The Blog for the Sports Gamer Three guys who love Sports Gaming rant and rave about various stuff.

Happy New Year

Tonight we're going downtown to some family New Year's Eve thing. I'm almost certain that Rum and Coke will not be served. Bummer.

Anyway, football season ended Wednesday night as the Buckeyes beat the ever loving shit out of Oklahoma State 33-7. Of course it was hard to fully enjoy the ass kicking we gave the Cowboys with ESPN's Trev Alberts and Mark May spewing ignorance from the ESPN College Football desk. If you listen to and believe Mutt and Jeff then you'd come away thinking:

• OSU is a dirty program that should be served the Dealth Penalty like SMU got back in the Dickerson era
• AD Andy Geiger will get fired
• Head Coach Jim Tressel will get fired
• Maurice Clarett was telling the truth!

I try to be as objective as I can with this stuff because I want OSU to be a clean program and I want the cheaters kicked out of the state. But Mike Tirico said it best on ESPN News after the Alamo Bowl when he said that anyone that thinks this will cost Geiger and Tressel their job have not followed this story close enough; he went on to say that calling for their job was the overstatement of the year. Being in Columbus and actually getting a lot more detailed local info than anything ESPN has "reported"..it leads me to believe that Alberts and May are just ratings grabbing. Here are some facts--stone cold facts--to consider:

• The Troy Smith case and the Clarett saga are unrelated. Completely and totally. Clarett could never name a name; could never name a booster or a tutor or anything. He then called Geiger and asked thet Geiger publicly say that Clarett was a good guy to get back in good with NFL people. In return Clarett would take back the story he gave ESPN. At this point you should believe anything this guy says at your own risk.
• The NCAA investigated the Clarett stuf and cleared OSU.
  
• Troy Smith accepted $300 from a dirt-bag booster because Smith's mom had bills to pay and Smith took the easy way out and broke the rules. No excuses for Smith here, he knew the rule and chose to break it. This does NOT mean Jim Tressel was involved in any way and that has never been hinted at. Period.
• Controlling boosters that want to get too close to the program is the #1 issue that schools have to deal with and it's almost impossible to fully police, which is why the Smith infraction is not even considered a major school violation. The NCAA rule in a case like this is that the player loses 20% of his season, and thus Smith will take his lumps by missing 1-2 games. Unless this gets tied back to OSU, then that'll be the end of it. Why Alberts and May connect these dots without any evidence AT ALL..no one knows. Geiger and Tressel are not going anywhere, much to the chagrin of ESPN.
• Now, even though I fully believe Tressel is innocent of personal wrongdoing, there's no doubt that players at OSU are not behaving like the Alumni (thad be me) want them to behave. A lot of them are, the OSU football team graduation rate has skyrocketed since Tressel took over and the team GPA is at 2.77, 2nd in the Big10 behind Northwestern (I mean come on..those Northwestern guys are smart!) but a few of them are acting like fools. Even so, ESPN says that Tressel needs to dish out tougher punishment. Well, we kicked 4 players off the team, including a 5 star TE recruit, for thuggish behavior. What else can a guy do but kick a guy off the squad?
  
• If you really want to know how a school gets drilled by the NCAA you should read NCAA.Org and learn why other schools got put on Probation. There's one key link to all of them: the school was either involved or turned a blind eye. OSU has self reported ALL of this stuff. ESPN and the NCAA has not turned up anything that OSU has not already reported itself for doing.

So my take on all of this, based on what I know, is that Smith will take his punishment, Clarett will fade into sports history after being cut in mini camp after being a 6th round pick, and Jim Tressel will continue being the head coach at Ohio State. As much as that may piss off some people, I dont' see a changing of the guard at OSU based on what the President of the university said this week.

It's a real shame that these headlines dominated the game because Ohio State has really found its stride of late and I'd bet anything that OSU is a preseason top 5 or 6 team next year. I know a lot of you could care less about this but it's a bit theraputic for me, and it's partly my blog.

Oh, and is Ted Ginn awesome or what?

WWBD?

What? No post from Bill after that minor OSU story last night? I'm waiting....

The Burst Pipe Saga Continues

Disclaimer: The tone of this is meant to be light-hearted, so please be sure to read it with that in mind. Especially with what's been going on in Asia, I don't want to give anyone the impression that I treat this as anything more than a rather ill-timed inconvenience. With that, read on:

Well, it’s three days later. The carpet in our great room is all ripped out and we have an estimate for new carpet, but the drywall just won’t dry (go figure). So for now, all our furniture from the room is still taking up all available space in our kitchen, guest room and living room, which leaves us with just the baby’s room (not much space there) and our bedroom (even less space). Ana (our 1 year old) clearly hates being restricted to just her bedroom when she comes home from daycare. I swear she thinks she’s being punished for something when we won’t let her leave her room. Judging by the fact that all of a sudden she crawls all over her mother, but cries whenever I pick her up, she must blame me. Greaaaaaaat. (Hear the voice of Bill Lumburgh from Office Space.)

