Game Two - Penguins at Flames

I'm gonna post a new illo every gameday until the Pens lose their first game of the season. We'll see how long this takes!

All I Do Is Win...

"All I do is win, win, win no matter what, got money on my mind, I can never get enough, and every time I step up in the building, everybody hands go up..." -DJ Khaled-

Welcome to the eve of another football weekend everyone.  Just poking a little fun at my not so perfect record last weekend with the lyrics above, although we got a couple of games right.  Looking back to last weekend, my overall record was 3-3 in the college games and 2-1 on the NFL picks.  In the college matchups of top 15 teams, I was right about Wisconsin and Clemson, and I missed on Florida, although none of these games ended up being the coinflips that I envisioned (Wisconsin 48 Nebraska 14, Clemson 23 Virginia Tech 3, Alabama 38 Florida 10).  In the games involving Texas teams, I was right about the Longhorns, and whiffed on the other two (Texas 37 Iowa State 14, Arkansas 42 Texas A&M 38, Kansas State 36 Baylor 35).  First off, tough weekend to be an A&M fan and a Cowboys fan I imagine...  I thought A&M had the Hogs, the way that the game started.  Second, I need to give a SHOUTOUT to Kathryn, one of my former kiddos who is up in Manhattan, and got to experience the atmosphere of the underdog Wildcats knocking off the Bears from Baylor.  EMAW!!! (Every Man A Wildcat).  ;)  On my NFL picks last Sunday, I lost my favorite play of the week, the over in the Pats/Raiders game (Pats 30 Raiders 19 - failing to get to 57 by about a touchdown).  However, Detroit (+3.5) and the Giants (-1.5) did cover (Lions 34 Cowboys 30, Giants 31 Cardinals 27), but both had to make bizarre comebacks for me to take those.  I will spare you Dallas fans reliving it, except to say that one of my friends who was preparing to go out after the game said that he was singing in the shower at halftime after watching the Cowboys sprint out to that huge lead... 

On to this weekend's games...  One of my co-workers told me that he is a loyal follower of the blog, and since I may have four of you at this point, I told him that I would take my chances on the Notre Dame games each week.  If anyone else has a team that they want me to handicap each week, let me know.  I am going to continue picking the college games straight up and giving you my top NFL plays of the week with the spread-over/under since that is the way that I started doing it last week,   The Irish are hosting the Air Force Academy this weekend, and I am taking the Irish at home.  Notre Dame had a nice road win at Purdue last weekend, and I think that the Falcons may have a little hangover from their overtime win at the Naval Academy last Saturday.  The other matchups I'm looking at come from games featured in a college pick 'em contest that I'm in, most of which are intended to be difficult to pick.  I will pick the 24th-ranked Texas A&M Aggies in Lubbock against Texas Tech tomorrow, mainly on the strength of the competition that the Aggies have faced so far, but A&M better be careful out there.  I don't know if they'll be able to withstand another disappointment after their near misses against Oklahoma State and Arkansas.  I'm going to take Nebraska at home against Ohio State, in a spot similar to A&M's.  The Cornhuskers do not want to come out of the Big 10 gate with another loss after all of the hoopla of entering the conference, and Ohio State is down right now.  Bill Snyder may get me again, but I'm going to pick Missouri at 20th-ranked Kansas State.  Missouri played Oklahoma to 10 points, and K-State HAS to lose one of these close ones SOMETIME, right?...  Oklahoma vs. Texas - the little game up in the Metroplex that will jam up I-35 North later this afternoon...  I have worked for the University of Texas, I will be rooting for the Longhorns, but I have to take Oklahoma to win this one.  The Sooners have played a few tough teams this year already, and they have a proven, experienced quarterback.  Although Texas has bounced back nicely after last year, they have been rotating inexperienced quarterbacks this year, and they are playing a lot of young kids in key positions.  In NFL contests, I like the New Orleans/Carolina game to go over 51 points.  Both of these teams have been playing a lot of offense and not so much defense so far this season.  I also like the Jets/Patriots game to go under 49 points.  I think that the hard-hitting nature of the renewal of this rivalry, plus my perceived perception that the Jets won't want Mark Sanchez gift-wrapping turnovers like he did against the Ravens can keep this score under.  I'm also going to pick the Lions (-5) against the Bears.  I just have a hunch that the atmosphere at Ford Field with a 4-0 Lions team on Monday night is going to be very similar to the post Katrina Superdome home-opener on a Monday night a few years back when the Saints crushed the Falcons.  Have a great weekend football fans!
       

