D's Notebook

Tag: parenting (Page 1 of 70)

Weekend Notes

December 16, 2024 /

A slightly quieter weekend. No sitting on the couch for 183 hours watching football. I actually got out of the house both days. Multiple times! Let’s review.

College Girls

I’ll share the biggest, best news up top: C got her acceptance letter from IU on Thursday. That’s the only school she’s really interested in, so I think she’s locked into being a Hoosier.[1] She’s pretty excited. Coincidentally she wore an IU shirt to school Thursday. It’s like she knew the letter was coming.

She found out a full month later than M did two years ago; apparently IU did rolling acceptances two years ago based on when you got your application in and switched to letting most early admission candidates know on the same set of days this year. We kind of wish they had waited another seven days so we can keep C focused for finals this week. Nothing to sap a kid’s motivation like telling her she’s been accepted to the college she wants to attend.

C and L have a review day today, three full days of finals, then a half day on Friday before they begin their holiday break.

M wrapped up her finals Thursday morning and was home by early afternoon. Seems like it was a good semester. Financial accounting was not her bag – is it anyone’s? – and that will be the first B on her college transcript. But she’s in marketing, not the CPA path, so surviving and advancing is the real goal with that class.

HS Hoops

We spent 3+ hours at CHS watching ball Saturday, so I’ll start with a review of last week’s three games.

Tuesday we traveled to ZHS, a big suburban school that tends to be good. Last year they beat us by 19 but we knew they are very young this year. We took advantage, winning by 20 in a game that was not that close. We hit shots, played good D, and made hustle plays. JV also won by 20. A good night.

Thursday we played a fellow Catholic school from the suburbs. We expected them to be trash. They were. Yet we only won by 20. A classic example of playing down to our competition’s level. Seriously, their varsity looked like a JV team, at least on offense. They were a scrappy team on defense but were just atrocious when trying to score. Each time we’d get the lead up to 20 or so, we’d go brain dead and let them cut 8–10 points off the deficit. JV also won easily.

The most exciting part of this night was driving to the game in an evening snow storm. There wasn’t much snow, but it was cold enough that the roads slicked-up quick. Throw in rush hour traffic and it took us 50 minutes to make what would normally have been a 20–22 minute trip. The only time we slipped or slid was pulling into the GCHS parking lot.

Finally, Saturday we took on undefeated #6 2A team EH. They went to Semistate the past two seasons but lost a ton of seniors from last year. We knew they have a truly great guard, but if we could contain her and limit the rest of the team, we’d have a good chance to win.

Until one of our two best players didn’t show up because she was sick. And we decided to let their best player go ahead and score 35. We had to put a JV girl on her for a couple stretches because of the missing player plus foul trouble. We kept digging holes and trying to climb out but let it get out of hand in the second half. The margin got over 15 points a couple times, we ended up losing by 13. JV won by 50. We were kind of incredulous that their varsity can be so good and JV so bad.

Roughly halfway through the season varsity is 5–6. JV is 9–2.

It is finals week so we don’t play again until Saturday.

Friday night L and I went to watch her middle school buddy play for our big rival school. Coincidentally they played the team we face this coming week, so it was a scouting trip, too. L proudly wore her CHS sweatshirt and left her coat in the car. I admired her confidence. There are tons of St P’s families at BCHS, so we got to see a lot of old friends.

Her buddy didn’t play much or very well, which was a bummer. L took mental notes on both teams to share with her coach.

We let her drop her crutches on Saturday. She’s not officially cleared but we also let her go over to the Y and shoot a little without her boot on Sunday afternoon. She said she lost her jump shot. I kept to myself that she didn’t have much of one before she got hurt.

There’s still some pain in her foot, but not like it was before the resting began. Two more weeks in the boot before she gets re-evaluated. Knock on wood, between some more rest, shoe inserts, and tape she’ll be cleared to play in our January 8 game, and then in the City Tournament the next week.

KU Hoops

Well that was better.

Bill Self compared North Carolina State to Missouri in terms of their physical abilities and style of play. I didn’t see much of that Saturday, although maybe it was a representation of the difference in playing at home vs on the road.

Naturally, most of the game took place at the same time as the CHS games, so I was following along and just made it home in time to see the final minutes, then watched the recording.

It is kind of crazy that KU has now beat NC State 13 straight times. That doesn’t seem possible in a non-conference matchup between two power conference teams.

Colts

I only saw the first half, as we went out to dinner Sunday evening. When we got home and I checked the highlights, I was pleased that I missed the second half. What a horrific effort that was! Jonathan Taylor fumbling a touchdown for a touchback for no reason. A completely idiotic trick play that turned into a pick-six for the Broncos. I remain in the You Have To Play Anthony Richardson camp. But days like yesterday make that a very tough place to be. He misses soooooo many throws, often the easiest ones, often badly. I’ve said it multiple times and I’ll say it again: even when he makes a good throw, there’s something about his ball that makes it very difficult to catch. I saw a couple in the first half yesterday that were relatively well-placed and for whatever reason the receivers just couldn’t bring them in. Maybe they’re surprised when the ball actually gets to them?

I don’t exactly have my finger on the pulse of the city, but I gather a lot of impatience with the direction of the franchise. 2023 seemed like a great year to be drafting a quarterback. In retrospect, the Colts may have been smarter to draft a non-QB a year ago, tank last season with a fill-in, and then grab a QB in this year’s draft. As with just about everything else they’ve done since Andrew Luck retired, the Colts managed to mess that up, though.

Pacers

On a bit of an upturn? They’ve looked better over the past week and won three-of-four. Their next nine games are brutal though – at Phoenix, at Sacramento, at Golden State, OKC at home, back-to-backs at Boston, Milwaukee at home, at Miami, and Phoenix at home. Is 3–6 a best-case scenario?

  1. Cincinnati is the only other school she applied to.  ↩

Weekend Notes

December 2, 2024 /

A long, extra-stuffed Thanksgiving weekend is in the books. Let’s run through the highlights.

Thanksgiving

For the first time in ages that we’ve been home for the holiday,[1] we did not host the local gathering on Turkey Day. One of S’s sisters and her husband opened up their house to the family. It was nice to not have to clean before and after, run around wildly the morning of, and hope that we hadn’t forgotten anything as we started serving the food. We provided mashed potatoes, Giada’s dressing, a meat and cheese tray, and pumpkin pie. That took a couple hours of prep, and I had a moment of panic when I wasn’t sure if the potatoes were going to be ready in time. In general, though, a much lower stress Thanksgiving than we’ve had in a long time. And we got to come home, get into comfy clothes, and crash on the couch instead of the hours of dishes afterward. Thumbs up all around.

College Girl

M came home Monday afternoon and was here in time for dinner. She went back mid-day Sunday. It was nice to have her home. She had only visited once this fall, so S and her sisters had barely seen her since summer. She has one week of regular classes before finals begin next week. She’s still not sure of her exam/project schedule, but should be home for Christmas break a week from Friday. Classes are going well. She’s eager to be done with financial accounting and never think about it again. No CPA accreditation in her future.

One of her friends who goes to the College of Charleston begins finals today. That just seems cruel.

College Football

Was this the wildest week of college football ever? Some huge upsets. Some great games. Most importantly, it seemed like there were about 50 games that included some kind of brawl. Fighting in sports is generally stupid, but in this case I approve. Nothing like some good, old fashioned hate to wrap up the holiday weekend.

Regarding the planting of flags on the opponent’s field, I’m 100,000% for it. Rub that shit in. Pettiness is always good. If you don’t like it, don’t lose the game. Take your L like a man instead of starting some punk-ass fight about it. Then go plant your flag on your rival’s field next year.

Of course now we’re going to get all kinds of dumb rules that ban flags on the field, postgame interactions, etc, etc, etc. Sports are dumb. The people that run them are dumber.

KU

I have three games to cover in this section, so I’ll pull them out for their own Jayhawk Talk post.

Colts

I missed most of the Colts game as we were watching a couple of our nephews yesterday. S and I helped the boys with their homework. I had the four-year-old and his pre-K stuff, which involved identifying letters and coloring them a certain way and coloring, cutting, and pasting a series of pictures of puppies so the matching ones went together. S assisted the second grader with his reading and answering questions related to his stories. Some of that was in Spanish, which she does not speak. The rest of us may or may not have laughed at her behind her back.

I was finally able to flip on the Colts game late in the fourth quarter. I saw Anthony Richardson throw three-straight balls that sailed into an area where no one could catch them. It looked like the Colts were going to lose to the lowly Patriots.

Then AR threw three-straight amazing balls. Of course, two were dropped by his receivers. One buried itself into the receiver’s chest so he couldn’t drop it. The Colts tried to screw it up, but converted three different fourth downs on a 19-play drive, including scoring on fourth-and-goal, and then converted the two-point conversion to eek out the win. Although the Pats came up just short on a 68-yard field goal that would have won the game. Not sure if winning is good or bad at this point. Somehow the Colts are still in the playoff picture. I still think getting a top 10 draft pick would be better than chasing the postseason.

