Weekend Notes

A slightly different weekend than usual around here. Plenty of sitting on my ass watching football, which is normal. But a couple car trips, a gathering, and two visitors mixed things up a bit.

High School Football

Cathedral had their one easy game of the year Friday, against winless Southport. In fact SHS had not scored a point this year. You knew it was going to be a rough night when the radio announcers said one of the keys to the game for CHS would be to get to a running clock situation as quickly as possible.

Mission accomplished. The Irish scored on a 65-yard TD pass on the first snap of the game. By the end of the first quarter it was 37–0 and the announcers were debating whether the 35-point clock mercy rule can kick in before halftime (it can not). 54–0 final, the cherry on top when a freshman ran for an 85 yard TD when CHS was just trying to run the clock out.

Elsewhere in Indiana, one of the schools I used to cover on a regular basis, EHS, cancelled their homecoming game and all homecoming activities because of a “harassment complaint” that was filed Friday. We’re not really sure what that means, but it seems super serious. In fact, the school said the remainder of the season is in jeopardy. I hate to make assumptions but this seems like something major is going on with the head coach, right?

Homecoming

Traditionally at CHS, homecoming is not a big deal. Or at least the dance part of proceedings. As long as our girls have been there, the homecoming dance was the night before the game and very casual: you went with groups of friends and no one dressed up, with kids usually wearing shorts and t-shirts. We always heard this was because the school has a winter formal in December and someone thought two big dances was too much to ask kids to prepare for.

That changed this year, with the student council going back to a traditional, semi-formal homecoming dance. And for some reason they had it the Saturday before the homecoming game. Maybe the kids don’t understand how homecoming is supposed to work. Or perhaps it was just the only night the student activity center was available.

Anyway, L went with a buddy of hers on the boys basketball team and had her group of friends over to our house before hand to eat and take pictures. They seemed to have a good time here. She said the dance itself was kind of trash. As was the party she went to after. She’s not a big partier, which was part of her assessment, but I think it was also a strange mix of kids, something else she’s not super tolerant of. She was home just after 11:00.

College Football

Part of the fun of her having friends over Saturday was that their gathering overlapped with the first half of the KU-West Virginia game. Good thing the Jayhawks were beating that ass. Or, rather, good things that WVU is kind of ass this year and even a B- offensive performance by KU was enough for a comfortable win. The defense was outstanding, but you wonder if that was just because the Mountaineers were so bad. I think the boys enjoyed me yelling at the TV a couple times while they were here.

In WVU’s defense, they’ve lost three of their best offensive players already. But their O-line looked terrible. It was one of the worst QB protection jobs I can recall. And I’ve been a KU fan for 45 years!

So not sure how much you can take away from the win. Jalon Daniels continues to be inconsistent. I think we need to accept that’s who he is after five years of injuries and hope he can keep things together for another three months because there’s no Jason Bean behind him anymore.

Again, it is a measure of how far the program has come that many of us were annoyed by the score at halftime. Not too long ago we would have been thrilled to be up 20–3 on a Big 12 opponent at halftime. Instead we were counting the missed opportunities for more points.

Big game against Cincinnati this week. Or at least big in our house. KU is an early 6.5 favorite.

How about C’s Hoosiers?!?! Holy crap! I had several friends ask me if I thought IU was legit going into their matchup with Illinois. I said I thought so, but that game would tell us a lot. IU answered every question, hanging 63 on a top ten team and were driving to score again before they ran out of time. Pretty sure Curt Cignetti is climbing the list of most hated coaches in the country quickly, which is funny since he coaches IU. He gets on my nerves but I figure IU fans deserve some fun after decades of futility.

We have tickets for homecoming next month and I’m actually interested in seeing them play in person. The turnaround in Bloomington is remarkable.

Visitors

Two visitors over the weekend. First, my father-in-law is spending a few days with us while his wife is out-of-town. That’s been tough. He’s not in great health and struggles with a lot of basic stuff. It’s hard to watch a man who was so gregarious and active be constantly wiped out and reserved. S and I work hard to find things to laugh about in his behavior (without making fun of him) to balance out the sadness and frustration. He’s with me today and S will take him back to his place tonight when his wife returns from her trip.

He has always been one of those old men who walks around other people’s houses and turns off any lights he finds on. This has caused both laughter and anger in the 22 years I’ve lived in Indy. Once, many years ago, S was in the basement studying for her boards and he was over helping me with a project. Without being asked, he opened the basement door, saw the lights were on, and switched them off, eliciting much cussing from the basement.

