Who’s the NUMBER ONE team in the AFC right now?
Woo-Hooooo! Sorry haters! Go Steelers!
Meet George P. Burdell!
Back in 1927, a man named William Edgar “Ed” Smith applied for admission to Georgia Tech. He soon received a letter in the mail telling him that he had been accepted into the school, and that he would be receiving an enrollment form in the mail. A few weeks passed, and Smith got that form in the mail. Actually, he received two of them.
He dutifully filled out the first with his own information, then pondered what to do with the second. He finally decided to pull a prank on his Academy of Richmond County principal, a UGA alum and staunch Bulldog supporter named George P. Butler, by enrolling him in the school. But Smith lost his nerve by the time he’d written “George P. B” on the form, so instead of completing “Butler”, he wrote “Burdell”, his best friend’s mother’s maiden name.
The prank would have been lame had it ended there. But it didn’t.
Once Smith got to Tech, he enrolled Burdell in all the same classes as himself. For the next three years, Smith did all his work twice, once under his own name, and again under Burdell’s name. Every homework assignment, every class project, every report, every paper, every quiz, every exam… everything. He would simply alter his handwriting and some of his answers and turn it in again under Burdell’s name. Smith was so dedicated to the prank that in 1930 “George P. Burdell” was awarded a bachelor of science degree from the school.
Lucky Rusty
Rusty Torres, a Puerto Rican-born baseball player, was one of the few baseball players in history to deal with not one, not two, but three baseball-related riots in his career.
22 year-old Rusty made his Major League debut on September 20, 1971 with the New York Yankees. Just a few days later, Torres was playing right field when the Yanks traveled to Washington to play the Senators’ final home games before moving to Texas and becoming the Rangers. It was the top of the 9th, with one out, and Torres was in the on-deck circle. Bobby Murcer hit a ground-out, and angry Washington fans, thinking it was the third out and the end of the game, stormed the field to protest their team’s move to Texas. Torres escaped without injury.
After the season was over, Torres was traded to the Cleveland Indians. Torres had a decent, but not spectacular, couple of seasons… and then June 4, 1974 rolled around… a date known in baseball history as Ten Cent Beer Night.
As the name suggests, fans were sold all the 8 oz. cups of Stroh’s beer they could drink for only 10¢ each. And the promotion worked: 25,134 fans showed up that night, compared to the 8,000 the team had been averaging.
Poor Bobby!
Atlanta Braves manager Bobby Cox has been in baseball for almost 50 years. As you may know, Cox is planning to retire after this season, so senators Johnny Isakson of Georgia and Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia thought it would be nice to hold a party for him. Imagine their surprise when the caterer showed up with this:
“Bobby Cocks”. Good job, folks!
Ya know, I can understand Shaquanda at Food Lion just not giving a damn, but you’d think that a professional caterer or independent baker would take thirty freakin’ seconds to verify the name of a guy who’s been in baseball since 1968, won the World Series, led his team to an unprecedented 14 consecutive division titles, been NL Manager of the Year three times, and holds the dubious MLB record of having been thrown out of 154 games.
Isakson’s staffers noted the error immediately, but there was not time for the cake to be “professionally” fixed. So one deft staffer cut slices out of the bottom row of the cake and deftly smeared the icing. Apparently Cox didn’t find out about it until yesterday, when the AJC ran an article about it.
DOWNLOAD: Steelers 2010 Schedule for Outlook!
Hey peoples! The new 2011-12 schedule is available here!
My apologies for not getting this out sooner. I had a really difficult time finding this year’s pre-season schedule (specifically, the pre-season TV schedule), and also had a hard time finding the playoff schedule. In fact, I gave up on the post-season schedule and just used my best guess… so let’s hope this is right!
The jimcofer.com “Pittsburgh Steelers 2010 Schedule For Outlook” is compatible with Microsoft Outlook 98 or later. It might also work with Google Calendar or any other webapp or calendaring program that can import calendar events from CSV files. However, it has only been tested with Outlook 2007.
The schedule contains all preseason and regular season Steelers games as well as the name of the network airing the game. All times are for the Eastern (USA) time zone. A reminder is also scheduled for 8:00PM the day before each game. Fans of other (lesser) teams can also download the file and use it as a template to create a schedule for their favorite team using any spreadsheet app that supports CSV files.
There are three editions of the schedule available for download: the Steelers 2010-11 schedule only, the 2010-11 Steelers schedule with the NFL playoffs and Super Bowl XLV, and a calendar with the playoffs and Super Bowl XLV only. Pick your poison by clicking the appropriate link below:
Steelers 2010-2011 Schedule
Steelers 2010-2011 Schedule with NFL Playoffs
NFL 2010-2011 Playoff Schedule only
* * *
Continue reading “DOWNLOAD: Steelers 2010 Schedule for Outlook!”
Roethlisberger to go?
It’s just part of the NFL’s considerable rumor mill at this point, but sources are saying that the Steelers might be looking to trade Big Ben:
Yahoo! Sports’ Charles Robinson is reporting that the team is at a “tipping point” with Roethlisberger. Team ownership is apparently “shaken” by how much Steelers fans are irked by all the bad press their team is getting.
Wow. I don’t know what to say. On a personal level, I think he should been shown the door weeks ago. But he is a great quarterback, and it’s hard to imagine the Steelers without him. On the other hand, trading Ben not only frees $65 million in salary, it would also (presumably) give Pittsburgh a metric ass load of draft picks.
I know Ben’s reputation is shot to hell in Pittsburgh, but is this really what we want?