SNF

I don’t know what we’ve done to deserve it, but for the second time in a couple weeks we got a prime time NFL game played in snow. Last night’s snow in Buffalo was a proper snow, too, although it looked like it had really dumped earlier in the day. When the Colts played up there in a foot of snow a decade or so ago, that may have been the greatest NFL snow game ever. I didn’t have a ton of interest in the game and was tired after a late night Saturday. But I stayed up deep into the fourth quarter to watch the majesty of football in a driving snowstorm.

Pacers

They might, officially, stink. Losses to Detroit and Memphis, after leading by 19, this weekend.

High School Hoops

Three nights of CHS basketball over the last week.

Tuesday the JV beat WC by seven. This was a wild game full of swings and runs. Lots of horrible calls. One ref was so preoccupied with a WC dad in the stands that he kept screaming at people sitting at the scorer’s table to get him out of the gym. I have no idea what that was about. I hadn’t seen the guy he was yelling about do a thing, and our athletic director didn’t seem super motivated to remove him.

Wednesday was varsity night. For the first three quarters, our girls played the best they had played all season. As the lead jumped up to 23 I leaned over to the dad next to me and said we seemed to have turned a corner, getting tougher and playing smarter since that respectable loss to 4A #2 a week earlier.

Guess what happened next?

That’s right, I jinxed those poor girls.

They lost their minds and blew 17 points of that 23-point lead. Mindless turnovers. Passivity on offense. Missed free throws. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong. To top it off, late in the quarter, when our coach really should have been clearing her bench because we were up 15+, there was a loose ball that our freshman starter dove for. Her head cracked against another player’s knee and she went down, not getting up for several minutes. When she was able to walk she looked dazed and had a huge goose egg on her temple. Based on her injury history, we are worried she’s going to miss an extended period.

We held on and won by six but ruined all the good feelings in the process. At practice Friday the girls got to watch film for 90 minutes. All of that film was from the fourth quarter. Which is kind of funny when you’re not the one watching it.

Saturday we drove down to the Louisville area for another boy-girl, JV-varsity doubleheader. These are usually cool, but I was bummed the games were scheduled that way. While I was being a good dad watching the JV girls in the auxiliary gym, there was a terrific boys game in the main gym. In the all-class, coaches poll, JHS was #2, CHS #4. Which would make JHS #2 in 4A, CHS #1 in 3A. We peeked in a couple times and JHS was always up by 6–8, but the Irish made a run and ended up losing by two.

The varsity girls lost by 10. They were down just one at halftime but foul trouble and lack of depth because of the injury killed them in the second half.

The JV girls played really well for three quarters, but like their varsity sisters three nights earlier, fell apart in the fourth quarter and let a 15-point lead get down to two a couple times. We ended up winning by six but it was way too nervy. You know what would have helped? A point guard who takes decent care of the ball. Hopefully we get one of those back in about a month.

Travel

Louisville is two hours away, so we did end up traveling for the weekend. This was my first trip in the Tesla in cold weather. Sub-freezing temps make the battery less efficient and cause charging to take longer. Which meant my brain had been spinning for a couple days on the best way to handle the logistics for this trip.

My plan was to leave home with a 100% charge and then stop at the Supercharger in Columbus, IN, a little over an hour away, on the way down to get back up to 80%. That would give me several options for the return trip.

However, the Supercharger in Columbus was not working. So I drove straight through, arriving at my destination with about 45% charge left. While we ate dinner I explored different options on the Tesla app. It kept trying to send me to Shelbyville, IN, which would involve taking a big right turn on the way back to Indy. It would also have me arrive at the Supercharger with about 5% charge remaining, which was way too low for my tastes with the temps dropping and snow falling. As much as I hated to go the wrong way, it made the most sense to cross the river into Louisville proper and go to a charging station about 10 minutes from where the games were. By the time the game ended, even the Telsa app was sending me that way. I think it was too cold to make it to Shelbyville.

So when the game was over I got L some Chick-Fil-A and we went to Kentucky to grab some electrons. Earlier in the evening the estimate was about a 10 minute charge to get home. By the time we got there, it was cold enough that it took us about 25 minutes. This was a 250 KW charger. Because seven of the eight chargers were being used and the falling temperature, mine maxed out at 85 KW, and was usually much lower than that.[2]

We left the charging station at 10 PM, arrived home just after midnight with about 13% of the charge left. If it had been warmer I would have been comfortable going under 10%, but being new to cold weather EV driving, I wanted as much buffer as I could have.

L didn’t mind. She had her iPad and watched shows both while we charged and on the way home. I was able to pull up the Texas-Texas A&M game on Hulu while we charged. And we lucked out with the snow. Early forecasts had called for 2–3” of snow in Southern Indiana right when we were driving. It was definitely snowing hard while we charged, but still mostly melting. And we drove out of it pretty quickly once we headed back north.

We got the Christmas decorations up across Friday-Saturday-Sunday. The calendar says December. Ten days after pushing 70 we are stuck in the 20s and 30s for most of this week. The holiday season is officially here!

  1. We missed 2021 and 2022 while traveling to Hawaii and Italy.  ↩
  2. Not to get too deep into the details, but you will rarely get the full listed power from a charger. Many elements go into what your car can pull, including how many other cars are charging at that location, weather, the temperature of your battery, and how charged your battery is. In general, you will pull more power early in your charge, and as the battery fills the rate will slow dramatically. The analogy I heard when I was car shopping was a theater filling for a movie. When the seats are all empty, people flow in easily. But as it fills and it’s harder to find an open seat, the people searching for one have to take more time to select one. Same pouring energy into your battery.  ↩

High School Hoops Chronicles: Two Game Nights and One Huge Bummer

November 19, 2024 /

Two games to catch up on from last week.

Tuesday the Irish played their Jesuit sisters from down the block. L was excited because the Braves were missing two of their best varsity players, meaning girls from their kinda crappy JV team had moved up, so she was hoping for two wins.

She got them.

CHS dominated the JV game and won by 20 in a game that wasn’t close after the first few minutes. L scored 8 on 3–6 shooting, hitting both of her 3-point attempts. She added three assists and SIX steals. She dressed for varsity but did not get in despite the Irish winning by 23. Her coach looked at her once but since the Jesuits still had starters in thought better of it.

Thursday we took on Mooresville, a traditionally strong program from a mostly rural area just outside the Indy metro area. We got two very different yet similar games.

In JV, we led by 12 at halftime and got it up to 15 a couple times in the third quarter before their coach decided it couldn’t hurt to start pressing us. Not sure why he waited over half the game to do that, because it destroyed our offense. We struggled to get the ball across halfcourt, and when we did made terrible plays once we set up the offense. Worth noting L either sat or was playing off the ball during this stretch. We had two girls who both scored around 10 points in the first half. Both of them took about a million terrible shots in the second half and failed to score. Just a total panic on offense.

MHS got it down to three a couple times but never closer as we held on in the final 90 seconds. L took seven shots, hitting just one, but she was clearly fouled on two of those misses. She added one free throw for three points, grabbed a rebound, had an assist, and accounted for just one of those stupid turnovers. Best of all, she again had SIX STEALS and forced a couple other turnovers. Her offense isn’t really clicking yet, but her defense has been great.

Varsity was another story. CHS fell behind early and trailed by as many as 15, but caught fire in a crazy fourth quarter that felt like it lasted about an hour. We got it down to three with MHS’ two bigs both fouling out along the way. Then we relaxed and the margin got back up to eight. We cut it to three two more times but couldn’t get the defensive stop for a chance to tie. We hit a three at the buzzer to lose by three. L again dressed but did not play. I’m pretty sure MHS hit 99% of their free throws while we hit maybe 50%.

A highlight from this game was a CHS dad getting into it with some MHS parents. I’ve known this dad for nearly 10 years and he’s always been a fool at games. He was ejected from multiple CYO games over the years but has somehow not learned his lesson. As usual, he was overly into the game Thursday. When an MHS mom seemed to lose her mind on a close call, he decided to tell her that she should keep her mouth shut, but in cruder terms. Now Mooresville folks are a little rougher than us Indy, private school folks. Or at least this lady was. I thought there was going to be a brawl. Luckily that was averted. This will not be the last incident this parent is involved in. I always try to not sit too close to him so I don’t get pulled into any confrontations.

JV is 2–1, varsity 1–2.

Now for the bummer.

L had been experiencing some periodic foot pain. It would flare up one day, disappear completely the next. It didn’t seem to affect her play so we decided to just monitor it. She told the trainer one day after practice, who examined her and gave her a bag of ice.

Then Sunday, following a hard practice Saturday to prepare for the #2 team in the state tonight, she could barely walk.[1] We put her in a boot for the rest of the day and Monday morning I took her straight to sports medicine.

The diagnosis was what S expected: stress reaction. Crutches or a knee scooter for the next four weeks while wearing the boot, followed by at least two more weeks in the boot. She will be re-evaluated on January 2. Obviously no basketball during those six weeks, a span of at least 10 games.

