Category Archives: Football

What team should I cheer for?

The Vikings are done.  Furthermore, I think the season is going to get worse.  “Land Baron” Brett Favre will either get benched (deservedly) or possibly  suspended (debatable.)   Have you seen Jenn Sterger?  She looks like a 20 year old version of his wife… but its creepy that she is younger than his daughters…  he’ll probably be suspended from the bedroom until further notice, anyway.  Take Favre away and we have T-Jack – I am hopeful given another set of starts he’ll show a lot of  improvement from the last time.

That said, I need another NFL team to get behind.  I wanted to cheer for the Broncos, but they are pretty far back in their division as well – and let’s face it, their the Broncos.  The Patriots and Steelers are just bandwagon choices and the NFC North is also out (Bears, Lions, Packers).

So, dear readers, who should I cheer for?

–Nat

Epic Choke Job by the Vikings

What hurt the most about the loss last night to New Orleans Saints was that it was a game, barring one statistic, that the Vikings should have won.

Look at these stats!

The Vikings had twice as many first downs, twice as many yards and ten minutes more time of possession.  Perhaps the only truly glaring team mistake was the yardage allowed on kick returns; a long kick return to start off Over Time basically sealed the deal.  Even on penalties, the Saints did worse despite the crowd noise.  The fact remains that they shouldn’t have been in overtime at all except for one important stat.

Turn overs.  Six fumbles, three lost.  That must be some sort of record.  New Orleans put the ball on the ground three times and only lost it once.  That punt return fumble by Reggie Bush should have resulted in at least three points (no overtime!) but AP and Favre managed to bungle a hand off about three seconds later and give it back to the Saints.  Brett Favre had two interceptions whereas Brees had none.  Too bad Favre threw the interception at the end of the game that took Minnesota out of the drivers seat for what happened to be the rest of the game.

It was like the offense just didn’t want to win!  Two opponent red zone lost fumbles, one in our own red zone that set up a New Orleans TD.  The defense did their part I believe, it has to be almost impossible to keep the other team from scoring when they get the ball on your ten yard line.

Bottom line, the Vikings had a great team and a great shot at winning a super bowl this year.   They’ll still be a good team next year but it is hard to believe that they will do this well and have so many of the right pieces again.    It is really disappointing.  Dave Brahn welcomed me to Vikings fanhood after the loss last night.

Thanks, I guess.

–Nat

Sunday night musings… (mostly football)

Well folks, its been another weekend that has swept by too fast.  It was great to see so many friends, a huge thanks to everyone we were able to see this weekend.  The big bummer about why we visited with so many friends is that Kristin is going to be in another country and seperated by a huge time differential for seven weeks.  Booo.  Remember you have friends and family here who love and miss you, baby!

There will be upcoming posts about what I am going to be doing to keep myself busy that will sound pretty fun.  The fact of the manner is that most of those things would happen anyway, it would be so much better if Kristin were here through all of them.  Let’s all hope that she has an awesome time 🙂

The Vikings game was a snoozer as predicted, although I think they let the Rams score the most points in a single game that they have scored this season, ten.  Much more unfortunate were the twins being routed in the baseball playoffs.  That means they won’t get a game two here in the cities which has to mean millions of dollars in revenue lost not only to the Twins association but to the surrounding area.  Keeping all those folks here for another two days would be have been huge money.  The best case scenario would have been splitting the first two games with the Yankees.  At that point, Yankees fans would have felt obliged to come to make sure they didn’t miss the final game of the series.  Since New York won the first two games fans knew that no matter what happened, they wouldn’t miss the game where the Yankees had a chance of being eliminated.  Joe Nathan, you blew it.

The Cyclones managed to not win their game either.  It is heartening to see how close they have come the last two games to winning.  This means that wins against Baylor and Colorado should be possible.  Let’s face it, they won two games last year.  Four or five would be giant steps in the right direction.  As we can see in the NFL even more clearly, coaches make or break teams (See Broncos, Titans etc.)  It could be that Iowa State actually has a really decent one on their hands.  A couple bowl apperances with a win would be pretty awesome and make Iowa State known for something more than their tail gating.

Kristin should feel pretty good about beating me at Fantasy Football after giving me crap about not teaching her enough about how it works 🙂  As a matter of fact, she would have beat anyone in our league.  My Pick ’em league also looks darn bleak, eight incorrect choices so far, although it looks like Peyton is giving me my fifth correct pick.  I was pulling for Denver but picked the Patriots.  Doh.  Baltimore!  You lost to Cincinatti!  How horrible!  By far my worst week in that league so far…

Work & Class tomorrow.  Yay.  😉

–Nat

Week 4 in the NFL, etc.

Whew, so many great games today and we haven’t even gotten to the best one – the Vikings vs. Packers.  🙂  I enjoyed seeing the end of the Pats vs. Ravens game and really enjoyed the entire game of Denver vs. Dallas.  Who would have thought the Broncos would look so legitimate heading into week five, and that Dallas would look so poor?

