With the eighth pick in the NFL Draft, the Tennessee Titans picked Jake Locker.
The same Jake Locker I've been reaming on for the past four years for being an inaccurate passer and overall a package-wrapped NFL bust.
Well the irony gods just threw a pile of crap my way. As a huge Titans fan, what should I do?
1. Should I root for Jake Locker? He is from my home state even though he played for the loathsome Washington Huskies.
2. Should I jump ship, become a Raiders fan, get $1,000 of dollars of Raiders gear and not know the record of my team during the season like every other Raiders' fan?
3. Should I hope that the NFL locks out all its players and Jake Locker decides to take up cycling instead.
I will give Jake this... he's not Vince Young. He's not going to puss out when people boo him. He's not going to go missing and need his head coach to go and find him. He's not going to throw his head coach under the bus. He's not going to need his mom to tell people to leave him alone.
No, Jake Locker is a competitor and that will could for something. However, I'm not going to dress up the Brandon Hansen Tennessee Titans Welcoming Hall with confetti and cake. I'll be a skeptic of Jake going into the NFL and he'll have to prove himself in my eyes.
Otherwise put in Kerry Collins! Or as I like to call him...
Now if the Titans get Taiwan Jones in the draft (as my friend Eric suggested), they will have Roos and Jones on the roster and should be called the Eastern Washington Titans instead of the Tennessee Titans.
A range of physical competitions including tug of war, marathons and beach sprints will test participants' prowess and capabilities. Less conventional events like the "best bum (butt)" competition, conga lines and egg throwing will also run.
So my buddy Eric will watch Apollo 13 anytime its on TV, and then after that he will put in the DVD and watch it again.
And why wouldn't you? It features Tom Hanks, the Cal Ripken Jr. of actors, Bill Paxton, who made the best tornado-themed movie ever and Kevin Bacon (for the ladies of course).
Throw in that Ron Howard, the most successful ginger ever, is the director and the fact that it is about the space program and it's a can't-miss.
However, I will digress that it's perhaps the greatest film ever. That goes to Gladiator, directed by Ridley Scott.
Buy Gladiator on Blu-ray.
Now I probably talk a lot more about Star War, Star Trek and Indiana Jones but those are more like guilty nerd pleasures than actual "greatest films ever." They have plenty of fluff in them that make them more like dessert than the main course.
Gladiator, on the other hand, no matter how you break it down, is the best action flick. It's the best character flick. It's the best historical flick. It's good on so many levels, and anytime I see it on television, I'm definitely watching the whole thing. How can I tell that Gladiator is so good? Consider the following...
1. Every movie since it that has been made has the "walking through the wheat field as a woman sings" scene - Seriously, it's perhaps the most over-used movie cliche since 2000. Any movie thats even remotely historic or set anywhere near the time of the Romans (or medieval, or even space-age, people just aren't original anymore) has the walking through the wheat field scene. What's great too is that Scott completely improvised that. He was like "Oh wheat? Jerry put on those Roman gauntlets and walk around, I'm going to shoot your hand touching the wheat for like four minutes on film."
2. How many HBO series have been about Gladiators now? - Like 80? I mean come on HBO... just stick to boxing.
3. I still feel like Russell Crowe could kick anyones ass - Was this possible the best casting choice of all time? During the entire movie did ever you feel like "oh well, a guy like Russell couldn't actually do that." Nope. Crowe is the kind of guy that if you meet in the bar you avoid hitting on his girlfriend at all costs and actually ask him if he'd like to take your girlfriend home.
4. It came before the rush of epic movies - You can thank the Lord of the Rings for that, but Gladiator was kind of on the cutting edge of the "epic movie" in the late 90s, early 2000s. Now they're a dime a dozen. What is crazy too is how remarkable the CGI holds up even though its 11 years old (Watch Jurrassic park and the CGI dinosaurs look like Sega Genesis monsters), and the fact that the first battle scene in the movie wasn't CGI at all.
5.Joaquin Phoenix - He's legitimately crazy, but perhaps the best villain I've seen in a movie. He's so good in fact, you feel sorry for him for much of the movie. Just wonderfully acted and this was before he started to embark on his rapping career.