L has actually been taking it pretty good so far. I think it’s going to hit her tonight when she has to sit on the bench during the JV game and then behind the bench for varsity. And the longer she goes without practicing the more she’ll realize what she’s missing.

JV is really hurting at the moment. Four girls who weren’t playing much quit this week. Three more were too sick to practice Monday. And now L is out. A couple girls who don’t normally get a lot of minutes have a huge opportunity.

It could certainly be worse. L didn’t tear or break anything, she doesn’t need surgery, and this wasn’t like one of her friends last year who had concussions number four and five and had to stop playing forever. But it still sucks. She’s going to miss roughly half of her sophomore season. Even if she comes back in early January, it’s going to take her awhile to get her fitness back.

About all she can do now is sit in a chair doing dribbling or form shooting exercises. I remember watching videos of Isiah Thomas doing folding chair workouts when I was in middle school. I need to find those for her.

That also means less high school basketball content for me to share. I’ll keep you updated on the game results, but doubt I’ll have as detailed breakdowns as normal.

  1. JV played scout, and L was assigned the part of the 6’3” girl who is going to IU next year. That may seem like an odd choice since L is only 5’7”, but the big girl spends most of her time behind the 3-point arc, so L got to chuck a lot. I was hoping this would carry over to her looking to shoot more but that’s not going to happen now.  ↩

Weekend Notes

November 11, 2024 /

A busy weekend with more driving than normal, some big events I was not able to watch live, and the standard wide range of topics to discuss.

High School Hoops

L’s sophomore season kicked off Friday with a trip 90 minutes north to play Norwell, class 3A runners up last year. We played their varsity over the summer in a close, fun game we closed with a big run to win. NHS lost several seniors from a year ago, but are traditionally a very good program with a strong youth program, so we figured this would be a tough night.

JV was a disaster. It looked like our girls had never faced a trapping defense before. We trailed 17–8 after one quarter and that was as close as the game got. We scored one in the second quarter, four in the third, and three in the fourth to lose 58–16. L played most of the first three quarters, scoring just two on 1–4 from the field. As a bonus she had to run off the court and throw up in the second quarter. We’re hoping it was just something she ate before the game and not her body still trying to get the mono out of her system. We let a freshman score 22 on us. She was good, but she was not 22 points in a JV game good.

The dad I was sitting with and I guessed we had between 20–25 turnovers in the first half. L later confirmed that they turned it over 23 times in those 14 minutes, 50 for the entire game. That’s what happens when JV just serves as a scout team in practice.

Varsity was a little better. Our girls had an early lead then gave up a 30–10 run, but trailed by just 10 at halftime. Then they gave up nine-straight to open the second half and were in trouble. They made a great rally in the fourth quarter and cut it to four a couple times, but never got closer and lost by eight. We sat by some very nice Norwell people, which was a bonus.

L was officially on the varsity roster, but did not suit up for that game. She definitely had a lot of work to do to climb into that rotation. Two games this week.

HS Football

While L and her teammates were in action up near Ft. Wayne, CHS was playing #1 Lawrence North for the sectional football championship. None of us could not get a good signal in the gym, so could only get updates when someone ran outside for a few seconds. CHS threw a pick six early and trailed 7–0 at halftime. The CHS defense had three interceptions of their own in the first half but the offense could not turn them into points. The game got away from the Irish in the second half and they lost 24–7, ending their season at 6–4. It was their first loss in a sectional game in the five years they’ve played in 6A. If they lose in sectionals again next year I believe they’ll move down to 5A for L’s senior year. Unless the IHSAA changes the rules again to keep CHS from dropping a class.

KU Hoops

Also at the same time as L’s game was the big North Carolina – Kansas game in Lawrence.

College basketball on Friday nights is dumb. I know, I know, Saturdays and Sundays are for football this time of year. Doesn’t make this scheduling any dumber. Move this to December when weekend slots are a little easier to find. Still, you can’t criticize the schools too much since they agreed to play a home-and-home series rather than drop this in an NBA arena or attach it to some kind of special event on a neutral court. KU just finished with IU. They start a series this year with Duke that has two neutral court games and two on campus. Bill Self continues to check boxes on places he wants to take the Jayhawks in the final act of his career.

Try as I might, I could not get any score updates on my phone, although the occasional text from a friend came through. The other KU dad on the team got a running score update from Google, so we saw that KU jumped out to a big lead then blew it all after halftime. Just as the varsity game ended his wife was somehow able to get ESPN to stream on her phone, so we watched the last 90 seconds of KU’s win. We both felt a little bad about being pumped about the win while our girls were hanging their heads about their losses.

I watched the recording of the game Sunday and was pretty pleased. A great start from a super-balanced team. Obviously taking the foot off the gas in the second half was not good. It was like they just stopped playing defense. Zeke Mayo belongs at this level. Hunter Dickinson needs to get his stamina back. If Flory sticks around a few years he might be the best rebounder of the Self era. I like all the options this team has, and they should get better playing together as they get more comfortable.

I have a few broader thoughts about the team, but seems better to save those until I’ve seen them in a real game a few more times.

Hey, guess when KU plays next? Tuesday night at 6:30 Eastern. Guess what high school team will be playing at the same time again? I’m not enthused about how the schedules are lining up this season. At least we can get a signal in the CHS game so I can keep one eye on the Jayhawks vs Irish grad Xavier Booker.

Dude’s Day

L and I got home around 11:00 Friday night. I stayed up a little bit to have a snack, talk to S a little, then make sure my car was charging before setting my alarm for 7:00 AM and going to bed. Saturday was M’s sorority’s “Dude’s Day” and I needed to be back on the road around 8:00.

Why “Dude’s Day?” Because kids these days want to be inclusive and make the event open for any relatives who aren’t biological dads who join in the fun. That said, I think I only met actual dads.

Anyway, I got to campus around 10:00. M introduced me to a bunch of sisters and their dads, we ate some food, then she asked me if I wanted to go to a frat party. It would be dumb not to, right? She also told me the young man she’s been spending time with would be there and he was “excited to meet you!” Oh boy.

I’m not drinking much these days, for a few reasons. So I wasn’t looking to get smashed with my daughter or anything. Fortunately for me M admitted on the way to the party that she was hungover from the night before and didn’t feel like drinking. Made the day cheaper/easier for me!

Anyway, we got to this party and hung around for an hour or so. Her best buddy from St P’s/CHS found us. Unlike M she was drinking and was very excited to see me, which was funny. And I got to meet M’s young man friend. He was nervous and goofy. As long as he treats M well it’s all good.

We did not have tickets to the football game (UC was playing West Virginia) so we went to a restaurant/bar to watch and eat. I have one friend who lives in Cincinnati, O-Dog that some of you know. Guess whose daughter gave us the table as she and her friends headed to the game? Small world.

We spent an hour or so there before the group split up. It seemed like a lot of girls were hung over and some of them needed naps. M and I moved outside where we hung with some more of her sisters and dads for another hour or so. The apartment she will live in the next two years is a couple blocks away, so we cruised by it when we left. We ended up going downtown to walk around a bit and enjoy the nice day.

We met up with one of her roommates and her dad for dinner at this fun sushi place right off campus. For some reason the sushi is always half price. It even says that on the menu, “All sushi is always half off.” I’m not sure what the angle there is, but I like it. I spent just $25 on a sushi dinner for two! And the sushi wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad either.

I walked M back to her house and hopped into the car for the ride home, pulling into the garage at about 9:00. It was fun seeing M in her environment. I know she was excited to introduce me to her friends and the other dads. A couple of the dads were pretty cool so that was a bonus.

KU Football

Guess what I (mostly) missed while hanging with my daughter? The Jayhawks rolling over Iowa State in the game I had been dreading all year. I’ve only seen highlights so don’t know how much of Arrowhead was filled with ISU fans – the pics I saw showed the stadium was not very full of any fans, Clones or Jayhawks – but the important part was KU played extremely well on offense, made a couple big defensive plays, and finally got a few breaks. It was fun to get the updates as KU ran up the big lead early, then nervously watch as they bungled things a bit on the fourth quarter before Mello Dotson effectively ended things with a pick six as I walked to my car. Clearly the concerns about Jalen Daniels’ health early in the year were correct, as he has seemed more comfortable and like the old JD for the last month. If only he had been able to play like this in September and October…

Alas, we’ll have to settle for being the best 3–6 team in the country, with a visit to #9 BYU and #20 Colorado in KC the next two weeks.

Colts

Man, the Colts are a true disaster. Joe Flacco throws a pick six on his first pass of the game, before I could get the TV on after dropping L at practice. He throws another interception in the first quarter, and was lucky not to have thrown a third in the opening 15 minutes. Later he lost a fumble. The Colts dropped an easy touchdown pass. The defense made some nice plays then fell apart late. There’s just no consistency in this team. Shane Steichen seems committed to Flacco going forward, even with him looking terrible the past two weeks. There were boos aimed towards Flacco throughout the game Sunday. It makes no sense to stick with him, even if you have no faith that Anthony Richardson is the answer. At this point you play AR and allow him to try to figure things out while aiming for a high draft position next year to get some kind of impact player for a team that has very few of them.

