Weekend Notes

Another weekend with other activities that kept me from watching dozens of hours of football. But they were good things, so no complaints. And I still watched a fair share of football.

Senior Retreat

Friday afternoon we gathered at CHS to welcome back L and 64 classmates who had spent most of the week at a retreat center about an hour north of here. The welcome ceremony is supposed to be a surprise. Since L is a third-born and we’ve been at CHS for 7+ years, she knew we would be there.1

L had a great time. She bonded with both old friends and new. Her group leader was the French teacher - who taught S many years ago! - and he told the kids the key to success was getting at least 60 hugs a day. L was one of the kids who took this to heart and made sure everyone got their hugs. She said at the beginning of the week some classmates weren’t super into it, but by the end everyone was all in. A girl in another group even shouted her out at the closing ceremony. “One of my sacramental moments was getting a hug from LB every morning!”

We took her out for dinner after where she downloaded a lot of what she had experienced. Despite the lack of sleep, she was buzzing with energy and ready to share. Later in the evening she headed to the home of another retreat participant for an evening bonfire. Sunday a group of them went to mass together, later a smaller group went to L’s old workplace and hung out all afternoon doing homework.

Senior retreat is one of the coolest things CHS does. All three of our girls had great experiences when they went away. The only bummer of L’s was she went on the first of the year, so none of her classmates that already attended joined the parents for the return ceremony. But that gives her the chance to greet many of her friends who take their retreats later in the year.

FNL

Once we got home, it was another split-attention Friday night for us with football.

CHS was over in Dayton playing the #13 team in all of Ohio. I was streaming the audio for that. And IU was playing Northwestern down in Bloomington. C was home for the weekend so watched that with us.

The Irish led the entire game until THS tied it late in the fourth quarter. But CHS had time to drive into field goal position when the game momentarily went off the rails. Before the next-to-last play of the drive, the game was stopped as a parent from the home team came onto the field and was screaming at the refs. It took a moment to eject this person. One play later, as CHS was lining up for a potential game-winning field goal, the home team’s assistant athletic director came on the field to yell at the refs. THS had no time outs left and he spent at least a minute on the field, effectively icing CHS’ kicker.

Sadly it worked. The kicker missed to the right.

Overtime.

Naturally THS scored on their first drive, CHS threw an interception, and it was an L for the trip home. This coming week was supposed to be a bye week but they picked up a local team that is terrible. Most of the senior class had plans to go to a concert that night. L was laughing at the senior football players that have to sell their tickets when I told her the game had been added.

Meanwhile down in B-town the Hoosiers struggled all night with Northwestern. I’ve watched bits of every IU game this year. In my humble opinion, this team is still very good, but Josh Hoover just ain’t it at QB. He’s a nice player but misses way too many easy throws. His footwork seems like it’s a mess. Northwestern isn’t terrible, but if the IU offense performs as it should, they win that game easily instead of going into the final seconds worried about losing.

Maybe Hoover is about to shake off his issues. It took Fernando Mendoza a few games to settle in last year. IU’s schedule begins toughening up soon so he doesn’t have much time.

Saturday Road Trip

Because UC’s homecoming isn’t until next month and falls on the weekend of their break, M and her roommates decided to have their own family weekend Saturday. With an evening game, that gave us plenty of time to get down there and spend most of the afternoon with her and her friends.

We “tailgated” at their house, a few blocks off campus. This is a normal thing at UC. As you walk the streets of the Clifton neighborhood, you find lots of old houses with kids hanging in their yards, or sitting out on the porch roofs, drinking, eating, playing games, listening to music, and doing all the stuff you would normally do at a parking lot or green space at a less urban campus. There were two other tailgates on M’s street alone.

We had a good time. L learned some college drinking games. We got to meet lots of M’s friends, including one of her summer roommates in France. It was great to see her for the first time in over a month. One of the other families had a TV outside so we could track the day games, but I barely glanced at those.

We did not get tickets to the game - UC went to 4-0 by beating Kansas State, which I supported even though one of M’s CHS classmates plays for KSU - so took off for home early evening, arriving just as it was fully dark. Those sunsets are getting earlier and earlier!

I watched some of the late games, mostly Oregon-USC. That hit on Dante Moore was awful. Even worse was the USC player celebrating after his late hit that left Moore in an obvious concussion reaction. Props to all the coaches and officials who kept it from escalating into what could have been an even uglier situation. And props to USC for suspending that kid, and the kid himself for releasing an honest and contrite letter on Sunday.2 I went to bed in the third quarter with the Ducks up and was pleased Sunday to see they laid some wood in the second half.

