I Can't Believe Some of the Words That Come Out of People's Mouth

I've seen and read the comments made by him, and I'm not even going to dignify mentioning his name because I'm still stunned that someone could really see the photos and videos and really believe those words. We hear more about the stories of people missing, massive destruction of cities, family members trying to find out any word about their loved ones, and he said that this was because of a pact to the devil?

 

I'll preface my comments by saying that I'm a recovering Catholic, having spent many years in parochial school when I was younger, and I attended a prominent Jesuit college and am a proud graduate. I learned my faith from my family, especially my grandmother who attended mass every day of her 99 years because it gave her balance and certainty in her life. During my honeymoon, I got her a rosary from Vatican City blessed by the Pope, because I knew that she would love it, and sure enough, it was all she could talk about in one of the last letters I got from her before she died last year. She loved the church more than anything, and couldn't see anything wrong with how they operated.

 

And until recently, I could follow that line of thinking until I lost my mom to cancer. In trying to make heads or tails of what happened, I spend some time talking with the priest that presided over my mother's service and he said faith would get me through my pain. So I did what he said and attended church and prayed, and the more of that I did, the more alone I felt, the more frustrated I was that I lost someone important to me. It didn't make a lot of sense to me, and then around this time, it was announced that there were many claims of child abuse by selected clergy members against children in their congregation. It became a crisis for me, trying to believe in an organization that I was trying to achieve direction and guidance from, and in a monumental decision, I decided to forgo what I had grown up around.

 

I met my wife right around this time, and she is an extremely spiritual person who has a strong belief in herself and the forces out there, and seeing her have a strong sense of self I knew it was possible to find belief outside the confines of organized religion. And knowing what I've encountered over the years, I realize that there are many beliefs and doctrines out there that people follow, and for the most part, most of them follow the same principles. What I've found is that it's important to believe in something, even if it's nothing, even if it's a being, even if it's two beings, even if it's in yourself. And in setting this belief, it's also important to realize that while the things you believe are important to you, not everyone sees things exactly the same way and it's important to respect those differences.

 

And I would never advocate that my beliefs are more supreme or important than anyone else, much less advocate harm or danger against people that don't follow my plan. Faith is an extremely personal choice, and while I'm sharing part of it with you all, I don't expect that people reading this will completely understand or be able to relate to what I'm talking about. But I respect those around me enough to be able to share this and believe that all of them will support me no matter what because it's what makes me happy. Granted, this is extremely simplistic, but at the same point, boiling some things down to the simple points makes them easier to digest.

 

So in listening to this person's words that this disaster was caused by an entire region's faith which is different that what he believes, I can't sit here and not say something. I'm tired of living in a society where some people think what they believe matters most, and if you don't buy into their idea of faith or salvation, you're not worthy. I don't understand what gives him the right to be some judgmental, so arrogant, so smug in professing what he believes, but then again, he's said other things like this before and it's all veiled in a "I'm just professing my belief" manner. It might be labeled as free speech, but it's filled with vitriol and spite, not love and optimism, which is how I view the supreme being. I don't think of this force as angry and vengeful, but again, it's my impression. And while I understand our way of life allows people to say and believe what they want as long as it doesn't infringe on others, I'm not happy a message like this is being portrayed as loving, Christian, or whatever.

 

And that's why I'm writing these words. I don't expect that this will change anything, except to make me feel better about sharing and giving people a peek into my insane world. And I promise that to those that call me friend and I call friend, I will provide you love and support because that's what I do and I believe in treating others like I want to be treated. And in my book, Haiti didn't deserve anything like what has happened to them, and my thoughts and prayers are with them as they try to recover from the devastation. And to him, I hope that at some point, you have a conversation with whatever force or being that you believe in, because I also believe in what goes around comes around, and I'm not sure I would want to be upsetting anything that powerful.

I Don't Get It, But Know Better Than To Mess With The Forces of Nature

I'm not close to retirement age myself, even though my wife repeatedly jokes about me being old. I still have a lot of years left to do things, and I'm not planning on slowing down anytime soon. I am enjoying my writing projects, we just started a home remodeling project that will transform our living area (ok, we have professionals doing the work, but we still have to choose colors, organize the house, keep the cats in line), and there's plenty of time to travel and see other parts of the world. My dad recently told me that after 67 years of being alive, he's decided to retire because he just doesn't want to work anymore. I can appreciate the sentiment, although I'm not even close to making that same call. Granted, work used to be something that was more to me than just a job, but now having other distractions to focus upon has kept me from the land of workaholics. I work to allow me the time and money to do the other things I want to do, or as it's often put, I work to live, not live to work.