Anyway, with any luck whatsoever (yeah, right), the room will be fully dry tomorrow (Friday) so I’m rolling the dice and telling the carpet people to do their thing on Friday (assuming they process our order fast enough). Meanwhile the insurance claims adjuster is telling me they want to run tests on the old carpet to see how much they’re willing to pay us for it and that it won’t happen till next week and will take another 2-4 days. Like we’re going to tolerate living in the house like this for another week if we don’t absolutely have to. I don’t think so. We’ll just have to pay the carpet people and hope the new carpeting isn’t more expensive than what the value the old. (Knock on wood.) If not we’ll get stuck with the difference, which at this point is something with which I think I can live.

Fortunately, I’ve at least been able to hook up my PC for some Internet access while waiting on all these guys to call me back with information. I wish I could connect my speakers to it so I could listen to some music, but with the drying machines and dehumidifiers going like a cement truck in here I doubt I could hear it very well anyway (if I wear headphones I won’t hear any phone calls).

The truly amazing thing to me is that I haven’t totally lost it yet. Historically, I’m hot tempered as hell. I don’t really ever lose it with people around, but small (usually non-breakable) objects get thrown around and the walls get quite a tongue-lashing. Especially since Ana got hear I’ve been working really hard on not letting my temper get out of hand (mostly successfully). Since the pipe burst the worst thing I’ve done is yell “goddamnit” really loud after dropping a can of 7-up, springing a leak in it. It was from the *only* carton out of about 10-dozen 12 packs of pop in our garage that didn’t have at least two cans freeze and burst (spent two hours yesterday cleaning that up). Don’t ask me why we have that much pop. I can only say that my wife likes it when things go on sale.

If nothing else, in a few years this is going to be one heck of a fun story to tell friends and relatives. Who am I kidding? It’s already funny as hell to me (believe it or not, I’ve been skipping over a lot of side plots to this story). It’s getting to be like that scene in Planes, Trains and Automobiles where Steve Martin and John Candy can’t stop laughing about their run of bad luck. Good times… Good times.

Buh Bye Tivo

Today was a huge day in my house. Imagine if you will:

* Being able to record HD

* Being able to record 2 HD shows at the same time

* Being able to flip back and forth between two live shows without missing a play

You see, my cable company dropped off their version of TiVo. Oh I'm sorry, I mean CableDVR. Let me just say that I enjoyed my TiVo. Apparently the business plan at TiVo is to shoot themselves in the foot. Let's say that TiVo's are for geeks like myself that are cutting edge, right -- the idiots that would pay $599 for a 10 hour Tivo series 1. However the folks at TiVo decided that there really isn't a market for HD Tivos and are not going to make their own.

This means that if I want to see Lost in HD I would have to watch it at 8pm on Wednesday. Uh, F that if you know what I mean.

So CableDVR comes to town with a 120GB hard drive. IT's $9.95/month (cheaper than a single tivo montly fee, but it sucks when you already bought TiVo lifetime), but just fantastic to watch recorded HD programs like Lost tonight. Oh yeah, and you know all that network time shift horseshit -- like tonight when Lost is on from 8:00 - 9:02 which prohibits West Wing from recording? Not a problem with this 2 tuner CableDVR. Oh yeah, and did I mention they both record in HD.

So, yeah, that's pretty awesome. Of course, part of me feels guilty bragging about this when Bill has frozen pipes and 45,000 people are dead from a tsunami. But I just had to tell you about it.

Openings in Text Leagues

As I thank my stars not to be Todd right now...

I have two openings in my OOTP 6 league that is currently in its 18th season. This is a long running league and I need two owners to take over two pretty darn good teams.

I also have openings in the Front Office Football 2004 league that I run. We are about to start the 2007 season. If you have any interest, email me.

My Christmas Story

I was going to title this post “The Great Flood”, but in light of the Tsunami in the Indian Ocean that doesn’t seem appropriate (if you can make a donation to any of the aid organizations like the Red Cross, please do so). Anyway, we (my family) blew town on the evening of the 23rd. We got back last night (the 27th), walked in the door and the carpeting in our “great” room (media room, whatever) was absolutely soaked. We’re talking the Marshes of the Dead from The Two Towers here. Gollum popped up out of the corner and said something about not looking at the deadlights or the hobbitses will light little candles of their own. Then he scampered off.

