XBOX Live

I just got XBOX Live, and already I am addicted. I have had XBOX for a while, but I didn't get the wireless adapter until recently. Without live, or without being with friends, XBOX wasn't that much fun. Now however there is the bonus of being able to play people from all over the world as well as your friends. Not only is there the ability to play against your friends, but you can also have conversations with eachother, or in parties, even if you are playing different games. Besides the gaming aspect, there is the XBOX Live marketplace. There you can buy game add-ons, tv shows, movies, music, and other cool stuff.

The Super Bowl, is it about the football or the comercials?

Yesterday night was one of the most important nights for TV station NBC. Hosting the Super Bowl is much more than just the right to the game, there becomes so much revenue and business that which is it more about? Each commercial ended up being $3,000,000 just for one thirty second spot. Now it is more for the sixty second ones, and more for the companies who had multiple commercials like Dorritos. Why is it becoming more about the commercials than the game? In some of the past years, I have been more excited about the commercials than the game itself, and I know I am not the only one who feels this way. For me, yesterday's game didn't get interesting until the last 5 minutes, except for the pick-six by Harrison earlier in the game. Unfortunately, the commercials have lost some of the touch that they had a couple years ago. There were still a couple good ones this year like the Career Builder one, and the Bud Light one, but for the majority the "Funniness Level" is dropping. Although NBC is obviously more willing to give spots to the higher paying companies for these slots, the companies themselves appear to be relaxing and not working as hard to become as funny. Part of that may be that there are more car commercials now, or maybe because of the number of movie trailers, or maybe it was just that there were much more beer commercials and they knew how to make funny commercials better, but the fact is that the legacy of the Super Bowl commercials is starting to diminish, which is taking away from the game itself if there aren't two teams you care a lot about.

Lions Go Win-less

At the beginning of the 2008 season the projections were that Atlanta was going to be bad, and that Miami might have another bad year. No one was expecting Detroit to be good, but no one was expecting them to have this bad of a season. Detroit was 7-9 last year, which is not awful, it is not great, but it is still decent. Detroit had a couple of decent draft picks, however none as influential on that team as Kevin Smith. He led their team this season with 976 rush yards, and he was third on the receiving list with 286 receiving yards. Calvin Johnson, the other main threat of the team was their receiving leader with 1331 yards, and he would have had a good partner, except after week 6 the other good receiver that the Lions had, Roy Williams, was traded to the Cowboys.
The Lions, who haven't have very many great draft choices the past few years will have the number 1 draft choice, unless they trade with some other team. The Lions, who have flipped quarterbacks multiple times this season, starting with Kitna then moving to Orlovsky, and finally to Culpepper might look towards the quarterbacks coming out of college as their number 1 choice.
Possibilities might be Sam Bradford, Mark Sanchez, Graham Harrell, but who knows how the rest of their draft might go, and even if they do have a good draft, how much will it change their team for next year?

Outliers

In Sports Illustrated a couple weeks ago, in the section "The Point After," Selena Roberts writes about parents who care too much about their child's/ children's sporting success enough that they are willing to take DNA tests that can show how likely they will be to being super-fast, like being able to sprint fast, or if they will have good endurance. These come from the amount of fast-twitch muscle fibers that each person has. The more someone has, the more likely they are to be quick sprinters.

This difference in people is genetic, and that obviously has some impact on an individual's athletic performance. She then goes on to talk about other advantages that some children have over others. For example, she talks about the Canadien junior hockey leagues, whose cut off dates are January 1st for age requirements. By the time you get to professional, and other elite levels of play, you see a trend where the majority of the players have very early birthdays in the year.

In Outliers, which is by Malcolm Gladwell, he goes into detail about these different scenarios, and how and why each person succeeds differently. When he looks at sports he sees the cutoff dates, and how normally the older players do better because they start off just being a little bit bigger when they are young. They make the "A" teams, and then most of the time they practice a little bit more than those on the "B" teams. As this progresses, the members of the "A" teams continue to have more and more practice hours than those on the "B" teams.

He also looks at schools, and which students do better. There he also sees that in terms of the school year, the olders students do better. He believes that this is because in kindergarten, the smarter children (normally the older, but not always) are put into the advanced programs, and they learn a little bit more there, and like in sports they progress a little bit further each year.

He then goes on to talk about how opportunity comes into play as well. For example, he looks into computers, and computer programmers such as Bill Joy, Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs. Now obviously they were all smart enough to understand and figure out all the computer stuff that no one had before, but why were they the ones that did it? The reason is that they were young enough to have the newest technology at the time, but they were old enough that they were able to figure it out for the first time. It turns out that the three of them, although they all came from different places, were all born within a year of each other.

This story goes on to talk about many other successful/unsuccessful people, and the difference for why some, even with a 200 IQ are unsuccessful and others are. I don't want to spoil the whole thing, but it is definitely a book worth reading.

