It’s not that often that you get to watch a series finale of a show. One reason is that you have to actually follow that particular show. There are so many TV choices nowadays (even with the advent of the DVR) that it’s fairly easy to bounce from show to show without getting particularly attached to any of them. The other reason is that most series have a short leash from television networks, and it’s rare that in this day and age a show will actually come to fruition and end on its own terms. That all being said (although also aided by the magic of the DVR), it’s got to be exponentially more rare to watch two series finales on the same night. What might make it even stranger (given the fact that I’m a dude), is that the two shows are from The CW (formerly The WB): Smallville and One Tree Hill.
I remember that One Tree Hill originally piqued my interest before the 1st episode even aired. Even though I only sparingly caught a couple random episodes of shows like Dawson’s Creek, I secretly always liked some of those girly teen dramas…however, if one of those shows could actually use something like basketball as the main backdrop, I could talk myself into watching it without at the same time feeling like I needed to hand over my man card. I watched every episode of the first season, but about midway through season 2 it became hit or miss for me, and that was pretty much my relationship with the show from that point until the end of season 4. Honestly, at that point I was pretty much ready to drop the show altogether, but that is also around the time that Krissy and I started to get serious about each other, and it just so happened she was a One Tree Hill fanatic. The problem was that this was also the point when the show, which was borderline lame from the beginning, started to really go south. From a marketing perspective, I feel like the original basketball angle was an attempt to draw in people outside the normal teen serial drama audience, and it probably worked. At least, it worked on me…at least, it did at first…but after a while I think the reality of the situation started to settle in, which was that this was a teen serial drama, and the majority of its viewers were always going to be teenage girls. I think the show started to reflect that, as from episode to episode there seemed to be less and less “guy-centric” basketball scenes. Also, the show kept adding more and more characters, as I think the writers realized that there weren’t enough people for the main characters to bed-hop with. Seasons 5 and 6 pretty much saw the show’s complete transition from whatever it was originally intended to be into what was basically a nighttime teen soap opera. The general theme was, in the words of Jay-Z, “Sex, murder, and mayhem – romance for the streets.” While the plotlines were suspect and the acting was weak, it at least made for semi-entertaining TV…but seasons 7 and 8 were borderline unwatchable at times. For starters, Lucas and Peyton (who were 2 of the original core 5 cast members of the show, but had really become the 2 stars) decided to leave the show. The show decided to add what seemed like 10 new characters to try to make up for it. Making matters worse, all of the remaining characters were made to be “good guys” even if they had had a dark side to them in the past. The writers seemed to try to make some of the new characters “bad guys” at 1st, but even all of those characters shortly, to use a pro wrestling term, “turned face” and became good guys as well. For the last two years, the show didn’t really seem to know what it was or what it wanted to be. In fact, if you read IMDB’s little synopsis about the show you would think you were watching a completely different show in 2011. There was no more real backstabbing because everyone somehow turned into a good person. No more backstabbing also meant no more really crazy, yet entertaining, plotlines. (The show tried to introduce a couple dramatic plots such as a psychotic stalker girl and a mystery drunk driving accident, but they just didn’t really work.) Instead, the show seemed to try to morph into some kind of hour-long quirky sitcom, which is hard to do when none of the actors are really funny. By the end of the last season, most scenes featured either this kind of “comedy” or a couple of the characters sipping a beer and trying to say something deep and introspective…except none of them really had anything to be introspective about. It was kind of sad really. People talk all the time about athletes who don’t know when to hang it up and try to continue their careers a couple seasons too long (see Favre, Brett), but the same can be true for TV shows as well (not that One Tree Hill was ever some kind of cinematic marvel to begin with). The fact is that Krissy and I probably fast-forwarded through at least 25% of the final season (especially scenes with Chase, Millie, Nate and Haley’s kid Jamie, or one of Julian’s lovey-dovey rants to Brooke). I guess we continued to watch mostly just because we felt like we were invested in the show…we had watched basically from the first season on; might at least see how everything turns out…but as stale as it had gotten, you understand why TV networks have such a short leash for shows to begin with.