 

I can't relate to the situation that affects many careers in the public eye where people suddenly need to retire, like athletes or actors. Everything that I do right now I'm able to do now and in the future, mostly because I keep up with technology and current events, I enjoy what I do, and it's also about keeping busy while doing a good job. I can imagine, though, when it's time for me to quit doing all of this, I'll be ready because I'll be tired of working and want to do things on my own terms. But at the same token, everyone of us reaches a point in our lives where we're forced to admit that retiring is the best for us because we may not be able to do what we once did. I know that my dad loves his job quite a bit, and would be perfectly happy doing it as long as possible, but he's tired and he's ready to avoid the toil of the rat race.

 

Taking the analogy to the point where I was going was we've all seen examples of athletes that have probably overstayed their welcome professionally rather than hang them up on top. For every John Elway, there's a Jerry Rice who while he's one of the greatest receivers in football ever, he should have hung up the shoes before going to Denver. People hang on as long as possible at points because they don't want to admit they can't do what they used to do anymore, which would mean admitting they've aged. I've heard the analogies of the wily veteran and experienced player, but for many a career, there's that pinnacle moment where they are faced with the reality of having to deal with their own mortality.

 

I didn't want this to be a heavy depressing topic, but at the same point, I see some parallels between this and the situation at NBC, which is moving from a relatively dumb decision to a complete meltdown of epic proportions. To recap what is happening high level, Jay Leno decided to retire from the Tonight Show about 6 years ago, giving Conan O'Brien the job once he was done. As the date of transition occurred, Leno changed his mind about retiring and NBC gave him a show at 10 PM to do each night to keep him with the network. The show has been an unmitigated disaster, and now NBC wants to move Leno back to 11:35 to do a nightly show while bumping the rest of the late night lineup later to accommodate him.

 

I grew up watching Letterman on NBC after Carson, the Letterman who was completely insane with his absurdest brand of humor and colorful stable of secondary characters. He was targeted to replace Carson on the Tonight Show, but in a move that caught a lot of folks off guard, Leno ended up replacing Carson at NBC and Letterman left to CBS to do his show. Letterman doesn't do nearly the same type of humor from his NBC days, but he's got a "what's stuck in my craw" approach that provides some quality amusement from time to time. O'Brien, meanwhile, I've gotten to know recently after seeing his very late night show a few times, and he followed the Letterman vein of wackiness. His Tonight Show is a bit more restrained, but at points, he's still doing the same goofy humor, the same "look at me being silly looks", and the same random sketches. He's played the hand he's been dealt and doing a good job.

 

Leno, meanwhile, is doing what he wants to do by returning to late night TV, and I'll admit, I'm not a fan of his work. I find it tiring, predictable, and just plain not funny, and I tried to give him a shot after Carson left. He's just not my speed, but I realize that there are those that appreciate his sense of humor. It's restrained, bland, a bit more vanilla, it's just not for me. Instead of handling this situation with tact and civility, Leno doesn't want to retire into the sunset but rather get his way, regardless of the results. O'Brien remains defiant that he wants to keep doing the show he wants to honor the legacy of the show that has been on the air for 60 plus years, so the whole thing has morphed into this extremely messy stalemate.

 

I'm all for people following contracts, and I understand that sometimes circumstances change and a decision made years ago might not apply anymore, but that still doesn't mean you don't honor your word. O'Brien has done nothing wrong more than just trying to entertain under some rather unusual circumstances, and instead of getting his time in the limelight, the guy who had it doesn't want to give it up anymore. Leno hasn't reached the point where he doesn't want to do it anymore, even though that's what he said way back when. I would hope he'd do the honorable thing and realize that walking into the sunset doesn't mean there's not things to do, it's just the classy thing to do here, but then again, it doesn't sound like he gets it. The only real beneficiaries from this mess are Letterman, who has rather enjoyed the turmoil, and Craig Ferguson, who continues to amaze me with his absolutely marvelous talent of being funny while walking on the edge of insanity. I can never figure out where he's going with some of his stuff, but it's always funny and scary, which good comedy often is.

