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Team Name: Hank Basket
Starters: 1 QB, 2 RB, 2 WR, 1 TE, 1 K, 1 DT
QBs: Carson Palmer (2), Drew Brees (6)
RBs: Larry Johnson (1), Corey Dillon (4), T.J. Duckett (11)
WRs: Chris Chambers (3), Joe Horn (5), Donte’ Stallworth (7)
TE: Joe Klopfenstein (9)
Ks: Josh Scobee (10), Matt Stover (12)
DTs: Patriots (8), Cardinals (13)
() – Round Selected

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Starters: 1 QB, 2 RB, 2 WR, 2 WR/RB, 1 TE, 1 K, 1 DT
Team Name: 111%
QBs: Jake Delhomme (5), Drew Brees (10)
RBs: Ronnie Brown (1), Reggie Bush (2), Rueben Droughns (4), Cedric Benson (6), Mike Anderson (12)
WRs: Larry Fitzgerald (3), Andre Johnson (7), Jerry Porter (11)
TEs: Alge Crumpler (8), Kellon Winslow (15)
K: Neil Rackers (13)
DTs: Colts (9), Falcons (14)
() – Round Selected

This Christmas there are quite a few books on my Christmas list (Sports Guy, Al Franken, 700 Sundays) which is funny since I have a pile here that I want to read yet don’t (these include 2 David Sedaris books and Moneyball). As far as those Christmas books go the Sports Guy’s book, Now I Can Die In Peace, was way at the top of the list. When he announced another leg of his book tour and it was stopping in Philly I knew I had to go. Plus, really, what else would I do?

The book signing was scheduled for 5:30 (or 5:00 depending on what site to believe). I checked with Lindsay and of course she had class all day, if the signing was the next day we would have been able to do something for the day, such as finally getting to the Franklin Institute for that exhibit. So I took an afternoon train into the city hoping to make it to Borders before 5, if it didn’t start until 5:30 who cares? Time can easily be wasted in a book store, even for me. The good old R5. I hadn’t been on the train since my last day at GSK, over 2 years ago. I was a little disappointed that I couldn’t remember every single stop, but that was more of a concern on the way back. You don’t forget the Center City stops. I wound up getting to Borders a little before 5 and the place was packed. There was masking tape running it some crazy pattern winding through the isles. The signing wound up starting at 5:00 meaning bordes.com was right and The Sports Guy’s own page was wrong. It took me about 45 minutes to get up to the plate. I didn’t have anything clever prepared he just asked what to sign and how I was feeling about the current Philly sports scene. He wound up signing “Hope there is a sequel for the Phillies” since I said to say something about our curse being over. Here is what he put in his column about the signing:

At my Philly signing on Wednesday, I couldn’t believe the body language of the locals — signing a sports book for these poor people was like signing a romance novel for Jennifer Aniston right after Brad and Angelina started dating. You can’t even imagine how many people asked me, “Can you sign it, ‘Maybe this will happen to the Eagles’ someday?’” How can Philly have no titles over the past 22 years, yet the Florida Marlins won two World Series titles in the past eight years alone? How does that make sense?

After that I called up Lindsay and found her having dinner with her friends only a few blocks away. She took me to NYPD Pizza, which I find as a very strange name for a pizza place, not exactly sure what angle they are going for with that. We went back to her apartment and chatted for a while. Her place is really nice, she has it made. Her own room, nice place, classes a block away, and the whole city right in front of her. With the train station down the street it can’t get much better. Her friends all seemed like a lot of fun and one of them even went to UD which was a very random encounter.

Trip Second

This one had a little less planning. Sunday morning I got a call that my neighbor wasn’t going to be able to go to the Eagles game and I could have his two tickets. I was pretty excited but also had a feeling it was not going to be easy to find someone to go see a lousy team in cold weather. People didn’t pick up their phones, didn’t respond to IMs and came up with weak excuses (some were valid). Buck said that he would go so I was all set. Mike came back about 20 minutes later very upset because he hasn’t been to the Linc yet and had been trying to get tickets all year. After the game I got these messages from Mike:

did i tell you that i hate you
that was an awesome game
you need to telepathically communicate with me next time
instead of im’ing
anyway, hope you had fun

As for the game is was really good, except for the loss. They stayed competitive and wound up tied at the end of the 1st half. They Giants got ahead in the 2nd half and I thought the team was done, but they fought back and tied it up. McMahon’s fumble in OT set up the winning field goal. Some facts about my two trips to the Linc, the first being 2 seasons ago: both games went to OT, both lost on a FG as a result of a turnover in OT, Moats had 2 Rushing TDs, first time that happened since the last game I was at when Duce had 2 TDs. Weren’t they fun?

A few pictures from the game, if you saw the pictures from 2 years ago, these are exactly the same except the Giants are on the field instead of the 49ers.

Posted via flickr.

