COLLEGE FREAKING BASKETBALL

I love college basketball.
I could end the post right there, because from this point I'm just gonna ramble on that topic.
I'm gonna ramble like Seth McFarlane when he runs out of ideas.

Anyway, I watched the majority of the UNC/OSU game tonight, and it has led me to believe that UNC has "it." There are routine studies to find out what exactly "it" is, but I'm pretty sure that UNC has whatever that thing happens to be. Having said that, OSU's good too - Greg Oden should be interesting to see in action. There's a lot of factors - as proven by things like Amare Stoudemire coming back into the Suns' lineup last year, you don't just come back and instantly help the team out and be a star player...there's chemistry issues, there's physical issues, etc. However, that guy's huge - and according to your mother, size matters.

In other college basketball news, I believe I have a sweet 16 to pick....so without further ado, I bring you Kevin Nye's end-of-November Sweet 16 projections:
1. North Carolina - Hansbrough and co. have enough to get them into the 3rd ring of the tourney...however, might not have the size to make it to the finals.
2. Georgetown - Hibbert owns the inside, case closed.
3. OSU - yeah...don't really know what else to say.
4. Florida - This is a no-brainer. All 5 returning from the defending champs.
5. Kansas - Just pulled off a wild win vs. Florida a few days ago, proving that they've got the talent. However, Kansas always loses early, so keep an eye on that one.
6. Nevada - Nick Fazekas is too good to be stopped before the sweet 16...he's about to win his 3rd straight conference player of the year.
7. Arizona - Lute Olsen's got a hell of a crew in there, Chase Budinger is 6'7 with a 42" vertical...that's sick (he was also national high school volleyball player of the year...imagine his intramural team, eh? oh yeah, and he averaged 34 points and 11 boards a game in high shcool...nasty).
8. UConn - Jim Calhoun gets it done with zero returning starters.
9. Texas - This is actually a surprise pick since Texas is also returning zero starters. But Kevin Durant will win big 12 player of the year - write that down...oh...I guess I already did. nevermind.
10. UCLA - I'm not entirely sold on them, but they did make the final 4 last year, and I don't know much about the PAC-10, but they get the nod here.
11. LSU/Alabama - I know, I'm cheating by picking 2 teams...but it's only because I'm not sold on either of these teams...but they're very highly rated, and Alabama's returning 4 starters...building on last year's 2nd round exit...LSU obviously had the final 4. But still, I think Big Baby is too trimmed down and he'll get eaten up inside...and they'll just not be that good.
12. Wichita State - can't exclude the Shockers for 2 reasons; 1 is that they beat tennessee as a 15 seed last year and are coming back with 4 out of their 5, and 2 is that their freaking name is the shockers.
13. Syrause - No McNamara, no problem, I say. Their other 4 are back and they have a sick frosh...and that pesky 2-3 they run is damn near perfect when Jim Boeheim gets a hold of them.
14. Southern Illinois - Salukis reppin' the MVC....biatch.
15. San Diego State - Aztec love mothafuckaz. Got the probably mountain west winners in here.
16. Gonzaga - Chuck helped this pick. I hated Morrison, but I like Raivio, Josh Heytvelt is pretty solid in the post, and Altidor-Cespedes was the sneaky stud on that team last year...so what the hell, Prueter gets the call.

That's it brothers and sisters. Those are my sweet 16 picks.
Obviously, since I can only pick about 11 out of 16 correctly when I have the list of the 32 available teams in front of me, I don't expect to get more than about 8 of these correct. Oh well, such is life. I figure 8 right is about as good as 8 wrong.
I'm talkin more nonsense than a Vietnamese prostitute on a military camp, I gotta stop.
Come on Cavs...let's get it back together.
Browns? you're almost dead to me...but like a dead family member, I still love ya.
sigh.

My letter to FSN

I hate it when seemingly intelligent television stations do stupid things. Last year at that little school east of here I wrote a scathing letter to comcast cable after they managed to show the same bengals/steelers game on both of their cbs channels. Profane, angry, yet structured. Ultimately I got a response that basically said they'd be forced to put my opinions in the trash folder. ...seems pretty stupid to me, considering an angry opinion means a lot more than a rational, calm opinion...if you ask me that is. Anyway, I decided to take a hint from those retards and send a letter along to FSN Ohio discussing how they've shown the Blue Jackets instead of the Cavaliers each of the last two times they've each played simultaneously.
So, here it is.