 

I've also begun to notice more about the forces of nature rearing their heads, with the crazy weather in Britain and the eastern US while Haiti is ravaged by an earthquake after dealing with some many hurricanes. With a large world that we live in, disasters happen and they are always tragic as people suddenly lose everything in a split second. It never makes seeing those things easy, even if there's a detachment we can all take because the events are often far away. I don't mean detachment in a bad way, but at the same point, it's easier to process bad news if it's not happening directly to you or someone you know, that's human nature.

 

The reason I'm noticing all of this is because of the movie 2012, which talked about the supposed end of the world according to the Mayan calendar by virtue of catastrophic events. I didn't see the movie myself, but apparently it's in the same line as Armageddon - loud explosions and lots of destruction. It's hard not to see what's happening and wonder if there's any correlation. I do believe that there are powerful forces out there that influence how things work, and while I'm not ready to admit these things are a sign of unrest, it's also hard to sit back and not notice what's going on and wonder if there isn't a connection.

 

At the very least, it should remind us that our time on the planet is finite, and it's up to us to do what we can to leave things in good shape for future generations, whether it's drive less, walk more, recycle when you can, or just be conscious of how your actions affect the planet as a whole. We can't just sit back and think what we do doesn't affect others, unlike a certain goofy chinned, snively talk show host who seems to be interested in one thing and one thing alone.

Some Things on My Mind

I haven't really addressed something here, so I thought I would start today's ramblings there. For those of you enjoying these notes on the social networking site BookFace, I actually started my own personal blog a few years ago at altheticsippotters.blogspot.com and have written about various topics there. It started as sports talk with a lot of emphasis on our local soccer club, the Portland Timbers, but now that I have another job where I write about the Timbers, the sippotters world is more generic sports stuff. If you want to check things out outside of FB, you can follow the link above or keep reading here because I'm able to share the link. I appreciate any and all thoughts about what I write, because it helps me improve as a writer. Social networking sites can be a wonderful thing to keep connected and share thoughts, although I admit it - I don't get the appeal of Farmville.

 

I'll admit that I try not to operate with a lot of biases, but I'm only human. We all tend to work with what we are comfortable with, although at times, it's nice to push the envelope and see what else might be out there. Human nature makes a lot of us conservative, and when it comes to the business world, tendencies towards the familiar are how things operate most of the time. Certainty rules, chances drool, and in a world where having the most profits makes you better than most, the more constants you can add to the equation the better off the results should be. Granted, certainty doesn't equate to success, but knowing more about what you are dealing with gives you a better chance. And sports actually takes this concept to a whole other level.

 

Most other business are concerned with the bottom line and making money, but sports as a business has to balance the bottom line with the winning line. You can have a very profitable team that makes a ton of money but absolutely stinks on the court if you don't focus on getting players that actually can play the game (see the Clippers of the NBA). The concepts of these things sometime produce completely different needs, and so it's a balancing game to try and mitigate the risks of spending money against getting talent, marketing the team, etc. So sports tries to do what every other business does and deal with certainties as much as they can, both in the bottom line and on the field of play.

 

Innovation is sometimes really slow unless you have an aggressive coach who's willing to risk his security to try something completely unorthodox, otherwise, the battle is two sides with essentially a base of talent and coaching talent. Leagues try to maintain a competitive balance in teams by legislating salaries and making sure that information is equally shared as much as possible so that there is a base level of competitiveness. The teams that tend to do better are the ones that find the best way to process this to their advantage without breaking the bank.

 

Some teams follow the path of spending like third world countries to try and win, like the Yankees or Cowboys. If you have owners that have a boatload of cash or have revenue streams that can support wild spending, it can work at points, but even the law of averages says a team can't dominate year after year because there are far too many factors to control in order to win. Spending may get you talent, but spending can't control injuries, performance, weather, officials, mental state, or other powerful forces. Others follow the nickle and dime process, like the Twins, who don't spend any sort of money unless absolutely necessary and instead rely on the use of younger, cheaper talent and managing expectations so that all things come together as cheaply as possible. The approach sometimes implodes (see the Pirates or Royals), but sometimes lightning strikes and you get success.

