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derbear85
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Name: Derek
Location: Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, United States
Birthday: 3/29/1985
Gender: Male
Interests: Listening to good music, watching good music, playing good music, and reading about good music. and concrete barrels.
Expertise: Not doing anything...
and of course,
Napping
Occupation: Retired
Industry: Textiles
Message: message meEmail: email me
Website: visit my website
AIM:  dmwarren85
Member Since:
8/7/2005
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| Thanks to Matt Cav for the Mew suggestion. Good album.
So, to be completely honest, this may be the greatest day ever. Why?
Snow Day.
For the first time since 1979, the University of Illinois cancelled school due to heavy snowfall. My roommates and I have been running around like giddy third-graders all day. We actually all cooked breakfast together. It's fantastic.
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| This is kind of a two part post, though both subjects probably deserve their own posts.
1) Super Bowl, of course. I think I made my feelings clear about the game in my previous post, and if I remember correctly I said that one team would come to play and one would totally crap the bed.
I hate being right sometimes.
When the clock read zero I actually was way more at peace with what happened than I thought I would be. I think the reasons for my tranquil state of mind were as follows.
a) Tony Dungy. For the last two weeks every one has tripped over themselves to say as many good things about him as possible, which would be more annoying if he didn't deserve them. He's an incredibly classy, respectable, and by all accounts christian man who has been through a lot. He deserved to win the Super Bowl.
b) I know I ranted about my feelings towards Manning, but I was very impressed with the way he handled himself last night, both during and after the game. You always know that when Manning takes the field he has done everything he can to prepare himself for the game, unlike a certain other quarterback who shall remain nameless, but his initials are Rex Grossman. The man does his homework. Watching him run the Colts' offense is like watching a maestro conduct an orchestra. The man is an offensive genius. And when the game was over he showed self restraint when it would have been so easy to go nuts.
c) When Illinois lost to North Carolina in the 2005 national championship, I was devastated. It was hard to get out of bed the next day. Why did it hurt? Because we should have won. We were tied with the game almost over and a good 3 shots that would have given us the lead, but all bounced off the rim. Heart-breaking. In contrast with the game last night, the Illini game hurt a lot more. Last night, around the end of the first quarter onward, there was no question who the better team was. 11 first downs. 5 turnovers. a twenty minute differential on time of possession. Both teams deserved the outcome.
I feel good about the future of the Bears. Pretty much everyone is coming back, and I think we'll be a top tier team next year. my one concern is Grossman (duh). After calling his critics "ignorant", he proceeded to play like a two year old. After his first interception he should have been benched. The Bears need to re-evaluate Grossman's future with the team, at the least make him earn his starting spot back during the offseason. Other than that we should be ready to go with a healthy Tommie Harris and Mike Brown next year.
2)My family's dog, Chunk, had to be put down this morning. She was only a year and a half old, and we had had her pretty much her whole life. During break, she had a couple of days where she seemed real lethargic and didnt move around much, which is extremely uncharacteristic for her. But every time that happened she bounced back the next day. The day I came back to school was one of the bad days, but the next time I talked to Mom and Dad they said she seemed fine again. Then this last Sat. my dad called me to inform me that she had gotten bad again and that they had taken her to the Vet, who discovered that she was anemic, and that she also had a tumor. Those two diseases co-existing in the same body made each other un-treatable. So this morning she was put to sleep. We only had her for a year and a half, and it's definitely short compared to some families who have a dog for 10 or 12 years before they go through this, but it still sucks hard. We had all grown to love her. Those of you who met her know she was the nicest, friendliest dog you could find. When I was home on break many a time we would hang out all day. In June, when my family went camping, we took her to a kennel to stay for the week, the only time she stayed somewhere away from home. When we got back, I ended up picking her up from the kennel, and when she saw me she completely flipped out, like I had just saved her life. Since then I like to think we had a special bond. Even when I came back from Australia after five months, I think she not only remembered me, but she remembered I was the one who picked her up from the kennel. Going home won't be the same anymore.
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| What a day.
I would love to write about HOW EXCITED I AM THAT THE BEARS ARE GOING TO THE SUPER BOWL!!!!!!! AHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!
