who can inject excitement into, well, a golf tournament? He even did the regional final with Butler and Kansas State. Where was he? Not doing play-by-play. When ESPN gets the tournament, they have to take Johnson.

The talking heads stuck to the script that was given them, even when Butler was clearly dominating play in the first half. Seth Davis was the only one, I think, who even noticed what Butler was doing to Duke. Of course, afterward they were falling all over themselves to point out how Butler was right there the whole time. This is why we don't listen nearly as much to mass media.

Split-screen action in the first four rounds? None. Random switches between games? Check. Blacking out games that aren't shown locally? Check. Complete incompetence? Check. CBS proved beyond a doubt why over-the-air networks can't handle sports any more. The three major leagues plus the NCAA should chip in and start providing better, cheaper broadband to people so they can watch games online and then cut out the over-the-air networks entirely. (The NHL doesn't have the money or the intelligence to do so.) We'd all be better off with a network that doesn't insert blocks of dead time so they can show you the local "news". (There was severe weather in the Indianapolis area. I think we were all concerned that they would "helpfully" break in with the report of a tornado sighted 100 miles away or something like that.)

In a just world, ESPN would cover a 65-team tournament and not screw it up, talking heads would actually go out on a limb from time to time ... and Butler is the 2010 national champion. But I guess that's not how it's going to go down.

MLB 10: goal fail

Well, over three or four advancement periods, I didn't do very well. I had a nice post about this saved, but Blogger lost it. Thanks.

I was brought in as an emergency catcher once. Catching is interesting, but as in the field, MLB 10 doesn't want to burden you with what you should actually be doing. For example, on a ground ball to the left side, you aren't supposed to back up the throw to first, even though the sim catcher does. You should stand at home plate in case, well, I don't know.

Anyway, I got pushed back to a backup role, then started again almost immediately when a guy in front of me got hurt. And now I failed at another set of goals (although I am hitting better), but they don't care as much because I'm just a "backup".

Sometimes it's interesting to see the different areas in which you're expected to improve, but honestly they're all pretty much related. If you do well, you can improve just about any attribute; struggle, and you'll not get enough points to improve your attributes. Basically, the more goals you have, the greater success/failure you'll have.

It's fun so far, and I'm learning about how to do things, but I'm not making a lot of progress yet. Maybe next year.

MLB 10: current goals

So here's something they do: they give you a set of goals to achieve in a certain amount of time. Some of them are stat-related (get 6 hits in 8 series). Some are attribute-related (improve your contact vs. right-handed pitching by X). At the end of the period, you're evaluated. If you do well, your manager and general manager are happy, and you might earn a promotion. If not, well, let's find out ... the manager wasn't happy. Good thing it was the "first time".

I had 8 series to do six things. Two of them were failures: draw a walk (hey, it's hard, they have to throw balls) and strike out fewer than 15 times (18 ... good thing they increased it from 8 halfway through). The other four were reasonable. I increased my contact vs. LHP and RHP (they're tied together, so that wasn't hard), got the hits (11), but didn't improve my bunting enough (why bunt? bunting is for weak bats).

Next goals: in 7 series, improve contact vs. RHP (no problem), plate discipline (no problem), get 28 total bases (hmm) and have an OBP of .360 or higher (uh). Oh, and draw 5 walks. Right. That would be 5 more than my career total.

Virtual me, baseball style

I broke down and got MLB 10: The Show, partly because its create-your-own-player thing was really good and, well, partly because my friends enjoy the create-your-own-player thing.

So I made a me, a 21-year-old third baseman (about half my age, but who cares?), and put him in the Detroit organization at AA Erie.

Hitting is hard. I strike out a lot. But I finally figured out that I need to start looking for specific pitches (when you guess a pitch correctly, you know just before it leaves the pitcher's hand, so if you know the pitch and you see where it starts, you can tell where it should finish). I struck out twice in three PAs early in the game, but I ripped a 3-2 pitch down the line in right for a double in the seventh, and in the ninth, with none out and the tying run on base, I guessed first-pitch fastball and put it down about 350 feet away, just over the right field wall. 4-3 Erie victory. (Somehow I wasn't player of the game.)

You get training points for good things and lose them for bad things (like throwing to the wrong base – grr, not my fault ... well okay maybe it was). Of course I got no bonus for the game-winning hit because the manager didn't need me to get a hit there, but lost points for the two times I struck out instead of driving in a run. (It's a cool way to do things, because sometimes you'll get credit for a small thing in a big situation. It's just funny right now.)

More to come later. Hopefully I'll learn a little more and move up to AAA Toledo soon ...

Thoughts on the Duke game

Purdue had a good run, Kramer and Grant had fine careers, Wohlford did what was asked of him, which is a lot more than most people in that situation might do. Good job, guys, and thanks for all you've done. Let's get ready for next season.

• CBS' production is, quite possibly, the worst I have ever seen in the 25 years I can remember watching the tournament. ESPN might actually start televising the tournament starting tomorrow. The hanging-six-feet-in-the-air-at-midcourt angle is atrocious. They still haven't done any split-screen action, and I don't think they even bother to tell people when they cut in or out.
• I don't think the officials understand what a moving screen is. Zoubek not only slid but initiated contact with Kramer on the play that probably gave him a concussion, and not only didn't get a foul, the Duke player with the ball also initiated contact, and yet the foul was called on the defender. I guess that's why I don't really do organized sports. I would be the guy who, on the next Duke possession, would wait for Zoubek to set a screen and then kick his foot out from under him or kick his knee by "accident" or something.
• I have Baylor in the Fracas. I'm not worried about Friday's game at all.
• While the officiating was, for the most part, atrocious, it had very little to do with the result. Purdue lost in large part because they ran their offense very poorly. Duke would apply pressure and the non-Johnson players would look around for Robbie Hummel to get open. With a solid point guard and better spacing, Purdue could have beaten this team. Also, Kramer returned to human form, by which I mean the guy who refuses to take outside shots and only puts up little-guy layups. Purdue can't afford to be playing 4-on-5 when the offense is struggling.
• The BWW in Fishers is going downhill fast. They finally replaced their junky old-school TVs with HD screens, but that just makes their old, fading projectors look that much worse. We saw only one of the two early games because apparently it's too hard to get the manager to bother with setting channels on TVs. In the corner where we were, there was one big-screen and two smaller screens. The one on the right had to be on the same game as the big screen for reasons unknown to normal people (the screens on either side practically touch the big screen, it's not like you can only see one) and the one on the left was showing Colin Cowherd display his utter lack of intelligence. Naturally, I couldn't get any wireless access: Harborlink is by far the worst provider I've seen at a restaurant, and this time the proxy server was redirecting requests through some other site that also sucked. I have friends that pick BWW out of habit, but it may be time to cut our losses.
• Duke sucks.

Only ESPN ...

would be stupid enough to believe that expanding the NCAA tournament is a good idea. However, with CBS apparently incapable of maintaining the quality of their telecasts, to say nothing of actually bothering to improve their coverage from year to year, the odds are good that the NCAA will opt out of the contract after this season and put it up for bid, and you can count on one pointy little finger the number of networks who ought to be bidding for it.