 

Businesses left to their own devices will simply try to acquire as much profit and influence as they can, because capitalism mandates that in its purest form. However, ethics kick in for most people and they realize that pure domination only leads to the desire to control more, and there's only so much profit that people can have, so it's important to keep that in perspective. Where the ethics don't kick in, legislation and regulatory put controls in place to make sure that things are as equal as possible, because we want things to be equatable as possible. Granted for most business, the forces of business keep most groups under control because supply and demand and economies of scale put pressure on things and reward more successful businesses. The rules get thrown out when you are dealing with monopolies (one entity controlling an entire business or trade) or oligopolies (a small group that controls a business or trade), because you don't have the same forces helping keep things in check.

 

Ok, the roundabout economics lesson aside, the business person in me hates regulation because I believe that all things considered, businesses will survive simply because they will innovate to make themselves more successful. The humanitarian and sports fan wins out in this argument though, because I don't believe that human nature and ethics immediately trigger the right response in a lot of people. Instead of doing the right thing or asking the right questions, it's all about finding the right angle or path of least resistance in the ultimate pursuit of victory, and so you can't just allow business to just do what they want to. For most sports leagues, this is why they have salaries caps, hiring rules, and competitive balance things in place to make sure that things are about as even as possible.

 

I understand the concept behind the Rooney Rule for the NFL, because most NFL teams tend to fall on known tendencies when they need new management, trying to mitigate the risk as much as they can or walking in with a relatively known quantity. The rule says you have to consider all sides without bias so that the most intelligent decision can be made and everyone gets an equal chance to interview. Leave it to the Hawks and the Vulcan guys to find the most obvious angle to exploit, and now the rest of the NFL sits back and watches what the end result will be.

 

The Hawks wanted Pete Carroll, whatever the cost, whatever the circumstances, so instead of following logic and process, they cut through the rules, did the minimum of what they needed to, and hired their guy regardless of the result. And while I'm not convinced he's even the right guy talent wise, the move has other moves that I don't think the Hawks have even considered. That's what happens when you have business people making sports decisions and not understanding the full impact of the choice. The team risks not only being fined by the NFL for their coaching hire (although their "interview" probably met the requirements), but now the rest of the league is going to get overly scrutinized for any future hire.

 

The biases here for the Hawks were simple: they wanted the guy they wanted no matter the cost, so manipulated the situation to get the result they wanted. Congratulations to them for working the system to make this happen, but don't be too surprised if this whole house of cards crashes down on you in more ways than you expect. While it might be more boring or prudent to follow the rules, you also don't run the risk of karma kicking you in the behind.

 

Finally, I get some fans might be upset at the end of the Packers - Cardinals game on Sunday, which was the only footbal I got to watch this weekend, but at the same point, the game wasn't lost by one simple missed call. Officials are human and try to catch things as best as they can. While there are officials that have admitted to being on the take, I believe that most of them try to do the best job as possible. Officiating is at its best when you don't even notice their work, because the game retained the flow and competitive balance. And for the second half, the Packers and Cardinals traded shots and torched the other sides' defense in about every way possible. I hate to see anyone lose games like this, but most sports mandate that someone wins and somebody loses.

 

One of the aspects of soccer that I love is that a tie ends up rewarding both sides if it's a competitive game, but that doesn't play well with most other sports because of this "win at all costs" mentality. That being said, the Packers should be able to hold their chins up for playing well, and showing their incredible talent, and they simply got outplayed at one point of the game. It's not the fault of the officials for missing a call, which appeared rather questionable in my mind anyway. What this attitude of blaming only shows is that as fans, we can't admit when the other side simply beat us for whatever reason. There has to be a reason why my team lost, and if I can't blame my side, I have to blame somebody else. Instead of tipping the hat to the other side for doing more to win in the end, it has to be somebody's fault.

 

It's attitudes like this that bother me in a situation where we had a classic match between two extremely equitable sides. It's a shame that anyone had to lose this, but at the same point, the Cardinals should be congratulated for outlasting a spunky Packer team that gave them everything, while the green and gold shouldn't be ashamed for playing as well as possible without winning. That's the way things happen in sports, and it may not be fair, but it's also reality which is something that sports needs to remember from time to time. 

