I wonder about the Wonderlic...

In honor of the NFL combine, which I was a stone's throw away from watching in person, here is a link to a mini-version of the Wonderlic test

http://www.angelfire.com/fl3/existence/wonderlic.html

The results listed on the main page aren't spaced out properly, at least not for my version of Firefox, so I'll add them here for reference...

9 correct= 50
8 correct= 44
7 correct= 39
6 correct= 33
5 correct= 28
4 correct= 22
3 correct= 17
2 correct= 11
1 correct= 6
0 correct= 0

Quick quiz: Which would be larger, Matt Millen's Wonderlic score, or the Lions win total last season???

Brrrr...

The weather that was in Green Bay last weekend seems to have made it's way here finally. It was -4 this morning... Mmmm, good old fashioned winter, the way it should be, and the way it used to be before we screwed up our environment. Just think how much better off we'd be, and ultimately how much better off our environment would be, if we took all of the money we are spending right now to send troops to the Middle East (to effectively protect our oil supply) and invested that money into developing alternative energy sources. Oh, wait... we were protecting everyone from those weapons of mass destruction... that's right... that's why we are over there... nothing to do with oil... or big fat governmental contracts with Haliburton...

I guess I kinda hopped up on my liberal soap box there for a minute... I was just planning on talking about the weather, that's all.

Anyways, a few other little notes...

Am I the only one that noticed that Brett Favre kinda gave away that game to the Giants. No one seems to be talking about it much, but he didn't have his best game (It still would have been nice if he were a Lion though). I guess the Packers weren't as destined as I thought. As a result, it turns out that Manning will be playing in the Super Bowl... not the Manning everyone expected before the season started, but Eli has played well. It doesn't really matter though. I expect the Patriots to crush the Giants, so here's an early congrats to all my friends in the Boston area... It was an amazing season. Patriots, Red Sox... even the Celtics are looking good... Hopefully this year the Tigers, Red Wings and Pistons can steal some of the attention the New England area has been getting ;-)... (The Lions aren't in any danger of stealing attention from anyone)

The Winter X-Games 12 start tonight. This is the highest profile snowmobiling event of the season. It's kinda a big deal here at work, so I figured I should at least mention it. The TV schedule, for reference:

http://expn.go.com/expn/story?id=3163738

Update...

T.J. Gulla is my guy... He's my racer from the office pool, so go T.J.!!!... I know, kinda weird... We don't have a Super Bowl board, but we have a Winter X-Games Sno-Cross pool... just for fun, of course ;-)

Find Me A Wormhole...

Well, I'll probably watch a couple of football games this weekend. I have a feeling they might not be too exciting though. It seems that New England and Green Bay are teams of destiny this year. I like San Diego, but it seems like there is no stopping the Patriots this year. Besides, the injuries for the Chargers aren't helping their cause either.

In the other game, the Giants have an uphill battle, and the weather will be just what the Packers like... about five below at kick off. It's always kinda tough to win at Green Bay anyways. Looks like Favre has a good chance to go to another Superbowl...

By the way, Detroit has one playoff win since 1957... Ugh

We are now gonna take a break from reality and slip off into an alternate universe... the imaginary place where the Lions got Brett Favre instead of the Packers... and the Lions had Barry Sanders and Brett Favre in the backfield at the same time... and the Lions won four Superbowls in a row in the 90's... and four more in the 2000's... and I won the Lotto... and it rains donuts and the snow tastes like mint chocolate chip ice cream... sigh...

Now, back to our regularly scheduled program

Well, at least pitchers and catchers report in a little over a month... YAY Tigers!!!

Random Randomness

Spring Has Sprung A Leak

The temperature is supposed to reach almost 60 degrees today. Our snow is gone and it's a wet, sloppy mess outside right now. How depressing... this is just not right...

Speaking Of A Mess

It looks like this Roger Clemens deal has turned into a real mess... he has to prove his innocence, while no one has really proven that he is guilty of anything. No DNA evidence, no receipts or records... just someone who says he did it. I don't know if there's any way to ever actually find out what really happened, so in the mean time, let the Joseph McCarthy Hearings continue. Arthur Miller is turning over in his grave, I'm sure.

Hey, This Guy Is Stealing My Ideas...

http://www.sptimes.com/2007/12/28/Tv/Those_were_the_days__.shtml

If he wanted me to write for his paper, he could have just sent me an email... I'd be happy to. I know... not only am I a dork, but I'm delusional , too.