6. It's not an art house film - Screw those. Go back to France.
7. Ridley Scott is not James Cameron - Here's the thing, Ridley Scott is british, and he started out making music videos and I believe commercials meaning that he doesn't BS like other directors such as James Cameron. Cameron will go on and on and on about how artful his 80s action movies are and nobody gives a rats ass. What Cameron wont tell you is that his movies are woefully lacking in any sort of depth. Since studios give him 200 million dollars to make movies, they generally tend the be fairly entertaining because the guy can do anything he wants. Scott? He's a workman, he's put out great flicks like Alien and Blade Runner and when you listen to him, he's most interested in making it a movie thats great for the audience than about talking about how great he is.
8. It's about Rome - I wouldn't generally want to live in the past, but if I could live in Rome, I would sooo be in.
9. Perhaps the greatest main character death scene of all time - It barely beats out John Wayne getting shot in the "Sands of Iwo Jima" and Spock dying in "Star Trek 2."
10. 11 years later, nobody is debating whether or not it should have won Best Picture - Seriously go back and look at who wins Best Picture at the Academy Awards. It's an interesting look back at what our culture was thinking at that time and you'll usually respond with "Jesus, why the hell did they pick that movie?" but when you come across Gladiator, you're like "Yup, that sounds about right."
I got my first “It’s baseball season moment” the other day.
Now I know that the pros have been playing for a little while, but my enthusiasm has largely been blunted by the fact that my beloved Red Sox have started the season with the same gusto as John Goodman on a treadmill.
Last Saturday, walking over to O’Malley Park for Mission Valey Rockies’ practice, you could smell the grass, the sun was beating down on the diamond and you could hear that familiar “thump” as a baseball came in contact with a leather glove.
It really doesn’t take much to realize that baseball is perhaps the best sport around. There’s no argument, but if you want to make a blasphemous statement that football, basketball or soccer is better, let me present the following statements.
The game is the same on every level – Football more than any other sport varies wildly depending on what age of kids are playing. The NFL is a very cold, calculated game with very little room for originality and everyone ends up copying one another’s playbook. College is a little more wide-open as teams try things as coaches play around the amount of talent they have on the team. High school actually might be the more pure form of football, it comes at a time where the talent of the athletes but also the smarts in the playbook are probably most evenly matched.
But you can’t compare the three. They’re so incredibly different types of games, the speed is different, the play-calling is incredibly different and if you’re trying to compare box scores, you’re going to go insane.
But baseball? With the exception of t-ball, the last level of baseball I excelled at, statistics and the way the game is played is largely the same. That’s what gives fans so much enjoyment. When somebody says a pitcher struck out 20 batters in a high school game, you know that it’s an incredible achievement. When someone runs for 200-yards in a pee-wee football game… well he just hit puberty before everyone else.
Softball too so resembles the pro version of baseball, that it’s rather eerie. Watching Janeal McDonald from Mission get up to bat is like watching Albert Pujols step up to the plate. You can tell that Lady Bulldogs fans expect something good to happen, and the opposing coach is nervously chewing on their fingernails. The only big difference is the base-running, if a catcher is distracted for a split second, it seems like teams like Polson will steal two bases on them.
Stats – Numbers count and mean something in baseball. If you didn’t as a kid pour over baseball cards and the plethora of stats they had printed on the back… well you didn’t have a childhood. Just how important are stats? Last week, I spent a good half hour at Walmart debating if I should buy a new pack of 2011 baseball cards just the heck of it. My reason… I could backtrack every MLB players stats I could get a card of. Why wouldn’t you blow a spare $20 on that?
The chatter – Have you listened to baseball players talk to one another. It’s funnier than “Conan” “30-Rock” “Saturday Night Live” and “Modern Family” combined. I wish I could say that it’s all innocent but lets be honest… baseball players are usually the weirdest athletes out of all the sports. Who else blesses their bats with chicken bones or talk to their gloves?
The history – Baseball can trace it’s history back to the Civil War. In what other sport can you refer to guys with handlebar moustaches and names like “Three-Finger Brown” and “Shoeless Joe Jackson” for stories. The best I can do for football and basketball is “Won’t shut up Warren Sapp” and “Blake could dunk on the moon Griffin.”