Worst Kept Secrets in Sports...

Wow, as I read the sports headlines from this past weekend, I'm forced to realize in this fast paced, media obsessed society that secrets just don't mean what they used to anymore. If people want to figure out something, they'll do whatever is necessary to find the answers, and good luck if you are someone that is remotely famous that has something you don't want people to know about. We'll just talk, speculate, spread rumors, the talk itself will overshadow the news itself because that's how things work.

 

Mark McGwire used steroids. Wow, that's like one of the worst kept secrets in baseball, and he's finally come clean today after years of speculation and hiding from the world in his own little cocoon. People aren't supposed to have biceps this big or heads this large naturally, but here's Big Mac swatting fly balls all over stadiums like nobody could. I actually saw him him a scoreboard in the old Kingdome that was estimated to be almost 600 feet from the home place when it existed, and I venture it was the hardest hit baseball I've ever seen fly in person. It just didn't seem possible that someone could do what this guy could do with a bat, but here we were witnessing it.

 

And it's what baseball needed after the mess that the strike caused that eliminated a World Series and the good portion of two seasons. The game was in danger of becoming irrelevant, as people tired of the antics of spoiled players, rich owners, and the escalating power play in the search for more money and influence. And then 1998 comes along and McGwire and Sammy Sosa turned a home run chase into a media circus that captivated baseball and non baseball fans alike. The questions about steroids were brought up then, but pushed under the carpet as fans attended games in droves and the luster missing was restored. And now, years later, we live with the ramifications of those choices.

 

McGwire avoided all the questions, all the allegations, all the evidence, and once he retired from baseball, retreated to a world where he could be himself and avoid the tough questions. The allure and camaraderie of the clubhouse called him, and so he made a return knowing he had to face the music. Today, he came clean, and we'll all wonder what might have happened if he didn't use drugs or he'd decided to talk about things earlier. Let's face it, A-Rod admitted to using drugs almost immediately after the accusations came up, and his career has remain relatively unscathed while Pete Rose and Barry Bonds are shells of their competitive images. Rose admitted far too late that he bet on baseball after years of speculation while Bonds remains quiet about what he might or might have done and he's faded into obscurity.

 

For a sports obsessed society, we love our hero worship. We want to know more about the people that play our sports, and will do anything to get inside their world. We buy their jerseys, read their stories, and follow their talents without even realizing that athletes share the same frailties, same insecurities, same mortality as we all do, and when these heroes fall whether it's because of misconduct, passing of time, or mistakes, we are usually a forgiving lot for the most part. As long as the people involved show some humility, some regret, some hint that they are bothered, otherwise, the heroes will be chastised as many days as they can be. Rose might have more hits than any other baseball player in history, but there's too many baseball fans that can't forgive him from not being honest about betting until the apology benefited him and a book deal.

 

McGwire will never be able to fix what happened so many years ago during a home run chase that captivated many baseball fans, but today he made a big start by admitting his transgression. Humility, it's actually an endearing quality, and something that people need to remember about from time to time..

 

Other thoughts: Pete Carroll is now coaching the Seattle Seahawks in another one of the worst kept secrets of sports, as he bolts from USC amidst allegations of misconduct around the school and recruiting. The fact that the Hawks fired their previous coach was surprising, because Jim Mora was anointed as the replacement coach when Mike Holmgren retired. And after one year filled with injuries, miscommunication, and talent issues, Mora is gone and Carroll is hired in one of the worst kept secrets of sports.

 

The NFL has a Rooney rule where teams need to interview a minority candidate, so that everyone has an equal chance of potentially be hired for the job. However, the team skirted around it with a cursory interview with the defensive coordinator of Minnesota while various news outlets were already reporting Carroll was hired and agreeing to terms in Seattle. In the zeal to hire somebody, the team cut many, many corners to find who they thought is the right fit. I don't know if he will make things better up there, but at the same time, I can't help but see this as pure panic by the team up there. These are the same clowns that nearly ran the Trail Blazers into the ground, and they're finally righting the ship, so perhaps this is a good thing.