PSA To The People In My Neighborhood

The holidays are over folks. I don't really care if you don't feel like putting your decorations away, but you don't need to keep turning your Christmas lights on every night. I've already said that we don't need to start the season before Thanksgiving, but we also should end it by New Year's.

Silly Question Of The Day

Why do gas prices end in 9/10 of a cent? How stupid is that?

Recent Baseball Headlines...

Dateline... Recent baseball headlines arouse intense emotions in fans, while firm members of the baseball community give slow, deliberate, deeply penetrating responses to hard questions posed by the cunning linguists of the media...

For a deeper, more intense look at the details, here are the facts...

---Rangers to sign Japanese RHP Fukumori
---http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=txrangersfukumori&prov=st&type=lgns

---Cubs sign Japanese OF Fukudome
---http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=txcubsfukudome&prov=st&type=lgns

Fukudome... Fukumori...

Hmmmm, with this kind of activity, and a few strategically placed pauses in the pronunciation of these names, I suspect there will have to be a new type of TV contract, most likely a series of late night telecasts on Cinemax...

Ok, give me a second to regain my composure here... Sorry about that ;-)...

Oh yeah, on a side note... baseball also released the Mitchell report yesterday, too..

Clemens hit hard in Mitchell Report; Tejada, Bonds and Pettitte also named
http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=ap-mitchellreport&prov=ap&type=lgns

I already addressed this topic earlier, and in general it still applies...

http://chockssquawks.blogspot.com/2007/08/should-we-cut-little-slack.html

However, Bonds' current problems stem actually from the perjury charges, not so much from the drug use, so his problems are a little different from the rest of these guys.

I guess I didn't realize how deeply intense and arousing the off-season hot stove league can be ;-)

More Random Thoughts

Trying to get back in sync...

C64
I got my first computer when I was in high school. It was a Commodore 64, and at the time I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I came across an article about the 25th anniversary of the C64 which jarred my memories...

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/ptech/12/07/c64/index.html

I know, it's amazing that I must have been in high school when I was about 3 years old ;-) Anyways, I taught myself how to program in BASIC and wrote all kinds of text based games and programs for it. For the first couple of years we couldn't afford a disk drive, so I had to save all my programs on tape. It was an audio cassette recorder that connected to the computer and saved programs on cassette tapes. This of course was just after the discovery of fire, and right before the invention of the wheel ;-) A couple of years later a program called Gamemaker by Gary Kitchen came out for the C64... I thought this was the greatest program ever made...

http://www.mts.net/~kbagnall/commodore/gamemaker/info.html

This program allowed people to make games on the C64 that had Atari-style graphics using a BASIC programming type language and some pretty cool tools. I spent a lot of time making all types of games, but my favorite was Sucker Spearin'. You see, for the first two weeks of April in Mills, the suckers (a bottom feeding fish) swim from the Saginaw Bay up into the little creeks and streams throughout the township. Millsers know about all about this. Back then, it was a right of passage to go out sucker spearin' all night long each spring. Well, I merged red-neck and high tech and made a sucker spearin' video game, and of course it included a digital version of me doing the spearing. Some day I'll have to see if that game still works and post some sucker spearin' screen shots ;-)

A cool website, but is it safe?
I came across a very cool website which has downloadable theme songs to just about any TV show you could imagine, so of course this caught my attention...

http://www.televisiontunes.com/browse.html

I just wonder if this can be legal, and as insane as the RIAA is anymore, I have to wonder if this is another MP3 lawsuit waiting to happen.

Speaking of being in Sync...
Am I the only one a little concerned that Microsoft is writing software that runs in vehicles? So are people gonna need anti-virus software for their cars now? I hope this doesn't give a new meaning to the Blue Screen Of Death.

Lions
At the two minute warning I said sarcastically "I know the Cowboys are gonna score... everyone knows the Cowboys are gonna score... Just let them score so we can at least get the ball back and have a chance to get a field goal." Guess what?!?! The Cowboys scored with 18 seconds left. Not that the Lions didn't have chances. There was a fumble that was right in front of a Lions player, and all he had to do was fall on it and the game would have been over. Instead he tried to pick it up and wound up kicking it right to a Cowboy. Ugh...