Breaking for local news? Please. That was stupid 20 years ago. Staggering Saturday and Sunday games so that at times we have only one (incredibly boring) game and at others we have no game at all? Incompetent. Repeatedly showing promos for the same four shows that CBS can't get anyone else to watch either? Lame.

Anyway, that's not the point. The point is that with ESPN bidding on it, one of the carrots they will dangle is that they would be willing to show an extra 31 games, essentially having two "first rounds".

Obviously, this is stupid. Why? Let facts be submitted to a candid world.

Timing. Right now, schools have only days to prepare for a trip to one of eight cities for Thursday or Friday games; two schools actually have to make it to Dayton on Tuesday when the selection show is Sunday. This is not easy.

If the tournament is expanded, there will be two choices. One is to play all 32 games the same week as the first and second rounds; this is, of course, beyond stupid, because there's no way you'd get all those teams to sites by Tuesday and Wednesday, even if you simply played the opening round at first-round sites. Eventually it would screw up. The other option is to play the opening round the weekend before the first and second rounds, which means a dead week before the actual tournament, and that's also stupid.

Cost. Regionals, in general, will sell out (except for 2009, when 20% of seats were unsold). The Final Four obviously does. The early rounds do not. In general, two rules apply: somewhere between 10% and 20% of early-round tickets do not get sold, and if you don't have games in Indianapolis, you're going to have attendance issues. The five highest attendance marks for first-round sessions are all from the RCA Dome. Lest you think it's simply a size issue, the fifth-best attendance mark is 27,959. There are plenty of places with that many seats, but outside Indiana, you won't fill them. (And the third- through fifth-best sessions did not include either Indiana or Purdue, in case you were wondering.)

Dayton hosts the current opening-round game because it's the only place that draws attendance for it, and even at that, it's weak. They had 11,346 in 2009, a record high, but only 8,205 in 2010. If you have separate opening-round sites, you have to find seven more cities that can sell opening-round games, which seems pretty much a no-go because they couldn't find any others as it is. If you have them at first- and second-round sites, you have the same problem they have now (attendance outside of Indy isn't great), except it'll be multiplied.

Dilution. Have you seen the NIT bracket? It's a few regular-season conference champions and a bunch of so-so teams from power conferences, with a few mid-majors thrown in so it's not a complete waste. Does anyone really want to watch two .500 teams from North Carolina? Well, that's what the ACC regular season is for. Sit down.

Almost all of the previous expansion was to serve one of two purposes: to admit additional conferences (there are now 31 automatic qualifiers) or to include teams that could possibly contend for a title but didn't qualify because of the small number of at-large bids available. In 1985, when the tournament expanded to 64 teams, it was mostly to provide every team with the same number of possible games (as opposed to the previous steps that added spots only for new conferences).

With very, very few exceptions, the teams who could win are the teams that are in. For the most part, those additional teams are going to be the .500 teams that slogged their way through the regular season and conference tournaments without doing anything of note ... and now we're to include them in a tournament game?

That won't be the only effect on the field. It isn't like they're going to take the worst automatic qualifiers and leave them as 16 seeds. If one of those teams pulls off an upset as a 24 seed, they'll get an 8 seed in the next round. Yeah. Think about that for a minute. (Of course they could bump seeds up like they do in professional playoffs, but I doubt that's going to happen.)

And then what happens to the NIT? It barely has enough teams to run as it is. What do you think ESPN would do then? Remember, they have the broadcast rights for the NIT now. Good luck working that one out. (I don't care about the other tournaments: they're meaningless and everyone knows it.)

Look, it's not going to devalue the regular season. This isn't football: basketball has always had a regular season of significant length, and regular-season fun didn't disappear when the NCAA first handed out at-large bids. It's going to devalue conference tournaments even more than they've already been weakened. (Look at the Big Ten and Big East. Yeah, West Virginia and Ohio State won and are still around, but Purdue, Syracuse, and Michigan State played like feces, and they also managed to make the Sweet Sixteen.) You think coaches of good teams are going to try when they know they're in no matter what? Do you think Minnesota's going to play hard if they're a 12 seed out of 24 rather than a 12 seed out of possibly 11? (meaning that the last at-large spot at the time might have gone to an 11 seed)

I would love for ESPN to take back control of the tournament and show it properly, but let's be honest: the Worldwide Leader isn't exactly known for its overall broadcast acumen. After all, this is the company that continues to support Around the Horn. Can we count on them to make the right proposal?

Keep the tournament at 65. (Heck, make it 64. Cut out one of the at-large spots. We don't need those teams.) Don't ruin it for everyone.

Friday tournament recap

One day, four games, three bars ... it's more than a normal person can handle, but I've proven myself to be exceptionally good at maxing out on sports. Thus I give you ... Friday at the Big Ten Tournament.

10:30 AM: Parking for $5.50. Not bad. One block closer, it's the same kind of lot and $20. You figure it out. We walk toward Conseco, trying to find a decent place for breakfast, lunch, or some other meal that can be served a) now or b) shortly after now.

Buffalo Wings & Rings is the choice, the Northwestern bar. (This means it's empty; apparently Northwestern does not travel well.) It's open at 10:45, which is pretty cool considering that it really opens at 10. They couldn't take food orders yet, but who cares? Soft drinks and seats.

They have nine sauce types and five levels of heat. Based on a tip from one of the bartenders, I go with Extra Hot instead of Hot with the Cajun sauce. An excellent blend, still milder than a hot BWW sauce ... 5 boneless, curly fries and a drink for $8.

12:00 PM: In our seats for tipoff, Game 1: #1 Ohio State vs. #8 Michigan. This really ought to be a blowout, except a) Thad Matta can't coach his way out of a wet paper bag at Ohio State and b) Michigan actually played these guys pretty close last time out. It does, in fact, turn out to be a good game.

Wireless signals are available but never work, so I check gmail with my phone. Boo to Conseco.

Ohio State isn't playing that hard. Michigan isn't playing that well. I guess they're evenly matched.

2:00 PM: Jesus. What a terrible way to lose. The only thing worse than losing like that is losing to the team with the worst-behaved fans in the Big Ten; said fans will now be crowing like they knew they had it won the whole time.

2:30 PM: Game 2, #5 Illinois vs. #4 Wisconsin. yawn. It's like watching yoga. Or mimes. We head out early and try to get seats. (There is only two hours between sessions ... this may seem like a lot until you've waited for 30 minutes to be seated and for another 20 minutes to place your order.)

By the way, when you average something like 55 points a game, you really can't fall behind by 10 or so. You're just not built to come back that far.

4:15 PM: We're at Coaches Tavern, I guess. It's not really well marked. We look for a table ... doesn't appear to be one. We stand at the door for a bit. People line up behind us. Fortunately, they're all well-behaved (meaning they aren't going to jump a table before us). We find one nestled in the back, though. Good news: we have a table. Bad news: it's in the back. (Also, Illinois hangs on to win. The Illinois person in our group survives.)