 

Conan O'Brien is being hosed. I've become a bit of a fan of late night television lately because my wife is a bit of a night owl, but also it's some of the best stuff on television. Granted back in my college days, David Letterman was a staple of late night studying when Letterman was creating his insane brand of absurdist humor. Letterman left to go to CBS and now practices his cranky old guy mad at things routine amusingly, but I miss the days of his confetti cannons and random characters appearing in comedy bits.

 

O'Brien has the same type of show now at the Tonight Show, but apparently NBC realized their error in putting Jay Leno on each night in a crappy talk show at 10 PM. I never liked Leno, I found his humor to be rather canned and lacking, although his work on the Simpsons was OK at points. Now that NBC sees what is going on, they want to return Leno to his original time spot and bump Conan back a half an hour. I love this trying to play all sides of things, but it's a serious mistake.

 

Leno said he was retiring and when he changed his mind, NBC should have let him walked but they decided to try and keep both sides happy. Now they have a mess out there that isn't going to end well for most folks. Well, except for the guy that I find the funniest guy in late night - Craig Ferguson. He's brash, he's scottish, he's insane, and he's funnier than anything out there right now, and I hope that Conan finds a home for his humor. When he's on his game, he's extremely entertaining, but I'm sure it's hard to be funny when you're looking over your shoulder to see what your network is doing.

It's Been A Rousing Start to the New Year

I know it's been a while since I've written anything, which I think happens around the holidays. Not only is there lots of family time and celebrating going on for Christmas, New Years or any other holidays that you might celebrate there, my birthday falls right after the holiday, so things don't slow down as the start of the year happens. Things around our household also were busy as we start a project to renovate parts of our house to give us more room while giving our brood of cats their own space to live in. That's how things work for girl and myself, we just have a crazy schedule which means there's either nothing going on or everything going on. It's kind of a fun ride at times, even if there are points where I would like things to float more in the middle.

 

That hasn't stopped things from happening around the area that is newsworthy, and so without further adieu, here's my takes on some of the stuff going on:

 

I don't buy the notion the Trail Blazers are cursed, but you do have to wonder what the heck is going on with this team during the 2010 season. Most of the key players for this side have injury issues, keeping them out for most or all of this season, and on most nights, the team is using a 7 to 8 player rotation. This isn't relating to talent, it's simply because they don't have enough available players.

 

Greg Oden, Travis Outlaw and Joel Pryzbilla are out for the year, while Nicolas Batum, Rudy Fernandez, and Steve Blake currently are out with various ailments. Add to that LaMarcus Aldridge, Jeff Pendergraph, Paddy Mills, Dante Cunningham and Brandon Roy dealing with various nagging injuries that have kept them out for parts of the year, and you can see that this team is essentially playing with one arm behind their back. Many nights, you don't know who is going to be available, yet here they are after the first of the year within striking distance of first place in the Northwest Division lead and the playoffs.

 

I'm proud of the team simply for battling most nights when most things are against them, and they've won some games that they probably shouldn't have, but they just simply wouldn't be denied. It also makes strange scenes like Tuesday night (1/5/10) the more palatable when they lose a winnable game at home after a tough back to back (game in LA Monday night, Memphis on Tuesday). Yes, the officiating was a bit uneven (how can you call Roy for a foul at midcourt with 25 second left when Webster gets decked taking a three and the whistle gets swallowed), and the team went into bunker mentality far too early for my taste, but it's hard to look at this and not be entirely happy. No team loses more than half of their roster for most of a season and sits where the Trail Blazers are in the standings now without truly achieving something special.

 

And for me, it's tough because of my feelings about the organization. I love the players on this team, and am proud of their efforts even with my own reservations about the guys in charge. Satellite TV NBA fans are getting hosed by the team's TV contract, while the team continues to attempt to strong arm the city into their vision for the Rose Quarter area, yet ticket demand is through the roof. We live in a rather unique market, where we live and die with our NBA team, and it takes a special kind of fan to try and ride through the ups and downs.