Completely Random...
Why does the knuckle on my left hand ache? I don't remember doing anything to it. Am I falling apart? I'm pretty sure it's not an old sucker spearing injury anyways. It might be an old sucker spearing video game injury though ;-)

BCS - Bowls, Chock Style

The college football bowl system is screwed up, that's a given. Here's a good article by Gene Wojciechowski of ESPN.com explaining it, for anyone that cares:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/story?columnist=wojciechowski_gene&id=3138383&sportCat=ncf

Football is the only sport in Division I-A athletics that doesn't have a championship determined on the field, but rather through a vote. I'd be a lot more interested in college football if there was a real champ determined at the end of the season. I know there's a plan for a "Plus-One" system after the bowls, but that will still suck, especially for the smaller schools. So, here's my plan for a real playoff system...

The Chock Plan is a 12 team playoff (This leaves room to expand it to 16 later after it becomes a huge success). We can use the BCS Poll to determine the 12 teams, which this year would be:

1.Ohio State
2.LSU
3.Virginia Tech
4.Oklahoma
5.Georgia
6.Missouri
7.USC
8.Kansas
9.West Virginia
10.Hawaii
11.Arizona State
12.Florida

The first two rounds would take place now... four games this weekend and four games next weekend at the home field of the higher ranked seed. The losers of these games could still go play in whatever bowl games, so those bowl games don't lose any revenue. The top four seeds get a first round bye, so this weekend the games would be:

#12 Florida at #5 Georgia
The winner of this game would play at #4 Oklahoma next week

#11 Arizona State at #6 Missouri
The winner of this game would play at #3 Virgina Tech next week

#10 Hawaii at #7 USC
The winner of this game would play at #2 LSU next week

#9 West Virginia at #8 Kansas
The winner of this game would play at #1 OSU next week

After these two rounds, there would only be 4 teams left. The winner of the Oklahoma game would play the winner of the OSU game in the Orange Bowl. The winner of the Va Tech game would play the winner of the LSU game in the Fiesta Bowl. After these two games, the final BCS Championship Game would be a week later.

Here are the current bowl matchups that involve these 12 teams:

Holiday Bowl: Arizona State vs Texas Dec. 27, 8 p.m.
Cotton Bowl: Missouri vs Arkansas Jan. 1, 11:30 a.m.
Capital One Bowl: Michigan vs Florida Jan. 1, 1 p.m.
Rose Bowl: Southern California vs Illinois Jan. 1, 4:30 p.m.
Sugar Bowl: Hawaii vs Georgia Jan. 1, 8:30 p.m.
Fiesta Bowl: Oklahoma vs West Virginia Jan. 2, 8 p.m.
Orange Bowl: Virginia Tech vs Kansas Jan. 3, 8 p.m.
BCS Championship Game Ohio State vs LSU Jan. 7, 8 p.m.

So, as an example, lets say the playoff games go as follows...

This way, the final 4 would be

Orange Bowl: OSU vs Oklahoma
Fiesta Bowl: Hawaii Vs Missouri

All of the other teams could go back into the bowl mix, maybe something like this...

Gator Bowl: Virginia Tech vs Kansas Jan. 1, 1 p.m.
Holiday Bowl: Arizona State vs Texas Dec. 27, 8 p.m.
Cotton Bowl: West Virginia vs Arkansas Jan. 1, 11:30 a.m.
Capital One Bowl: Michigan vs Florida Jan. 1, 1 p.m.
Rose Bowl: Southern California vs Illinois Jan. 1, 4:30 p.m.
Sugar Bowl: LSU vs Georgia Jan. 1, 8:30 p.m.
Fiesta Bowl: Hawaii vs Missouri Jan. 2, 8 p.m.
Orange Bowl: Oklahoma vs Ohio State Jan. 3, 8 p.m.

BCS Championship Game Ohio State vs Hawaii Jan. 10, 8 p.m.

Texas Tech and Virgina were originally slated for the Gator Bowl, so they would have to be shuffled down to one of the lesser bowls like the Weedwacker Bowl or whatever.

Oh, and by the way, I like the underdog, and I like the Run -n- Shoot offense, so in my little fantasy world, Hawaii beats OSU for the National Championship. In the current system, they will never get a chance to prove themselves.

How cool would this be??? ;-)

Tiger Rumors

It looks like the Tigers are gonna to trade for a new outfielder...

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3106431

Jacque Jones... Hmmm. We'll see. I'll miss Omar though.

I hope it works out and I guess I'll have to dig out my old baseball cards now.

YAY Tigers!!!


PS: Thanks to my good friend Rod for the heads up on this story :-)

I Am Not Smarter....

Than a Vegas bookmaker... YAY Spartans!!!! I hoped they would win, but I didn't expect that type of performance. I guess Notre Dame does have some real problems... Oh, can you hear that? It's the world's smallest violin playing in the background.