This place has good wireless, plus we could even get a signal from neighboring O'Reilly's, the Michigan bar. I catch up on email and such.

Eventually, they get the right person waiting on us, and we eat. The Albuquerque Burger: guacamole, salsa, and pepper jack. Waffle fries on the side. Thumbs up for this meal ... we had one of those bigger coupons, something like $15 off if you spend $35 or more. Decent meal and a nice rest, then back to Conseco.

6:30 PM: Game 3, #2 Purdue vs. #7 Northwestern. Quite possibly the worst Purdue game I've ever seen in person, only because this used to be a good team. (When I had season tickets at Purdue, they didn't break .500.) I avoided killing anyone around me who rooted against Purdue, the Boilers held on to win, and I could breathe again.

Why is Northwestern not in the NCAA tournament? Because they lose games like this one. And the game at IU, and the ones they lost to Penn State and Iowa ... you know, the three teams that lost on Thursday.

9:00 PM: Game 4, #3 Michigan State vs. #6 Minnesota. Purdue will face either the team that just beat them in Mackey or a team that is fighting for an NCAA bid. woo.

Michigan State, not surprisingly, becomes the fourth higher-seeded team to play like crap. They fall behind by 10 and we leave.

10:45 PM: At BWW, our third and final stop for the night. It's the Wisconsin bar, so of course there aren't many Wisconsin people here. We watch MSU fight back and force overtime, then completely crap themselves and lose. Purdue vs. Minnesota Saturday. woo.

There are drunk people from various schools. All are pretty much decent folks. (In fact, even OSU people are generally decent ... it's just that the ones that aren't are loud enough to spoil it for everyone else.) The rest of the party drinks up, I play some trivia, and then we head home.

A good night was had by ... well ... sometimes it just works out this way, you know?

Random thoughts

HTML is nice, but it doesn't type easily. I suppose I should use something that builds content more easily ... because, after all, this is my career. I can do stuff like that, you know.

Yet another reason why the NHL is not a major league outside Canada.
Even the NFL, a Neanderthal among leagues, realizes that hey, people getting hit in the head is baaaad. In the NHL, it's perfectly acceptable.

Well, to be more precise, there are probably only two people in the league who think it's acceptable, but because they are a) the commissioner (the worst in NHL history) and b) the VP responsible for discipline (the second-worst in NHL history, behind only the jerk who's now a GM and has been consistently finding players who hit like this), nothing will change.

At some point, one of two things will happen: either the NHL will realize that they can't be protected from the real world much longer and they'll actually make changes to improve player safety, or something will happen on the ice and the legal ramifications will change things forever. It may be hyperbole to talk about what happens if someone dies on the ice, but hey, in recent history there has been a player whose career was ended by this same kind of thuggery, and absolutely nothing changed as a result of that.

It's also the same league that welcomed a guy who assaulted another player with his stick. Guess what? The guy is an "enforcer", which is a hockey term for "career thug", and apparently he fits the role well. This is the image that the NHL wants to promote. Well, there you go. Maybe it does belong on Vs, right before "When Wolves Attack".

Health care reform isn't dead yet.
The President is still trying to get the word out. Some kind of reform will pass, I think, and it will take effect eventually, but it'll be much less than what we need, and as a result there will be a lot of blame. Most of it, naturally, should be on the people who oppose any change whatsoever; some of it should fall on the shoulders of those who want total change or none at all. (This is Washington, folks: nothing that involves the Senate gets done quickly.)

All I want is for it to get fixed before I really need health insurance. I have no expectations any more. Our system is completely broken and assholes who are still covered (because they're rich and have connections) want to keep it broken.

The NCAA tournament is around the corner.
Three weeks ago, I'd have said I can't wait. Then Robbie Hummel tore his ACL, and now, well, I guess it'll be fun to watch. In the meantime, off to the Big Ten tournament I go ...

Other notes

I'm still working on losing weight; I sort of put it aside for a while to focus on other things. The weather's better now, I'm getting back into Wii Fit, and so I may have more to report later. For now, just know I basically maintained over the winter. Actually, I also unlocked the pushup challenge on Wii Fit. Apparently I need more upper-body strength. (I may end up getting Wii Fit Plus too.)

The work situation is about to change dramatically, but I have no way to know in what way this will happen. I have a number of promising leads that will either all hit at once or all disappear at once. Of course, this will probably all happen next Thursday and Friday.

I tossed a small burlap-ish bag of catnip onto the couch. Naturally, the cats ignored it because it's old and it was purchased. (Free things make the best toys.) Later, I looked over at the couch and saw what looked like a small, long little hairball or not-hairball. I stood up to get a better look, but you, the clever reader, already know what happened: it was simply the bag viewed at an angle. No cleanup required. (Thankfully. There has been enough of that recently. Someone ate something she shouldn't have eaten.)

captchas don't work

At least, most of them don't. Either they're simpler and spam gets past them, or they're difficult enough that the average person struggles to read them.

I was setting up a gmail account recently and had to try 4 times to get one I could read. (Interestingly, Google's setup was poor enough that you couldn't even ask for a new image; you had to guess what was there. And then when you guessed wrong, it cleared the password you had set up for it. stupid.)

I don't understand why people use the twisty-word type of captcha. It really doesn't help anything.

And Facebook's check is timed, for some stupid reason ... you can request more words, but in the time it took for me to type and click OK, I had to repeat the process. Also stupid.

Security does not work when it is harder on the user than on the criminal.

NHL 10: Late December '09

Hey, with the real-life NHL in full swing, I've picked up NHL 10 again ...

Three games this week: hosting San Jose, hosting some team I don't recognize, and at Colorado. Oh, Columbus is the middle one. Didn't recognize the logo at all.

December 21st: I made a nice play in the first, fishing a puck out of the crease (and nearly putting it in) and taking it to safety ... didn't mark Marleau well and gave up a goal, then got off the ice a second before we equalized. We got the third goal in the first minute of the second period (on the same shift where I knocked down Joe Thornton). Two more later and we cruised to an easy win.

Stats: 0 G, 0 A, +1, 4 shots, 0 PIM, 2 hits, 1 blocked shot
Result: W 5-1 vs. San Jose
Grade: A- (A+/A-/B)

December 23rd: Tough game ... actually went to a shootout. Naturally, I missed my shot ... they won, 2-1 after 4 shots.

Stats: 0 G, 0 A, -1, 4 shots, 0 PIM, 0 hits, 1 blocked shot
Result: L 2-3 SO vs. Columbus
Grade: B (A+/B+/C)

Four points out of 8th ... easily in the playoff hunt, but we need to keep winning, especially against Western Conference teams.

December 26th: gave up a silly goal in the slot when I didn't check my man, then we lost in OT when they scored a power-play goal. One of our D went down with a first-period injury, so I got a lot of ice time: 40:41, second-most on the team (my partner had 47 minutes).

Stats: 0 G, 1 A, even, 4 shots, 0 PIM, 0 hits, 1 blocked shot
Result: L 1-2 OT at Colorado
Grade: A- (A+/B+/A-)

woot! Moved up to the second pair.

Three games this week: Chicago on Tuesday, Anaheim on Thursday, Vancouver on Saturday.

