NOT READY

9 days until I am no longer a Bradley student.  It is soooooo weird and I am not ready.  I have used those two words to describe myself for the last 4 years of my life, 4 of the most important and most dynamic years I have had in my life to this point.  We change so much in these 4 years and experience so much, and I am not ready to walk away.  I thought I was for this entire semester.  But I was wrong.  We rag on this, that, and the other about Bradley, but we will all miss it.  We will miss the time we spent here with great friends, (some) great professors, and great experiences.  As the time for the job decision comes down to the wire, I would be lying if I said being around this environment was not a factor in my choice between Echo (Chicago) and Fastenal (Pekin).  I can't imagine not being able to go over to SigEp any day I want.  My time to make the decision is quickly running out, though, as my third and final interview with Echo is tomorrow.  This time next week, I will have made my choice (assuming I get the offer to even make it a choice haha) and I will be headed away or I will get to spend some more time here.  Either way, I won't be upset, but each will have their ups and downs.  I definitely would not be disappointed to stay around this place...

NFL Draft

Am I the only one that can't get excited about the NFL Draft considering all the circumstances surrounding the upcoming season?  I usually love the draft, it's one of my favorite events of the year, but I can't get all hyped up about drafting players for a season that is in such serious doubt right now.  I am so angry at the players that I don't even want to think about bringing more divas to the show.

And the meeting on Tuesday left me with more questions than before!  The result is apparently that it was decided that a lockout would be illegal, which would seem like a victory if you are an NFL fan, but in fact this is really a victory for the players, as all it really means is that the owners will not be able to prevent the season from happening no matter what the players are doing.  At least that is the way I understood it all.  Why do we allow our professional athletes to act like this?  Why is it acceptable to us as a culture for pro sports to be such a joke and money pit in so many ways?

Week in Review

Pros
-Invited back for third/final interview with Echo
-Cards finally show some life and reach .500
-Blackhawks almost out of playoffs
-BMA 452 project just about wrapped up

Cons
-MTG 490391 projects nowhere near wrapped up
-Still need to apply for more jobs (I want to find a happy medium instead of two extremes!!!)
-Bulls keep winning
-Had to write film analysis on The Virgin Suicides aka one of the most depressing movies of all time

Perfect World
School was over with and I got a 1 year grace period on my loans....I need a break

Hockey Sucks

Like I have said before, I would not consider myself a Blues fan.  However, I would consider myself someone who thoroughly enjoys watching Chicago sports teams of any kind lose and suffer.  When my friends from the Chicago area watch their sports teams, I will be the first to admit that I am that guy that will sit and root for the other team harder than they are even rooting for their own teams.  I can be somewhat of an ass.  

But last week an event took place which reminded me why I hate Chicago sports.  The Blues and Blackhawks were playing in a game that could either keep the Hawks' playoff hopes alive or take them out completely.  Now let me remind everyone that Blues fans don't get a lot of chances to celebrate, especially when playing the Blackhawks.  So needless to say it would have been considered a tremendous success for the Blues to take them out of the playoffs in return for all the beatings we have taken at their hands over the last few years.  This particular game was tied 3-3 in OT, an immense moral victory being so close Blues fans could almost taste it.  But what happens?  The Blackhawks score a questionable goal that needed to be reviewed.  To make a long story short, one of their players kicked the puck (illegal) and it could be seen after further replays and reviews that the puck did not actually cross the line (not a goal lol).  Not surprisingly, it was ruled a goal.  The next day, sports reviews and news stations all over discussed how it was a total scam and Chicago had been put through to the playoffs because it was good for the NHL (Chicago being the 3rd or 4th largest sports market, especially for hockey).  

Outside of being a total jerk to my Chicago friends, I am one of great passion for MORALITY in sports (e.g. I hate Barry Bonds) and this royally grinds my gears lol.  I have also discovered through news sources since this incident that it is pretty well-known that the NHL is among the most corrupt sports leagues in existence, in terms of situations like this.  I would sit on the couch and root for every team they play in the playoffs, but I can't bring myself to watch that much hockey.  Fortunately, I believe they're losing as we speak : )

Get it together, Cards

I get a worse feeling about the 2010 Cardinals season every day.  Atop all of the controversy with Albert and losing Wainwright for the year, they have now lost Holliday for 4-6 weeks to an emergency appendectomy, and have begun the regular season 1-3, including a loss today to the PIRATES!....are you kidding me!!  The Cards are gonna need great showings from people like Kyle Lohse and Jaime Garcia on a consistent basis in the absence of their number one starter in order to have a shot at the division title.  Lohse started out strong today, but the Pirates got to him later in the game.