Sunday

This time of year in Indy, when the weather becomes perfect, it is always a huge topic of discussion on whether the roof of Lucas Oil stadium will be open. The team has a rather narrow window of temps and conditions in which they will open it, which has led to lots of complaining about why local taxpayers had to fund a roof that opens but rarely gets used as intended.3

Well, Sunday was about as ideal as you can get. 70° at game beginning, mid-70s when it ended. The slightest of breezes. Not a cloud in the sky.

The roof was open!

And as soon as the game began I was cursing the Colts for opening it.

Why?

Because the team was wearing their ugly “rivals” uniforms that are all a deep gray with blue lettering, from helmets to shoes. No white to be found. And as the game moved between areas in bright sunlight to others in deep shadow and the TV cameras struggled to adjust, you literally could not see the Colts players at times.

What a stupid, stupid moment. What a perfect franchise to make this choice!

Anyway, the Colts game was a little like the CHS game. They led the entire day, until the Texans took the lead late. But the Colts marched down and kicked a go-ahead field goal then survived a tepid Houston attempt at a game-winning drive. Although for some reason they didn’t seem to be in a lot of hurry, going absolutely vanilla for the second-straight week late in the game. In today’s paper our local columnist ripped Shane Steichen for his play calling. I agree, but also wonder if he realizes Daniel Jones is crap and just didn’t want him to blow the game.

Jones was terrible, responsible for three turnovers. The Texans’ D bottle up Jonathan Taylor all day. Sauce Gardner was poor, getting beat badly a couple times, getting flagged for interference, and apparently getting injured (at least momentarily) again. That trade looks worse every week. The Colts D could barely get any push against the Houston O-line. Yet the Colts won, so I guess I can’t really complain.

Rather than watch the late afternoon games, I flipped over to the Fever’s WNBA playoff opener in Las Vegas. They had just taken the lead when I started watching. But the Aces blew them out from then on. I think that break for the World Cup hurt the Fever as much as any team. They were scorching hot before the break but never got their mojo back after. Plus, since Aliyah Boston had to play heavy minutes during the tournament, her already aggravated leg injury seemed worse after returning from Germany.

Now they have to win game two or their season is over.

Having three-game series to open the playoffs is high on the list of incredibly dumb things the WNBA has done.4 It is INSANE that the best team in the regular season, Minnesota, is a game way from elimination because New York upset them in game one. Almost as dumb as starting your playoffs in the middle of an NFL Sunday…

We went out for dinner with friends but were home in time for the Sunday night game. That ended up being awesome. I toyed with going to bed at halftime, with the Rams up 16-0. I wanted to see how the second half began. About 30 minutes later I was thinking about going to bed again because the momentum had completely swung and it really felt like Denver was on their way to winning by a couple touchdowns.

Luckily I stayed with it for a wildly entertaining fourth quarter. Shame every game can’t be this fun.

I made the rule last year that I won’t draw any broad conclusions about the NFL until we have a month of games in the books. So look for that exciting post next week!

Replay

This whole “expedited replay” thing drives me nuts because there doesn’t seem to be any logic to it. Last week in the Colts-Chiefs game, the NBC announcers asked the question of what triggers the expedited review, after two plays that seemed very similar were given different treatment. The response was every play is looked at, but the expedited review only comes into play if something is obvious.

So when CJ Stroud was tackled a full yard short of a first down but the officials spotted the ball three feet the wrong way and moved the chains, how was there no expedited review Sunday? And how did the Colts not challenge it? The Texans scored their first touchdown a couple plays later, so that was kind of a big mistake in what ended as a two-point game.

Then that pass interference call against the Rams that set up the winning score for Denver was horrific. But it was not eligible for challenge or review. I guess that’s not really a replay complaint as much as an officiating one. Since replay could not be used to overturn a clearly incorrect call, I’ll count it as another argument against reviewing plays.

Apparently the baseball season ended yesterday, too. I didn’t watch all season. Not sure I’ll tune into the playoffs at all this year. An idiotic, likely extended, lockout is coming. I see no need to reward anyone involved. I am on a couple text threads where baseball seeps in, so if something really cool seems to be happening maybe I’ll switch over. I’ve never been afraid of skipping an exciting sporting event for “principles,” though, so don’t count on it.

  1. Later she also told us, “You guys put the time on the calendar so I knew you were coming.” Whoops. I blame S. ↩︎

  2. I recognize that he was likely well coached in the words he chose. But it still struck the right tone. ↩︎

  3. We are still paying off that debt, of course. ↩︎

  4. And, to be fair, MLB does the same thing, although at least the top two seeds in each league get byes. ↩︎