December 29th: we scored twice on one shift, then I got a third plus when the defense changed before the forwards did. Gave up a bad goal on a turnover, but it didn't matter.

Stats: 0 G, 0 A, +2, 1 shot (I think, I looked in the wrong place for SOG), 0 PIM, 1 hit, 0 blocked shots
Result: W 4-1 vs. Chicago
Grade: A- (A+/B/A-)

December 31st: gave up a bad goal, took a crap penalty (interference, thought I was finishing my check), but played well other than that. Easy win: Selanne took a major plus game misconduct for slashing, and that was that.

Stats: 0 G, 1 A, +2, 1 shot, 2 PIM, 3 hits
Result: W 6-2 vs. Anaheim
Grade: A (A+/B+/A+)

Random thoughts

The US rolls into the gold-medal game.
Anticlimactic. The Finns looked completely overmatched ... you'd never guess that these were the top two teams remaining in the draw. (Yes, in case you've not been paying attention, #2 Sweden and #3 Russia are out. It's #6 Canada and #7 Slovakia to decide who will face the Americans Sunday.)

And despite all that, Gary Bettman is still too stupid to realize how valuable this is for the sport. Maybe it's because he's afraid that people will actually like hockey if they watch it; that would explain the contract with Vs. (And with NBC, the least-competent sports network in history. Why Bettman thought it was a good idea to pay NBC to show NHL games, I'll never know.) Obviously the NHL needs to stop for the 2014 Olympics in Russia, which means Bettman will probably be "negotiating" this until 2013. I hope he retires before he completely destroys the NHL.

Jim Bunning is a stupid prick.
Sorry, there's no other way to put it. It will be a boost for the Republicans when this jackass is out of office. (It'll be a boost for America too; I would guess there is at least one rational Republican in Kentucky. Whether or not he or she runs for the Senate is anyone's guess.)

Purdue's dream is over.
There are a lot of ways to look at this (I recommend the link that shows what to look for when someone goes down with a knee injury), but it boils down to this: prior to the injury, Purdue's ceiling was a national championship, and their floor was probably an Elite Eight appearance. Now, the ceiling is probably a Final Four appearance, and the floor is a second-round NCAA loss. Even if Keaton Grant continues to play solid basketball, that leaves Purdue with three productive players and a lot of smaller parts, and if they face a team that can limit at least two of the productive players, it'll be very difficult for the Boilers to win.

Watch how Purdue handles their next two big games, at home against Michigan State and then their Saturday game in the Big Ten tournament ... those are the most favorable matchups against good teams Purdue is likely to have. If the Boilers look bad in either or both games, or if they lose any others (the conference wrapups against Indiana and Penn State or the Friday tournament game), sell your Final Four tickets.

The Free Press is full of lying liars and doesn't care if you know or not.
Michigan is not going to be crushed under the NCAA's thumb. Rich Rodriguez is not Satan. Mistakes were made, perhaps some bad decisions were made, but it is not what the Freep would have you believe, not that this bothers them in the slightest.

The Freep is out to get Rodriguez and Michigan, much as the Indianapolis Star likes to crap on Purdue at every opportunity, although in this particular instance the Freep has crossed into territory not even Bob Kravitz will occupy.

Follow the link above and read some other mgoblog posts about the situation. You'll see what I mean.

How can I be so confident? Even OSU blogs agree with mgoblog. Basically, sane people believe that a) Michigan is getting screwed by this coverage while b) USC is getting away with pretty much everything. An OSU blog (and coach, by the way) supporting UM? Dogs and cats, living together. Yep, it's the apocalypse.

Poor form design

Even Google gets things wrong sometimes. (I don't mean like Buzz. That's more like "Even Google completely nukes a section of the internets and then attempts to apologize later, as if words could somehow make up for the incredibly stupid decisions they made.")

Have you nominated your area to be a test market for Google's reported 1 Bbps fiber service? You should. I did, and when I submitted the form, Google politely told me that while they'd saved my information on the page (good), there was something I had to correct ...

One of the boxes could contain no more than 384 characters.

Why 384? Who knows. (Typically it's 255; you may get smaller numbers if they do something to the text going in or coming out, and I suppose this could be a natural-language field, but I digress.) The point is that they showed me a restriction after I submitted the form ... and not only that, they didn't even tell me how much I had to change.

This is very bad practice. First, you should do this checking prior to form submission so that you don't make the user waste a step. We don't like trying things that don't work. (Google is notorious for low-load pages ... but then they have AJAX to bring up search tips and such, so why would they not use JavaScript here?) Second, if there is a problem, tell the user exactly what it is, and if possible, make recommendations to fix it. Tell me how many characters I've typed. Don't make me copy the text into Word just to count it. Better yet, add code to the text box to show me exactly how much room I have.

Ah, Google. Just like the rest of us, aren't you?

Curling? Really?

Sure.

Pros:

Definitely a sport (scoring involved)
Lots of strategy
Casual people can actually play it
Slower pace allows explanation of strategy

Cons:

Unfamiliar to many Americans
Ruined by commercials

Wait, what? Ruined?

Yes. NBC is making the same mistake that networks made with soccer for 20-30 years in the US, repeatedly killing its televised popularity as participation in the sport soared. (This would be akin to buying a home above list price these days.) Just as ESPN tried to force soccer into their standard sporting template during the World Cup and got bashed repeatedly for ignoring live action, NBC cuts away from live play to show commercials in the middle of an end, usually not even bothering to show the shots you missed while they were away. The stranger part is that they'll come back from commercial after the 5th end (the halfway point), then cut to commercials again, then miss the first couple of rocks in the 6th.

If you want to increase the popularity of a sport on television, you have to show it in a manner that supports the sport. NBC, of course, is the network least capable of doing this on the planet, and thus we get the exact opposite.

Look, more people in the US are going to be watching the Olympics right now than would watch all of the individual sports combined during the years in between. Now is the chance to teach people about it ... show something like Canada vs. Great Britain, so you've got skilled teams with the crowd reacting to each shot, and show the whole thing. Talk about strategy, scoring, everything. Get people involved. And instead of burying your snout even deeper in the trough of advertising money, lift your piggy head, take a deep breath, and let the sport speak for itself. We've already seen the same commercials 20 times over anyway: the Olympics are just like all other televised sports in that you get the same commercials over and over again, except there are so many days that the commercial overkill happens after a day or two instead of weeks.

It makes me sad. There are people at NBC who are responsible for nothing other than sports coverage, and they're obviously so bad at their jobs that trained monkeys would be offended if asked to replicate the work. Yet they are still employed. Dear NBC, hire me at half what they're making, and I'll make your sports coverage ten times better.

Yes, this

NPR's Linda Holmes says it very well: NBC has no idea what it's doing.

If the IOC had any brains (and many would argue they've been missing said brains for a long time), they'd do whatever is necessary to yank the exclusive contract for US television rights and award it to a network that actually shows sports. In an era where people watch live sports on TVs, computers, phones, and who knows what else, NBC continues to show tape-delayed events. (Hey look, guys, isn't this cool? Who do you think will win ... how did you know? Was that on the World Wide Web somewhere? We've got to get that someday.)

