Category: Sports

The final AP Top 25 poll of the regular season is out… and just look at the standings!

1. Alabama (62) 12-0 1,620
2. Florida (3) 11-1 1,516
3. Texas 11-1 1,488
4. Oklahoma 11-1 1,480
5. USC 10-1 1,355
6. Penn State 11-1 1,257
7. Utah 12-0 1,216
8. Texas Tech 11-1 1,197
9. Boise State 12-0 1,103
10. Ohio State 10-2 1,069
11. TCU 10-2 885
12. Ball State 12-0 834
13. Cincinnati 10-2 824
14. Oklahoma State 9-3 798
15. Georgia Tech 9-3 708
16. Oregon 9-3 630
17. Georgia 9-3 495
18. Boston College 9-3 482
19. Missouri 9-3 479
20. Brigham Young 10-2 385
21. Michigan State 9-3 312
22. Mississippi 8-4 280
23. Pittsburgh 8-3 241
24. Northwestern 9-3 190
25. Oregon State 8-4 122

Go Jackets!!!!

The final score from Athens:

Georgia Tech	45
Georgia	42

So then it’s up with the White and Gold
Down with the Red and the Black
Georgia Tech is out for a victory
We’ll drop our battle axe on Georgia’s head
When we meet her our team will surely beat her
Down on old Georgia’s farm there’ll be no sound
When our bow wows rip through the air
When the battle is over Georgia’s team will be found
With the Yellow Jackets swarming around.

What’s the good word?

Enjoy a couple of pictures:

I’m a Ramblin’ Wreck from Georgia Tech, and a hell of an Engineer
A Helluva, Helluva, Helluva, Helluva, Helluva Engineer
Like all the jolly good fellows, I drink my whiskey clear.
I’m a Ramblin’ Wreck from Georgia Tech and a hell of an Engineer

Oh, if I had a daughter, sir, I’d dress her in white and gold,
And put her on the campus to cheer the brave and bold.
But if I had a son, sir, I’ll tell you what he’d do–
He would yell: ‘TO HELL WITH GEORGIA!’ Like his daddy used to do.

Oh, I wish I had a barrel of rum, and sugar three thousand pounds
A college bell to put it in, And a clapper to stir it round.
I’d drink to all the good fellows, who come from far and near.
I’m a Ramblin’, Gamblin’, HELL OF AN ENGINEER!

I like bashing the Charlotte Bobcats on this site. It’s true that I didn’t live here during the brouhaha over the new arena, but Lisa was vehemently opposed to it, as were most of her friends and coworkers. So their “Screw the Bobcats!” attitude has rubbed off on me. To this very day, I have only seen someone wearing a Bobcats shirt or sweatshirt twice; while it’s common to see people wearing Panthers or Tar Heels shirts to the store or mall, you’ll never see a Bobcats shirt. And besides, the Bobcats suck: only the 1-10 Washington Bullets (I refuse to call them “Wizards”) are doing worse. Also, it seems like any time the Bobcats front office had a decision that would either make them “heroes” or “zeroes” in this city, management went out of its way to piss off Charlotteans. So here’s a fun Bobcats bash for you:

I joined Facebook a couple of months ago and quickly found out about Facebook’s “gift system”. Basically, anyone can create a “gift application”, in which you upload pictures of products, celebrities, drinks, etc. to the Facebook site. You then caption each pic and pick an order for them to be revealed to end users. Once someone sends another user a “gift”, more of your “gifts” are unlocked to them.

Well, I thought it was kind of fun, so I created my own gift application: “Gifts From Charlotte”. I filled it with Cheerwine, fried chicken from Price’s Chicken Coop, ice cream from Tony’s, fried pickles from The Penguin, and other Charlotte treats. Imagine my surprise when I searched for it in the Facebook directory the other day and noticed this:

The “Charlotte Bobcats Fans” group is the largest Bobcats group on Facebook. It has 310 active users. There are a couple of other Bobcats apps; as you can see, they have 3 members here and 5 members there. All told, the Bobcats have around 320 active fans on Facebook.

My silly “Gifts From Charlotte” app… the thing I threw together on a whim one day… has 1,108 monthly users – which is almost 3.5 times as many fans as the lowly Bobcats. The UNCC 49ers fan app (the first entry listed above) has 1,490 members. So UNCC – a local college that has a respectable, if unspectacular, basketball team – has 4.6 times as many fans as and NBA team!

Lord, the Bobcats are sad!

Details are leaking out about the changes to the Steelers’ ownership.

It seems that Tim and Pat Rooney – the two Rooneys most involved with racetracks and casinos – will sell their entire stakes of the Steelers to Dan. This will give Dan a minimum of a 48% share of the team. But it will probably end up being more than that, as John Rooney and Art Rooney Jr. plan to sell around half of their 16% stakes in the team. So it’s likely that Dan (and, eventually, Art II) will end up owning around 64% of God’s Favorite Team. Or shall I say at least 64%: word is that the McGinley family – hitherto reported to be not selling their shares – will also sell a small part of their 20% stake to Dan. So, in the end, it seems that Dan will end up owning somewhere around 70% of the team. Details are (obviously) still sketchy at this point. Read more about it here.