Pacers

I also missed a Pacers loss to Charlotte Friday, but was able to watch them beat the Knicks Sunday despite being short five players. Tyrese Haliburton bounced back from his zero point, five assist performance against the Knicks two weeks ago with 35 points and 14 assists. Bennedict Mathurin scored a career-high 38. My man Johnny Furphy even got some first quarter minutes, although he did not score.

I am glad the Pacers only play the Knicks three times in the regular season. A truly maddening team to play against. I’ve said this before but it amazed me what those Villanova dudes got away with in college, between the constant bumps and shoves and not-so-subtle elbows the refs somehow always missed and then the constant bitching after every play as if they were the ones being pushed around. That they all still get away with it in the NBA is exponentially more maddening.

Other Shit

The weather is still unreasonably nice here. I probably wore shorts for the final time until spring break last week, although I’ve thought that a couple times and had to bust them out a few days later. Our lawn service is still coming, which is kind of crazy. Usually by now they have finished and I borrow my sister-in-law’s mower to do my one mow of the year to chop up any remaining leaves.

I’m obviously avoiding the biggest story of the past week. I don’t have the energy to get into it. I will just share that I took C to vote when she got home from school on Tuesday. S had voted the week before and waited nearly an hour. It took C and I longer to actually go through the ballot than to wait and get checked in. The lady running the door asked C if she was a first-time voter and everyone cheered for her when she said yes. Shame the day was all downhill from there.

Weekend Notes

November 4, 2024 /

This was a fairly quiet weekend thanks to a KU bye week and the girls being busy on their own.

Halloween

Our Halloween was relaxed. We decided to go hang with our old neighbors. It sure brought back memories to sit in their driveway and watch kids scamper through the cul-de-sac. That was where our girls did almost all of their trick-or-treating. As we at chili we reminisced about the various holidays we shared with our friends, including the one when it was sleeting sideways and our girls insisted on going out. We might have been the only people dumb enough to hit the streets that night, and folks were literally dumping their entire candy collections into our girls’ bags. They thought the misery was worth it.

We’ve left a bowl at our house a few times with a sign telling folks to help themselves. And we always come back to an almost-full bowl. It helps that we get very few trick-or-treaters. We did that again this year. C and L were home and said they didn’t hear a lot of kids come to our house. Yet when we got home the bowl was completely empty, robbing us of our post-Halloween candy to share as a family. I didn’t bother to check our front-door cam to see which little a-holes helped themselves to the entire bowl.

HS Football Playoffs

CHS won their opening playoff game against now 0–10 North Central 36–0. It was pretty sloppy with lots of penalties and wasted opportunities. L walked across the street to watch but I didn’t think it would be worth even that meager effort. I believe this is the first year since M was in seventh grade that I didn’t go to a single CHS game, although I still listened to each one and did walk over when our friends from Carmel played NC.

The Irish advance to play #1 Lawrence North, who after a slow first half looked really good beating their arch rivals Lawrence Central. I had that game on TV until the Pacers started. CHS has knocked LN out of the playoffs each of the last two years but this is a very different LN team. I will be watching basketball 80 miles north so likely won’t be able to follow the sectional championship game very well.

College Football

A KU bye week meant no heart-breaking, come-from-ahead loss. Which was a nice change from how this fall has gone.

I watched most of Ohio State – Penn State. I see Andy Kotelnicki’s kryptonite is still first and goal inside the 10. His offense always bogged down in those situations at KU. Even with better talent he still struggles when faced with a short field. It’s like all his creativity disappears and he just runs dives up the middle.

Clearly having either just played KU or having the Jayhawks next on your schedule takes a lot out of a team, with both Kansas State and Iowa State losing Saturday.

I was actually looking forward to watching IU play this week. I knew the game was on Peacock. We are Xfinity customers and I thought we got Peacock for free. Turns out we just get a limited part of Peacock free, and that tier does not include live sports. I was not going to pay $10 to see one game of a team I don’t really care about. But cool that IU is 9–0 for the first time in their history.

Colts

So much for Joe Flacco making a difference. I didn’t watch much of the Colts-Vikings game Sunday night but when I did, I saw an offense that was absolutely putrid. Yep, Chris Ballard and Shane Steichen are going to be looking for new jobs this winter.

Pacers

After beating the Celtics in overtime Wednesday to get their first win of the year, the Pacers blew multiple leads in New Orleans to lose another one Friday.

Worse, for the second time in a week they lost a backup center to a non-contact, achilles injury, this time second stringer Isaiah Jackson. For the moment Myles Turner is the Pacers only true big. I hope they are triple taping his calves and ankles, while also finding a way to move some of their wing depth to find another big body.

College Hoops Recruiting

It’s been a quiet recruiting season, so far, for KU. That was because Bill Self put all his recruiting eggs into one basket, and was waiting on a decision from Darryn Peterson, the #3 overall player in this year’s senior class. Peterson finally made his decision Friday night, picking KU. That’s been the assumption for months, mostly because he’s already signed a multi-year deal with Adidas and all the other schools recruiting him were Nike programs. Still, there were rumors that both Ohio State and USC were making big runs at him.

The Jayhawks got their man and can now, hopefully, start filling around him. KU will lose at least six players after this season, so there are opportunities for any young men who want to play in the greatest building in the game. DP, the highest rated recruit KU has signed since Josh Jackson, is a pretty good start.

Misc

I swear, October is the fastest month of the year. It just flies by no matter how old you or your kids are.

The sun setting at 5:40 is stupid.

Late summer keeps hanging on. We had two days around 80 last week. We are supposed to have a couple days in the 70s this week. It will flip eventually, but zero complaints about the weather at the moment.

The girls both went to parties Saturday. The cops showed up at the one L was at. But, she was quick to tell me, not because of the the actual party. One of her travel teammates had a bunch of people over. Naturally word got out, a hoarde of kids from other schools showed up and they were not allowed inside the house, so they first destroyed L’s friend’s basketball hoops (one of those movable ones) then started fighting in the street. The cops showed up to clear them out but never even knocked on the door where the actual party was. Glad we’ve trained our girls to understand they can have friends over, but can never, ever host a party. We’re not dealing with that shit.

Remember being in high school and hearing rumors that there was a party at so-and-so’s house, or in such-and-such neighborhood, and driving around hoping to find it and then talk your way in? I did plenty of that. But I never destroyed anyone’s basketball hoop. Or fought in the street.

Weekend Notes

October 14, 2024 /

Kind of a quiet weekend for us on the personal tip. Plenty of other shit to review on this gloomy, chilly Monday morning.

Northern Lights

Since we live inside the city’s light dome, we weren’t able to just walk out and see Thursday’s northern lights. I was able to get a couple shots, using a long exposure, that showed a bit of the colors.

There were tons of amazing pictures from not too far from us. It definitely would have been worth my time to get off my ass and drive 30 minutes or so to get a bette naked eye view of them. But did I? Nope, despite seeing northern lights being on my bucket list.

Interesting Times At School

CHS parents got this text last Tuesday afternoon.

Screenshot

When the girls got home their eyes were big and they were talking fast. Apparently they were nearly in the midst of all the fun.

C said as they exited campus and headed west, they saw a car that had been pulled over by the police take off through the intersection she had just passed through to the east. Moments later they heard a bunch of loud noises as that car collided with several others that had just come off of campus. That proved these fools weren’t super criminals. Traffic around CHS during dismissal is a true nightmare. It can take you 15 minutes to travel a quarter mile if you hit the lights wrong. Yet these geniuses decided they were going to use that moment to evade cops.

A few of girls’ friends who were behind them got videos of first the car taking off, then the driver and his passenger sitting on the curb in handcuffs.

Word was they were arrested on drug and weapons charges. Awesome.

Two years ago M and C missed driving through an intersection by St P’s where there was a road-rage shooting by about five minutes. Now C and L missed get smacked by a criminal by literal seconds. They’ve obviously been saying their prayers, and/or their dead grandmas are looking out for them.

Royals

Well, it wasn’t unexpected, but after snatching game two in New York, the Royals couldn’t win either of the games at home and lost to the Yankees in four games. Another one-run loss and a two-run loss to end the season. It was pretty much all that was great about the Royals this year – the starting pitching with the bonus of an improved bullpen – and all that was not right – a woefully thin lineup that struggled to score to begin with, but had an even mightier challenge when Bobby Witt Jr. and Salvador Perez weren’t hitting.

The Yankees didn’t blow them out and the Royals didn’t embarrass themselves. Playoff baseball, especially the first two rounds, can be super flukey. That benefited the Royals in 2014. Their special blend of Royals Devil Magic did not make an appearance in this series.

Still, a surprisingly fun season. They got me at least partially interested in baseball after falling out of love with the sport because of how management handled the most recent labor stoppage.