I think we are rapidly approaching an era where broadcast networks are no longer equipped to show sports. (And a cheer goes up from the non-sports-fan contingent.) Don't laugh: I'm not the only one who thinks this. Notice what ABC and ESPN are doing? You've obviously seen that Monday Night Football is on "cable", and that didn't ruin the football universe. ABC is shifting more events to ESPN, including NASCAR events ... there are ABC affiliates in the South that are not happy with this, but I don't know that too many people care.

Unfortunately for the people who don't have cable and can't stream events, that's where things are heading. ESPN could cover the NCAA tournament 10 times better than CBS can, and CBS knows it: when they offered $1 billion for what I think was a seven-year contract to get the rights back after ESPN snagged the first-round games and did them superbly, they were doing it to protect valuable territory, just like NBC did with the Olympics, and just like the NCAAs have surpassed CBS' ability to cover them well, the Olympics have surpassed NBC's ability to cover them ... at all.

If some people are upset, you might be doing something right. If everybody's upset, you must be NBC.

NHL 10: Early December '09

AHL: ha ha, I got a crap interference penalty in a scrum along the boards, and sure enough, the announcers sided with me. Didn't matter though, we killed it off. Lost 2-1, I missed a hip check and the guy set up the winning goal. Had a nice shot in close, but I couldn't put it home. 3 hits, 3 blocked shots.

Four games this week, Sunday and Monday at the same team, then on the road again Friday and home on Saturday.

AHL: Third star, two assists in a 2-0 win. Almost had a shot at an empty net, but I passed by accident. (I didn't have a great shot, and it probably would have been icing if I'd missed.) A grade, 2 hits, drew 1 penalty, blocked 1 shot. +2.

AHL: Second game at Lake Erie. Miserable. 2 hits, -2. We still lead our division by 3 points with 3 games in hand, trail Hamilton by 6 with 1 game in hand for the conference lead.

AHL: One penalty for hitting a guy just a touch too late. A-, 2 hits, 1 blocked shot, 1 takeaway. 2 assists on one shift in the second period, +2 for the game.

AHL: 0 hits. 0 blocked shots. At least I had good shots. Of course, none went in. 1 assist, even. We climbed to within 2 points of Hamilton.

Woo hoo! Called up to Dallas! Third pair and included in special teams (which is kind of odd; I understand the game wants you to get more experience but it would be nice to make you earn one or both honors).

Three games this week: at Carolina, at Atlanta, and home against Detroit. That last one won't be awkward.

We made a trade with Florida, but fortunately it didn't affect pairings.

At Carolina: 21 seconds in, we score. That's a nice return to the NHL. Some rough shifts (including a minus where the goalie lunges out to stop a pass into the zone he doesn't have to play and turns it over), but I got a +1 and an assist late and we held on to win. Much more of a physical presence this time. Lots of good calls for passes (9). We're still way out of the playoff race, though, in 13th.

Stats: 0 G, 1 A, -1, 4 shots, 0 PIM, 6 hits, 2 blocked shots
Result: W 7-4 at Carolina
Grade: A (A+/A/B+)

At Atlanta: A tough defensive struggle, scoreless through two periods ... I have the puck at the point, skating backward, no one is open, I fire a shot at Pavelec ... and the red light goes on. Goal! My first NHL goal, and it gives us a 1-0 lead as well. Later in the period, I fire another one at the net, it's tipped down and in, and we're up 2-0. Unfortunately, my dumbass defensive partner turns the puck over in our end and it's promptly put in the net. 2-1, and I no longer have the game-winning goal, but get the first star nonetheless. (I got an E for scoring my first goal in my 30th game. Hey, I'm a defensive defenseman! Back off.)

Stats: 1 G, 1 A, +1, 3 shots, 0 PIM, 2 hits, 0 blocked shots
Result: W 2-1 at Atlanta
Grade: A (A+/A-/A)

vs. Detroit: ha ha, this one was a bit tough, not just because it was Detroit, but because I was playing against the Datsyuk/Zetterberg line. Halfway through the first, I was a -2. Fortunately, we ended up getting a couple of goals to even the score, and then our pair helped set up the game-winner in the second. Plus I got a hit on Zetterberg ... not sure how he stayed in one place long enough for me to hit him.

Stats: 0 G, 1 A, even, 5 shots, 0 PIM, 2 hits, 0 blocked shots
Result: W 3-2 vs. Detroit
Grade: A (A+/B+/A)

I'm getting much better at calling for passes well. I feel like I know what I'm supposed to do most of the time ... I just don't have the trailer role down. (When there's an odd-man rush and I should be attacking.)

We've pulled within 5 points of 8th-place Chicago.

More Madden 10 fail

I'm in an online franchise league in Madden 10 ... we just finished the Super Bowl (obviously I was not in it) and are ready to start the draft, and as a result, we've discovered how not ready for release online franchise mode is.

For one thing, you can look back to previous seasons and see ... the Super Bowl scores. That's it. No stats, no standings.

For another, when you roll to the next season, for every team with fewer than 7 open spots, it automatically cuts players to make room for drafted players, even though you have plenty of room on your training camp roster for these players (or should). And then when the draft is ready, you can't pick up the free agents it cut for you.

The draft is something else. Small time slots, no way to make them significantly big, and no way for the commissioner to undo a pick ... which is really inexcusable, because the default time slot is apparently 15 seconds. Yeah. And you can't set what they call a "draft profile" on the 360 because that would be helpful: you can actually see all the draftees' attributes there. You have to do it online, where you can't see more than one attribute at a time unless you click on the person, and you can't even sort accurately across groups. For example, if you sort by overall, but you're showing draftees by speed, all you get are the top overall scores for the draftees with highest speed. There's no way to remove that second filter.

I would say this was a half-assed effort by EA, but it would be an insult to actual half-assed efforts. Someone who had no idea of the work involved made the decision to rush this out with Madden 10 when in reality it should have been held back at least a year.

If you don't have a copy of Madden 10 yet, but you saw online mode and are swayed by it, don't be. Wait. It's not worth it yet. At all.

NHL 10: November '09

Still in the AHL.

AHL: another game against Chicago. 3-0 shutout, B+ grade, 2 hits, 2 blocked shots. +1.

The funny thing is that supposedly I get more experience doing defensive things than offensive things, but I've been pretty even overall (438 xp offense, 473 defense, 451 athletics) ... you get something like 20-40 per game in my role, depending on what you do. This is, of course, one of the things about being a good defender: what you do isn't in the scoresheet. That is, if you don't hit. (To reach the next level, Pro, I have to amass 300 hits, play 75 games, get a C or better in my last 5 games, and have a plus/minus of at least +5. Uh, 300? Two seasons, probably.)

AHL: gave up a goal on the opening shift. I even poked the puck loose and the guy just swept it back up. crap. Modano scored in the first minute of the second, though, and with another goal at the end of the shift, we evened it up. Two more goals in the second put it away, although we conceded a late goal after we scored an empty-netter. No hits. boo. 2 long shifts, 2 blocked shots.