Outstanding performances are gonna need to come from unexpected places this year, or the Cards are gonna be left out of what most thought would be a pretty level playing field in the NL Central.

I Hate Jim Nantz....(Not very creative I know, but seriously, I hate him)

So I've been talking a lot about how great this year's NCAA tournament has been.  I've also said how the major reason for this is the element of unpredictability.  What creates unpredictability in the NCAA?  Upsets.  What creates upsets? Generally, mid-major teams playing well.  If the VCU's and Butler's of the world don't fare better than people expect them to against the powerhouse conferences (ACC, Big Ten, Big East, etc) the tournament becomes predictable and stagnant.  Simply put, you know from square one that teams like Pittsburgh, Ohio State, Kansas, and Duke will beat teams like Bucknell, Morehead State, Wichita State, and Butler.  That takes all the fun out of watching the tournament.  It goes against the essence of what is exciting about MARCH MADNESS!

So why, then, do sportscasters like Jim Nantz and Clark Kellogg insist on tearing these lower echelon teams down?  In 2006, when the mid-majors really started to put themselves on the map and made record-breaking runs in the tourney, Nantz and his then-partner Billy Packer made some brash comments about how sickened they were that teams like Bradley and Northern Iowa were doing as well as they were.  Their comments incited an enormous backlash throughout college basketball and its fan base.  Nantz should have learned his lesson.

Instead, he and Clark Kellogg chose to make similar comments this year (in a much more passive fashion, I would like to note).   But they don't ever cite statistics or in-game evidence to support their claims.  They just sit at the desk and say, "There's just too many mid-major teams" or "VCU never should have had a chance at the tournament".  Well, sorry Clark and Nantzy, but I believe you have been proven wrong.  Butler, a Horizon League team, and VCU, a Colonial Athletic Association team, are playing this weekend for a shot at the title.  

The sad thing is that Jim Nantz is a great broadcaster and seems to be an intelligent enough guy, and should recognize that all the dominant conferences just going around and stomping on everyone else does not make for exciting basketball!  That is what makes college basketball so great!  What's so infuriating is that there is no apparent reason why it would benefit Jim Nantz for mid-majors not to be in the tournament.  Why would that make your day better, Jim? You want to see UNC play Duke? Watch the ACC Tournament.  You want to see a team without the most talent in the world pull off an incredible and inspirational upset against a powerhouse that they theoretically shouldn't be able to beat? Watch the NCAA tournament.  Without this kind of excitement, what would be the draw? What reason would people have to watch if they know what's going to happen.  Open mouth, insert foot, Jim.  This is the way college is and we all like it.  You would do well to accept that or pick a different sport.  HATER

What a Tournament!

This year's March Madness has been one of the most incredible tournaments I have ever seen.  It has literally been as if seedings have no value at all!  We have seen one region in which the 10, 11, and 12 seeds all made the Sweet 16.  We have seen a once again under-ranked Butler team make it to the Elite 8 for the second consecutive year, last year making an appearance in the championship game as a 5 seed.  We have seen one of the better Duke teams of the last several years eliminated before the Elite 8 as a 1 seed.  And best of all, we have seen nearly every game come down to the wire.  There have been hardly any instances of the last 2 minutes of a game being filled with fouls and free throw shooting.  It has truly been a tournament representative of everything people love about college basketball: underdogs defeating the "elite" teams, buzzer-beating shots to win games, exciting athletic performances, record-breaking scoring, emotional story lines such as BYU....the list goes on and on.

However, the one thing that all of these upsets and unexpected outcomes will likely cause is an even easier path to the championship for dominant teams like Kansas and Ohio State.

I'm sitting in 1st place in my bracket pool, and I'm looking pretty good cause one thing that this tournament will not see is the defeat of Ohio State! You may not like them, and neither do I really, but they are UN stoppable by anyone left in this tournament. There are simply no other big men who can compete with what Jared Sullinger puts out there.  Too bad we'll only get to see him in college one year!!!