In other news, remember Mean Joe Greene’s famous Super Bowl commercial for Coke? Troy Polamalu is set to do a remake. It will air during this year’s Super Bowl.

The Philadelphia Eagles and Cincinnati Bengals fought to a 13-13 tie last Sunday, the first such tie in an NFL game since November 11, 2002, when Pittsburgh and Atlanta played to a 34-34 tie.

Ties are obviously rare in the NFL – if a game is tied at the end of regulation, a 15 minute “sudden death” overtime is played, in which the first time to score wins. Since it’s fairly easy for most teams to at least get a field goal when they need one, most games end within that overtime period.

During the regular season, if neither team scores during the overtime period, the game ends in a tie. During the playoffs, however, overtimes are added until a team scores. It’s as simple as that. And you’d think one of the NFL’s marquee quarterbacks would know that. But apparently Donovan McNabb does not. After the game, McNabb was quoted as saying:

“I didn’t know [a game could end in a tie]… I’ve never been part of a tie. I never even knew it was in the rule book. I was looking forward to getting the opportunity to get out there and try to drive to win the game. But unfortunately with the rules, we settled with a tie.”

Huh? I know that ties don’t happen often, but jeez – this is a basic NFL rule we’re talking about here, not something obscure like a 1 point safety! But no, McNabb’s idiocy continued:

“I hate to see what happens in the Super Bowl or I hate to see what happens in the playoffs. You have to settle with a tie.”

Sigh. Yes, Donovan, the NFL would let the Super Bowl end in a tie! Jeez – that guy is as dumb as a box of rocks!

Go back to your Chunky soup, Donovan, the grown-ups are talking!

So yesterday the Pittsburgh Steelers defeated the San Diego Chargers at Heinz Field by the score of 11-10. The Steelers won by first getting a safety (2 points) and then scoring 3 field goals (9 points). It seems hard to believe, but a final score of 11-10 had never happened in the history of the NFL… until yesterday. That’s 12,837 professional football games, and never once was there a 11-10 score!

I haven’t seen the game yet, but I wonder how it actually happened. Large Benjamin threw for 308 yards (with no interceptions!) and Willie Parker ran for 115 yards… but still, the Steelers were unable to put it in the end zone… until the final play of the game, when Troy Polamalu picked up an errant lateral and returned it 12 yards for a touchdown. Except that the Chargers were called for an illegal forward pass. The officials huddled for several minutes, initially giving Pittsburgh the score, then taking the points off the board. After the game was over, referee Scott Green admitted that the TD should have counted. So… once again, the referees screwed over Troy Polamalu. This is getting old, folks!

The four Rooney brothers have agreed to sell their shares in the Pittsburgh Steelers football team to their oldest brother Dan, current chairman of the team. This will give Dan (and his son, Art II, who is team president) an 80% share of the club, which will meet all NFL rules and regulations and keep the team within the Rooney family.

The Steelers began way back in 1933, when Art Rooney Sr. won $2,500 at the Saratoga Race Course in New York. He used his winnings to buy an NFL franchise for the city of Pittsburgh. The team was called the Pittsburgh Pirates, after the local MLB team Art loved as a child. In 1942, the team was renamed the Steelers after the city’s heritage in the steel industry. After decades of losing records, the Steelers finally began to show signs of life in the late 1960s, and later went on to become the “Team of the 1970s” by winning 4 Super Bowls in that decade.

When Art died back in 1988, he left 80% of the team to the each of his 5 sons, so that each one owned 16% of the franchise. This violates an NFL rule which states that one person must own a minimum of 30% of any team. Additionally, some of the Rooney boys owned racetracks and slot machines, which violates NFL rules about team owners having a stake in gambling businesses.

Continue reading “There IS a God: Rooneys Keep Steelers”

NFL head coaches hate benching starting quarterbacks. Starting quarterbacks usually have the most overall talent in their position on a team. And they say something about the head coach and his philosophy and decision-making skills. Benching a quarterback for reasons other than health means that you might not have made the “correct” decision the first time… or that “panic time” has set in. Neither option is good for a football team.

But so it is that the Steelers face this question this very week. Large Benjamin is not only not living up to his gigantic paycheck, he’s directly costing his team games. His 4 interceptions against the Giants cost the Steelers the game. The Colts rolled up 14 points off his interceptions.

But perhaps the best example comes from the Redskins game. The Steelers offense, which struggled mightily against the Redskins, roared instantly to life when an injury to Rothlisberger forced seasoned veteran Byron Leftwich to enter the game. Once Leftwich came in, the offense, which could barely get a first down in three quarters with Big Ben, suddenly “clicked”, and the Steelers almost instantly ran up 2 touchdowns.

So the word in the blogosphere is that fans (and certain sports writers) think that Ben should be benched for this week’s game against the Chargers. And you know what? I think they might be right. Maybe Ben’s shoulder is hurt much worse than we had been led to believe. Maybe he’s just in a slump. I don’t know. What I do know is that the Steelers defense has been playing their hearts out, only to have Large Benjamin throw the games away with stupid plays. So why not give Byron a chance? With the way he’s playing, there’s even talk of him looking for a starting job next year… so why not use him while we have him?

Tech beats FSU and the Dogs get pounded by UoF! Woo-Hoo!!!