It is probably too much to ask for the starters to be as good in 2025 as they were this year. The bullpen was bolstered late in the season and became a weapon, so pitching in general should continue to be a strength for the team. Now if management can go find a bat or two to plug the many holes in the lineup, we could be cooking with gas next year.

That said, surprisingly, the AL Central could be one of the most competitive in baseball next year. Cleveland is in the ALCS. Detroit had an amazing run late in the season and pushed Cleveland to the bring in the ALDS. The Twins fell apart late but entered the season as preseason favorites. In other words, even if the Royals make smart decisions to improve their roster for next year, there’s no guarantee it will be enough to return them to the playoffs.

KU

Hey, no Jayhawks loss this week! You never know, KU could always find a way to lose in a bye week.

It’s been kind of crazy to see how the teams that have beaten KU have done after knocking off the Jayhawks. Illinois is 5–1 and ranked. UNLV is also 5–1 despite their quarterback checking out. A week after beating KU, West Virginia went to Oklahoma State and destroyed the Cowboys before losing to Iowa State this week. Then Arizona State pulled a massive upset beating Utah this weekend. Only TCU has looked worse after beating the Jayhawks.

Mostly that doesn’t mean shit. Anyone who has watched KU this year has seen how flawed they are, both on the field and from a schematic/coaching perspective. Still, four of their losses have been by a single score. The TCU game was a single-score game until the closing minutes. As many issues as the Jayhawks have had, a few breaks here and there and they could easily be 5–1. While I think us KU fans would be waiting for reality to set in, we would feel a lot better about things.

This week brings Houston, and KU opens as favorites. Get a win and it doesn’t necessarily turn the season around, but it could at least change the vibes. Lose this one? Man, things will get ugly.

In totally unrelated news, Purdue fired their offensive coordinator last week. This week they went to Illinois. The ESPN boxscore was all messed up, but I believe they trailed by 27 in the second half before scoring 30 straight points to take the lead. They gave up a tying field goal at the final gun, then failed to convert a 2-point conversion and lost by one in OT. All from firing their OC. Hmmm….

CHS

Friday night Cathedral took on Southside Catholic rivals Roncalli. This was once one of the best rivalries in the city. Before the tournament success factor was introduced, the teams played in the same class and were often either in the same sectional or regional. In our first few years living here, they always face each other in the playoffs, and the score was usually something like 10–9 or 14–13. And Roncalli often won.

But Roncalli, aside from a 4A state title two years ago, has been kind of crappy since their legendary coach retired a while back. CHS beat them 42–0 last year. This year it wasn’t much better, a 35–6 Irish win. A CHS receiver made an insane catch for an 84-yard TD. He dropped two other sure touchdowns on easy balls. The only RHS points came on their final drive with a running clock and facing the CHS reserves.

The #5 Irish are now 5–2 with a big matchup at 7–1 #6 Warren Central to close out the regular season.

The sectional draw was last night. CHS gets the school across the street from us, who will be 0–9, to open. Then a likely matchup against presumptive 9–0 Lawrence North for the sectional crown. CHS has ended LN’s season the past two years.

Halloween Shit

Both the girls had friends over Saturday to carve pumpkins, eat fall foods, and have fun. Tough to get a shot of all the pumpkins but they look nice on our front porch.

Worth mentioning that L had a young man over she’s been hanging with for the past few weeks. He’s a nice kid. They were joined by another couple. Those four stuck to one part of our house while C and her group of ten-or-so seniors stayed in another part. Seemed like everyone had fun. Once things got going S and I kept to our room to stay the hell out of the way.

Closing Time

We closed the pool on Friday. It was sunny and 80° when the guys were shutting it down, the water still at 78° despite me not running the heater in a week. I think you call that perfect timing. Of course, the girls hadn’t been in the pool since August. I had been using it, but as I’ll share tomorrow, I haven’t been able to get in for a week or so, meaning we closed it a week late. Since I wasn’t running the heater I didn’t mind.

Then Sunday morning S and I first cleaned up the leftover pumpkin messes from the girls then stored away all the pool furniture and other summer goodies into the pool house for the winter. Our pool deck is now naked. Appropriately it was super breezy and gloomy while we were doing that, and 15° cooler than the day before. This week looks super fall-ish, although another warm-up is forecast for next weekend.

Colts

The Colts couldn’t get it done against pathetic Jacksonville a week ago, but did enough to win against the equally pathetic Titans this week. Man, Will Levis is fucking bad. Anthony Richardson, who sat out again, may end up being a bust. I’d rather have a dude that can only play every third game than Levis, who throws some of the worst balls I’ve ever seen. Maybe he figures the game out and turns into a solid QB eventually. But watching him Sunday, I was glad the Colts passed on drafting him a year ago.

The crazy thing about watching the Colts is that if they could ever get healthy, they really should have a plus offense. They have two really good receivers in Michael Pittman and Alec Pierce. Josh Downs showed Sunday that he might be better than those two. And AD Mitchell has loads of potential although he has a long way to go. Old Man Joe Flacco gets them the ball just enough to be dangerous. If you can keep Jonathan Taylor on the field, easier said than done, you have terrific balance. Of course, you can’t keep him on the field and there is no decent backup. The O-line has improved, even losing one starter for the season.

But that defense? Woof. They make just enough plays, especially against a shitty team like Tennessee, to make you think they might be decent. But they aren’t decent at all, even allowing for missing important players up front and being too thin on the back end.

Feels like a season that ends in 5–7 wins and puts them too deep into the draft to get a player that can immediately plug a gap next year.

Fall Break

It’s appropriate the weather has finally changed, as this week is the girls’ fall break. They are in school today and tomorrow, then off the rest of the week. We are traveling to Denver to visit our family out there. It looks like we will have a 20° temperature swing while we’re out there, too, so packing could be tricky. Obviously a lot more about this next week.

Weekend Notes

October 7, 2024 /

A busy, warm, disappointing, and significant weekend.

FNL + Party

Friday was a big night for a couple reasons. First, L was having friends over to celebrate her birthday. Seven girls, including her middle school buddy who goes to the rival high school, gathered at our house after school. They are a good group and fun to be around. They are mostly sassy and confident and silly, and while they usually congregate away from us, when we have to interact with them they always make me laugh.

Once S got home we ran them over to Marion University, which was hosting the big Center Grove vs Cathedral game. This was class 6A #5 vs #7. CG came in at 4–2, CHS 3–2. CG had won three in a row in the series and have dominated it over the past decade. In a change, it was moved from the final week of the season to week eight this year for some reason.

It was a wild game.

CHS scored on the first play of the game, a 64 yard run.
Trailing 10–0, CG had an 80-yard TD run.
CHS answered with a 74-yard TD pass.
CG led 30–27 at halftime, and eventually 45–35 with about six minutes to play.
The game ended with this sequence in the final five minutes:
Cathedral touchdown.
Cathedral successful onside kick.
Cathedral touchdown.
Center Grove interception.
Cathedral punt.
Center Grove interception.
Game over.

Huge win for the Irish. Normally you would say these teams are on a collision course for a rematch in semistate. CHS is going to have trouble getting past Lawrence North, who is 7–0 and destroyed #2 Warren Central this week, in sectionals though. They would also likely have to beat #1 Brownsburg between sectionals and Center Grove, and they’ve already lost to them. Anything is possible I guess.

The only bummer to the night was apparently there weren’t a ton of CHS kids at the game. Marion is on the opposite side of the city from school. Since CHS kids come from literally everywhere – something like 80 middle schools are represented in L’s class – you would think that wouldn’t be an issue. Especially for the Center Grove game, which is always huge. But I guess it was an issue. Anyway, L texted us at halftime that they wanted to leave because “no one is here” and it was boring. So the girls were eating cake and ice cream at our house when the Irish made their furious comeback. I kept listening and let them know the result.

Kids, man. Kids.

Royals

Man, so close to stealing game one in New York. Yes, there was a curious, at best, replay call that didn’t go the Royals way that directly let to the winning run for the Yanks. Bobby Witt Jr. got no love from the home plate ump in the 9th. Bummers.

What truly sucked was the Royals pitchers walking 80 Yankees batters. The fifth inning was really when the Royals lost this game. That inning went walk-single-walk-walk-foul out-fielder’s choice-walk. Two runs scored, both on bases loaded walks.

You don’t expect to lose in Yankees Stadium because you walked in more runs than you allowed on homers.

The Royals are a resilient bunch, though, and I think the loss will get them more re-focused than discouraged. Hopefully the pitchers are a little more locked in Monday while the hitters can keep generating runs.

Oh, and this ALDS schedule is nuts. Three days off in a five-game series? When these teams played a five-game ALCS in 1980, games one-through-three were played on consecutive days. And that was with a night game on Thursday in Kansas City and a night game Friday in New York. Since the Royals swept that series, I don’t know if an off-day was scheduled before either game four or five. But in 2024, there are scheduled off days between games one and two, two and three, and four and five if needed. Dumb.