Here’s what we think happened (this has zilch to do with gaming but I must vent): Our garage door has been acting flaky lately. Not shutting all the way, shutting and going back up, etc. But it was recent and I hadn’t yet decided it was a problem (stupid me), so evidently when we drove out of dodge we hit the button to shut the door but didn’t stick around long enough to make sure it went all the way down and stayed that way. A day later, our neighbor noticed it was open and went and shut it for us (heck of a nice guy). If only he had noticed that first night with the sub-zero wind chills.

Now, we have a water spigot in our garage. And (*really* stupid me), unlike every other year, I never got around to disconnecting the garden house from it this year. It was full of water and frozen solid (thanks to the garage door being open all night), which I can only assume reached into the wall which runs between our laundry/mud room and our great room. A short way into the house the pipe split and basically spewed water for 3-4 straight days until we got home last night and shut off the main water valve for the house. At this point the entire carpet of our great room (probably in the neighborhood of 200-400 square feet; I can’t eyeball that) is absolutely saturated along with everything else in direct contact with it: A few assorted pillows and blankets, our three DVD racks, our TV stand, a dresser, the computer desk and computer, each section of our five-piece couch and my kid’s brand new wooden toy chest which she got as a birthday gift just last week.

To top it all off, I’m supposed to be out the door within two hours of getting home to be at the last leg of a sleep study I’m participating in (I have narcolepsy). Instead I got to make phone calls for a 24-hour plumber, file a claim with the insurance company, set up an appointment for water damage recovery people to assess the damage to our floor and dry wall in the area and remove every last piece of furniture from the room (which the rest of the house is not really equipped to hold). Fortunately, I was able to go to my sleep study appt. early this morning instead of last night (it’s a daytime study and their wireless connection is the only reason I have Internet access to post this long-winded whine).

Anyway, the plumber came last night and fixed the pipe. My wife just let me know the water damage people have ruled our carpeting unsalvageable and are ripping it out as I type (which leaves nothing but the concrete slab our house is built on). UGH. They’re telling us to expect the drying process to take 3-5 days. Double UGH. And to top it off I just found out we have a $1000 deductible (I thought for sure it was $500), which means the money I’m being paid for the sleep study is now nicely sucked up for that instead of going towards paying off our car and Christmas. Triple UGH, with a side of mushrooms (yucky).

So that is my happy Christmas story for this season. In light of the Tsunamis striking the countries around the Indian ocean it seems rather trivial, I’m sure. But it’s a story to tell either way, and I’m sure in a few years it might even be a fun story to tell. Regardless, I hope everyone had a great Holiday. As soon as we get our house back up and running again I’ll come up with some more of these oh-so-meaningful bloggies. Finally, have a safe and happy new year!

Stuff

Well, I did get some nice boxers. Bill definitely got the better take for 'presents received', but I bought myself one that is delivered today -- a Samsung 50" DLP TV that has the stand built in, aka the "Kirk." I bought the corresponding stand as well. I am moist with anticipation.

In other news, that earthquake is just an incredibly sad story. Imagine being at a great tourist attraction, sleeping, and then a 25 ft wave hitting your hotel room. It's just incredible the devastation. I hope that our government helps out -- I know I want to pitch in myself.

What Bill Got for Christmas

Well, Columbus was in a black out for the holiday but as I said our block was spared. So we were able to proceed as usual with the gift giving. I really get a kick out of giving someone a cool gift. I really love that. Every year my parents, my wife and my little girl gather around to gorge ourselves with "stuff." I know this kinda misses the whole meaning of the holiday but it sure is fun. This year I bagged:

• Season 1 and 2 of Six Feet Under (never saw it on HBO)
• 512K of RAM! Woo hoo! 1024 here I come!
  
• Sweatpants (work clothes)
• Halo 2 for the Xbox. Online here I come! I will make Dan my bitch.
  
• America: The Book by the Daily Show crew.
  
• A "Well, duh" desk caldendar. It's actually really funny. Really.
  
• The Lord of the Rings box set extended DVDs - it's like 12 hours of orcs
• 2 button down shirts when I am forced to go outside when not playing basketball
• A new desk chair - my new comfy chair!
• A waffle maker! I'll actually use this for Ashley several times a week.
  
• And finally the Arnold Palmer Indoor Golf Game. When you get gifts like this you reach the conclusion that you have way too much stuff.
  