 

I did finally relent and attend a game on my birthday versus Golden State, and while it was a win for the Black and Red, I didn't find the overall experience enjoyable. I find myself disliking the overly canned, completely controlled and contrived entertainment that is now part of the NBA right now. At no point do teams let spontaneous chants or cheers start, they fill every spot with something to see, something to hear, something to do. The game itself is almost secondary to all of the other things going on, and being away from it for a bit, I realized how much the environment is contrived. While I still get a kick from how loud and passionate the Rose Garden can be when things are rolling, I could do without the standard two chants of "Defense" and "Let's Go Blazers!" The NBA is more a sport - entertainment hybrid, and for fans like myself, I don't think I'll ever see things go back to a simpler time when fans were left to their own devices at points.

 

The Timbers will have a 2010 season, although it was touch and go for many months as the USL and NASL sides played an advance game of ego stroking to get more money. I cover the main points of this in my other blog home, but just knowing that the stadium deal for PGE Park is forthcoming next week while the Timbers have a league to play in for 2010 is a huge relief to me. While I can relate to a lot of the moving parts of this dispute at some point, the disagreement simply came down to two sides thinking their idea was better to make money and help soccer along, while discounting any other thoughts about the process. There's no reason this should have taken so long to resolve, but when you have money, influence and egos in the room, nobody wants to relent even if it's for the best.

 

I had a good holiday season, although it was far more mellow than in previous years. There was no travel outside the area, there was only one big family gathering to visit girl's grandparents at their assisted living home, and I was able to talk with my sister and dad briefly on the day for a short time, which is always pleasurable. It was nice to have a holiday that didn't have a lot of drama and frustration, even though there was the occasional misunderstanding.

 

I've also come to learn about my own personal shortcomings in greater detail, which has been both an enlightening and frustrating experience. In certain aspects, I take things at face value and I don't question why things are why they are. While that works in some areas, it's important to remember to question things, something I would have thought my Jesuit education would have taught me. I don't like being wrong, and when it does happen, I'm way too hard on myself. I'm probably my own worst critic, but at the same point, you have to give yourself credit for making strides at points. But you can't be complacent, either, because change is the main force behind personal growth. Yes, I've probably oversimplified this as vaguely as possible, but ever since I started this process to improve my outlook, this is the first time I've felt that real hurdles were being crossed.

 

It's easy to go through the motions and think things are changing, in an attempt to try to improve things, but it takes real work to understand yourself and understand the impact you have on others. Granted, I don't want to be too hard on myself, but I'm learning how entirely hard I've been on certain people in my life, and I'm not happy about it. I'm not a big resolutions guy, but with the new year, I'm resolved to try and be more aware of how I impact others and make sure that I'm not adversely affecting people with my mood and actions.

 

In addition to that, I'm also working on getting in better physical shape. I've become addicted to the Nintento WII games, especially WII Resort and WII Fit Plus. There's a lot of really cool games to play on both of these programs, and the WII gets you a good workout without too much effort. The first few times I did aerobics and yoga on the WII Fit, I was in pain and dripping with sweat, and I didn't think any video game could do this. The WII does, giving you support when you need it, while yelling at you at times when you also need. it, kind of like a certain person that is near and dear to me.

 

Finally, I don't talk much about college football around here, whether that is because I went to a school that didn't have college football or I find the whole BCS mess a complete scam. But this year's bowl season had some of the most compelling football action I've seen all year. Yes, it was disappointing that the Oregon Ducks lost the Rose Bowl, but they didn't get blown out and played well for most of the game, unlike the Beavers who got blown out of Vegas with a stiff wind.

 

But it's hard not to watch the Fiesta Bowl and get caught up in the non-BCS sides battling in a rather competitive game, even if the first half was incredibly boring as both teams struggled with nerves and composure. The game came down to a single moment on a punt play, where Boise State executed a fake punt that worked, and they scored the winning touchdown a few moments later. They then held off a charging TCU side with a very good defensive effort in one of the better finishes this year. Ok, it wasn't the crazy finish of the Humanitarian Bowl in Boise where Bowling Green and Idaho scored 15 points in the final minute of the game, with Idaho getting a two point conversion with no time left to win the game 43 to 42, but the Fiesta Bowl was still a very entertaining game.

 

Granted, the schools and the BCS are putting out information that says they want this system to continue, despite most fans wanting a playoff in college football, which means that nothing about this championship is going to change anytime soon. But if they keep producing moments like what they did in Boise and Glendale, I don't think most fans are going to mind that much.