Monday Afternoon Randomness
– In my opinion, Ben Roethlisberger should be benched until all his legal issues are sorted out. When Andrea McNulty, the first accuser, went public, I was willing to give Ben the benefit of the doubt. McNulty, after all, seemed less than stable mentally. But this second woman seems perfectly normal, and has done everything “by the book”. So, in my humble opinion, it’s time for Dennis Dixon to start until Ben decides to be a decent human being.
– Speaking of “decent human beings”, Troy Polamalu is the anti-Ben.
– From Texts From Last Night: “(813): So let me get this straight. You would sleep with an uncircumcised guy whose name you didn’t know, but you won’t try the new shrimp taco from taco bell?”
– During World War II, Red Cross regulations required the Germans to allow “games and pastimes” to be passed to Allied POWs in prison camps. The British convinced Waddington, Ltd. (the UK licensee of the Monopoly board game) to create some “special editions” that had “low-profile compasses, files, and maps” embedded into the game board. POWs could then tear open the board, remove the items and escape. Waddington, Ltd. was chosen by the British government because the company had perfected a method to print on silk, and silk escape maps don’t wear out, turn to mush in the rain, can be compressed into a tiny size, and (most importantly) don’t make any noise when opening or folding. The company, who made the games in a secret room at company headquarters using only a handful of highly-trusted employees, also included German, Italian and Austrian money mixed in with the game’s play money. Although some have estimated that a third of all POW escapees used the “Monopoly kits”, the exact number is actually unknown. Read more here.
– Joseph Casias, a Michigan man, was fired from his job at Walmart… for using medical marijuana. The company did this despite the fact that medical marijuana is legal in Michigan and that Casias had a valid prescription for the drug. Way to treat a five year employee with cancer and a brain tumor, Walmart!
A Shotgun Blast of Trivia
– London, England, is farther north than Amatignak Island, Alaska
– King Narmer, an Egyptian pharaoh who ruled in the 32nd century BC, is generally thought to be the oldest known historical figure. There are certainly mythological people (like Adam & Eve) who are older than Narmer, and there are fossils of early humanoids (like “Lucy”) who predate him by thousands of years… but Narmer is the first person we can actually date and know a bit about his story.
– If you took a piece of string and wrapped it around a basketball, then took another piece of string and “wrapped” it so that it hovered 1 inch above the first string, the second string would be 6.28″ longer than the first string. If then you took a string and wrapped it around the earth, then took a second string and “hovered it” an inch above the first string… it would also be 6.28″ longer than the first string.
– The largest countries, in terms of geographic size, are (in order): Russia, Canada, China, USA, Brazil, Australia, India and Argentina. The next country on the list? Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan is also the world’s largest landlocked country, and is larger than Western Europe.
– The Super Bowl champion New Orleans Saints wore black helmets for the 1969 pre-season. The only problem was that the Saints’ front office hadn’t run the new helmets by the NFL to see if they approved. The league objected to being left out of the loop, and thus put tremendous pressure on the team to change back to their original gold ones. When team ownership found that fans hated them, they quickly went back to the gold helmets we’re familiar with today.
Thursday’s Random Stuff Post
– Ever wonder what life’s like for people who pirate Windows? Windows expert Ed Bott decided to “go underground” and see how pirated copies of Windows 7 actually work. The results are pretty interesting and worth a read, even if you’re not a tech person.
– Starting St. Patrick’s Day, Continental Airlines will offer flyers “a new option allowing you to purchase seat assignments for unreserved, Economy Class seats that feature extra legroom.” In other words, they’re going to start charging more for exit row seats.
– Speaking of St. Patrick’s Day, head over to this site to find a McDonald’s near you that offers Shamrock Shakes!
– The NFL has released their new conference logos, playoff logos, pre- and post-season logos, Super Bowl logos, and conference championship trophy designs. And they’re absolutely horrible. The new AFC logo, in particular, is pretty awful. What say you?
– Research in the academic journal Psychological Science shows that darkness increases dishonest behavior. It’s not just that darkness provides practical advantages (like “cover” for criminal activity); people genuinely think that the darkness can provide a measure of anonymity and invisibility… like a kid closing her eyes whilst hiding in a game of “Hide and Seek”.
– Lots of movie and TV stars get their starts in corporate training videos. Here’s a clip of Lost’s Michael Emerson… in a prison training video from 1992!
Sean Payton punks Jerry Jones
Now this is just 29 different kinds of awesome! From si.com:
On Friday night, the Saints’ staff at the combine gathered in a private room at St. Elmo Steakhouse, an 108-year-old Indy landmark, for a final celebratory nod to the Super Bowl win over the Colts. This is a group that likes its wine, and likes to have fun.
At the restaurant, word passed that Dallas owner Jerry Jones would have his Dallas group in this exact room Saturday night for a team dinner. Jones had even phoned ahead, according to a waiter, to make sure a magnum of a wine he loved, Caymus Special Selection cabernet sauvignon, was ready to be served at dinner.
Sean Payton told the waiter he’d like to have that wine, too. The waiter told him: Sorry, sir. We have only one bottle left, and it’s reserved for Mr. Jones.
Payton said he’d like to have the bottle nonetheless. I assume there was much angst on the part of the wait staff at that point. My God! Who do we piss off? One of the most powerful owners in the NFL, or the coach who’s the toast of the NFL, the coach who just won the Super Bowl?
Here came the bottle of Caymus Special Selection, and the Saints’ party drained it.
But drinking Jones’ wine wasn’t enough. Payton gave the waiter some instructions, took out his pen … and, well, the Cowboys party found at the middle of their table the next evening an empty magnum of Caymus Special Selection cabernet sauvignon, with these words hand-written on the fancy label:
WHO DAT!
World Champions XLIV
Sean PaytonThat’s the kind of thing Jones will get a big laugh out of. And remember.