Weighing In

Hello, all two of you. It's been awhile! So, what's going on in Dan Land? You guessed it... BULLETED LIST TIME!

• Browns went with Frye as the starting QB, and haven't yet named a backup. They kept Derek Anderson (which surprised me, as you might guess from my posts below) and got rid of Ken Dorsey. I don't know what God Anderson prays to, but I suspect many offerings were made over the weekend.


• I played two rounds of golf this past weekend, and am looking forward to another this weekend with my good buddy Jon, in advance of our pilgrimage to the Browns home opener this weekend. The courses look hard as hell, and I suspect my lunch will be handed to me early and often. In case you haven't heard, I'm not that good at golf.


• The Tribe went 5-0 against reigning Cy Young winner Johan Santana this season. I only feel safe in saying that since we will not face Santana again this year, thus making me unable to jinx any further 2007 appearances against him. First time ever a team has gone 5-0 against a reigning Cy Young winner.


• I'm only going to talk about this once, because I have grown tired of it already (thanks, ESPN). You all only get one free shot, so make it count. I can make no excuses for Michigan losing to Appalachian State. None. But, here are some things to consider, while trying to "rank" how "embarrassing" this game may have been. You may call them excuses if you wish, I don't care. Again, I'm making no excuses for the game itself; Michigan got outplayed, made too many mistakes, and had some questionable coaching moves. For your consideration:
  
  1. "Dan, it was the first time a 1-AA team EVER beat a ranked AP team!!! LOL!"
  Consider that it was the pre-season ranking, and that now Michigan is no longer ranked. Aren't there teams ranked too highly every year in the pre-season? If the BCS accounts for teams' rankings as they change, shouldn't it be the same, here, too? Michigan clearly is/was not the #5 team in the country, and it was a ranking assigned to them based on pre-season projections. Had this been week 7 and Michigan had already crushed two or three decently ranked teams, then by all means... call Elias Sports Bureau.
  
  2. Appalachian State isn't a run-of-the-mill 1-AA team.
  First, let me say I'm NOT letting my boys off the hook: Michigan still should have won the game, and if they played 10 times this year, UofM would probably go 9-1 against them. That said, remember that Appalachian State is probably going to be the #1 ranked 1-AA school the entire year (two-time defending national champs with a win against Michigan now), whereas Michigan is now currently out of the polls (see above); the AP voters certainly don't think they're one of the top 25 in the country anymore. And, one could argue/guess that, if ASU was in division 1-A, they would probably come in as maybe 70th out of 119 teams (let's be honest, there are some SHITTY 1-A teams out there). So, does it make the ASU win look a little less of a monumental upset if you consider it a 70-over-at-least-26 upset? 16-over-a-1 in the basketball tournament, I don't think so. This isn't some team with a 15-19 record winning a play-in game beating Florida in the baseketball tourney. Applachian State is a good fucking team, albeit playing in a smaller division. I mean, hell... the Cleveland Browns beat two AFC playoff teams last season! Consider this post from a sports blog, which I read as part of CNNSI's coverage:
  
  I do not think Appalachian State is getting enough respect here. If I believed everything I'm reading, I would think a ragtag group of high school kids just beat the Colts or the Patriots. This is HARDLY the case!
  
  Appalachian State is, obviously, the best team that 1-AA has to offer. They have won the 1-AA title two years in a row and have some really good players on there. While I don't think they would be worldbeaters in 1-A, I do think that in the right situation they would be respectable and make it to a bowl.
  
  Put another way: I would consider Michigan getting beat by some sorry 1-A also-ran like UCONN, Florida International or even Indiana a MUCH bigger upset than this. (BTW that hurts, because I am a UCONN fan). This is an upset for all time, but let's chill out on the hyperbole, just a little bit.
  
  3. Big Ten fans should remember where they come from.
  Make fun of us? Sure, why not? I've lived in Columbus long enough that I've heard it all. But, rememeber, after 9 months of hearing how bad the Big Ten is, how does this help you, OSU fan? Or you, Penn State fan? It doesn't. It makes your team look just a little bit worse, simply by association. What if Michigan beats you later this season? I'm sure you can all take the Peter Gibbons defense ("Yeah? Well that may be. But at least I never slept with Lumberg."), I guess, but you can't deny the fact that it makes the conference look worse.
  
  4. At least we didn't lose our home opener by 30, like Notre Dame did.
  This doesn't really help Michigan at all. It does, however, make me feel just a little bit better. Why? Because fuck Notre Dame, that's why.
  
  I've said my piece. I'm over it. It's like I told friends: I look at it now like the beginning of any Browns season. Whatever expectations I had are now gone, so I'm not going to dwell on it anymore. I'll just drink my beers, eat my chicken wings and bratwursts, and enjoy the so-called football. Everything else is gravy.


• House of Cards played a lack-luster show this past Saturday night at Scarlet and Grey. Nothing really important here, other than we're at least back to playing after my self-imposed hiatus while changing jobs and going to Ireland.


