Shouzer

Well, I obviously haven’t been posting too much lately. It’s in large part due to the fact that the semester is coming to a close, and I’ve been pretty busy lately. It seems that a large portion of my professors don’t plan out their courseloads very well, and we end up getting swamped with work right at the end. For me, it’ll all be over at 10pm on Thursday, when my last final ends. Then I’ll have a good month to decompress before it starts all over again.

In much better news, the Broncos again have a two game lead in the AFC West. It came as a result of them winning their game and the Chiefs and Chargers both losing theirs. Haha, it was pretty sweet. So they’ll definitely be in the playoffs, but now it’s just a matter of whether or not they’ll be playing in the first round and things like that.

I haven’t really been commenting lately either, so I wanted to use this space to say congrats to Scott for his job, his toy, and his becoming project manager for ChallengeX. It sounds like things are going pretty well. Also, that excerpt from the Rose Thorn was pretty funny. Good job, Scottie.

I was looking for the old “Centers: Don’t Walk” commercial from SportsCenter back in the day, and i found an ESPN hosted page with a bunch of their “This is SportsCenter” commercials. Check it out. SportsCenter commercials have consistently been some of the funniest on tv for years now.

Bee Tee Dub: This is my first full day with a computer for over a week. Some things you just can’t live without.

I think a record may have been broken on this play.

What a kick!

USC drops to #2. I mean, come on. That’s just ridiculous. I don’t even watch college football, and I know how stupid that is. If this isn’t proof enough for you that the BCS is just worthless, then you are an idiot.

USC should not drop in ranking until they lose, and even then it would be questionable. Didn’t they beat Texas, the new number 1?

If you didn’t catch the Rams-Saints game today, then you missed out. It was probably one of the most entertaining games that I’ve ever seen. The football itself was pitiful. Both of those teams suck, and are usually good at finding a way to lose. The Rams kep getting defensive penalties to offset their big plays, like 3rd down stops. The Saints, well, you should know how they do.

Anyway, the game was awesome because of all of the funny stuff that happened during it. First funny moment: D. Lewis punching some guy from the Saint in the balls. That was just funny. He got ejected and everything, but it was totally worth it. The send moment is the one you will see on Sportscenter: the Saints TE, Conwell I think, caught the ball and came down with it. Mike Furrey, FS for Rams, then proceeded to run over and grab the ball from his hands and run it back for a TD. The Ref didn’t blow this wistle because they are trained to go in favor of the fubble recovery because of challenges. Well, the saints were out of TOs, so they couldn’t challenge. The challenge couldn’t come for the booth either because it was the last play before the 2 minute warning. When they showed the replay, Conwell clearly had control of the ball. The ref probably couldn’t see because he was tied up with some other defender, but he definitely had control. So they credited Furry with an interception because they said Conwell didn’t have control, and the Rams won the game. Did I mention that the Saints were making a late comback drive that would have probably resulted in victory? Wow, I laughed for at least a minute about that one.

as im watching the illinois-penn state football game tonight, i come up with this theory. it goes like this. there are three types of football teams (and i suppose you could apply this to other sports and also players). i categorize them as follows.

1. The team that makes you think, “These guys are amazing. They are the some of the best at what they do, and I receive pleasure out of watching them play their game.”
2. The team that makes you say, “These guys are good. But if I devoted all of my time to football, I have no doubt I could be doing what they’re doing.”
3. The team that makes you say, “These guys look lost. I have no doubt in my mind that I could start for this team and make some better plays than what I’m watching right now.”

Examples:
1. 96-97 Chicago Bulls. Wasn’t this the team that won 70+ games? That’s insane. Jordan made everybody around him look like an All-Star. More importantly, the Bulls made everyone they played look like my high school’s JV team after Thanksgiving dinner. ESPN should start another network called ESPNMJ where we just get to watch him and his Bulls embarrass professional athletes 24 hours a day. I’d pay someone for that. And it would help ease the pain of the Washington Wizard days.
2. 2004 USA Men’s Basketball Team. I’m going to refrain from making any “Dream Team” jokes. Basketball had never been more boring than last summer’s Olympics (not to mention the preceeding World Championships in Indy). They premise: Get the best American roundball players (position doesn’t matter) together on one team, let them play some white guys from Slavic and SoAmer countries who aren’t good enough to play in the NBA themselves, and *hopefully* sleepwalk our way to the Gold. Sleepwalk was about all they did. Sure we got the highlight film facials and no-look passes, but this was no Sportscenter Top Ten Nominee. I’m pretty sure than my eighth grade team (22-3) could have beaten the teams USA was beating by single digits. And just like an average team, they won the Bronze.
3. The existence of the Houston Texans. Granted, they were an expansion team merely three years ago, but they had what I thought was a superb expansion draft. And they followed that up with an excellent college draft, where they got Dom Davis and Andre Johnson who have outplayed their draft position even this early in their careers. Along with this, they got placed into a division, where at the time, only one team was even playoff worthy (Colts). But three years into the Texans era, and has there ever been a team that you could bet against regardless of the spread or opponent.
“Texans are +145 this week”
“Oh yeah? Hm, I’m thinkin’ 150. Put me down for a half a hundred”
“They’re playing a Division III team”
“In that case, make it 200″

The 2005 Illinois Fighting Illini Football Team is a 3.