A Massacre at Lambeau

This past Sunday, November 16th, the 4-5 Green Bay Packers hosted the 5-4 Chicago Bears. It was a cloudy day with a high of 34 degrees, and yet the stadium was still jammed full of all the crazy cheeseheads. By the end of the first quarter, the score was 7-0 Green Bay on a 3 yard pass from quarterback Aaron Rodgers, to wide receiver Greg Jennings, and they wouldn't turn back after that.

After the first drive the Bears had in the second quarter, which ended in a field goal, they would not score again, and they only made it past midfield 3 times. Two drives later, Green Bay running back Ryan Grant capped off a 7 play drive, in which he had 40 rush yards, with a 4 yard touchdown run to give the Pack a 14-3 lead. The offensive line of Green Bay absolutely demolished Chicago's defensive line, allowing Grant to gain 145 rush yards and the touchdown. They also allowed the rest of the running backs a total of 50 yards, totalling 200 yards on the day. The week before, against an undefeated Tenessee team, the Bears only allowed twenty rush yards. Then to end the half, Green Bay kicker, Mason Crosby, hit a 53 yard field goal ending the half a 17-3 Green Bay.

The second half wasn't any better for the Bears, as the Packers scored another 20 points. The killer though for the Bears was when they finally got into Green Bay territory since the field goal Kyle Orton fumbles the snap, and Packer defensive end Jason Hunter picked it up and ran it all the way back for a touchdown. The Bears got into Packer territory twice more, once which ended in a failed 4th down conversion, and the other which ended the game, the final score being 37-3.

The Packers now lead the NFC North, although it is still extremely close, as Green Bay, Chicago, and Minnesota are all 5-5. Green Bay leads on division record, since they are 3-1, and have head-to-head against Chicago. Also, the Detroit Lions are not only bringing up the rear in the NFC North, but also in the league, as they are league-worst 0-10.

Is the Odyssey Really Necessary?

We just finished the Odyssey, which took over a month to complete, and which was a pain to read. Roughly 400 pages, we easily could have cut most of it out of the curriculum and just read the important parts. Also, lots of it is detail that shouldn't be needed could be cut out. The book could have versions designed for school purposes, and those designed for other literature purposes. For example, in the version for schools, most of the detail and unnecessary parts could be cut out, and there could be a part that analyzes what happens and explains the analytical thinking behind it. Then for the literature lovers, and people that only want the real deal, there can be a complete version like we have now.

Have Fantasy Sports Gone Too Far?

I love all the fantasy sports that I play. This includes football, baseball, basketball, and even occasionally soccer. I play on Yahoo, but there are numerous other sites, some have fantasy for all sports, like ESPN and Yahoo, where as others are designed for a specific sport like NFL.com or MLB.com. From what I have seen, just on Yahoo, is that fantasy is starting to be taken too seriously.

For football, there are programs (for you to BUY) that let you watch how each player is doing during the game that is going on. I find these useless, since once the game that includes your players has started, you are not allowed to change your roster to make your team better for that week. Besides watching the games on TV, which I am sure many fanatics do, on ESPN there is a FULL scoreboard of every game going on at any given time. Also, you can watch a gamecast which is almost like watching it live. Every 30 or 60 seconds the page refreshes itself showing what happened in the last play. Also, it shows the stats on the side so if you are desperate then you can look up the stats for each player that you have on your team. And fantasy has gone way past just football and baseball. There are now multiple different types of each, as well as numerous other sports including, golf, auto racing, and even fishing on some websites.

Fantasy is no longer a hobby, it has turned into a lifestyle . Almost 20 MILLION people in America play fantasy sports. Ranging from professional athletes themselves to doctors to business men to children, everyone is starting to become hooked. I can't pretend that I don't take part in this super time consuming "game." I am just as hooked as anyone else. If I have nothing to do, I go on Yahoo to see how my teams are doing. Even if i have already checked them that day, I still go on to search for new players that are becoming hot, or if I need to rotate my starting lineup based on how I think that each player will do.

There are some absolutely ridiculous statistics about how fantasy sports (football mainly) takes up our nation's workers and even money. According to a Sports Illustrated article (whose facts come from a Chicago research group) fantasy football will cost the United States approximately $9.2 BILLION dollars in lost work time this season and that is ONLY in football. That isn't even including all the other fantasy sports that take place during the year.

I am 15, and already I am addicted. My friends and I have played fantasy baseball, basketball, and football for 2 years, and we are already talking about "keeper" teams (Teams that are for leagues that stay together year after year as opposed to the singular season teams). Drafts have become full day events where everyone brings all the preseason rankings that they can find, and we all go down into one person's basement and only leave for the occasional bathroom break. I don't know how other drafts are, but I assume that they are almost as intense, if not more intense than ours.