It's a Great Day for Hockey

'Nuff said.

Actually, not quite enough. My Stanley Cup pick? Pens over Sharks, for the fifth consecutive year.

Blogging

Posting my sixth blog entry, I thought that some of you might be interested in blogging itself - how to start a blog, how much money it takes, is it easy or difficult to do, etc...  You can start a blog for as little as FREE, which is what I have done, using www.blogger.com as my host site (www.blogspot.com is essentially the same site).  I myself have really only followed one blog, http://pkrdlr.blogspot.com, which is titled, 'Life as a Las Vegas Poker Dealer'.  The blog is written by a friend of mine that I met while I lived in Las Vegas, and as you can see looking at the link, it's at blogspot.com - when I decided to use the same site for my blog, it linked me to blogger.com, so what I'm saying again is that they are basically the same host.  The site gives you templates to choose from for your background and your page layout (for those of you that know me well, I am NOT an artist), it allows you the option of featuring advertisements (with the possibility of making money from them), and you get to make decisions in many other areas.  It really is simple to set up the blog - you just need to complete a simple registration, which includes having a title for your blog, so be prepared to provide one, because I had to think one up while I was sitting at my computer registering.  With my blog still being in its infancy, I am sure that most of you following it at this point clicked on a link from your facebook page.  If you do get into blogging, there are many websites out there which can be used to promote your blog.  Some of them do not charge you to register, and the one that I am going to sign up with is www.blogcatalog.com.  Their site is free, but to submit your blog to be included in their database, you have to have done at least 10 posts, so after I hit the 'publish' button in a little while, I will be more than halfway there.  Blogcatalog.com also asks you which category you want your blog to be listed under (for their search engine), and mine seems to be a combination of sports and humor (the best matches that I can make from the choice of categories that they offer).

Back to the advertising that you may choose to be allowed space on your blogpage, the ads are placed there, in part, by the content in your blog postings.  I have enjoyed following the different ads placed by and below my postings as I have started this.  When I did my first true sports post this weekend, including my football predictions, those types of ads showed up on the site, where you can get football picks.  I have also had ad placements by ITT, Marriott, and Ramada, among others.  When you are in your account at the site, you can click on the number of pageviews that you have had (I am officially over 100 now, thank you), and a lot of information becomes available to you.  You can click on a 'traffic sources' button, and it shows you how your visitors found you.  I now have visitors from three sites that are not facebook.  For those of you who are not one of my facebook friends, they are the ones who have helped to get this blog off the ground, because to this point I have done nothing to get the word out other than posting the blog link on my facebook page.  The information is anonymous, so I cannot tell who is reading the blog, only how they were directed here.  Clicking on the 'audience' button gives me three interesting pieces of information.  First, I know which countries the readers are connecting from.  At this time, I have had 6 hits from Russia, and 1 hit from Germany.  The second piece of information provided is the type of browser that the user is viewing my page with - in order of most hits to least, you are viewing my posts on Internet Explorer, Mobile Safari, Mobile, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Opera.  The third type of pageview information provided relates to the viewer's operating system - again, in order of most hits, you are using Windows, Android, iPhone, BlackBerry, Macintosh, and Samsung.  You can click on an 'overview' button to see how many hits your blog has had each day. 

I know that this little blog entry really didn't have anything to do with sports and that it wasn't very funny, but I wanted to get out some information in case any of you were interested in started your own blog at some point. Of course, this does get me one post closer to having my blog reviewed for approval at Blogcatalog.com...  ;)  Have a great day everyone!
 