Goodbye to Les

After 9 seasons, 5 of which being winning ones, Bradley made the decision to fire Jim Les just hours after the team was eliminated in the second round of the MVC Tournament.  I don't think anyone can say they were totally surprised by this, but I will at least concede that I didn't expect them to do it after this season, of all times. I honestly believed that, after having lost Taylor and Sam, Les would be granted some understanding and given another year to prove himself.  Especially considering that lots of freshman and sophomores got plenty of time and experience on the court this year.  You would have to expect this to set up a decent team next season.  But, as each day can go to show, college basketball is a lot of things, but never predictable!

Bruce Pearl

Allow me to be the first to congratulate Tennessee men's basketball head coach Bruce Pearl on his firing today.  Congratulations are in order, because Pearl's history would lead you to believe that this is what he wanted.  He has had such a blatant disregard for the integrity of the game throughout his career that he had to know it would turn out this way sooner or later.  Pearl has been a career weasel dating all the way back to his University of Iowa days, when he deliberately tried to sabotage Illinois through false illegal recruiting allegations after a highly regarded high school player committed to U of I over Iowa.  Kind of ironic that his career has now come to at least a temporary halt for exactly the type of thing he falsely accused Illinois of in 1989.  This move gives me a lot of faith in the fact that honor and integrity remain top goals of the collegiate environment.  It's nice to see, at a time in history when it seems that the least respectable people are the most successful athletes.  College basketball, and sports as a whole, are better places without Bruce Pearl.

Wainwright Out for Season

The Cardinals' top pitcher, Adam Wainwright, will now miss the entire 2011 season due to the infamous Tommy John surgery.  Not only is this bad for our chances this year, but I think it also hurts the chances of Pujols staying here after this year.  This is for two reasons.  A) Wainwright being out significantly decreases the likelihood that we have a successful season, something which I think would give Pujols more reason to stick around.  B) Without Wainwright in the lineup, the Cards may feel like they have to go out and sign a big name pitcher.  This will obviously leave them without the money they will need to sign Pujols after the season.  The real hurter here, though, is losing Wainwright.  He's still a young pitcher who has had two Cy Young caliber seasons in a row and this is devastating to our playoff chances.  It's starting to look like a tough year to be a Cards fan.

Not the biggest hockey fan, but...

The Blues won 9-3 against Anaheim on Saturday.  Ridiculous.  Blues fans, much like Rams fans, haven't had much to cheer about in the last couple of years, so when there is a game like this one, my Facebook news feed fills to the brim with Blues statuses.  In all honesty I probably would never have know had it not been for Facebook (MTG 391 PLUG lol).

The first Blues game I ever went to, my Dad and I happened to get on a Metrolink train that got stuck SMACK DAB in the middle of the bridge crossing from Illinois into Missouri over the Mississippi River.  I can think of very few times in my life I have been as scared as I was as we sat on a billion year old-bridge barely wide enough to fit the train, while the guy in front of us says "Hope the bridge doesn't collapse, this baby will sink to the core of the earth."...comforting.  We wound up sitting there for about 45 minutes waiting for another train to come push us across.  Now riddle me this...How does it take 45 minutes for another train, when they are scheduled to run every 7-8 minutes?

Pujols' Self-Imposed Deadline Falls by the Wayside

So, the deadline Pujols had set for the Cardinals to get a deal done in the 2010-2011 off-season has passed.  Albert told reporters that the Cards had until this morning at 11:00CT if they wanted to lock up a deal before the 2011 season.  They will now have to wait until the regular season is over to resume negotiations with Pujols.  I have to admit, I am 100% surprised by this.  I knew the likelihood of getting a deal done was fading, but I never really thought there was a chance that they would let him hit free agency after this season.  But the more I think about it, the more I have to look at the Cards' future as a team.  The reality is that paying the kind of money that this deal will require is going to seriously jeopardize the re-signings of Adam Wainwright, Chris Carpenter, and Yadier Molina: essentially the core of the team, minus Matt Holliday.  And we haven't been able to get deep into the playoffs since the '06 World Series even with the rest of those players, so how will we be able to get there without them and with no money to go get anyone else?  Maybe I was too hopeful for a deal before this season, and now I'm just being pessimistic.  I don't really know.  But it's not totally over yet.  The Cards will still have a short window (I believe 1 week) after the season ends with exclusive negotiating rights with Pujols, meaning that other teams will have to wait that week to being negotiations.  And even past that, the Cards could still wind up the highest bidder on the market and win him back.  There are a lot of ways that this could play out, but no matter which one it is, I have to say that I can't imagine Cardinal life without El Hombre.