KU

Same old same old. A disastrous end to the first half. A lead in the fourth quarter. The inability to stop the opponent when it mattered most. A fifth loss in a row.

Lawrence radio guy Derek Johnson posted this amazing stat on Twitter after the game: In each of their losses, at some point in the second half KU has had at least a 74% win probability. Add those up, and the odds of going 0–5 over that stretch is 0.01%, or about 1 in 10,000. Yet KU found a way to do it. Never say we can’t do amazing things in football season!

I think that stat also points out the truth to this season, something I pointed out last week. KU got just about every break possible last year. This year, though? No breaks. Or when they get a break, they find a way to fuck it up.

The offense and OC Jeff Grimes have taken the bulk of the criticism this year. The offense was fine Saturday. Yes, there were a few bad choices, notably in the two three-and-outs after KU forced turnovers because of hopelessly conservative play calling. One first down late in the second quarter and Arizona State never gets a chance to tie the game going into halftime. Jalon Daniels, who might have had his best game of the year, rushed a throw to a wide open Quentin Skinner that cost KU four points in a four-point loss.

Those aside, Saturday was on the defense. Yes, they forced two turnovers and blocked a field goal. But there were, yet again, massive holes for ASU to exploit all night. Almost no pressure on the quarterback. KU got destroyed at the line on running plays and gave up 313 yards rushing! Not technically on the defense, but they also gave up another long punt return to a player who should have been tackled seconds after fielding the ball by one of three players.

I know they were missing one defensive captain the entire game, and Cobee Bryant left the game late with what appeared to be a bad injury. That doesn’t excuse how bad the D looked as a whole, and has looked all season.

I read a theory this week that the transitional recruiting class between Les Miles and Lance Leipold, which was ranked in the 110s nationally, is what is killing this team. There are a ton of seniors of various types, a lot of freshmen and true sophomores, but not many of those third year players who maybe aren’t ready to start, but have been in the system and can come in briefly to spell the starters when needed.

I have no idea if that explains KU’s defensive woes or not. I am starting to think last year’s performance was a fluke. DC Brian Borland should definitely be under as much pressure as Grimes, because he hasn’t found a way to scheme around talent issues.

I genuinely hated sports late Saturday night. The Royals and KU games overlapped some. I had the Royals on the TV, KU on the MacBook. It was harder to follow both than my attempts to listen to CHS and watch tennis or football earlier this year. Higher stakes, I guess. KU and the Royals both scored at about the same time once, which was fun. The Yankees scored the go-ahead run at nearly the same moment Arizona State tied the game going into halftime, which was not fun.

Oh, a couple of my KU buddies and I had talked about going to this game a while back. We didn’t go forward because, for some reason, tickets even on Southwest were over $500. I was glad we chose to stay home. Not just because of the loss, but also because it was 106° at kickoff. I read somewhere this was the hottest temperature at kickoff for an ASU game this century. And, (in)famously, whatever Sun Devil Stadium is called these days has all aluminum bleacher seating. I can’t believe the game was nearly sold out.

Colts

No Anthony Richardson or Johnathan Taylor, plus a couple key defensive injuries. An offensive lineman breaks his leg during the game. And the Colts hadn’t won in Jacksonville in 11 years.

So no surprise that after giving up their third ridiculously long touchdown of the game, they trailed by 14 late. I went outside to water some plants, figuring my weekend didn’t need any more sports disappointment.

A few minutes later I noticed S looking at the window trying to get my attention. I strolled over and glanced inside at the TV and saw the Colts were kicking a PAT to tie. Apparently Joe Flacco and Alec Pierce did their best to save the day, but the Jags kicked a field goal to win at about the same point in the clock as where Arizona State beat KU. Perfect.

I don’t think the Colts are terrible. But they are definitely on the bottom half of the mediocre middle of the NFL. That middle is so big that any team in that group can beat any other, so the Colts might still manage six or seven wins. I wonder if they would be better served to start thinking about the draft and focusing on getting the best pick possible. Which means as tempting as it will be to keep starting Flacco when AR is healthy, you have to focus on both developing Richardson and determining if he is the man going forward. You can’t delay that question another year while you’re chasing a Wild Card spot with Flacco.

LB

Some milestones for B girl #3.

She turned 16 Thursday.

Saturday we got her travel basketball assignment for next year. She’s with the same coach she’s been with. It does suck that we’ve lost two more of her best friends she’s played with the last three years. We might steal one of those girls back but we’re not confident. Travel ball at the high school level is brutal when it comes to roster building. You have very little say in who you get, as teams higher in the pecking order can “steal” girls if they need them. That happened to one of her besties, and from what I’ve heard from that girl’s mom, she does not want to play with the team that picked her. L is hopeful they can get her switched back to our team, but I’m doubtful.

L is still suffering from the lingering effects of mono, but will try to go back to preseason practice this week. She feels mentally bad about missing two weeks, but also feels physically bad any time she breaks a sweat. Knock on wood I don’t get a call at 6:30 AM Tuesday that she’s sick at practice, or just can’t continue and needs to get picked up.

Sunday she passed her driving test. She’s been doing a great job with her practicing, so there wasn’t much doubt. Her instructor even said “Piece of cake” when they returned. She can officially get her license on Jan. 1, although she’ll obviously have to wait another day.

Weather

A gorgeous, warm weekend to wrap up an unseasonably warm week. Saturday I hardly watched any football during the day, partially because I knew I would be watching both the Royals and Jayhawks at night. But also because I wanted to sit outside and read and enjoy the beautiful day.

All last week they were saying this week would be much different. It is cooling off a little; we’ll be down in the upper 40s for a few mornings. But days will still be in the low 70s, slowly warming back to the low 80s by the weekend. These are the days you have to hold on to because even when they are mild, the Midwest winters will suck the life out of you.

D’s Notes

October 2, 2024 /

Another dive into the notebook for a selection of random notes.

College NIL

Shockwaves went through college sports last week when UNLV quarterback Matt Sluka, who tore up KU in week three, announced he was sitting out the remainder of the season so he could transfer and retain a year of eligibility. He claimed that UNLV had not lived up to their NIL agreement. UNLV fired back that they had provided everything promised and he was looking for a better deal elsewhere because of his hot start.

Before we get to the NIL angle, there’s actually another dumb thing that needs to be addressed. In college basketball, if you play one game, you have burned your eligibility for that season. In football, players can appear in as many as four games and maintain their redshirt option going forward.

That is one of the stupidest rules the NCAA, an organization with a lot of dumb rules, has instituted. Before NIL you would occasionally see a player decide after week four he was shutting it down so he could jump to another program. Khalil Herbert did that at KU a few years back, running all over Boston College one week then not playing again that season before jumping to Virginia Tech. I think this might sneakily be the most destructive element of the modern, free transfer era. It’s bad enough coaches have to re-recruit their own players every year. Now you have to worry about whether they’re going to make a business decision before week five that wrecks your season.

I’m all for player power, but I think they have too much power in this situation.

Back to NIL proper. I just laugh at this, and know more of it is coming. For the 100th time on this site, let me remind you that the NCAA could have nipped this in the bud 20 years ago. All they had to do was share a fraction of the money they made from using players’ names in video games, which was the right thing to do on every moral and legal level imaginable, and then allow schools to throw kids a few bucks when they sold jerseys with their names and numbers on them. But, no, they insisted on protecting the “sanctity of amateur sports,” when college football and basketball decidedly hadn’t been amateur at the highest level for at least a generation, and refused to allow any of that to happen. Now we’re in a wild west where the NCAA has no rules or control and no higher authority is interested in stepping in to create ground rules. The result is kids getting paid flatly to play at specific schools rather than profiting off the use of their name, image, and likeness as was supposed to happen. Boosters are funneling money into NIL collectives rather than university booster organizations or general funds.

Congrats, NCAA! You managed to both destroy college sports while trying to protect it, and create a significant financial shortfall for universities at a moment when they face increasing budgetary hostility from the legislatures that fund them. That is some amazing work!

Replay/Refs

Pretty much every game I watch these days refs make terrible calls. WNBA refs might be the worst I’ve ever seen, worse even than high school refs. At least high school refs are out-of-shape, thin-skinned, semi-pros so you expect them to suck. I think WNBA refs make up the rules as they go some nights. Twice in their playoff series the Fever had to use a challenge in the first quarter because the referees assigned a foul to the wrong player. In each case it was obvious an error was made, but the refs made no move to correct their call, forcing the Fever to burn a challenge early. Fortunately, in each case they won and the call was changed. ESPN’s Rebecca Lobo blasted the refs and league for putting the Fever in that situation. A referee mistake should not force a team to burn their challenge.

Refs suck. You know what else sucks? Replay. In so many ways.

We can see a replay on TV and often in five seconds know if a call was right or wrong, then we sit around for three minutes while the refs try to figure it out. And then sometimes the refs still come up with the completely wrong call. The worst is in college basketball, where they will review an out-of-bounds call, realize the initial call was wrong, in the process see there was a foul that went uncalled, but can only change who has possession, not assign the foul that caused the turnover.

