I attended my first Pioneer football game in about three years on Friday night. Overall, I can say that some things had changed, and yet some hadn’t whatsoever. The new entrance to Holloway Field is gorgeous. I’m extremely jealous of the locker rooms that they have now, and it is a very classy building they have out front. The football team seemed miniature size compared to the team I was used to watching five-years ago, so hopefully they won’t get banged up too much during the year.
I wouldn’t expect anything good to happen on the NHL front anytime soon. The NHL Owners hated the proposal that the NHLPA submitted, and the players thought that it was pretty fair. This always spells disaster when negotiating a new Collective Bargaining Agreement, or when you’re negotiating anything really. It is very curious though, that two players, Mike Fisher (Nashville) and Scott Hartnell (Philadelphia) were given new contract extensions on August 20th, and Taylor Hall (Edmonton) was given a contract extension today. I mean, I get that the lockout hasn’t started yet, but with a lockout coming, I find it strange that an Owner and a General Manager would be okay with giving out a new contract to guys so close to the end of the CBA. Not to mention the fact that Hartnell’s deal is a six-year contract and Hall’s is a seven-year contract. The importance of that is the Owners initial CBA proposal included a section/rule to limit all player contracts to a maximum of five years. So why would they do this? Is this not hypocritical? Or are they trying to get them locked up and hope that his contract will not be rolled back to five years with a new CBA? Or are they using this as a way to get a longer contract through one last time? It just doesn’t seem kosher to me.
After taking a year off from having a night game, Michigan will return to primetime at the Big House in 2013. Dave Brandon announced this today, along with the mentioning that it will NOT be in November, ruling out Nebraska and Ohio State. There would be huge risks with the weather and current Big Ten Conference rules stipulate that teams cannot have games starting in prime time in November. This means, that the night game options will be: Central Michigan (8/31), Notre Dame (9/7), Akron (9/14), Minnesota (10/5), and Indiana (10/19).
This to me is a complete joke. It’s just like Alabama claiming a National Championship in a bunch of their odd years, where they had exactly zero reason to claim a national championship. Alabama claimed a National Title in 1941 where they were ranked 20th by the AP Poll, but some other poll retroactively awarded them one, after the poll was created; this doesn’t even make sense. But at least Alabama didn’t wait for 108 years to claim a National Championship, where they literally beat high school teams during the season. Not only is this claim bull crap, but Michigan, who has a title for 1904, legitimately won theirs. They went 10-0, outscored opponents 567-22 and they beat all collegiate football teams. And while it bothers me that Minnesota is doing this based off a computer poll that was designed in 1996 to backtrack and “analyze” seasons that nobody was alive for, it bothers me more so that they are allowed to claim something 108 years after the fact. How is this even legitimate?
I am not a fan whatsoever with the direction this year’s Madden game is going. It started when they put Calvin on the cover and destined him and the Lions to be jinxed, and it continued when they removed some of the fun/key features from Franchise mode. That being said, they did a fantastic job with the commercials. The game comes out August 28th, but I would recommend playing the demo or finding somewhere to rent it from before buying it. Enjoy.
The Western Athletic Conference was in trouble as soon as teams started to shuffle conferences to make more money. Currently the WAC has seven football members, and apparently five of them are planning on leaving after this year, and the conference has no plans to replace them. It may seem quite obvious, but it is impossible to have a two-team NCAA Football Conference. With the lack of a major television contract, nobody is clamoring in order to get into the WAC conference. This is the issue that ESPN and mainstream media has created. Small-time conferences will never be able to survive against the big boys because their teams aren’t as skilled athletically, and aren’t nearly as marketable, the result? Conferences will start ceasing to exist.
So I’m finally home from Colorado Springs and in the process of unpacking my whole life that I brought with me (aka I haven’t started yet). It’s even more sad that we finally moved out of the house on South Forest Ave after two years there. Literally had the perfect room setup, and now I have no idea how you are supposed to go out at night when you don’t live on campus. If you have any tips on making this adjustment, please feel free to share them.
I was wondering when it would finally happen, but Jalen Rose finally came out and voiced his opinion on the USA Women’s Gymnastics team being called the “Fab Five,” and I was thrilled. He’s absolutely right; it can and should be attributed to lazy journalists and executives. Only one article I have read on the gymnasts said that they can’t be called the Fab Five because that is what Michigan Basketball’s 1991 recruiting class was nicknamed. Sure they weren’t the first group to be called the Fab Five, but that’s the moniker they have been known by and when they revolutionized the game of college basketball, it stuck.
Haven’t written on the blog for a while and so I’m just going on a rampage today. And thank you Austin Shapiro for noticing the poor grammar in my original title and fixing it.
ESPN for a while was running their own version of “Hard Knocks” with the New York Jets, literally covering everything they did in training camp. Even reaching a new low and creating a graphic about what movie choices the Jets team could go and see on Tuesday night. Just embarrassing, how could anyone think this was a good idea to talk about on Sportscenter?
After UCLA made it to a bowl game as a 6-7 team last year (due to their loss in the Pac-12 Championship Game), there were some discussions about moving the eligibility back up to a 7-5 record in January. Less than a month ago, it was reported by multiple media outlets, including ESPN, that the bowl eligibility would likely remain at 6 wins. Then over the weekend, everyone was thrown a curve-ball and eligibility was changed, and actually lowered.
The Daily Traub 