Games on Wednesday and Friday this week.

AHL: 3 hits, 0 long shifts, 4 blocked shots. 1 assist, even for the game. A 2-1 win for the good guys. Playing a bit better, but I did make a mistake that led to their only goal.

AHL: same opponent as Wednesday's game. We scored two goals in the final minute to win 4-2: the first came as I took the puck up ice (for some reason they decided not to press me), created a 2-on-2, beat the guy on me, then set up the game-winner. (Not as good as the GWG myself, but I'll take an assist.) Empty-netter made it 4-2 and an extra plus for me. 2 hits, 5 long shifts, 1 blocked shot. 1 assist, +1 overall.

Games on Wednesday and Saturday this week. Texas is currently tied for 3rd in the Western Conference.

Finally made it up to C in hits (40 out of 245 needed), so it's obviously not a rate grade but rather an overall grade (a rate grade would be lower).

AHL: 2-1 win on a power-play goal with less than 2 seconds left. 4 hits, 5 long shifts, 0 blocked shots, 5 good shots. -1, though.

AHL: 4-3 OT win with me on the ice. Had a chance to score a goal with a delayed penalty, but couldn't gather up the puck; attacked in the OT on 4-on-4 play, but didn't get a good shot either. 2 hits, 11 long shifts (oops), 0 blocked shots, 1 penalty drawn, 9 good shots. 1 assist, +2.

Games on the 22nd, 23rd, 26th, 28th. (Thanksgiving, yeah.)

AHL: Milwaukee again. Jesus this was a bad game. 2 hits, 5 long shifts, 0 blocked shots. -5. Yeah. -5. On the ice for every goal against.

Somehow I get promoted to the top defensive pair after that game.

AHL: Promotion is totally justified. 3 assists, +4 for the game, second star as we crush Grand Rapids. A grade, 2 hits, 6 long shifts, 1 blocked shot, 9 good shots taken. Got my 50th hit (in 20 games, a D for that - I can't help if we keep the puck and I can't pop anyone). Got enough XP to move up to a 76 overall rating.

AHL: 6 hits, one minor penalty (totally my fault), 7 long shifts, 4 blocked shots, +2.

AHL: A grade, one silly retaliation penalty, 3 hits, 5 long shifts, 1 blocked shot, 8 good shots, 2 takeaways, 2 turnovers, 1 assist, +2.

One more game in November, Sunday at Manitoba again.

AHL: B+ grade, 1 hit, 3 long shifts, 2 blocked shots, 6 good shots.

Next game is December 5th ... hopefully by Christmas I will be back in Dallas with the big team.

NHL 10: weeks 3-4

AHL game: finally, a solid physical game. 7 hits, put one guy out of the game and out for a week or so, A+ grade, third star. 0 turnovers. Still in the minors, though.

AHL game: only 2 hits, 3 turnovers, 2 takeaways. 0 shots on goal. B+ grade.

Three weeks in, half the time in Austin, slight improvement but no sign of being called back up yet.

AHL game: same story, not much in the way of anything, but we win again. At least I'm on track for all of my goals except hits. One nice thing is that we are taking many fewer penalties and we're scoring more, so my +/- is going up.

AHL: second of a home-and-home with San Antonio. Another win, only 3 long shifts, +4, and one nice shot from the high slot. May have to change the curve of my stick to aim differently.

Woo hoo! Moved up to the second pair. More ice time (although in Be a Pro Mode, you're automatically on the first shift each period and on each specialty unit, as well as an extra attacker, which is funny when you consider I'm a defensive defenseman).

AHL: A grade, second star. 6 hits, finally at my average. 8 long shifts, oh well. Sometimes it's not my fault: I head to the bench but they aren't ready to change yet. One assist, +3 for the game.

AHL: ugh. 2 hits, -3, on the ice for all three goals against, including the game-loser with less than a minute to play. Poor defense by me. Got a couple of good power-play shots, though.

NHL 10: week 2

Third game in the road trip, at Vancouver. No offense. I did manage to pop one of the Sedins at the blue line to shake the puck loose, but that was about it. I got a minus from giving up an empty-net goal. whatever. 10 long shifts. 2 takeaways, 2 turnovers.

Stats: 0 G, 0 A, -1, 2 shots, 0 PIM, 1 hit, 3 blocked shots
Result: L 0-2 at Vancouver
Grade: B (A+/B/C-)

So I didn't get enough hits and they sent me down to the Texas Stars (how original). Now I'm playing with Modano, Zubov, Robidas ... yeah, I don't understand what they're doing in the AHL either. I thought I would be a dominant player at that level. Instead, I'm still a third-line D-man. whatever.

First AHL game: OMG they take penalties. All the time. Bonus: the AHL stats do count toward my season totals. I don't care, I'm not giving details for these games.

Second game, this time we win. I'm hitting more and forcing turnovers, plus not having as many long shifts.

NHL 10: first week

Decent opener: my defense partner gives up a goal off his shoulder for my first minus, but I got a pair of assists and finished +1. Only 2 hits, though, and I still stay on the ice too long. We came back to win, 4-2, in part thanks to me drawing a minor on Shea Weber in the final minute. (We scored on that power play.) 2 blocked shots, but 4 long shifts. 3 turnovers. bad.

Stats: 0 G, 2 A, +1, 1 shot, 0 PIM, 2 hits, 2 blocked shots
Result: W 4-2 vs Nashville
Grade: A- (A+/C+/A+)

Road opener: again we concede on the opening shift. Fell behind 2-0, but ended up scoring 2 third-period goals to pull out the win. I really wanted to shoot at the empty net, but not from my end. I hit Neal up the wing, but he didn't get a clean shot at it. 9 long shifts, uh oh (thus the C+ for team play). Both shots were well taken, 0 takeaways, 1 turnover.

Stats: 0 G, 0 A, even, 2 shots, 0 PIM, 1 hit, 2 blocked shots
Result: W 3-2 at Edmonton
Grade: B+ (A+/B+/C+)

Second game of the Alberta trip: no goals in the first period. I was on the ice for all three normal goals (we scored two empty-net goals). I got a couple of good chances in the slot, but couldn't put them home. I did bait Iginla into a cheap penalty in the third (not that it required much effort). 9 long shifts (again). 0 takeaways, 4 turnovers (whatever).

I achieved Rookie status with that game. (Got my 5th hit. Too bad they're expecting 5 per game.)

Stats: 0 G, 1 A, +1, 3 shots, 0 PIM, 2 hits, 1 blocked shot
Result: W 4-1 at Calgary
Grade: A (A+/B/A+)

NHL 10: prospect game

Another in the line of "virtual me" posts ... I broke open NHL 10 today and created a me. A little taller, a little heavier, much, much better at hockey.

Played in the prospects game ... A+/A-/A+ scorecard, 1 minor penalty, 2 assists, +3 in a 4-0 win. Got the third star.

Signed by the Stars. ugh. Three-year contract, standard, I guess. I think I was the number one pick, but EA doesn't let you see how the draft turns out.