Then there are all stupid rules about what is and is not a catch in football. Or how in baseball a player’s body coming a fraction of an inch off the bag for a fraction of a second somehow means he was out. And so on.

I’m pretty sure I’ve suggested this before but I think replay review should only be shown at real-time speed. We don’t need to slow it down to one frame per second to analyze whether a ball moved a fraction of an inch when a receiver hit the ground. If we’re checking the refs, we need to check them at the same speed they made the call.

Yeah, folks will throw a fit if slow-mo shows detail that real time does not. That’s a downside I’m more willing to live with than how replay is used now.

And every review should be a coach’s review, with a limited number of challenges per contest. Give us back our games!

Kids

I forgot to mention the M got her sorority Little last weekend. It was the girl she/we expected, an architecture student from California. They both looked excited in the pictures we saw, so that’s good. We were worried the new girl wouldn’t be as into the process as M and her Big were last year. Looks like she can at least fake it.

We submitted C’s two college applications she plans on sending Monday evening. One to IU, her top choice, and one to UC. M got her acceptance letters from both schools in mid-November of her senior year, so we should know fairly soon.

Our mailbox has been flooded with promotional material from schools for both C and L. This week C got a package from High Point University. When we opened it up, this book was inside.

It’s a legit, hardback book. She hasn’t checked a box expressing any interest in them, so I assume thousands of these went out unsolicited. I guess at a hair under $70K a year, before aid, they can afford to send some books out. Seems like a weird choice for 17–18 year olds, though.

L has been sick for a couple weeks. It’s been so bad that she’s had to skip a few morning basketball workouts. We’re are pretty sure she had/has mono, but when we had blood work done last week, somehow the mono test got lost. There were other indicators that suggest mono so we’re going with that. Official basketball practice begins in three weeks, hopefully enough time for her to start feeling better.

ESPN

The alleged World Wide Leader is having rough times. Last week they laid off Zach Lowe, one of the best sports writers/analysts across all sports, and the finest basketball analyst they had. Another sign all they care about is the hot-take side of “analysis” that can be chopped up into Tik-Tok videos.

Also, last week I was sitting in a waiting room reading their story about the final home game for the Oakland A’s. It was a great story, and proof that ESPN does still allow some long-form journalism to take place under its watch.

But check out how user-hostile the reading experience was.

I’ve noticed this a lot lately. You get roughly halfway through a piece and this footer filled with disclaimers, etc pops up. You can’t dismiss it. You can scroll up and it will disappear, but when you scroll back down it returns. It remained on my screen until I finished the article. It’s not even a freaking ad, just a bunch of legalese that the reader should be allow to dismiss, or better yet, should auto-hide after a few seconds.

Finally, multiple times Monday ESPN showed graphics for the baseball playoffs that were completely wrong. One had the Royals and Tigers flipped, the Royals playing Houston and Detroit going to Baltimore. At least this one you could kind of explain away. The Royals and Tigers finished with the same record, the Royals getting the five seed thanks to winning the season series with Detroit. Obviously someone didn’t know the tie-breaker rules and either gave Detroit the higher spot because of alphabetical order or because they had a better record over their last 10 games. Or because they didn’t bother to look at MLB.com to get the official bracket. Still super dumb, but understandable since ESPN, like much of sports media, has fired many of their experienced editors and replaced them with cheap talent that doesn’t understand context.

Later in the day, though, they flashed a graphic that had Oakland in the playoffs. The A’s finished 17 games out of the final Wild Card spot. Worse, they had them playing the Padres…on the National League side of the bracket. I guess leaving Oakland means the A’s are also switching leagues?

Weekend Notes

September 23, 2024 /

Another full-ish weekend, with most of our attention focused on the corrupt and disgraceful arena of sports. Sports suck.

Family

Let’s flip our normal order, though, and kick it off with family chat. M came home for the weekend. It was her first visit of the semester and nice to have her in the house for about 48 hours. She had no plans and mostly chilled on our couch while doing homework or taking naps. I told her to let me know if she was missing any specific meals and I would make them for dinner, but she never got around to picking something and/or we had other things going on, so she didn’t get any good home cooking. Which is kind of a bummer. That was always a highlight of trips home for me. This was also her first time coming-and-leaving on her own. When she left Sunday afternoon, S noted how it was nice that one of us wouldn’t spend the next five hours driving to Cincinnati, helping her get settled, then coming right back. Indeed.

Her classes are going well. Much harder than freshman year, since she’s in the business school now, but she’s working through it. Crazily, she showed me how she has her next two-and-a-half years completely planned out. Thanks to all the hours she took with her from high school, she can both spend a semester abroad and then do a co-op without taking any classes another semester and still graduate on time. We are also about to sign a lease for where she will live the next two years. Seems like she just started college and now we are about to lock up her housing up to graduation.

C had a quiet weekend, until she got sick Sunday night. She is home with me today. Fun.

L had a tryout for next year’s travel ball team yesterday. We think she’ll end up on the same team, or at least with the same coach and the same core players, she has been on. So this was more a required show your face type thing. She is really hoping that her old coach is allowed to keep the team together, because she didn’t feel very good yesterday either, and didn’t think she played very well.

High School Football

One reason we couldn’t do anything special for dinner for M Friday was that it was CHS’ homecoming, and the girls basketball team had a tailgate. S and I went and ate pizza and hung out with the girls and other parents for about 90 minutes. We came home after to hang with M. It was hot, the game was at Butler so our season passes didn’t work, and we knew it would be a blowout – CHS beat the school across the street from our house 53–13 – so we didn’t see any reason to stay.

That proved to be even smarter when our first rain in two weeks rolled in midway through the second half. There was lightning, of course, and the game got halted for about an hour. L was there with friends and they left to get ice cream then hang out at a friend’s house.

Jayhawks

This is why, as a KU fan, I should never, ever, ever have expectations when football season rolls around. In 44 years of being a KU fan, conditions have been right to have serious hopes, I’m talking potential conference championship game rather than just go to a bowl game, exactly twice in my life. Both times those expectations got blown out of the water before the season was even halfway finished.

This time it was allowing West Virginia to score 15 points in about 3:30 of game time in the fourth quarter. The defense was terrible, our two alleged all-conference cornerbacks getting roasted all day while the line couldn’t tackle anyone. Jalon Daniels struggled. Shocker. The play calling was odd, again. Yet the Jayhawks were up 11 with under 5:00 to play on the road, after a two-hour weather delay no less. Then they blew it.

While there was plenty to be mad about, and this game pretty much ruined my entire day since it took over five hours to complete and then I was pissed for the remainder of the night, all the attention goes to a couple coaching decisions. First, taking a delay of game penalty right before the weather delay and turning a 4th and 2 into 4th and 7 was idiotic. Especially when our punter hadn’t exactly been kicking the shit out of the ball. Then running to the short-side on the biggest play of the day, when a first down might ice the game, was criminal. As one West Virginia writer pointed out:

Kansas for the last hour: Succeeds for chunks of yards every time they run a speed option.
Kansas on the biggest 3rd down of the game: Let’s try something else.

Maddening.

Jalon missed some more throws that suggested to me he’s compensating for injury/weakness in his body. But the coaching staff had an entire summer to game plan around that, and apparently didn’t. Then they make dumb calls in the game’s biggest moments.

Just like the only other time I had big expectations going into the season – 2009 – this season has quickly gone to shit. Now, the Illinois loss doesn’t look so bad after they won at Nebraska this week. And the remaining schedule is still relatively weak. Given how KU’s best players – aside from Devin Neal and Daniel Hishaw – and coaching staff have performed through the first four games, I don’t have much confidence things will improve. And next year we will roll out a team filled with freshmen and sophomores who haven’t played much…

Again, with Kansas football, it can, and almost always will, get worse. Can’t wait to see what this week brings.

Other College Games

Well, it’s started. All the weird, new conference games that a year ago would have been awesome non-con games. USC traveling to Michigan, for a tremendous game that went down to the final seconds. Tennessee going into Norman and slapping Oklahoma around, which was cathartic to this Big 12 fan. The games were good, but the vides were odd.

I read this weekend how UEFA adjusted how they schedule the Champions League this year, requiring the best teams to play more games against other strong teams. It is starting to feel like college football should do something like that. Just get rid of conferences and throw all the names into buckets based on preseason rankings, and try to make balanced schedules from that.

Here’s a wild bonus idea: Keep the schedules geographically logical, too. Nah, that’s crazy talk. Why would we want schools to play most of their games against rivals from neighboring states?

Colts

Hey, at least the Colts won! Not that they looked good doing it and didn’t try to give the game back to Chicago like three times.

Quarterbacks

Jalon Daniels has seven interceptions. Anthony Richardson has six. I’m falling out of love with the forward pass.