Fantasy Football

I am sitting here at home on a lazy Monday afternoon, my Saturday as this work week has played out, currently watching the Rangers/Rays baseball game as I wait for tonight's THRILLER between the Indianapolis Colts and the Tampa Bay Bucs.  When I talk to people who are not very familiar with fantasy football, tonight's matchup is one of the textbook examples of a reason that I give endorsing the popular pastime.  For those of you who are not very familiar with fantasy football, it is actually a pretty simple game to play.  I will admit, the first time that I ever heard the term 'FANTASY fooball', I reacted with a roll of my eyes and a "huh?"  How the game works is that you build a team by selecting players from any of the 32 NFL rosters.  In standard leagues, you will select 16 players total - each week you will start 9 of those 16 players, having a 7-player bench.  Your team scores points based on how your players perform in the ACTUAL NFL games, accumulating points for positive plays (gaining yardage, scoring touchdowns, kicking field goals, etc...), while losing points for negative plays (fumbles, thrown interceptions, etc...).  Each league has its own specific scoring system, determining how many points you will receive or have deducted for these outcomes.  Each week, your team is matched up against the team of someone else in your league, and the person whose players score the most points wins.  One of my favorite things about fantasy football is that it makes normally uninteresting games worth watching, because during most games each week, you will either be rooting for one of your players who is playing in a game, or you will be rooting against one of your opponent's players.  When the NFL made tonight's schedule, a Week 4 matchup between the Colts and Bucs looked pretty attractive (the 'Dungy Bowl', if you will, both teams having been coached by Tony Dungy).  The Bucs played very well last year, and are a team that is on the rise.  The Colts have been one of the most interesting teams to watch in the league for a while now, scoring tons of points each year, with superstar Peyton Manning at the helm.  Fast forward to today, and Peyton Manning has not taken a single snap this year due to injury, and the Colts are winless.  HOWEVER, the game has a huge impact to me personally in fantasy football, as most Monday night games seem to.  Monday night games are set to feature meetings between the better teams, who have the good players that fantasy football owners want on their own teams.  My 9 players have finished playing for the week, and I hold a 16-point lead over my opponent, but she has Colts' running-back Joseph Addai on her roster, so I will be watching an otherwise meaningless game with A LOT of interest tonight.  I am playing in two leagues this year, and I will have two teams with 3-1 records if Addai scores less than 16 points tonight.  One of my teams is just like the Houston Texans right now, sitting at 3-1 but with an injured Andre Johnson on the roster...  That team is in a random online league that I joined, a league in which I got the Baltimore Ravens defense in the 9th or 10th round.  In this league, points ARE NOT deducted from a team's score when the defense allows their opposition to score, and the Ravens have scored more than 20 points for me in all 3 of my wins.  In the league that I'm playing in with a bunch of friends (where I'm facing Addai tonight), my 1st 2 picks were Tom Brady and LeSean McCoy, and they have been leading the way.  Being a Boston Red Sox fan, I cannot wait until this Rangers/Rays game, this..., filler, is finished, so that I can watch a game that actually means something.  :)  Have a good one everybody!
 

If I Was In Las Vegas....

I always wanted to be a major league baseball player when I was growing up.  I LOVED playing the outfield, chasing down fly balls, making diving and sliding catches, throwing out baserunners - LOVED IT.  As I have grown older, the time of year that I look forward to the most is football season.  I moved to Texas after I graduated from high school, and I am sure that is part of the reason, as popular as the sport is here.  The event that football has become, where parties are planned around games, the huge explosion of fantasy football, the ease of betting and watching multiple games at once when I lived in Las Vegas for a couple of years - all are factors I am sure.

The timing of my blog starting this week blends well with the menu of great matchups that are taking place this weekend in college football.  Three huge battles of 4-0 teams taking place today, with #3 Alabama @ #12 Florida, #8 Nebraska @ #7 Wisconsin, and #13 Clemson @ #11 Virginia Tech - a few of MANY interesting games today.    As I do these weekend sports posts during the infancy of this blog, I will make predictions for each weekend's games (I LOVE making predictions) just to keep things interesting.  I can already see that there is a possibility that at some point this blog may morph into a 2nd solely sports-related blog, but I want to see how writing one goes, so I'll stick mainly to the weekend with the sports for now.  With as many 'coinflips' as there are in college football this weekend, I'm not going to include betting lines or spreads with these picks, but I'll just pick my projected winners.

 If I was in Las Vegas this week, and had to bet these games...  I would take Florida in the Bama/Florida game - I like that the Gators are playing at home, and I like that it is Will Muschamp's first really big game.  I think that the Swamp will be a tough road spot today.  I would take the Badgers in the Nebraska/Wisconsin game.  Again, the home-field could be big in this one (if I'm not mistaken, Wisconsin hasn't played a road game yet this year, but since I'm not betting it, I'm not looking it up...).  ;)  I like Clemson at Virginia Tech.  The Tigers have played some tough opponents this year, and until they lose, I think that I am going to stick with them (while not betting any games, I have been picking the Tigers in all of my ESPN contests).  Again, all three of these games are flips, and nothing would surprise me.  Closer to home, I look for Texas to win today at Iowa State.  The Longhorns are playing much better this year - it's amazing what a few new coordinators and a few new recruits can do.  The Cyclones beat Texas last year, and I'm positive that the Horns remember that.  I like Texas A&M against Arkansas.  This is a spot where you have to be careful if you are making bets.  ESPN lists the game as being at Arkansas, but the game is actually being played at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, NOT the same thing.  This is a #14 vs. #18 matchup (another flip), but the Aggies loss is a one-point loss to Oklahoma State, so I'm going with them.  I'm picking Baylor at Kansas State, but I don't think that the Bears will win by as much as some people think (ESPN's Gameday did a feature story on Robert Griffin earlier this morning) - both of these teams are 3-0, and K-State isn't a pushover at home. 