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to recruit to my man-cave and see if the Red Sox can’t pull themselves out of the basement of the AL East.
Apparently Portland likes Mark Cuban just as much as every other city. Which is surprising considering how laid-back and awesome Portland is.
An object thrown from the Rose Garden stands hit Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban in the face during Thursday night's Game 3 loss to the Portland Trail Blazers.
The incident occurred midway through the fourth quarter after Cuban had been interacting with the fans in the section behind the Mavericks' bench. Cuban was not injured.
Sherritt becomes the third Eagle on the roster joining EWU alum Matt Nichols and Greg Peach in Edmonton.
Winner of the 2010 Buck Buchanan Award as a top defensive player in Division 1 subdivision, J.C. Sherritt (5-11, 212lbs) is Eastern Washington’s all-time career leader in total tackles and is second in tackles on the Big Sky conference all-time list. He’s also been recognized with multiple All-American, Academic All-American and Big Sky awards.
Eskimos General Manager Eric Tillman commented on Sherritt on the Eskimos website, "JC may not be the biggest or fastest player we'll sign, but without a doubt he's one of the best football players. He's a hybrid type athlete, who’s smart, physical and is an outstanding open field tackler. Obviously, his production at Eastern Washington was off the charts. We expect to give JC an early look at the will linebacker spot where he’ll likely compete with Damaso Munoz and Will Harris. Signing players who possess athletic versatility will be one of our highest priorities as we continue to build a winning franchise."
Eastern Washington University's new head men's basketball coach Jim Hayford announced on Tuesday his coaching staff.
Joining him on the sidelines will be Craig Fortier, Craig Ehlo and Shantay Legans.
Hired as EWU's associate head coach, Fortier spent the past four seasons as Hayford's lead assistant at Whitworth University in Spokane, Wash. During Fortier's four years at Whitworth, the Pirates won 98 of 116 games for a winning rate of 84.5 percent. In the 2010-11 season, the Pirates finished 28-2 and advanced to the NCAA Division III Sectional Final (Elite Eight) for the first time in school history. At the same time, his wife Lisa was on the coaching staff for the Gonzaga women's team, which advanced to the Elite Eight of the NCAA Division I Tournament and finished 31-5.
Ehlo brings to Eastern 14 years of experience as a player in the National Basketball Association -- including playoff appearances in 10 of those seasons. Ehlo has also spent three seasons as a high school basketball head coach and six years working with one of the nation's most esteemed camp programs, the Nike Skills Academy, led by such current NBA superstars as LeBron James, Steve Nash and Vince Carter.
The lone holdover from Eastern's previous coaching staff is Shantay Legans, who enters his third season as an EWU assistant coach.
Haven't been watching the NBA playoffs? Why the heck not? In what could easily be the best post season product out of all the major sports, the NBA playoffs have not disappointed so far.
Mas Sports' Riley Lemm has a rundown on The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of the NBA Playoffs so far. You can read that right here.
NOTE: He does not mention the Spurs. Why? Because the Spurs do not matter. They're not entertaining. They're old. They're completely irrelevant. Is anyone really on the edge of their seats for the Portland-Dallas playoff series. No, because the Western Conference this year is a relative old folks home compared to the hip and exciting teams in the East.
I'm not talking about who's better from an actual X's and O's. I'm talking about from a fan's perspective. Other than fans in those cities, nobody is going to be thrilled about whoever makes the Finals from the West except for the Thunder. Lakers? Been there, done that. Spurs? Gag me and throw me down a well. Hornets? All four of their fans will be jumping for joy. Grizzlies? Yeah right, like that will happen. Blazers? Brandon Roy doesn't quite have the Bazinga! as Lebron James. Nuggets? Wait, who's on that team now? Steve Kerr?
Today I get a text from Brandon that states, "Dude! Have you seen the new VW Beetle! I can't wait till I can cruise Polson in one of those! Sweetest. Car. Ever!"
I replied with, "ummmmmmm...."
What do you think of the new 2012 Beetle? I think they are better than the last version that was very high school girl car.
From what I gathered from random texts, Facebook status updates and my own imagination is that Casey went to the Tri-Cities this weekend with Lindsay for wine and good times.