Super Bowl XLV Implications for the Motor City

Okay so aside from being a fan of my hometown St. Louis sports teams, I will have to admit that I am also a Detroit Lions fan...yes, yes go ahead and get the laughs out now. Last season, I was rooting for the two worst teams in the NFL.  But this year was a different story for both of those teams.  The Rams found themselves playing in what was essentially a play-in game for the playoffs against Seattle in the final game of the regular season.  The Lions, some experts said, may have finished out the season as the best sub-500 team in the league. For the first time in a while, I enjoyed watching football this year.  But what was especially exciting for me is that my team pulled off the win that some are now pointing to as the turnaround of the Packers' season.  

The Super Bowl put me in a funny spot...on one hand there were my division rival Packers, on the other, Ben Roethlisburger.  Herein lied the problem for me.  Roethlisburger, to me, represents a good part of what is wrong with professional sports.  Roethlisburger, like so many other professional athletes, shows us all that it's okay to be a reckless, irresponsible, even immoral human being, as long as you're a celebrity.  He teaches us the lesson that a certain amount of money can make any problem go away.  And he lets us know that for some reason, in the end, people like him can still be "winners" in our society:  He's already won 2 Super Bowls.

For this reason, I cannot find it in myself to EVER root for him, or that organization.  The good thing about this dilemma, however, was that the Packers represent the total opposite.  Not only do the Packers have a much more likable and wholesome image, but they are what football should be.  They are a gritty, hard-playing, well-rounded, TEAM-ORIENTED group of players set on a TEAM GOAL.  They are not a band of individuals focused on personal achievements like so many other teams are.  So, despite them being my divisional foe, and as much as all the Bears fans that surround me here at Bradley are gonna hate this:  they were the "good guys" in this one.  And I'm proud to have been the team to beat them to inspire the rest of this amazing run.

Look out for the Lions next season.  They are an up and coming team, mark my words.

Sign the Prince!

The first order of business for "St. Louis Sports" as a whole HAS to be the signing of the best player in baseball today, Albert Pujols.  After the 2011 World Series, Pujols will be a free agent.  There are several concerns facing Cardinal nation right now in regards to this situation.  First and foremost, for St. Louis fans such as myself it seems like it was just yesterday that we were reading about how, although Albert claimed to have a deep respect and love for this organization and its fans, he still had a business decision to make and that the money would be a factor.  This was not too long before his first re-signing in 2004 for 7 years and 100 million dollars.  "El Hombre" has given us no reason to think that money is not just as much of an issue in 2011, and Ryan Howard recently signed a $25 million per year contract with the Phillies.  If that amount is appropriate for Howard, than many experts put Pujols' value at somewhere around 30.  Can the Cardinals afford that?  Unless they have somehow come upon a Chicago Cubs-like salary cap, they have never given us any evidence that they have that kind of money to throw around, on top of what they already pay for guys like Matt Holliday, Chris Carpenter, and Yadier Molina.

Secondly, what would the St. Louis Cardinals be without Prince Albert?  He has been the staple of this organization for nearly a decade already, and should he put up numbers like he has been on a consistent basis Albert would be in the discussion for one of the greatest baseball players in history, if not THE best.  Is it even an option to let that kind of talent out of our grasp? The Cardinals have to consider his value not only to the team, but to the city of St. Louis as a whole.  Pujols has been, throughout his tenure, one of the most charitable players in sports.  What his baseball talent brings to the Cardinals, his honor and humility as a person brings to the city, tenfold.

And finally, Albert has already stated that after the first day of Spring training, he will not engage in any further contract negotiations until the end of the season.  That would cause the Cardinals to lose out on the exclusivity of their current negotiations with the big man.  They can't afford for that to happen.

If Albert Pujols is to be in a Cardinal uniform in 2012, the deal has to be made NOW!