Here are my goals:

• A plus/minus of +14 or better. That makes sense for a defensive D. (It's also low ... because Dallas sucks.)
• 245 hits. Ouch. (no pun intended) That's 3 per game plus 5 extra hits. I better hit some people.
• 140 shots would be nice ... not so bad. I typically only shoot from the point off a faceoff win.
• 24 points would be a bonus ... expect these to be assists, mostly. Hopefully I can manage that.

They're giving me four games to earn a spot on the roster, otherwise I go down to the AHL. Hmm. I suspect those games don't count toward my season goals. I suppose I better play well. I thought it was preseason, but apparently we don't play that.

Maybe I can do something well and earn a trade to a team I don't dislike. (It could have been worse: Calgary, Anaheim, Colorado ...)

The Romans would be proud

Roger Goodell wants to ban the three-point stance. Short version: doing so would possibly limit the number of powerful blows a lineman has to absorb, decreasing the possibility of debilitating brain damage later in life.

Spin: nice idea, but because Goodell isn't doing anything about other serious problems in football (serial cheap-shot players like Ryan Clark and Ray Lewis), it's possible this won't make much of a difference, and thus it's only a PR stunt.

I link to the Football Outsiders post to show the discussion ... sadly, there are several people who seem to believe that the players know what they're getting into, therefore, screw them, we want our violence. (You know, the NASCAR-wreck crowd.) This guy retires with 10 concussions and develops Alzheimer's at 40, but who cares? Look at this rookie? Wow, he's a really big hitter!

It is the internet, and thus e-pinions are likely to be stronger than you'd see in "real life", but still, it's discouraging to think that on a statistically-inclined football site, there are a number of people back in the Coliseum, still rooting for the lions. (Ha. Maybe that's Detroit's problem. There isn't a team of Christians.)

Advertiser fail

Did you know there aren't enough ads in sports games?

No, really.

Wow. I mean, I have done some contract work for an advertising agency, so I know a very little bit about the ideas that get tossed around on a smaller scale, but I still don't agree with most of it ... I think the advertising industry is stuck in the 20th-century paradigm of directing the user's experience, even when every single 21st-century gadget reinforces the idea of the user directing his or her own experience. Be part of that or begone.

Unfortunately, both EA and ESPN have shown that they do not understand this. I'm expecting ESPN to have annoying Snickers placement all over the place next year ... I'm sure it's much better to be working on that or on other unwanted "features" than on fixing bugs in the game (like playoff spots in online franchise mode being determined by alphabetical order).

WTF, Los Angeles edition

I have three thoughts about this.

1. Lane Kiffin is the absolute dumbest coach in the history of intercollegiate athletics.
2. Actually, that.
3. Yes.

Okay, so really, 2 is this:

Assistant: Yeah, so I'm not convinced that Barkley is good enough to be the guy next year. I mean, some of those passes, a 13-year-old could throw.
Kiffykins: Hold on, I'll get one. (darts out of room)
Assistant: Wait, it was a figure of speech ...
(Kiffykins returns.)
Kiffykins: I got one. Okay, next position.
(Assistant sighs.)

I guess 3 would be that if you actually find a parent stupid enough to believe that anything Kiffykins says will be true in five years – five times longer than his stay at Tennessee – you might as well put one over on him. I can't wait for this poor kid to try to enroll at USC in 2015, only to find out any number of things have happened (USC has no scholarships to give, there are three five-star prospects already at QB, the coach after the coach who replaced Kiffin has no intention of honoring the offer, his arm fell off in 2013) ...

iPad?

iGuess.

Read this and this, and you'll get a pretty good idea of what I'm thinking. (Maybe it will be great for old people. You know, the ones that actually have a 401(k) left and will spend money from it on technology.)

Football Apocalypse

Al Davis was right. Lane Kiffin is a turd. (But hey, Tennessee fans, at least you got rid of him before he did any permanent damage!)

First, Pete Carroll leaves USC for the Seahawks. This wouldn't mean too much, except that Carroll already has a reputation as an average NFL coach. And the massive cheating scandal at USC is becoming too obvious for even the NCAA to ignore. The fact that the Seahawks don't have a president or GM (the guys to whom the coach typically report) doesn't matter. (Actually, the GM thing doesn't matter much if the franchise is run poorly. See Cleveland: bad owners hire backward. The GM should hire the coach.)

Second, Carroll went out of his way to deny that the move was related to the NCAA investigation. Right. As if he'd have admitted that was it exactly. Good cheaters don't wait to be punished, they move along and let the school take the blame.

Now, Lane Kiffin is leaving Tennessee for USC. After one season. A season in which he racked up quite a number of secondary violations.

Not the best candidate? Correct. Ill-suited for the position? What do you mean? It's not like he was the guy who made some of this happen in the first place. Oh wait, yes he was.

Brian Cook explains in more detail here. Basically, USC is raising a big armored middle finger to the NCAA. Yeah, we cheated our asses off. No, you're not going to do a damn thing about it, because everybody knows you only punish the little guys.

So one of two things should happen. Either USC gets the death penalty, or all hell breaks loose. Um, in a sense. (Because there's obviously a lot of cheating going on with respect to recruiting anyway.)

What will probably happen is that USC will have to forfeit some wins (yawn), they'll be on probation for X years, give up Y scholarships, and everyone involved will say they're very sorry, and they'll promptly start up again as soon as the probation is over.

What ought to happen is that both football and basketball should be suspended for a season; the head coaches and AD should be punished as well. That part's a little tricky, seeing as how they both ran for the door once they saw what was coming. Maybe a fine, one season's salary from each? Even if you banned them from coaching in the NCAA again for life, that might not be that effective. (Although the AD is still there. Suspending him would definitely have an impact ... but then again, if your AD got both your name programs killed for a year, you ought to be doing more than suspending him.)

NCAA, USC has called your bluff. It's time to turn over a full house.

Madden 10 blows

So I get a safety and force a free kick. I pause the game in the middle of the kick to check out what's on TV ... when I resume the game, the camera's locked on to the kicker. Never mind that I'm the receiving team. I'm lucky the game didn't make me fumble the kick so it could recover and return for a TD.

This kind of bug mystifies me. I cannot understand how a game that has been around for this long can be released with so many glaring errors in it. Somebody at EA needs to be fired for this.

NCAA 10: Season 3 summary

We started off at Kansas State and actually led 31-20 before the sim decided to take over, eventually winning by 10 (after we scored a meaningless TD). After beating WKU, Central Michigan raked the defense for 48. Not a good sign for non-conference play.

After a bye week, we rolled UAB 31-3 and FAU 28-10. Fell behind Arkansas State by 17, managed to rally to get back into it, but then had a problem on a punt, didn't get away from it in time and gave up a fumble return for a TD, losing by 3. Crushed MTSU and Troy, which put us in a three-way tie with Troy and North Texas heading into our game in Denton.