I hope everyone had a great holiday. I got some cool stuff but by far the best moment was when my girl saw her new bike complete with purple tassles and training wheels and then pulled the sheet off her new dollhouse that is taller than she is. She flipped out. She then proceeded to play dolls the rest of the day and then asked me to get her some "bad guys" to play in the house with her. We took off for Toys R US and she picked out Spawn action figures as well as Masters of the Universe action figures. My four year old girl likes Barbie....and Skeletor! I love this kid.

Well that was different

Amazing how trees tend to fall over with 6 inches of ice covering them. Anyway I just got my cable back after a 3 day hiatus. I'm lucky, though. Half of Columbus had no POWER--on Christmas no less. Only my block in like a 1/2 mile radius had power. It was pretty weird. Anyway, Happy Holidays. I'll be back tomorrow, I have the first 2 seasons of Six Feet Under to watch...

Two More awards

Sorry, I can't help it:

Best HD Football picture: Fox. So what if they have the crappy NFC, I'd still watch it in 720p. Their HD is just so damn good.

Best Sports Score Display Thingy: Fox again. CBS' 3 point font and stupid "GAMETRAX" are just as stupid as ABC's stat thing that tells you how fast a football is going in baseball MPH. Everything is in a line at the top of the screen with Fox. It's easy, and dandy. Honorable mention to ESPN for always putting the play clock for NFL games on screen. Fox does lose a point by putting their own graphics all over the field of play, which is annoying. Fox' NASCAR ticker is hands down better than NBC's, which along with their play by play really suck.

Merry Christmas

While waiting for the WWE-like NBA game today at 3, InHD2 has "Yule Log" until 3pm. You've never seen anything like a Yule Log in HD with 5.1 Digital Sound. Just thought I"d let you know.

One more bloggie

I forgot this one..

Best Online Videogame Rental Service: GameFly. I hate to say it, because I live on the East Coast and it takes freakin forever to get the games.

That being said, I can 95% of the time, get new releases through the system. They easily have the most professional site. I just restarted my membership there. Even though it takes some time to get the game through the mail, it's much easier than seeing "Short Wait" for two weeks.

I had tried Gamerang because it was more local, but of my 10 game Q, 8 were on wait. I have never had that issue with Gamefly.

Gamefly is pricey compared to the competition, but given the availability, I'm going back to them at least until I try all the new holiday games that I haven't had time to play .

Dan’s Super Terrific Bloggy Awards

Here we go.

Best Game: Half-Life 2. It is awesome. Better than Halo 2. An absolute must buy, just an amazing game. The single player is a lot of fun just in itself. Buy this game now via Steam.

Next Best Game: Halo 2. Well, it definitely has it's moments, but it's short in single player -- shorter than HL2. I enjoy HL2 more. Even online.

Best Sports Game: ESPN NFL 2K5 (Xbox) Again, it's not even close. This game is easily the one I've had the most fun with online and offline in 2005.

Sports Game Honorable Mention: I think Sony/989's MLB 2005 has a lot of potential. I loved putting myself in the game via the Eye Toy. The game itself was a lot of fun; in fact, I probably spent the most 'game time' on this baseball game. MVP had more depth, ESPN was good but tedious IMHO. MLB was a plain vanilla game -- no editing, no downladable rosters, but I think Sony can fix this. I hope they do, because I'd buy next year's if all they did was make the rosters editable, allowed more people on the roster, and had league play. Then the game would really rule. I especially enjoyed the player career mode -- instead of a 'franchise' where you control a team, you control a player, get a contract and have to earn your keep. I was a pitcher with crappy skills and an old one at that. However, I hung on, I went 9-2 but didn't have a lot of innings (usually I pulled myself after the 5th). But anyway as you can see by my prose, I did enjoy the game. Make it better and I'll be happy.

Biggest Surprise of the Year: ESPN College Hoops 2K5. I'm not a huge basketball fan and even less of an NCAA Basketball fan, but when Bill and his cohorts kept telling me to get this game, I finally did. Whoa! What a game. I've been lucky not to run into legacy issues myself, but the on court gameplay is challenging but fun -- you don't feel that EA like catchup logic and can almost understand why you got beat. A lot of fun for $19.99.

Weirdest Game that was Also Cool: Katamari Damacy, PS2. Only in Japan would they say "hey, lets make a guy control a big sticky ball that can pick up stuff it rolls over, including crabs, erasers, batteries and whatever else it hits, and then let's make a king take that sticky ball and throw it up into the sky as a constellation" as a premise for a game. But damn, what a game. And, you have never heard a cooler musical score. This is another cheap game that's well worth it.