Watch out Big 10... Ok, ok, lets not get carried away, but maybe a bowl game this year???

Now my Lions, on the other hand... I wish I hadn't seen this one coming. I thought I was back in 1995 watching a playoff game. I'm hoping they can bounce back and at least make this season interesting. I'd love to go on a wildly inconsistent roller coaster ride with this team, as long as there were a few peaks to go along with the valleys... Even close to .500 would be great. 3-13 year after year really gets old after a while.

Wayne Fontes, where are you when we need you???

I Love My Spartans, But...

Michigan State opened as a 14 point favorite on the road at Notre Dame. The spread is down to 11 now, but even so, I can't see my alma mater beating the Irish like that, as much as I'd love it. Notre Dame has it's back to the wall, and you know the old cliche'... Home dogs bite.

We'll see if I'm right, and I really hope I'm not, but I've got a bad feeling about this weekend.

And speaking of bad feelings, the Lions look to be in a tough spot, too. I have a feeling the line is right for this game... Philly by 7. I'm gonna be pulling for my team with all my heart here, but we are up against another team backed into a corner, with a QB who's been on the hot seat all week. Besides, I think we got lucky and opened against a couple of the weaker teams. If the Lions can win this one, I'm really gonna be in line to have my heart broke, because I might actually start believing... and after all these years, I really should know better...

The Fat Lady... She's Warmin' Up

I really wanted to see a sweep when the Tigers - Indians series started. I guess I should have been a little more specific...

Best Quote Of The Day

Lions third-string QB Dan Orlovsky, speaking about Jon Kitna, told the Detroit Free Press: 'Indy can have Peyton and New England can have Tom, but we wouldn't trade this guy for anyone in the world.' Uh, Orlovsky won't be a GM anytime soon.

Taken from ESPN's Power Ranking Page
http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/powerranking?week3

Football Night in America?

NBC, Is that really the best name you can come up with? You should be ashamed of yourself for your lack of originality, and you should apologize to all of Canada...

Isn't this overkill?

ESPN Headline: No. 1 Miami Northwestern trumps No. 2 Southlake Carroll

Here's the link:
http://sports.espn.go.com/ncaa/highschool/news/story?id=3022242


This is football.... High School Football

And this was televised nationally by ESPNU. This is just wrong. High school football teams don't need to travel across the country to play each other, and they certainly don't need to be on national television. This just seems so contrived, based off of some completely random and basically useless national high school poll. Do we really need to turn high school sports into big business? Why can't we just leave high school sports to be king of the hill in their own little area, instead of letting this type of hype give these kids the wrong impression?

Besides, the whole nation could really care less unless you live in Miami or Southlake.

Can the Tigers do it?

Toronto Blue Jays 4
Detroit Tigers 5

Is some of last year's magic starting to show up?

Down 4-1, bottom of the 9th, two outs, facing Roy Halladay, and coming off of a seriously momentum killing double play...

Bang... Casey
Bang... Inge
Bang... Granderson
Bang... Polanco
Bang... Er, Walk, Sheffield
BANG... Maggs

SWEET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

All you whiners... quit your bitchin' and show your support... or would you rather go back to losing 119 games a year? Yeah, right...enjoy this, however it turns out.

How About Those Lions!!!

Detroit Lions 36
Oakland Raiders 21

YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, the Detroit Lions are well on their way to breaking my heart again. My initial reaction is that they looked good, other than that little 3rd & 4th quarter collapse that not only allowed Oakland back in the game, but to come back from a 17 point deficit to take the lead. Ultimately, the Lions stepped up and won a game that in years past they would have lost after giving up that big lead. Any type of road win in the NFL is big, so I'm happy about the result. Calvin Johnson looked good. Hopefully Matt Millen finally got a draft pick right. I don't even want to bring up how good Charles Rogers looked in his first game... I'm sure we won't have a repeat of that (I hope, I hope, I hope...) The entire offense looked good, and the defense made plays when they needed too. However, I'm trying to not get too excited... there were several chinks in the armor on Sunday. The turnovers were painful, although I know that's part of the deal with Mike Martz's offense. Also, to let Oakland back into the game after seemingly dominating them for the first half was concerning. And why the hell didn't anyone cover Ronald Curry?

Well, we are 1-0... But remember, Oakland was the worst team in the whole NFL last year. I know, the Lions only finished one spot higher, by somehow beating the Cowboys on the last day of the season. If Calvin Johnson works out, and JaMarcus Russell flops, then it will have been worth it.