It started off poorly: on one two-play sequence, we fumbled the ball and it stood, they fumbled it and it was overturned. Crazy finish: they kick a 50-yard FG to go up 27-24, we return the kickoff 91 yards to lead 31-27. They score in 1:18 to lead 34-31. We score at 2:08 to lead 38-34. UNT drives the length of the field, converting three fourth downs, including one that gave them the ball at the 1, first down. We call time out to get a better defense. They throw an interception ... but as we try to kneel down, the sim strips the ball. Fortunately we recover and advance it, run the time off and win. North Texas, thanks in part to sacks, had -39 yards rushing. Yeah, it was the #1 classic, almost 2000 points.

We ran through the rest of the Sun Belt with just the one loss, clinching another New Orleans Bowl spot. Against Louisiana Tech in the finale, for the first time I can ever remember, I pulled a sim on a punt: nice, high punt, no one blocking, I hit the returner just after he caught it to force a fumble, then held him down while a teammate recovered. (Of course he magically stepped out of bounds right after recovering it, so it wasn't just like the sim: the sim always scores on those. We did force a fumble on a regular play later, and we returned that one for a TD. And we had a fumble that I successfully challenged ...)

My running back won the Doak Walker Award. Pretty impressive for a sophomore, but in the past, award winners who return never live up to their previous seasons. Even if you have a good season, you don't get votes. Last season's winner, my now-senior TE, caught 82 passes for 835 yards and was omitted from the top 12. A sophomore corner (Robinson) finished 7th in Thorpe balloting.

South Florida in the New Orleans Bowl. Wow. We score with 20 seconds left in the first half to lead 21-20. They return the kickoff with 9 seconds left to lead 27-21. We return the kickoff at the end of the half to lead 28-27. South Florida leads next, 37-28. Then 37-35. Then 44-35. Then 47-35. I thought we were done: we had four interceptions at that point.

Great drive to cut the lead to 5, 47-42. We force a punt. Drive to score with 26 seconds left, converting the 2 to lead 50-47. They drive to midfield, heave a Hail Mary ... and we intercept it in the end zone. Crazy game. We had 480 yards total offense, 9-14 on third downs, 3-4 on fourth downs (which means we converted 12 of 14 times we had a third down). If it hadn't been for the picks – one of which was returned for a TD – we'd probably have won easily. We actually broke into the top 25 after that win, #21 ... the only time we've been ranked to date.

In-season recruiting went very well. We signed 3 four-star players (the #4 and #6 athletes and the #26 CB) and 4 three-star players (#31 WR, #21 athlete, #38 OLB, and #18 DT), 23rd-best class overall.

My top TE is leaving, as are two of my three best QBs, but the WR and HB are returning. I lose a good LT, but other than that, the seniors are passable but not irreplaceable.

This time, Michigan and Texas are interested in hiring me. (RR didn't get it fixed in Ann Arbor, I guess.)

Unfortunately, the WR who transferred from FSU is ready for the NFL, so my 92-rated WR is gone. Now I really need to sign a good one. The nice thing is we're getting an 86-rated LE transferring in from Georgia. Of course he's not eligible for a season, but I can use that depth. Right now my single LE is a 65.

I signed four more four-star recruits (#5 athlete, #7 athlete, #7 WR, and #6 OLB) and five more three-star recruits (#26 DE, #40 TE, #13 QB, #53 G, and one I couldn't find) to finish 24th overall.

We're C+ on offense (B- at HB, C- at FB), B- on defense (B+ at DE thanks to the transfer, no C-), B- on special teams and B- overall. Up to 47th in the preseason polls and of course favored to win our third straight Sun Belt crown.

Non-conference schedule includes Miami-Florida at Miami, USC in Lafayette (how did we do that?), and Tulsa at Tulsa ... of course we're playing at Louisiana Tech for the fourth game. Strangely, replacing a I-AA team with the Bulldogs kept my SOS at C-.

Now they want me to finish in the top 25 (I think I can) and play in a January bowl game. Um ... we don't get invited to those. And I doubt I'll run the table with this schedule and this team. Oh well ... here we go ...

NCAA 10: Season 2 summary

(Warning: gamer post.)

2010 started off poorly with losses at rival Louisiana Tech (who wasn't automatically scheduled, I had to add them) and home to UAB. The next game was the conference opener against doormat Western Kentucky.

As is so often the case, WKU did everything perfectly, resulting in my first ragequit in I don't know how long. They were up 42-21 in the second quarter ... you'd think I was playing LSU instead of a team that had been in I-A just two seasons. Of course, the second time I played the game, I won easily, 45-17. (In case it bothers you, I would have won the conference anyway. Unless I ended up throwing the disc into the street.)

We ran off six wins in a row, counting that game, including a double-overtime win over Middle Tennessee State. Next was a triple-overtime loss to Florida Atlantic, 71-63. (Yeah, my defense is still terrible, even considering the boost that the sim gets on offense.) We beat Monroe to clinch the Sun Belt, upset Mississippi in Oxford, and then got destroyed at 2-10 Minnesota: no ragequit, but I did go to super sim with about half the fourth quarter left when it was clear there was no point in finishing the game; the next-to-last play was a 94-yard TD or something like that for them. Remember, the Big Ten is a tougher conference.

We lucked out (or would have, in real life) by drawing the New Orleans Bowl as Sun Belt champs, right next door in New Orleans. We led UTEP 17-0 before the sim figured out what was going on and ran off 24 unanswered points. Unfortunately for them, we scored the last 14 of the game, held them on fourth and two from the 3, and that was that.

Recruiting went better this time: 1 4-star recruit (#13 CB, a juco but badly needed anyway) and 3 3-star recruits (#24 MLB, #27 SS, #39 FS – see a pattern?) during the season. I've got soft commits from a 3-star OT (#37) and a 2-star K (#30, needed because my current kicker hit the crossbar on a 43-yard attempt in the Superdome). Leading on 4 more players, second on 2 more, including the #1 punter.

My TE won the Mackey Award, which was nice to see: he was a monster in the passing game. 111 receptions, 1273 yards, 8 TDs. I hope he doesn't go pro. (Bonus! He didn't.)

We met two of our three goals, beating ULM and getting a bowl bid. As expected, no 5- or 6-star teams on the schedule, so I didn't get a chance at that one. I got a 5-year extension offer and accepted it. BYU and Penn State came calling (JoePa got forced out, I guess), but no thanks, this is for SEC promotion.

Conference USA came calling again, and once again UAB would be shown the door. (Ha. Good thing it wasn't based on in-season results.) No thanks. I'm holding out.

No incoming transfers. (But hey, no one wanted out either.)

Ended up with 7 3-star recruits, but no punter. (Hope one of my kickers can punt.) Again, we did much better than the rest of the conference. Also, I lucked out and landed a 76 punter as a walk-on. ha ha.

This time, we do get Louisiana Tech (on the road? I think not). Non-conference games are at Kansas State, vs. Central Michigan, and vs. UAB. (What's up with that?) No strength of schedule, but whatever, I'm not ready to compete yet. Better to build my roster depth before I make a run for the SEC.

We're also picked to repeat as Sun Belt champs. C+ offense, C defense, C+ special teams, C overall. Individually, we're best at WR (B-) and worst at OLB (D+). I'll guess 2012 before we can make a run at the SEC.