There is a pretty big bummer goin’ on right now, however.  ESPN fantasy football is broken due to login issues.  Very lame.  I want to see how my rookies did today and I am out of luck.  Pulling for Big Ben tonight as I sat Tom Brady to play him.  I hated doing it, but I figured that the Ravens defense would be a little more stingy.  I am looking forward to the Ravens vs. Patriots post season game, that should be pretty awesome.  Maybe I am wrong, but I believe the Ravens just lost home field advantage in that game and playing if Foxboro in January is huge…

It was a bummer that IA State had the field goal blocked.  So close to that first conference win, and now they are so far away…

Shout out to Dan Tonkin today, who finished his first marathon in literally five ticks under five minutes.  Kristin, the Mooneys and I supported him along the way at three stops but the mental fortitude required to accomplish running 26 miles is nothing short of amazing.

*UPDATE 10/06/2009*

The Vikings beating the Packers 30-23 was incredibly fun to watch.  Kristin watched the game with me, so that was pretty awesome too 🙂

–Nat

Ames Iowa, a fun place!

Kristin and I went down to Ames this weekend along with the Mooney’s. After leaving late on Friday night, Derek and Meghan did a great job of driving us down there and we got to spend a little time with Liz and her house mate before enjoying the air mattress in the living room.

Saturday Kristin and I enjoyed awesome Pizza Ranch Buffet after dropping off Liz for her rehearsal and pictures. While Liz was there, I downloaded and installed on PlayOn so that we could see how much functionality could be squeezed out of Liz’s new xbox 360.  It seemed to work pretty well, but kept dropping out when we tried to watch Dr. Horribles Sing Along blog.  It ended up working on Sunday, but caused no end of frustration during the twenty minutes I tried to get it working.  I’ll blog more about that some other time.

I picked up Liz and dropped her off again when my dad showed up with the tickets with Mike Cooley.   Jason and Derek showed up shortly later and we all headed off to tail gate just north east of the stadium.    While we were tailgating, a helicopter circled and dropped a paratrooper who we believe delivered the game ball.  It was only about 4:30, so it was hard to tell what point was because the game wasn’t until six.

About 5:15 we headed into the stadium and were treated to a great performance as expected from the band and a surprising victory from the football team.

The Iowa State Varsity Marching Band

Click on the pic for the real deal...

The Iowa State Varsity Marching Band #2

Click on the link for the real deal...

Sitting at the game, I got really thirsty.  Despite a raised eyebrow from Kristin, I decided to buy a cup of pop.  Kristin decided to get a picture of the cup to commemorate the occasion.

It was tasty. Yep.

It was tasty. Yep.

We finished up the game, said goodbye to my dad,  hung out with Liz & Brad at Old Chicago, and that was our Saturday.  Liz seems to be doing really well down there which is really awesome.  “The Rental” in Ames is so much nicer than than “The Rental” was in Waverly that there really is no comparison. It’s really exciting that Brad is cruising towards both graduation and getting married next year, too.

Sunday featured some tasty Chinese food, hanging out with Liz and an uneventful ride home with the Mooneys.  Conversation is always good in the vibe… 🙂

–Nat

Vikings Win, 10-6 on the PickEm, Cyclones Win

It’s going to be a better week as the Vikings won, what is really pretty crazy is that the Vikings appear to be a second half team this year as  both of their wins have come out of second half rallies.  Admittedly, both of the teams were pretty awful.  The Browns got blown out by Denver this week, Detroit is Detroit.  We’ll see how they fare against San Francisco next week, another team that is also 2-0.  At least it will be a home game, with the winning record it shouldn’t be blacked out.

PickEm was rougher as expected, especially as I lost big points on the Patriots, not too mention the failure of starting Brady in one of my fantasy leagues.  Philip Rivers turned out to be a good start in my other league, and holy crap Frank Gore.  You and Adrian Peterson single-handedly filled out my skilled positions score…

Yesterday was the day the Cyclones broke their record-setting 18 away game losing streak at Kent State.  I have to believe they paid Kent State even more than other years so they could play them on the road.  Ah well, a win is a win even though it apparent they still have issues at the QB position.  Kristin and I are looking forward to traveling to Ames and seeing the Cyclones handle Army.  They should handle Army, anyway.  They should be able to beat Colorado and with any luck surprise a Big 12 school at home.  Four or five wins coming off a year in which they one two games.

I should note that I am using the “Clone Zone” streaming audio to enjoy the games.  Wish it was free, but at the same time it is pretty amazing that it all works.  A decade ago, I would have been simply out of luck.  I wish I could buy the games singly instead of signing up for a subscription.  Its the kind of thing that I will remember the day after I get charged for another month…  I’ll keep it for the whole season if they can stay in games.  The Iowa game was embarrassing to listen to.

–Nat

Pro Football 2009, Week 2

Today should be a pretty exciting day for Vikings fans with the team on the road to Detroit. If Detroits defensive performance against New Orleans (Drew Brees threw for *six* touchdowns) is any indication, the Vikings should be able to roll over them. Will that happen? Unlikely, the Vikings always seem to play to the same level as Detroit. Let’s just hope they win, that’s what has to happen…

My Yahoo! Pro Football Pick ’em is bound to get worse this week, as I had a perfect set of picks last week. Pulling for the Browns, Cardinals, and the 49er’s as upsets this week, I think.

Which reminds me, I need to go tweak another fantasy league – get Percy Harvin up into my starting lineup…

–Nat