Now I've been to the Tri-Cities and I have no idea how you could have a good time but Casey apparently found a way. The following is a series of events that I assume happened while he was drinking wine and talking about the Seattle Sounders.
Friday, 2 p.m. - Casey starts drinking wine.
Friday, 2:10 p.m. - Casey is drunk.
Friday, 2:12 p.m. - Casey texts me that he is drunk.
Friday, 2:15 p.m. - Now since Casey is in the Tri-Cities, I can only guess that he can do two things. (1) Go to one of the various bars in the area, the kind that are "Tri-City staples of society" that have high school jerseys pinned on the wall and one of the Tri-City new stations playing in the background or (2) steal some nuclear rods from the power plant.
Friday, 5 p.m. - From the lack of news coverage, I'm guessing Casey did not steal the nuclear rods.
Friday, 6 p.m. - At this point I'm curious what his wife is thinking however I dare not message her because if anyone is more drunk than Casey at this point, it is his wife. She's the rare kind of girl that could outdrink a hockey player and then beat him up.
Friday, 7 p.m. - Casey texted me something I can't repeat for fear of getting sued. Sorry Rosie O'Donnell. It wasn't nice.
Friday, 8 p.m. - At this point, we're reaching the married couple curfew. This is when no matter what is going on, the married couple will look at their watch and go "ohhh welll, time to hit the ol' dusty trail" however, unexpectedly, Casey and Lindsay break this curfew. Never a good idea because that usually means both parties are hopelessly intoxicated.
Friday, 10 p.m. - I imagine at this point Casey was at a dance club, doing fist pumps with the Tri-Cities version of "The Situation" but since it's the Tri-Cities, he was probably called "The Mistake."
Friday, 12 p.m. - Usually around midnight, bars become pretty unbearable for most normal folk that either don't have a drinking problem, a criminal record or an acceptable posse of friends for protection. In Casey's case, he's probably tipping over tables at this point and demanding to be called "El Nino."
Saturday, 1 a.m. - I get a text from Casey, angry that a store will not actually let him drink alcoholic beverages inside the store. "Because if they sell the products you should be able to drink them." I think every person has thought this at one juncture or another.
Saturday, 1:05 a.m. - Casey is kicked out of the store.
Saturday, 9:05 a.m. - Casey surveys the damage from the previous evening.
... and that, ladies and gentlemen, is a Friday night in the life of Casey Knopik.
And with the new promo for the upcoming season Discovery again shows that they truly have the best shows and most creative marketing department out there.
NEW YORK (AP) - ABC canceled two of its three soap operas on Thursday, consigning "One Life to Live" and "All My Children" - and Susan Lucci, daytime's most famous actress - to television history.
The move leaves "General Hospital" as ABC's only daytime drama, one of only four that will remain on ABC, CBS and NBC's daytime schedule.
Soap operas have slowly been fading as a TV force, with many of the women who made up the target audience now in the work force. In place of the two canceled dramas, ABC will air shows about food and lifestyle transformations
Ratings were bad and the average age of the person watching was 57... not exactly the key audience you want if you're a television network. So-long Soaps!
If you've watched ESPN in the past couple of days, you've seen the videos and the talk about Tom Brady's terrible performance in the 2000 NFL Combine. It's the little skeleton in the closet of the all-American quarterback, and I'm here to tell you that there are a bunch more secrets that he's hiding.
He once dated Miss Piggy
Come on, when you're the backup quarterback on the New England Patriots, you're not exactly getting football groupies knocking on your door. He had to go into other avenues.... puppets.
Brady was once caught putting on Drew Bledsoe's jersey to sneak out into practice get snaps
However, he was quickly caught as he also stole Bledsoe's jockstrap and hair conditioner.
Have you seen the "Tom Brady approves pet neutering"
... and then the commercial cuts to a dog going "Tom balls out on the field, but doesn't ball out in other people's yards with their pets - just like me!"
He had a horrible drug addiction
The story you haven't heard is the crazy amount of Slurpees the man would consume before games. That Berry Blast is a killer.
He doesn't wash his feet in the shower
Oh, Oh, god man, come on! Get that crap cleaned off!
Yahoo Sports has jumped on board with the Taiwan Jones hype machine. EWU's star running back has just put in a VERY fast 40 time which could push him up on the draft board...