[Edit by Jared:] Updated categories.

We went to an Illini hockey game last weekend, and even though it’s just a club team it was a pretty good time. I don’t know what everybody else thought, but I really enjoyed it. I’m actually a pretty big fan of hockey, so that might have something to do with it. I don’t really keep up with the NHL at all, but that’s just because players in the NHL are little whiny bitches.

Anyhow it’s gotten me in the mood for hockey. I wish we would play sometime, but that’s not going to happen because most everyone I’m friends with would just never give it a try–I wouldn’t really describe most of my friends as adventerous or open to change..

So since that’s just probably not going to happen, my only other choice has been to play ESPN NHL 2k5. The dumb thing about that game, though, is that every once in a while it just decides to freeze. It’s not during a game, either. It’s between games in your dynasty. And if you have your game saved, it does it everytime you try to load the game. So the only option is to have two saves and just replay your last game if that happens. I might have to buy the new game just so I don’t have to deal with that shit.

For those of you who aren’t in the know, the general consensus is that the Broncos are the #2 best team in football right now. That’s money, baby. Gotta love you some Jake the Snake.

What sucks is that they’ve got a relatively tough schedule coming up. They’ve got Pats, Giants, and Eagles as their next three games. I don’t care what the Pats and Eagles have looked like lately, they’re damn good teams. And the Giants have no doubt been playing well this year.

It’s true.

the answers were finally posted for puzzlecrack, and we figured that even if we HAD realized earlier the part we were missing, we still most likely wouldn’t have used the right method to decrypt it. we had actual confirmation that we were leading or in the top 5 the entire day friday, which makes the defeat pretty sour. not to mention, if we had gotten ourselves into gear on mon-thu last week, we would have undoubtedly finished in the top 3.

what a team effort, though, by “the big enchilada”! everyone knowing their roles and stepping up to the plate when they were called upon. cliches aside, it was the most fun i’ve had at school this year, and i can’t wait til next year. i believe mr. bert johnson will be recieving a few emails requesting more frequent competitions.

in other news, the jaguars beat the undefeated bengals. who dey? dey da loozas.

Well, the Broncos beat the Chargers and that’s always nice. It was a division game, so that makes it even better. They’re now second in the division behind Kansas City, who’s looking pretty good. Hopefully they’ll turn it up pretty soon.

We had a preseason flag football tourney this weekend. We won our first game and lost our second. It was single elimination, so we’re done. It was pretty weak, though, b/c it’s supposed to be non-contact, but that’s not how the second team played, and that’s not how the refs called it. So we kind of got screwed in that way. I mean, if the rules had been made to allow contact, that would have been different. We would have been ready for that. But they weren’t, and the refs let them get away with it. So it sort of caught us off guard.

Either way, we signed up for the actual intramural flag football league today. That should be pretty fun. We play one game a week, I believe. I imagine we’ll do reasonable well, from what we saw this weekend.

I used to like football… That was until the Broncos got beat 34-10 by the Dolphins. Oh well, that just means they’ll go 15-1, I guess. Hehe. I promised an update yesterday, but to be honest, I didn’t feel like giving one.

I was part of a 3-person group that gave an oral presentation over our homework this morning. That was lame. We did pretty well, actually, with a 38/40. It was just a pain having to do it, especially since I know it’s going to be harder next time we do it. After the first problem we presented, the TA was like, “That’s the best proof we’ve seen so far.” That’s funny, because our proof was shit. I’ll take it.

Joe, my roommate, took me to the annual Terre Haute North vs. South high school football game last night. South won, if you care. I didn’t, but I didn’t think I could write a post about it without mentioning who won.

I had kind of forgotten how slutty high school girls can be. It’s been so long since I’ve been to a high school event that I had just forgotten. Of course, last time I was at one, it was ok to look. This time, I had to walk around going, “Statutory, statutory, statutory.”

Speaking of statutory, there was this guy about 5 rows in front of us. He was probably in his mid to late 40′s, and he was with a girl who looked like she was about 16-18. I’m figuring this is his daughter, but then they start holding hands, kissing on the cheeks, and snuggling a little bit. Granted, it was nothing that would be inappropriate in a father/daughter relationship, but it would certainly be rare to see that kind of PDA. We spent the entire game trying to figure out whether it was his daughter or his girlfriend. Joe was going to ask in the 4th quarter, but then the game got really good. Plus, they got up and left with about 6 minutes to go. I really wanted to know too.

I was wondering what you all thought about this whole Lance Armstrong drug scandal. Here’s a story if you don’t know about it.

I would hate to think that he is actually guilty of this. It would certainly make all of those people wearing those yellow bracelets look stupid. It is believable that he used the drugs because his comeback was so miraculous, but I hate to believe it. I’m not sure if I could ever watch sporting events with the same fervor. Lance has always represented all that is good in sports. His story was inspiring enough to make me actually care about cycling, which is saying a whole lot. I have to say though, if it was anyone else, I would believe he was guilty in a second.

All of these athletes on drugs are disappointing to me. Sports should be a pure escape, not a tainted market.

When you people do specific things, you just know right away that they’re cool. This is just one of those things. Look down through the “headers”, and if you’ve seen the kid from Ball State, you’ll know why it’s funny. Haha, Broncos rule, baby!