But I Can't. I just can't. Believe me, I'm ecstatic that the Bears are going to the Super Bowl. It's a great accomplishment after a rocky season and no one thinking we would beat the Saints this week. But something concerns me. See, I've got this thing with Payton Manning. I don't know what it is, but something about him rubs me the wrong way. Maybe it's that he stood by his whiny little brother when he said he wouldn't play for the San Diego Chargers if they drafted him in 2004 (turned out to be the best thing to happen to the Chargers). Maybe it's that he blamed the Colts' loss to the Steelers last year on "protection problems", essentially saying the offensive line that has done everything short of die for him over the last 6 years was to blame. Maybe it's that every Sunday I see a game with Payton Manning on TV and all they talk about is Payton Manning and then they go to commercial and there's like 8 commercials in a row with Payton Manning and then they go to halftime and all they talk about is Payton and Eli Manning. Maybe I've just enjoyed watching him lose every year. Even tonight when Asante Samuels intercepted Manning's pass and ran it for a touchdown I found myself giggling like a schoolgirl.
Point is I REALLY REALLY don't want the Bears to be the team that gives Manning his long awaited Super Bowl ring. I've been through this before when U of I lost to UNC in the title game two years ago and Roy Williams finally won his first title. It sucks. hard.
Do I think the Bears will lose, then? I don't know. I can't answer this question. Any answer for this question would be slanted by either my love for the Bears or the omnipresent pessimism that comes with being a Chicago sports fan. Both teams are fully capable of winning but both teams are inherently flawed. The Colts have an incredibly talented quarterback and wide receivers, but a defense who can't stop the run, plus that quarterback has only had one good half in three playoff games this season. We have two solid running backs that could break their defense, but we also have a quarterback who seems to be a football Jekyll and Hyde. You don't know if you're getting John Elway or Ryan Leaf. Our defense was solid for the first 3/4 of the season, but towards the end they started giving up way too many points. This week they had their best game in two months, but will that defense show up again in two weeks? I just can't pick. I don't think it's gonna be a close game. One team will come ready to play and one team will totally crap the bed.
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| hmm...
i haven't touched this for a while, though I do still read your xangas and i enjoy hearing about what you are all up to. part of the lack of action has to do with the great toshiba laptop crash of '06. my computer, after 3 and a half years of faithful service, crashed in a blaze of glory. the good news is we took it to computer people and they managed to save all the stuff on my hard drive (basically meaning a LOT of music) and put a new hard drive on it, so it should be up and running again in a couple of days. things i think you should know since my last entry:
-james brown, one of the greatest artists ever, ever, EVER, is no longer with us. the world is a little sadder and a little less funky because of it.
-i have a new drug, and it is called "scrubs". have you ever had a book or movie or album or tv show that you knew for a long time you should really check out, but you just never did it, and then like five years later you finally did and you wondered why the heck you waited so long? that's been my relationship with scrubs. luckily with two hours a day of reruns I can catch up quickly.
-everyone, EVERYONE who reads this should check out the aforementioned song by TV on the Radio, "Wolf Like Me". find it on myspace or something. best song of 2006. there, I said it. If you can't get into this song, at worst you might be dead, at best you may have no soul.
-tonight's cowboys-seahawks game was one of the craziest finishes to a football game I've ever seen. of course i missed the boise state oklahoma game on monday because I went to bed. apparently my body decided that after five years it had had enough of my contact lenses and was doing everything it could to make me miserable whilst I wore them.
-i'm going back to U of I on Tuesday. yeesh. how'd I end up back here already?
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| One of the greatest figures in recent sports history that most people
have never heard of died today. Odds are you've never heard the
name Lamar Hunt unless you're a Kansas City Chiefs fan or a huge sports
nerd. However he was one of the most influential figures in NFL
history. He was a longtime owner of the Kansas City Chiefs.
In the 1960's he founded the American Football League which was
intended to compete with the NFL, an idea that seemed ridiculous at the
time. However, thanks to Hunt's development and work, the AFL
eventually became a part of the NFL. He worked for many of the
innovations that have occurred in the NFL over the years and pro
football today would not be what it is without his work. He also was a
huge advocate of soccer in America, co-founding the MLS and is an
inductee in the U.S. soccer hall of fame. He also is in the
International Tennis Hall of Fame for some reason and was an original
investor in the Chicago Bulls.However, his most famous contribution to
sports came from an unlikely source while he was in the middle of
negotiations between the NFL and the
AFL to establish a game between the champions of both leagues. During
these
negotiations he was at home one day and his daughter was playing with a
ball, tossing it against the wall. He asked about the ball, and she
told him it was a super ball. Not long after that happened, the NFL and
AFL finalized the plans for the championship, and they were deciding
what to
call the game. Hunt, inspired by his daughter's toy, suggested
the name Super Bowl.
Not really any point to this entry, I just find this story interesting.
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