I'm a student at Ohio University, hailing from the Cleveland area, and I'm appalled at the fact that twice in a row, FSN Ohio has showed the Columbus Blue Jacket hockey game instead of the Cleveland Cavaliers basketball game. I realize that we're geographically closer to Columbus than Cleveland, but here is a list of reasons that this scheduling :
1. The Blue Jackets have the worst record in their division.
2. The Cavaliers have the best record in their conference.
3. LeBron James is the most marketable athlete in the world today - providing the Cavaliers with one of the largest fan-bases in the NBA.
4. The NHL locked out for an entire season and came back - yet no one seemed to notice; the NHL is the least-watched professional sport short of the WNBA.
5. I have never met anyone who can name more than 1 player on the Columbus Blue Jackets.
6. I don't know anyone who can't name 1 player on the Cleveland Cavaliers (this is clearly related to #3).

The bottom line is that it's preposterous to put any NHL game (the Stanley Cup last year drew worse ratings than regular season MLB games...which is embarassing) on instead of any NBA game - especially when said NBA game features 2 of the league's best players in LeBron James and Kevin Garnett.
In closing, I understand that FSN Ohio is contracted to show games featuring both of these teams; I just find it ridiculous to think that the last two times they played simultaneously, the Blue Jackets were deemed more important.
I expect changes.


There you have it. I expect changes, and a response.
Based on the response I get, I might not only post the response, but then counter-argue and unleash the proverbial beast on them. I'm pumped.

Basketball season.

I'm so pumped that basketball's back. This is the best time of the year. I love this. When do I ever seem this excited about a post? During basketball season, that's when.
Everything is good about this. I'm watching some NIT regional finals - gonzaga vs. baylor. I must say, I like the zags a lot more now that Morrison's gone - I can't stand him. They got Raivio back, and they have Pierre Altidor-Cespedes...whose nickname is in the works. Baylor's getting killed, but I will continue to watch because it's college basketball! yes! Saw a bit of the UNC game earlier, good times. I was shocked to see that Tyler Hansbrough's career high in rebounds was only 11. I know he's only been in for a year and a couple games...but he's a power forward/center who pretty much out-athletes everyone....Iduno, it was just surprising.
Speaking of surprising...Kansas already started choking! Awesome! I pick them every year and they already blew it! Oral Roberts wins by a convincing 7 point margin. Kansas came in ranked #3, I don't know who they were kidding. I'm looking forward to them once again choking their way into the toughest region at a 3 or 4 seed and eeking through the first round...maybe 2 rounds, and then getting beaten by double digits. Mark it down, you can set your calendar by it. Nothing marks the tail end of March like a Kansas choke. I love college basketball.
The Cavaliers are good. Larry Hughes left the game with a bruised leg, that's no fun, but at least it's just a bruise. I'm not even writing about interesting stuff here, I don't know what's going on.
I'm really tired...and I have a lot of studying to do - 1 final down, 3 to go. I shouldn't have stayed up til 5 plotting pranks last night. Stupid college kids.
...just a thought...as I'm watching ESPN during halftime...is this Karl Ravech? I haven't seen his face yet, but is Karl Ravech really pulling off college basketball analysis? This is something that needs to be examined.
I'm going to bed.
Go Cavs, Browns, and Tribe!

Million dollar question.

So last night I was pretending to study and talking to Ski when we discussed a very interesting question.
I mentioned to him that Britney Spears had filed for divorce from that stud Kevin Federline. Obviously, one day later, this basically becomes old news. However, the question stands:
Would you still have sex with Britney Spears?
Let's take a deeper look at the pros and cons.
Pros: She's still Britney Spears; you fantasized about her endlessly from about 8 years ago to about 3 years ago and rightfully so - she was gorgeous. She had everything going for her that a girl could have; a pretty good voice, great looks, lots of money, and Justin Timberlake at her side (and really, no one would have been mad if they had stuck together). Plain and simple, Britney Spears was the balls. Furthermore, now that she's split from that trash-pile, she will most likely get back into the spotlight and clean herself up. Granted she's got kids now, but Pamela Anderson and Heidi Klum have quite easily proven that hollywood moms stay hotter than hell if they so desire. Also, let's not rule out another album within the next year or so - taking a heart-break (if you can call it that) and turning it into a successful album is anything but strange in the music biz (see: Tragic Kingdom from No Doubt)...and clearly, in order to have a new album out, she'll have to get hot again.
now.
Cons: Kevin Federline had sex with her.
There are more cons than that...but seriously, that one trumps anything else you can ever come up with. That's worse than her new-found passion for cigarettes and ugly guys.
Worse than her disappearance from the lime-light to live in something resembling a mobile home.
Worse than her 55 hour marriage to a child-hood friend.
Worse than her tattoo-history: her first tattoo was of Chinese characters on her leg which she thought read "mysterious" but actually read "strange." and her 2nd tattoo is a Kabbalah/Hebrew tattoo on the back of her neck - which she has tried twice...the first one was gibberish, this one is one of the 70ish Kabbalah words for "god."
Seriously though, K-Fed trumps all that...and it hurts.

So there you have it; the pros and cons laid out for you to make your own decision - I expect comments.

P.S. I'd wait 6 months during her mourning period, then rock her world.