Anyways, only 9 wins to go to get to Jon Kitna's prediction. Let's hope next week at home against the Vikings goes as well... then I will really be on my way to having my heart broke this year...

Fantasy Football Sucks

There's nothing better than drafting Donald Driver as your #2 WR with a fourth round pick, only to watch him being taken from the field in a cart literally moments later. God, this game sucks.

I thought I was pretty solid to that point... Two decent RB's (I consider them both to be #1 quality) and two decent WR's (again, both #1's I think)...

RB Willie Parker PIT
RB Travis Henry DEN (I'm hoping for a lot of potential here... No RB committees please, Mr. Shanahan)
WR Chad Johnson CIN
WR Donald Driver GB


This draft is being held by email, so it's going slow. I'll keep my blog updated if anyone cares about the progress.

(Who am I kidding, no one even reads this but me)

Should we cut * a little slack?

So Barry Bonds has tied Hank Aaron's all time home run record, and within the next few days will have the record all to himself. It's obvious that Barry isn't popular with everyone at the moment, but let's take his personality and demeanor out of the equation and look at the underlying issue. The real question is "Does he deserve an asterisk next to his record?" And what about the other players from this era? How exactly should they be considered in the historical perspective of the game?

After the complete disaster of the strike in 1994, baseball was in trouble. They needed to find a way to increase fan interest in the game, and revive the national pastime. Otherwise, the game was quickly on its way to being past its time. In addition to the complete devastation of the strike, and the loss of a World Series, there were other factors going against baseball as well. Baseball was losing its popularity... The new generation of kids had other interests... video games, skateboards, other extra-curricular activities, and even just plain old slacking in general. The new generation of parents did not have the time or patience to teach their kids the game, instead pushing them into soccer where it was easy to put them on the field and let them run. The skill and practice involved in learning how to hit, learning how to field a grounder, and learning how to throw a curveball were all gone. The intricacies of the game within the game were lost, replaced with the mentality of "kick the ball and chase it". In addition, no longer was there only three television channels, and everyone would talk about the game because that was the only thing that was on the T.V. Times were changing, and baseball needed to find a way to save its sport.

All of these factors lead baseball to turn a blind eye toward performance enhancers. It may not even have been intentional. They may not have considered how serious this topic could become in the future. But they did know that bigger, stronger players... and more home runs... would generate interest in the game. Barry is a product of the system, as are a good numbers of players from this era. These men are at the very top of one of the most competitive sports in the world. Their whole life they've been programmed to do what ever it takes to win, and that is what has driven them to be able to compete at this level. Now this is not an excuse to say that what they did was right, it is just an observation of why and how it happened. And since the powers controlling baseball did not explicitly make clear that performance enhancing drugs would be a major violation, there were no real repercussions to stop this from happening. Until congress became involved and forced baseball to review the drug policy, players had little to worry about. With the rules that were in place, performance enhancement drugs probably weren't considered much different than corking a bat, or throwing a spitball. Sure it was illegal, but it was considered more gamesmanship than cheating. Even when Mark McGwire was on his record setting pace, a bottle of Andro was found in his locker. There was nothing that could be done about it, because it wasn't illegal or against baseball's rules at the time. Can we apply rules retroactively, even in the court of public opinion? Do we convict all of these players because we suspect that they were cheating? Do we really put that much stock in Jose Canseco's book? And is that really the way anyone should be judged, on hearsay? Even now, is it fair to single out individual players without concrete proof? Is American justice based on that philosophy? Just because Sammy Sosa grew much bigger physically during his career, how is it fair that we label him a cheater without proof, or suggest he was cheating if he was only using supplements that were actually within the rules at the time? How can we just randomly assume people like Alex Rodriguez, Roger Clemens or Ichiro have not used enhancements simply because that is what we want to believe? There is absolutely no proof that any of these players have used any type of performance enhancers, but the same can also be said for many of the players who currently have that cloud hanging over their head.

For better or worse, all of these accomplishments were performed on the field, within the confines of the game, and were allowed to take place by the governing body of baseball. I understand that this can set a bad example for our children, but perhaps it can be an opportunity to actually discuss with them right and wrong, and the fact that people aren't perfect, just human. The real example can be set by baseball from this point onward and the way they fix the problem moving forward, not how they dwell on the errors of the past. Unfortunately in reality, sometimes cheaters do prosper. But if that means that we protect the rights of the innocent in the process, it is a trade off I can tolerate.

Congratulations Barry, but I would still rather share a cold one with Hank Aaron any day of the week.