Fever

Like a lot of Indianapolis, at 3:00 eastern I switched from the ugly Colts game over to watch the Fever open their playoff series with the Connecticut Sun. That went well for one quarter, then it turned into a rout. The Sun kept big defenders on Caitlin Clark and made her life hell. CC and Kelsey Mitchell combining to shoot 4–23 from 3 did not help. We’ll see if they can regroup and adjust for game two and get the series back for the finale in Indy. The Sun have handled the Fever pretty easily all season, but it would be cool to steal game two and have the deciding game back here.

Royals

Man, you think KU had a bad week, go check out what the Royals did. Six straight losses. At home. A 13–1 collective shellacking to the Giants over the weekend. Now somehow tied with Detroit, DETROIT, for the second/third Wild Card spots with Minnesota just a game back, and Seattle a game behind the Twins. Detroit closes the season with three against the pitiful White Sox, so they have effectively locked up one of those two spots.

A week ago the Royals had a five-game cushion over the seventh place spot, with a 99% chance of making the postseason. This morning that percentage has dropped to 69% (per Fangraphs). If Minnesota wasn’t nearly as cold as the Royals those odds would be even lower.

Maybe the bats will wake up this week. Or the pitching will do enough to get the R’s to the playoffs and then the bats will wake up. Sure doesn’t look promising this morning.

Weather

Mother Nature finally flipped the switch Sunday and our heat wave broke. Rain moved in midday Sunday, with heavier showers in the evening, and the temps have dropped 10–15 degrees from where they had been. The forecast has highs in the mid-upper 70s with cool nights. Just about perfect.

We put the Halloween decorations out Saturday. The holidays are getting close.

Holiday Weekend Notes

September 3, 2024 /

It was an action-packed weekend. At least for watching sports from the comfort of my house. Friday night in particular was kind of crazy. High school football on the radio. Indiana Fever and US Open on the TV. Royals-Astros Gameday coverage on the Mac. With bonus weather monitoring on every screen. I guess I’ll break things down by subject rather than day.

KU Football

A slow start turned into the blowout it was supposed to be Thursday night for KU. Not sure you can make any great assessments of the team given the opponent. I thought Jalon Daniels looked a little rusty, but I also don’t know how open the playbook was. It seemed like the coaching staff was doing some experimenting with the offensive line. A pick-six for Mello Dotson, likely not the last for this defensive backfield this season. Devin Neal scoring touchdowns, Luke Grimm catching passes. We’ll find out a lot more about the Jayhawks next week when they go to Illinois.

The first game at Children’s Mercy Park seemed to go just fine. Word from people who went is that it was a great atmosphere. The replay system not working early and likely costing KU two scores was kind of a bummer.

HS Football

A week after beating preseason #1 Ben Davis, #3 Cathedral got a reminder their schedule is still brutal, losing to #6 Brownsburg 30–14. They got there a rather odd way.

BHS jumped out to a 17–7 lead Friday night before lightning was spotted. Although the storm was 10 miles away, and moving away from the stadium, the game was delayed over an hour before a second series of storms popped up and officials decided to postpone the game until Saturday afternoon.

Things didn’t get much better in the resumed game. CHS was playing with their primary running back – who ran for 168 yards week one – hobbled Friday, then without him completely Saturday. L heard Sunday he’s probably having surgery and out for the year. Not sure if he was worth 16 points but I think he would have helped. If he is indeed out for an extended stretch, the Irish’s already brutal schedule looks even more formidable.

Weather

Last week was hot, sticky, and nasty. The heat index was up around 110 a couple days. Friday night three rounds of storms came through, and torrential rains and heavy winds blew the heat away. The humidity stuck around through Saturday. Then Sunday morning it was 52 and 100% pleasant. The extended forecast has a bunch of mornings like that, with a few even colder, and daytime highs mostly in the mid–70s with a few mid–80s sprinkled in. September is a truly glorious month.

US Open

I watched a ton of tennis last week and into the weekend. Week one of the Open might be the best week of tennis of the year, hell one of the best sports weeks of the entire year, with great matches in progress just about any time you turn on your TV from noon to midnight.

Weekend highlights were Frances Tiafoe’s two wins and both Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic losing early. It was a bummer that Coco Gauff went out early, but at least she lost to another American. In general it’s great to have several decent American players in both the women’s and men’s game at the moment. It sure makes for better crowds in New York.

Royals

Crap on a stick.

Last Wednesday afternoon the Royals were tied for first place and were up on co-leaders Cleveland going into the seventh inning, nine outs away from a four-game sweep of the Guardians. Then the Royals melted down a little and they’ve yet to recover, losing six straight games. Three injuries during that span have not helped. At least they still have a cushion in the wild card race for the time being.

It’s been a bit of a charmed summer for the Royals, totally unexpected and built on out-of-nowhere quality starting pitching. The pitching has still been fine, at least the starters; it’s been the bats that have let them down over the past week. They were nearly no-hit Friday and have gone deep into other games with just one or two hits. Maybe, hopefully, surely the hitters can lock back in and they can hold on to one of those wild card spots to complete this surprise season.

Fever

I know I’m not alone in having watched more WNBA games this year than in the rest of my life combined. I now know exactly when the Fever are playing, and on what channel. Unlike other sports, which S doesn’t really pay attention to, for the Fever she gets kind of locked in. Ironically our basketball playing daughter will still just breeze through and watch a few minutes, but rarely sits down and watches long stretches with us.

Two more wins over the weekend for the hottest team in the league. The Fever are now over .500 for the first time in five years. Which sounds made up. Have they really been that bad, for that long? Again, since I never watched I don’t know if that is a real stat or not.

It’s been fun watching this team figure each other out since their disastrous start. Kelsey Mitchell is a revelation, and a perfect backcourt partner for Caitlin Clark. Aliyah Boston finally settled down and started playing like the former #1 pick she is. Lexi Hull is one of the most fun players to watch, and seemingly can’t miss a 3 since the Olympic break.

And, of course, there’s Clark. She was starting to get comfortable before the break, but has looked like a first team all league player since getting some time to both rest and work on her game. In those seven games she’s averaging 24.6 points, 5 rebounds, and nine assists. And that’s with her teammates still booting 3–4 passes a night, or blowing open layups.[1]

She’s added a floater. Her teammates are getting better at anticipating her crazy passes. She’s handling the physicality of the league better. She still makes a few horrible passes a game, but when she’s averaging almost nine assists a game, you’ll take those. And her outside shot still isn’t locked in. That will come next year. Any questions about her transition to the pro game have been answered.

The only real bummer to the Fever turning the corner is it has kept us from going to a game. Tickets were crazy expensive at the beginning of the season, as you would expect. I planned on waiting until the hype died down and the team fell deep into the bottom of the standings before trying to grab some for a weeknight game. So much for that. I was looking at tickets for tomorrow’s game and even upper level seats were going for $200 each. That seems excessive, especially when L isn’t super into watching. Although she would go if given the chance.

Oh, one other WNBA note. The yammering idiots on TV need to drop the whole Caitlin Clark vs Angel Reese thing and focus on the real issue: how stupid are the four teams other than Indiana and Chicago who passed on drafting Reese? She’s getting 20 boards a night over the past three weeks and leads the league in rebounding for the season. From watching Chicago Friday, it’s obvious that some of those numbers come because her coach leaves her on the court deep into blowouts to pad her numbers. But 20 rebounds is 20 rebounds.

The rookie of the year argument is pretty much over, as CC is both having a better and more impactful year while Chicago is dropping like a rock despite Reese’s play. That shouldn’t hide the fact that Reese is having a phenomenal rookie year of her own.

College Football

It’s always hard for me to dive in this first week of real college football action. There’s so much other stuff going on, both on TV and in real life, that it’s hard to lock in. I had plenty of games on but other than Notre Dame – Texas A&M didn’t get super focused on any of them.

That was a big win for the Irish. Notre Dame’s defense looks incredible. They have a cake schedule. They will be one of the top four teams in the playoff. The obvious joke is they will then lose to Alabama or whatever SEC runner-up they play in the first round. But that game will be in South Bend. In December. Surely Touchdown Jesus will scare up some lake effect snow, or at least nasty windchills, to aid the Irish.

Family Time

We didn’t do anything big family-wise for the holiday weekend. M stayed in Cincinnati. C and L went to the CHS game with friends Friday, but neither went back to the resumption on Saturday. L went to the gym with basketball friends Sunday. C went to the Pitbull concert Sunday night. We had the in-laws over for dinner Sunday, and three of the nephews over to swim on Monday. S and I went to dinner with friends Saturday.

I also found a little project for myself over the weekend. It scratches one of my biggest itches and will have a direct effect on some of my blog posts. I doubt most of you will be as interested in it as I am, but I’ll still share more details about it soon.

And with that, summer is over. Preseason training for school basketball started for L today, and I was up at 5:15 to get her to school on time. A perfect way for her to knock out some of her driving in the dark time!

  1. As the father of a lady baller, I will say the most frustrating part of the women’s game is how many layups are missed. That, more than any other area, is where the difference between men and women is glaring. It’s a lot harder to make a layup in traffic when you release the ball a foot/foot-and-a-half below the rim than within a few inches of it.  ↩
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