• Speaking of which, I changed jobs. Not sure if I mentioned that here. Onward and upward! I now work for my old company's parent company's Global Production and Manufacturing group, doing project management for our Pegasus online LMS/Assessment platform. I'll leave you all to discuss what that might mean in the grand scheme of things.


• And, speaking of Ireland, we finally got pictures uploaded and sent around on Snapfish. If you were not one of the lucky ones to receive the honor of seeing these pictures, please e-mail me and I will send them your way. Also, I do actually plan to document our trip here, but as we know I'm a lazy blogger and that has fallen pretty far down on the old "to do" list of late.


• Along the lines of e-mailing me, if anyone reading here was planning on finding themselves tailgating/pre-gaming for the Browns home opener this weekend, and would like to meet up for a drink (*cough*Steve*cough*), please e-mail me as well.


• Michael Vick. Hmm. Jon touched on this in his most recent entry (in short, he's tired of hearing about it, thinks Vick shouldn't be allowed back in the NFL, and is annoyed by people crying that it's a race issue). Rather than leave a huge-ass comment, I'll post my thoughts here:
  I totally agree. The climate of the news media in this country over the past five to six years has become such that I can barely even watch anymore. It's become all about selling papers/magazines, and getting eyeballs glued to TV sets. In the world of infinte 24-hour news (including ESPN) channels, everyone is clammoring for something to broadcast, to get people to watch, to get the ad dollars. They no longer care as much about the news as they do about being unique, and making money off of people (and, one could argue, off of people's tragedy). I mean, I love "Showdown: Iraq!" and "Terror at Virginia Tech" graphics and theme music as much as the next guy, but...
  
  It gives platforms to people who shouldn't have them, be they political hacks and blow-hards from both sides of the aisle, the Nancy Graces of the world who will say anything to be controversial, and have no real business being on TV, and in the sports world, people like Pedro Gomez (whose only job most of the last two years has been filing daily reports about Barry Bonds). It trivializes journalism to the point where the real journalists left in this country are so hard to find, it drives people like me away from the media altogether, and creates a largely dumbed-down population who only get sound bites and watered down news.
  
  The reason I take this round-about relative to Michael Vick is twofold:
  1: This allows people to further agendas, such as "Oh, this is about race." No, it really, really isn't. Just like Chris Rock's old rant/joke about OJ Simpson: "This isn't about race, it's about fame. If OJ wasn't famous, this wouldn't be news. If OJ drove a bus, he wouldn't even be OJ. He'd be Orenthal, the Bus-Drivin' Murderer." But, I digress. There's no way to say that Vick is being treated in a racially unfair way, because a white NFL quarterback has never been federally indicted for running a dog-fighting ring and executing dogs. How can you compare and say Vick is being treated unfairly because he's black? If anything, he's being treated unfairly by the media, but not by the Justice System. And, do we honestly think the media would let a story about a famous white person go, if he/she we accused in a federal trial for *anything*? It's not like the Feds had some circumstancial case and Vick is/was being railroaded. It really is all about fame. If it was me going to trial for this, seeing as how I don't have any money to hire awesome lawyers, I'm going to the clink for a long time, and I can damn-sure bet you wouldn't be hearing about this on your 6 o'clock news unless you lived in Columbus, and even then the story would come and go in a matter of days. Vick's going to be getting off easy, if anything.
  
  And, 2: I love my dog, and neither my wife nor I could imagine our lives without him. I think what Vick and his co-defendents are/were accused of doing is horrible, and I could never imagine doing such things to ANY living thing, for entertainment or otherwise. But let's not miss the bigger picture as well: while this stuff is totally cruel, inhumane, and makes my stomach turn, it also saddens me that there are tens of millions of adults and children in the country without health care, and there are American soldiers dying every day for no discernable (to my eyes, anyway) reason in Iraq. Shouldn't the media be talking more about that shit, too? I know Michael Vick puts butts in seats and gets the protesters out in force for both sides, but can't we all agree that there are bigger fucking issues that we should be dealing with?
  
  As to whether or not Vick should play again, I'm fairly ambivolent. He's going to have to prove a lot to ever really get a chance to do so, because the American public will not be quick to forget this. The other thing to remember is that new commish Roger Goodell is ruling with a pretty iron fist, and this thing has been embarrassing to him and his league. He won't let that go by lightly. Vick has AT LEAST a year to sit AFTER he gets out of the can, if not longer. I've heard 2010 at the earliest. That makes him 31 (I believe), and having not played NFL football for 3 years. Again, he's going to have a lot to prove, even just from a physical standpoint, to make it back to the League. And this is a QB who was never that great a passer to begin with, a QB who runs first, and who will at that time be past his relative prime as an athlete. As Red said in The Shawshenk Redemption, "They send you here for life, and that's exactly what they take." Time slows for no one, man.


• Damn, that was a long-ass, John Kerry style bullet point! Karl Rove would fire my ass immediately!


• My work fantasy football draft was yesterday. My team eats it. Raw. My Browns-Tailgater-Crew team is much better, and that was a computer auto-draft as I was out of town. The lesson? I think you know.

Well, that's all folks. Hope your eyes don't hurt.