Inspiration

You loyal readers may recall that I made a motivational post preaching the point that if you quit when you're tired, you'll never get any better.
That's still true.
But I'm here today to talk on a different - but related - subject.
It's time for a little story about why I am the way I am.

As you probably know, I'm not exactly the type of guy who does something because other people do it. It's not that I'm an attention-whore and trying to get people to notice me because I'm different...it's not that I have a vendetta against people who do things that I don't do...it's none of that.
Basically, the reason that I am how I am - that being why I don't drink, don't smoke, don't do stuff that people tell me to do just because they do it - is because of a simple lesson that I managed to conjure up from my own life's experience.
It comes down to the fact that someone's always watching.
See, people ask me all the time why I don't drink, and I always have different answers: I've made up stories, I've exaggerated truths, I've tried simple reasoning, I've done it all...but the best way I can explain it is that someone is always watching.
In case you didn't know, I've got myself 2 older brothers who totally kick ass. The whole time they were growing up, I was right behind them by 5ish years - watching everything they did...desperately wishing I was their age and got to drive and do cool stuff whenever I wanted. Basically, my brothers and their friends were my heroes - and I always noticed that they were really good role models (hard not to notice when you are practically stalking them). I started to think about why that could have been, and thought that maybe it had something to do with me. I don't want to make any bold statements like this, but I took that and formed my own opinion.
During high school, you quite obviously will start to experience some new things and get into new types of situations...and every time I was faced with one of these decisions, I'd always do what I thought would be the right thing because deep down I knew that someone was watching. Somewhere out there, someone would know and it would let them down. I remember a conversation with Coach Rosati about it early on in my high school days about how by being a part of the football team, you take on a role model status for all of those little kids who play lions club through middle school football.
The thought of letting down people who look up to you was and still is something I could/can never get over. I guess the reason I thought of all this is because of the unusual situation on Saturday night where I was at a party with mostly juniors in high school - a couple of which were worth seeing. One of whom was talking about looking up to guys like myself and the other guys in my grade...hearing things like that make you realize that whether or not you were thinking about it - those guys were watching. Further proof and further bolstering of my beliefs and practices.
Iduno, I just felt like motivating a little bit...deep down, someone's always watching
watching, judging, smiling, hi honey, look at the baby, look at the baby.
Seriously though, there's always someone who knows, and sometimes the littlest things stick with people. Tiny snippets that seem insignificant to you can make all the difference in the world to someone else.

A motivational quote that fits nicely right here, courtesy of Lou Cirino: "Never, if possible, lie down at night without being able to say: I made one human being, at least a little wiser, a little happier, or a little better this day."


That's all I have right now, I promise next time will be funnier.
Adieu.

Unrelated thoughts

I'm gonna go in a few different directions here...first of all, there was a meeting in the lobby today. The banner read FREE SEX Information. ...I thought that was pretty clever. Anyway, at the meeting, they passed out green condoms and some condom education sheets. Some things that I think are worth mentioning about this are as follows: What kind of girl would be willing to have sex with a man who put on a green condom? Seriously, why don't they pass out a condom that you could use on people that aren't blind (cuz how many blind hotties have you ever met? Just out of curiosity, is all)?
The other thing that should be noted about this seemingly good idea for a meeting is they gave out a sheet titled "13 steps for Using a Condom Correctly" Step 1. Get consent.
Get consent for what? Are you about to have sex with a girl and then have to ask if you can use a condom? If she says no, do you not have sex? What is going on here? This is just about the strangest thing I've ever read.

Let's get to more interesting stuff.
Cavaliers opened, won, outplayed the Wizards. Larry Hughes is very good at basketball again, that's nice. LeBron James is still real good, although he didn't do anything that absolutely blew me away (save having 2 very nice blocks). Any way you slice it, Cavs won, 1 down, 81 Ws to go. Got the Spurs Friday night in what'll surely be a barn-burner.
Browns finally got a W on the same day that the Bengals and Steelers lost. For those 5 hours or so, all was right in the world. Then you look at the stat sheet and realize that we still were held under 300 yards of offense and you realize that Jeff Davidson had very little to do with that win, and that the defense really just rocked the Jets' socks off. That's not to say that Davidson didn't commit to the run, as advertised. Droughns did end up with 33 carries for 125 yards, which was pretty sweet. Iduno, I'm not holding out a ton of hope for this week, but as a Cleveland fan, I'm eternally optimistic.


More other news, Halloween at OU really is pretty wild. This year was a supposedly small crowd, which is really something considering that there were an ass-load of people in town. Iduno, lots of people, lots of fun, good times, I'm going to bed so I can actually get a decent night's sleep before I drive home tomorrow.
Keep on keepin' on, Cleveland sports fans, I dig ya.



that would be my sign off if I were a Cleveland sports personality.