The NFL...  Kinda wishing that I had started this blog earlier now.  On facebook a week or two before the regular season started, I predicted that the Kansas City Chiefs would not make the playoffs this year (0-3 right now), and I also predicted that the Houston Texans would not only make their first playoff appearance, but that they would win the AFC South outright (2-1 right now).  Trust me, I would not lie to you (well, I might, but I'm not lying about this)...  ;)  My favorite play in the NFL this week is the over in the Patriots/Raiders game.  Depending on when you bet the game, the number is in the upper 50's, but the total in both the Oakland/Buffalo game and the New England/Buffalo game was well over that range, so that's the play I'd make.  In the spirt of the Clemson Tigers and sticking with a team until they prove me wrong, I would take the Lions with the points at Dallas.  Romo is still hurting, Austin is still out, Jones is still dinged up, the Cowboys still have the same offensive line...  Dallas has played admirably considering the injury troubles they've had, and are close to being undefeated also, but I'd take the Lions.  I also like the way that the Giants looked last week against Philly, and would take them against the Cardinals.  It looks like Brandon Jacobs is out of the doghouse that he's been in, and the game that keeps sticking in my mind for Arizona is a 16-10 game with the Seahawks - Seattle has been thoroughly unimpressive in my eyes this year....  The blog will still be here Monday so that you can ridicule my picks in hindsight...  :)  I have 2 fantasy teams this year that are both 2-1, but I'll talk more about fantasy football later on.  I definitely won't be making a blog entry tomorrow, so I hope that everyone enjoys their football and has a great weekend!

Cruel, Cruel Summer...

This post is not about the song recorded by the group Bananarama, for those of you old enough to remember that tune.  The Summer of 2011 has easily been the most difficult, frustrating, and exhausting summer of my life.  The months of June and July are the focal point of my discontent.  I can without hesitation relay that I am ecstatic that the calendar has now turned to the month of October. 

During the 13 months preceding June 2011, I was working with good people at the University of Texas, and lived so close to campus that I actually walked to work and took the campus shuttle buses home.  My job started too early in the morning each day to take the bus to work, but considering that I was spending ZERO on gasoline when the cost of gas was near $4.00 a gallon, I didn't complain at all about my morning commute.  I saved enough money during this time to leave my job at the end of May, having enough in the bank to pay my bills for June and July, when my lease ended.  There was also enough money to invest in the job search that would result in my return to teaching and coaching, with enough left over for moving expenses and my first 2 months of rent, at which point the checks from my new school district would kick in.  Not so fast....  After paying coaching association membership fees (which allow you to use access job postings online), driving to interviews all over the state (eleven I believe), and spending money on coaching clinic fees (allowing me to interview in person with multiple districts for jobs that were still vacant), I was shut out.  I completely understand the state of our economy, and am fully aware that I was not the only person who was unable to find a job in the education field this summer.  My problems are with the school districts that had me driving across the state during the summer, in my vehicle with no AC, getting 20 miles per gallon, in situations that: (1)  They called me in to interview just because they have a minimum number of candidates to interview before making a hire;  (2)  They focused on the fact that I had not taught a cetain subject or subjects for a while, when they clearly knew that BEFORE making me drive 3 or 4 hours, having already received my resume';  and (3)  They told me that they would call me and inform me of their hiring decision when it had been made, which did not happen in more than half of these cases.  Number 3 is the one that really burns me, although they all do.  Knowing the state of this economy, and then just having someone spend in the neighborhood of 100 dollars round-trip, and then... just... blowing them off...  Yeah.....
I reached the end of July scrambling for a place to stay, and scrambling to find some type of work.  It is very nice to have good friends and family, let me tell you.  My sister had agreed to let me stay with her and her kids if the need arose, which I gratefully did for close to three weeks.  A good friend of mine, learning of my summer, hired me to work at a job that he told me "wouldn't make me rich", but I was working within a week of speaking to him.  In the near future I will do a full blog post on my workplace, but for now I will just say that I work at a great venue with a lot of great people, and that the Texas Music Theater deserves a full post.  My heart goes out to everyone who is struggling financially, and I hope that this stagnant economy soon passes, just as this summer has...