Well, he still does that. But in the modern, smart(-ish) home era, he gets confused sometimes. I have several lamps that are on smart plugs which turn on around sunset then automatically off at various times. One of the lamps doesn’t have an obvious off-switch. Friday evening I found the entire smart plug pulled from the wall, lying on the table next to it. He’s persistent in reducing our electric bill! That is one we laughed at. Each night before bed I make a circuit of the house resetting things he has “adjusted” for us.

Thursday I drove down to Bloomington to bring C home for the weekend. Well, kind of. Her weekend plan was to go to Cincinnati to visit some high school friends on Friday and then her big sister on Saturday. So she needed to come home to get a car. She normally has just one class on Fridays, a discussion for her political theory class. They had an exam on Tuesday so the discussion was cancelled and I was able to get her Thursday night.

Like the first time I saw M her freshman year, C talked all the way home. Seems like she’s off to a good start. Classes are going well and she enjoys them all. She’s made some new friends while still seeing some of her high school pals. She and her roommate are getting along, although she doesn’t love her dorm because it is constantly loud and chaotic. She’s joined a couple of clubs. She has probably already found a group of girls to live with next year.[1]

She had a good time in Cincy then drove back early Sunday so she could spend time with us. Which, naturally, turned into her napping most of the day until I drove her back in the afternoon so she could go to a Colin Jost concert on campus.

I have to say that the drive to Bloomington is so easy. After over 10 years of construction, the upgrade of US highway 31 to Interstate 69 finished a year ago, making it a clean shot to B-town. No more stoplights between I–465 and when you exit for IU. No more constricted lanes while the road was being improved. It’s a smooth, 70 minute drive.

On my drive back Sunday I had a strange experience. I was cruising along at about 80, passing another car, when I noticed a huge pickup was suddenly right on my ass. As soon as I could I got back into the right lane. This truck ripped by me. It was a huge, Chevy, dually truck. In the back bed was a massive, carved, wooden bear statue strapped so it was upright. And this truck was going at least 90. Just for fun I got up to 86 or 87 and homie was still pulling away from me like I wasn’t moving. I guess someone needed that bear in their yard ASAP!

Always good to see the college kids, especially when it seems like they are doing well. I’ll repeat an observation from two years ago when M came home for the first time: one of the great moments in parenting is when your college kids come home and you hear them spending time with their siblings, giggling and having their own conversations away from S and I.

Colts

OK, I don’t want to get too excited about the Colts’ 3–0 start. They’ve beaten two of the worst teams in the league and then were a fortunate/controversial penalty call away from losing to Denver a week ago. But they have POUNDED those two bad teams, looking terrific on both sides of the ball. The next four weeks should tell us a lot. Two trips to LA to face the Rams and Chargers sandwiching home games against the Raiders and Cardinals. Getting at worst a split from those games and you’re feeling pretty good about the team, especially if they can stay close in the two road games. It is a bonus that Houston is 0–3, giving the Colts a nice cushion on the pre-season picks to win the AFC South.

There was a very 2010’s Kansas football moment in the Colts game. Indy was up 17–6 late in the first half with Tennessee driving. The Colts held on third down leaving the Titans with 4th and one with 45 seconds left. The Colts called a time out to stop the clock. After the time out the Titans offense remained on the field, standing around looking confused. So Tennessee called their own timeout. After a pause they ran their kicking team onto the field. Only to get a delay of game penalty because they were standing around waiting to get a kicking ball onto the field. A delay of game penalty after not one but two timeouts! Very Turner Gill/Charlie Weis/David Beaty. And then the Colts blocked the field goal, drove down the field, and kicked their own field goal as time ran out. It’s amazing how things spiral for bad teams.

Fever

I feel bad about giving up on the Fever. Not only did they win their opening playoff series, they went into Las Vegas Sunday and stole game one against the Aces, controlling almost the entire game.

Since the WNBA will always WNBA, the game was played opposite of the Colts game. Between than and me not expecting much, I never switched over. I was sitting in C’s dorm room when I saw that they had, in fact, won. I’ll be tuning in for game two, which means they’ll probably get crushed. Still a pretty remarkable story. No matter how this series ends up, it is some measure of redemption and consolation for a season that has, mostly, been a disaster.