After serious work and rehab at Athletes Performance in Carson, California (a bit of which we caught on tape recently), Jones flew up to the Bay Area and put on a major show in front of what San Francisco 49ers running backs coach Tom Rathman told one observer was the biggest NFL attendance for a private workout he had ever seen. API's Travelle Gaines told Yahoo! Sports that Jones ran one 40 and times in the range of 4.27 to 4.35 on all stopwatches. We'll get the official times later today and pass them along (as well as an interview with Mr. Jones), but this could really push Jones up quite a few draft boards. Currently seen as a third- to fifth-round prospect, Jones may jump up a bit higher based on today.
In other news, WSU players were spotted eating hamburgers in Pullman.
Tomorrow, April 14, is the first MLS game in Portland, Oregon as the Timbers host Chicago on ESPN2 at 8 pm.
But Jeld-Wen Field, formerly PGE Park, isn't home to just the Timbers. It's also home to a cat colony.
As workers installed a new Jeld-Wen Field sign, finished painting and laid the last of the turf in preparation for the Portland Timbers' home-opener, things have remained business as usual for some of the park's "staff."
Well, more or less. Somewhere between 12 and 19 furtive felines comprising the field's feral cat colony have had to adjust to a new location for their feeding station when the park was converted into a soccer stadium.
You can check out the rest of article over at The Oregonian.
What is this? A one-of-a-kind Eastern Washington National Championship Fooseball Table? Boy, the university sure knows how to milk every penny from us die-hard Eagle fans. They got it right though, because what Eag faithful would not want this beauty?
An EWU student made it as his senior capstone project and it has a current bid of $4,750 with the money benefiting the EWU College of Science, Health and Engineering. While that may be out of my price range, you can go make a bid here.
And if you don't have the money, just play beer pong with red cups. Same thing.
Every once in a while, people ask me "who is your favorite NBA team?"
... damn.
I don't have an answer. You know why? Because my favorite team was ripped away from me like a homeless person getting the purple drank taken away. How dare they...
In other news, here is the Sonicsgate guy getting thrown out of Cosco ... so funny. Why? Because he was making a run at Starbuck's Howard Schultz's book signing. Check it out.
Let me just say that I live eight hours from Seattle in MONTANA and people are still wearing Sonics jerseys. You go to hell Howard Schultz.
Eastern Washington University's head football coach, Beau Baldwin, will throw out the ceremonial first pitch at today's Seattle Mariners game at Safeco Field.
The Mariners host the Cleveland Indians. Game time is 6:10 p.m.
Despite being a quarterback and a three-year letter winner in baseball at Curtis High School in Tacoma, Wash., Baldwin still received plenty of advice on how to throw the ball over the plate in his ceremonial appearance. In an informal workout at Eastern on Monday (April 4), Baldwin showed an impressive fastball while joking with two former Eastern pitchers -- Kerry Pease and Howie Stalwick.
Pease is the associate director of the EWU sports and recreation center and Stalwick is a freelance sportswriter. They were former teammates who pitched sparingly for Eastern in the late 1970's and 80's. Eastern dropped baseball following the 1990 season.
Eastern athletic director Bill Chaves, an avid Boston Red Sox fan, was also on hand to provide some pointers.
Tonight the Mariners are taking the field in Seattle for the first time of the 2011 season. And for the first time since 1977 Dave Niehaus won't be calling the game.
He passed away last year in November.
At tonight's game there will be pre-game celebration to honor Niehaus. And Niehaus' wife will be throwing out the first pitch.
The celebration get's started at 4 p.m. when First Avenue South between S. Royal Brougham Way and Edgar Martinez Drive South, outside Safeco Field, becomes "Dave Niehaus Way South."
The city has brown street signs, which will be placed atop the regular First Avenue green signs at the ceremony.
Seattle-based rapper Macklemore will also be performing his tribute song “My Oh My” before the game.
I've been a mess these past few days for several reasons. One of those reasons has been the godawful play of the Boston Red Sox, my favorite team. Nothing sums of the start to the season, quite like this...
CLEVELAND — As the Red Sox played the Cleveland Indians here last night, Charlie Sheen and his “Violent Torpedo of Truth’’ tour were at the State Theater only a short distance away.