The focus is still on Orange. We have been led to believe by just about every sports reporter that Notre Dame is going to the Fiesta Bowl. Not that they even deserve a BCS bid, but thats a story for another time. Here are the details as far as Orange was concerned. The original plan, after Janos first bought the tickets would have been to fly to Orlando and hopefully have lodging at the Crawford residence. Then drive the 3.5 hours to Miami for the game and somehow drive back after. With more people starting to jump on board plans have to change. First, would be a dream scenario if everyone were able to find a place in the Orlando area we could call up our good friends at Carl’s Rent-A-Van and get a sweet ride. The dream of renting a van from Carl dates back to Sophomore year when a whole bunch of people were interested in going on Spring Break, we all know how that story ended. However finding enough space in Orlando would require a few hotel rooms and why pay for rooms in Orlando, go to Miami. So with our good friend Expedia we looked into the options. Turns out it may be cheaper to get a package from Expedia than to do it in pieces. We found an excellent Indian Casino across from Everglades National Park. Package includes airfare and a rental car. Four people per room and car, $311/person for 3 nights. Unbelieveable! I should do this anyway, bowl game or not. I even changed some options, if you add days it gets cheaper, I guess the plane ticket is the largest portion of the price. When I changed the trip from 1/1 to ¼ to 1/1 to 1/6 it went down to $283 a person.

Anyway this is all up in the air. Our students need to get themselves tickets. We need to root this weekend for UCLA and Colorado, and even Virginia State (cause I want them to win the ACC, I said early in the season that I thought the most fun bowl matchup we could have would be Virginia Tech). It really doesn’t matter what happens, a trip is going to happen and its going to rock. If we stay at an Indian Casino, well then this trip really will have no ceiling for greatness.

Just from the title you know this is something worth reading. By now you should know of my numerous problems with ESPN and also how much I enjoy lists, especially ones with 52 items.

Some that I agree are terrible that I’d like to mention:
Stu Scott
The Hot Seat (I’d include any of the stupid non-sports segments on Sports Center)
Scoreboard Sound Effects – I’ve been complaining about this for a while. I have a lot of problems with score bugs in general but sound effects are not needed.
Ron Jaworski not used enough – I can’t stand Jaws, his ‘backseat role’ should be pushed further back in the car.
All of points complaining about Chris Berman.
Lee Corso
Mike Gottfried – I actually didn’t notice how terrible he was until he covered the Penn State-Michigan State game. For fun I’d like to see him call a hockey game, he talks so slow he’d only be mentioning when a goal is scored.
John Clayton and Sean Salisbury – I actually thing Clayton would be ok on his own. I was rooting very hard for Salisbury to take that coaching job this past offseason so that I would not have to listen to him anymore.
Woody Paige
World Series of Poker – The list only seems to have a problem with the marathons. Poker should not be on ESPN at all, maybe on ESPN2.

Ones I don’t Agree with:
High School athletes committing to college. I think its great they cover this. When D-Will made his announcement I watched ESPNEWS all afternoon.
Mark May – The only college football analyst I actually like. They had him paired with Trev Alberts before Trev got fired. Treb by the way was the worst college football analyst.
PTI – They don’t complain about the show but don’t blame PTI for anything. Its the second best show on the network, behind Baseball Tonight of course.

Things that need to be on the list:
Bottom Line – I don’t mind it on Sports Center but get it off the screen during games, get it off ESPN2 while you’re at it.
Kirk Herbstreet – Corso is on the list but no Kirk? They should be combined in to one, or put next to each other to pad the number of items on your list. Keep Fowler and start over on Gameday.
The Top 10 List – Its not difficult to rank plays in a decent order, yet they screw it up nightly.
Did You Know? – The best part of Sports Center when I was little.
Highlights on Sports Center – I can analyze on my own, just show me what happened.
Stats on Sports Center – I really stopped watching when they stopped showing the full screen stats after each highlight. The Bottom Line should not contain more stats than on the screen and I shouldn’t have to wait for them if I’ve just watched the highlight.

I hope I get back to this topic soon enough. I watch ESPN so rarely now, if anything I’ll watch ESPNEWS during the day and then College Football on the weekends.

See Last Night’s Pics (all of the court, you know what to expect from my sporting event pictures)

Posted via flickr.

“There’s air in this room, how come this room ain’t bouncin?”

See Them

Gillick will need to get to work immediately in order to fix this team, if that can even be done. I think this team is destined to win 86 games/year. Unless both Gavin Floyd and Cole Hamels make the rotation and are as good as we were told they were a few years ago. Starting pitching is the key. Replacing Bell and Lieberthal might win us a few more games and even get us a wild card but without a few dominant starters we won’t go past the first round. I’ll put Myers in to that category and let Lieber or Wolf pitch a Game 4 but we need more.

I’m excited for the off-season. We should be active and pop up in all sorts of ESPN.com rumors and get my hopes up unnecessarily, what else is that rumor mill for?

See All the Numbers