Game I would have given major props to had there not been an EA Boycott: Burnout 3 is a fantastic game. Unfortunately, it's distributed by EA and therefore under my boycott.

Game that actually hasn't been released yet but I've played and is a major disappointment even if there isn't an EA Boycott: NFL Street 2. Same shit, different day. Still an NFL Blitz wannabe. I'd rather play the most recent (aka 'shitty') incarnation of Blitz than this turd.

New Platform that people are buying for no apparent reason: Nintendo DS. Why?

Better Platform that people should be buying but aren't: Tapwave Zodiac. PDA? Check. WiFi? Check. Bluetooth? Check. Bigger screen than GBA and bigger resolution? Check. Six buttons plus analog stick? Check. Licensed games that I bought before the boycott like Madden? Check. No support whatsoever? Check. Crappy licensed games like Madden? Check. Zero buyers? Check.

The Terrorists Have Won Award: Electronic Arts for their good for them, bad for America decision to get the exclusive NFL license. If we can continue to count on more shit from them like NFL Street 2, the NFL's license in 2009 will be worth $10.23.

Best State for Voter Fraud: Ohio of course. Hey, let's make a voting precinct that's heavily democratic near a college have only 2 voting terminals and have 10,000 voters. That makes sense -- but when they all go home because of the lines, then it's not voter fraud.

Next Best State for Voter Fraud: New Hampshire. 2 Republicans and high up in the Bush chain, were charged with jamming get out the vote phone lines in 2002 during that election, effectively killing the Democratic rides to the polls lines. 1 has pled guilty. Good thing Republicans like to make sure every vote counts -- becuause when that happens, they lose, like in Washington state.

Best Coffee Maker: The single cup Keurig coffee maker is the greatest invention ever!

Best New material Thing in Dan's Life: HDTV, easily, with on demand cable a close second.

Game I had high hopes for but sucked: Like Bill, I have to go with NCAA Football 2005. What a massive letdown.

Game I wish would be released next year: Microsoft High Heat Baseball 2006.

Best redesign of a console: PlayStation 2. Anytime you can get people to buy a 5 year old console at the old price, you're doing a good job.

Best online service: Xbox Live. (Duh)

Worst Online Concept: EA Sports Premium Pass. Hey, let's pay for something we get for free with a game that costs $30 less! What a concept. Can't wait to see what they'll think of next year when they are the only game in town. Assholes.

So there you go.

What a bunch of wusses

Okay, it's all funny to hear Bill and Todd complain about the weather. Here in Northern New England, you know what's different when we get 8 inches of snow? Nothing! Businesses are still open, schools may get a 2 hour delay (sometimes they do close), but everyone is still expected to be at work at their regular time.

That being said, while listening to XM, a caller from Columbus said they didn't have power, so that could explain Bill's absence. In that case he's not a wuss. Not having power buh-loows.

But if he does have power and 'had to shovel,' buy a snowblower. When you buy a house up here, usually that counts as an appliance. LOL. I'm glad I bought that Toro Power Shovel from a few months back -- it's perfect for when we get 2 inches and I don't need to bring out the snowblower but need the driveway clear.

It's 50 degrees here where I am but we're getting driving rain and some awful wind. Makes me long for 12 inches of snow, actually especially at Christmas...

Happy Holidays

For two days going into Wednesday all we heard from the local weather outlets was, “It’s the worst storm EVER! It’s the worst storm Ever! …Back to you.” (You have to hear the voice of Lewis Black to appreciate that.) I was supposed to wake up Wednesday to see five to eight inches of snow. I woke up to ZERO inches of snow. Given that I love winter and snow (what good native Michigander doesn’t?), I was pretty disappointed. But given our local media in Indy I should’ve seen that coming.

So naturally I paid little attention when the same dire predictions were made yesterday for Wednesday night and Thursday morning. Imagine my surprise when there was about eight inches of snow in my driveway this morning. Easily the most I’ve seen accumulate overnight since moving to Indy five years ago. I guess I should’ve been more careful what I wished for. It took me two freak’n hours to shovel the driveway this morning and the plows still haven’t hit our street despite doing the rest of the neighborhood. I wonder who we pissed off at the county government building.

Anyway, I had hoped to put up some bloggies today, but as we (me, the wife and kid) prepare for our traditional holiday three-day, four city Midwest swing there won’t be time. So, it’ll have to wait till I get back (probably next Wednesday).

With that, I wish you all a very happy holiday. Please be safe out there (particularly if you live in a winter weather state)!