Here’s some more truth: The Sox are more of a mess than the drug-addled actor at this point as they were beaten, 3-1, by the Indians.
Anytime your baseball team and Charlie Sheen are mentioned in the same sentance (unless they're talking about Wild Thing), you should probably just pack things up for the season. But I mean there's plenty of games right? Unless you think about this horrific stat.
No team that has started 0-4 has won the World Series.
So what you're telling me is that the SEATTLE "I'LL BE HOME FOR OCTOBER" MARINERS have a better chance of making the World Series than the Red Sox do??????
Tokyo (CNN) -- Japan began dumping thousands of tons of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean on Monday, an emergency move officials said was needed to curtail a worse leak from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
In all, about 11,500 tons of radioactive water that has collected at the nuclear facility will be dumped into the sea, officials said Monday, as workers also try to deal with a crack that has been a conduit for contamination.
And no one has a problem with this? I mean you're putting terrible toxic material into the Pacific Ocean! Remember the last time that happened? Yeah this guy...
However, apparently it's not that big of deal, or so they want to make you think...
"To put this in perspective, the Pacific Ocean holds about 300 trillion swimming pools full of water and they're going to release about five swimming pools full of water. So hopefully the churning of the ocean and the currents will quickly disperse this so that it gets to very dilute concentrations relatively quickly," said Timothy Jorgensen, chair of the radiation safety committee at Georgetown University Medical Center.
"It's a considerable amount of water, but the immensity of the Pacific Ocean will quickly dilute this amount of water to harmless levels," he added.
Right, and it will just fade away and disappear. No long-term issues or anything. We've never had anything like that before right?
So the Seattle Mariners' bid for the undefeated season ended last night when they lost to the Oakland A's but no doubt I'm going to hear about how the Seattle Mariners are 2-1 and the Boston Red Sox are 0-3.
And then in five months when the Mariners are staring down a 100-loss season and, I'll take a very satisfying dig at Joe Mariner fan, the same guy that thought signing Griffey was a great idea, the same guy that loves Doug Fister, the same guy that still has his Jose Lopez jersey.
Reasons why you're still single... you like the Seattle Mariners.
Both John Lester (Friday) and John Lackey had poor outings for the Red Sox in their first two games of the season and now Boston is 0-2 on the season. Granted there is 162 games in the season but I felt it would be better to press the panic button.
Either that, or I can officially start hating the Texas Rangers.
When they made the World Series last season everyone in Spokane magically became a Rangers fan. Now I know that their minor league affiliate is there in the Spokane Indians, but really a minor league team should not affect your major league rooting interests. I'll root for the Spokane Indians any day, but I'm not going to hop on a bandwagon because they get their players from the Rangers organization.
And people in Spokane just couldn't admit they were front-running, they had to throw in the "oh I've been a Rangers fan since they've been affiliated with the Spokane Indians."
Riiiiight, I remember everyone complaining they didn't get an affiliation with the Mariners.
Anyways, the Red Sox are 0-2, and I'm breaking into the booze cabinet.
With Facebook constantly adding features, sometimes you get a curveball thrown at you. Now they have this "splatter random photos of your friends on the right sidebar" thing that causes some interesting images to pop up.
As we come across awesome photos of our friends, we'll plaster them up on Just South of North. Sure, we'll probably lose friends, but hey! It's all for a good cause.
Casey has been known to go on a biking adventure or too. In Montana, regardless of the weather, there are plenty of people who like to go on some two-wheeled adventures as well. Today it was rugged, it was muddy and it was windy but still a large group of Mission Valley bikers suited up for the Speedwagon Classic. Good times for those sitting and watching them bike (myself and coworkers), and here are some images I captured.
Taking a page out of the Eastern Washington University playbook, the University of Central Arkansas is installing colored turf.
But not just one color. Instead they are opting for a purple and gray turf.
And after seeing the Eagles of Eastern Washington go undefeated at 8-0 on "The Inferno" of Roos Field and then ride that momentum onto a National Championship it's no surprise that Central Arkansas is making this move.
Central Arkansas also plays at the FCS level in football as part of the Southland Conference. Last season the Bears finished 4-3 in conference play and 7-4 overall.
.
