The Peyton Tracker

Peyton Manning will go into the Pro Football Hall of Fame once he decides to stop playing. But he’s not done playing, Not yet anyway. 

Just about every distribution imaginable had been tracking him since he was released from the Colts. Where will this future Hall of Fame quarterback go? When will he make a decision? It goes on and on and on. Not even March Madness can thwart Peyton Watch 2012. 

I have to admit I’m following it as much as anybody else is. I’m a fan. I went to school at Tennessee at the same time and followed his career ever since. So for me it’s a little odd seeing so much attention being paid to a guy who walked around the same campus I did. It’s cool but a little strange. 

The strangest part is hearing that he only has a few more years of playing. That makes me feel old and I’m not the one coming off of multiple neck surgeries. 

In the next few days we’ll hopefully find out where Peyton will play next year and if he lands in Nashville with the Tennessee Titans I may have to put my house up for sale and move to Nashville. It would be pure bedlam. 

If he signs with the 49ers…Montant, Young, Manning? I think my heart just skipped a beat. 

The Political Filter Bubble

I use to be fairly political. I also worked in TV news so it kind of comes with the territory. Since I got out of TV news i  have become less political. That being said, I cannot remember a primary lasting as long as the Republican primary is lasting and I think it’s a product of the environment. The environment of now. 

The environment of now being your own personalized Presidential run. 

With all of the outlets available to a political candidate now (youtube, twitter, blogs, 24-hour cable news) candidates choose to live more and more in their own little worlds. They all believe that they’re right, can win and that they have the support to do so. Yet when you look at the polls most of these candidates are living in fantasy land. They have become encompassed in their own political filter bubble.

They hear what they want to hear which is ‘you got a chance.’ Probably a lot of this is due to the donors who keep throwing money at these folks. So where and when does reality sink in? Well I believe that that is still old school, it’s when the money runs out. 

So when does the money run out? I suppose it’s when the donors figure out that they didn’t back the right guy. It’s a lot like owning a stock. At some point you have to realize that the stock is not going to come back and you have to sell and take the loss. 

A word to the wise

The problem with the rat race is the even if you win, you’re still a rat.

Thought Drop: 2012.01.02: Good Coach/Bad Coach

Today was a perfect example of good coaching and bad coaching in College Football.

Example 1: Brett Bielema at Wisconsin. Coach Bielema called a timeout in hopes of getting a call reversed and pinning Oregon inside their own 1 yard line. The play wasn’t reviewable and therefore early in the 3rd quarter Wisconsin was down to 1 timeout. In the final seconds with Wisconsin down they attempted to spike the ball in Oregon territory with :02 seconds on the clock. They spiked the ball but the clock ran out.

If Bielema knew that the play wasn’t reviewable or if he knew (or his assistants knew) the rulebook he wouldn’t have used the timeout and arguable had more time on the clock at the end of the game and would have been able to give his excellent QB a chance to win the game.

Example 2: Mike Gundy of Oklahoma State. Fast forward to the end of regulation in the Fiesta Bowl. Coach Gundy of Oklahoma State had 1 timeout left with Standford driving and  time running out. Seeing that Standford was going to play for the field goal Gundy saved his final timeout. Why? To attempt to “freeze” the redshirt freshman Standford kicker. It worked. The Standford kicker hooked the field goal and the game went into overtime where the same kicker missed yet another kick and Oklahoma State eventually won by, you guessed it, a field goal.

Did Beilema make a bad coaching decision and Gundy a good one? Yes. I understand Bielema’s thought process by calling a timeout in the hope that the officials would review a previous play and hopefully pin Oregon inside their own 1 yard line. Would it have mattered? Considering that Oregon had a 91 yard touchdown run earlier in the game I don’t think pinning Oregon down inside their own 1 yard line would have mattered.

Did Gundy make the right call? I believe so. It was only a few weeks ago that the NFL’s Dallas Cowboy’s coach Jason Garret “freezed” his own kicker on their very same field by calling a timeout right before a kick. This doesn’t always work but knowing that the kicker for Standford was a redshirt freshman and had already missed a kick earlier in the game Gundy had to believe that this was his teams best shot at forcing the game into overtime.

So there you have it, two examples of coaching. Two different outcomes and two different sets of emotions going through Madison, Wisconsin and Stillwater, Oklahoma.

One Last Thing

“You tend to get told that the world is the way it is, but life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact; and that is that everything around you that you call life was made up by people no smarter than you … Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”

Steve Jobs, 1984

Attention Baby!

Achtung Baby is the greatest record I’ve ever heard or experienced.

FACT

A new friend of mine named Shon Peterson told me to about it while we were talking in Anthropology class as freshmen in High School. To this day I have never heard an album that changed the game like this one did. It sounded like the future. Not a future depleted of natural resources or travelling through the cosmos but one of passion, poetry and style with a bitchin paint job.

The ensuing Zoo TV tour blew my mind. It was the Internet age before the Internet. TV’s everywhere, sonic sounds blasting at every turn and 4 guys who could make a stadium seem small. Then you had Bono in as he says, “Lou Reed’s glasses, Jim Morrison’s pants and Elvis’s jacket” out in front. To this day, I think he looked like one of the coolest guys I’d ever seen. Hell, I bought a serious of leather jackets after that.

Now comes the 20th anniversary of Achtung Baby.  20 years since I first heard the opening guitar riff of ‘The Fly’. 20 years since I heard Edge’s guitar make that future acid sound of ‘Mysterious Ways.’ 20 years since ‘One.’ 20 years since my World got unlocked to the sites and sounds of sci-fi rock’n'roll.

The one thing I came to be jealous of after all these years is that, at the end of the day, U2 is just 4 Irish kids who started a band. No band member change. No break up and reunion tour. Just 4 guys who love to create music together and somewhere along the line made a dent in the Universe.

A shock to no ones pt. 2

Leo Apotheker…yes that one. You know the one who was H-P’s CEO for almost 11 months before the Board of H-P sacked him and he walks away with up to $13 million and relocated to Belgium or Switzerland (his choice).

What am I doing wrong here?