Smallville is a different story all together. Whereas One Tree Hill probably dragged-on a season or two longer than it should have, I feel like Smallville could’ve given us a couple more seasons without any complaints. First, I have to say that I’m a sucker for anything Superman-related. I wouldn’t classify myself as a so-called “fanboy,” but this show would have been pretty sorry for me not to have been interested. I wasn’t a collector, but I used to read the comics. I would race home from the school bus when I was kid to try to catch an episode of the Superman cartoon show. Even the most recent Superman movie that came out, which was a flop, I liked…so, you get the point. With that being said, probably the only Superman rendition more iconic than Smallville was the series of Christopher Reeves movies. And yet, some could argue that Smallville even tops that (and that’s saying something given the number of times Superman has been rebooted in mainstream American media). On a side note, I would be interested to see what kind of numbers Smallville did in terms of viewership over the years. I’m sure it didn’t rate comparably with hit shows from past years, but it had to at least be one of the WB’s/CW’s higher rated shows to have lasted 10 seasons. I would have been interested to see if the show would have been better received if the writing and acting was better, but in terms of paying tribute to the Superman mythology while playing up an angle (starting during Clark Kent’s adolescent years and not fully transforming into Superman until the final episode) that hadn’t really been covered before in the whole Superman genre, I think the show did a great job. And the acting and humor was cheesy at times, but it was almost as if the show knew it was, and eventually it seemed that the writers would work cheesy lines into the script in a way that the show was almost poking fun at itself. Still, while his acting left something to be desired, they couldn’t have casted a guy in Tom Welling (the actor that played Clark) who looked more the part. I guess that’s half foresight and half dumb luck, but by the last couple of seasons Clark’s character just looked exactly like how you would picture a young Superman looking in your mind’s eye. Anyway, I know there are some episodes that I missed throughout the years, but looking back at the IMDB episode listing there are so many episodes that it’s hard to tell which ones I missed and which ones I just forgot. I would say that I have seen almost every episode in seasons 1-3. In seasons 4 and 5 I probably saw most but not every episode, but looking back now I think I may have missed most of season 6 and all of season 7…in a way these were probably the worst seasons to miss as Lex and Lana were pretty much written out of the show by killing off their respective characters (neither ended up being completely “dead” and would later return in short reprised roles). Season 8, which is when Krissy and I jumped back into the show, introduced a bunch of new central characters, and missing most if not all of the previous 2 seasons left us with a lot of extra blanks to fill in. In the end, while Smallville never really got the amount of acclaim it probably deserved, 10 seasons was a good run. Being that it lasted 10 years, it’s going to be strange to no longer have it on the air. Smallville, as corny as it sounds, is a show that I grew up with, and I thought the last episode did a good job of completing the story they were trying to tell. Maybe with the help of iTunes I will start over from the first episode of season 1 in the not too distant future, and fill in some of those blanks that are still there.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
A Minor Setback
When I first began to take training somewhat seriously, it was easy to take any gains I was making for granted. Once I figured out all of the things I was doing wrong I was seemingly setting new 1 rep maxes every other week. The sad but universal truth for every training goal – strength, weight loss, endurance, etc. – is that the further along you are, the more difficult it is to make significant gains. One thing you don’t expect to happen is to go backwards though…
A month or two ago, I wrote about my gym finally getting standard (non-Smith style) bench equipment. Ironically, around that same time I started to experience some significant “losses” doing any type of chest press using dumbbells. Looking back at my training log or journal or whatever you want to call it, I was starting to get to the point where my dumbbell presses were getting pretty heavy, and I felt like even though I wasn’t that strong on the standard bench or even benching using the Smith machine I more than made up for it with the dumbbells. According to my log, I was at the point of doing 3 sets of 7 with 100 lb. dumbbells on the flat bench and 3 sets of 12 at 85 lb. on the incline. All of the sudden, and somewhat mysteriously, my strength on these exercises seemed to disappear. On the flat bench, I could barely even get the weights off my chest to even start a set with 100’s. Even doing 1 set on its own of between 8-10 reps with 90’s or 95’s was tough. Stranger still, I didn’t seem to have any such power outage on any non-dumbbell chest press exercise. The first time it happened, I just figured I was having an off day: didn’t sleep enough the night before, didn’t eat enough that day, energy was low for some reason, etc. The second time I tried (and failed), I was perplexed and frustrated. The third time, I was just plain ticked-off.
At first, I wasn’t sure what to think. I wondered if it had anything to do with the fact that I had recently dropped a few pounds. (A few months ago, I tipped the scales at 201 lb. I could’ve kept the weight on, but I had found myself playing more and more basketball, and I wanted to see if I could regain some quickness and explosiveness. Plus, I just wanted to see what I looked like a little more lean and toned-up. Right now, I’m somewhere in the 191-193 range.) The fact is that it’s only natural to lose a little bit of strength if you drop some weight. The other (and probably even more relevant factor) relates back to what I said before about playing more ball as of late. Even though I’ve gotten myself into better shape, playing more often has led to a few nagging injuries. Nothing major, but I might have slightly re-tweaked my old shoulder injury, and I did something to my left hand (specifically my index and middle fingers) that still hasn’t healed…I’m not sure if I jammed them or what, but combining that with my previous injuries to my pinky and ring fingers on the same hand (that means I at least still have a good thumb on that hand, boys and girls) makes it tough to grip and balance a weight. In theory I guess that those could account for a little loss in stability and explosive power that might go into dumbbell chest press exercises.
With the new gym equipment, I was planning on trying to use those pieces more now anyway (since I had been deprived of them for years) and use the dumbbells to supplement those exercises, but maybe this was just God’s way of saying, “Slow your roll.” Either way, hopefully some R&R from the heavier dumbbells and being lucky enough to not re-aggravate any of these injuries will allow me to use the 100’s again sometime in the not too distant future.
A month or two ago, I wrote about my gym finally getting standard (non-Smith style) bench equipment. Ironically, around that same time I started to experience some significant “losses” doing any type of chest press using dumbbells. Looking back at my training log or journal or whatever you want to call it, I was starting to get to the point where my dumbbell presses were getting pretty heavy, and I felt like even though I wasn’t that strong on the standard bench or even benching using the Smith machine I more than made up for it with the dumbbells. According to my log, I was at the point of doing 3 sets of 7 with 100 lb. dumbbells on the flat bench and 3 sets of 12 at 85 lb. on the incline. All of the sudden, and somewhat mysteriously, my strength on these exercises seemed to disappear. On the flat bench, I could barely even get the weights off my chest to even start a set with 100’s. Even doing 1 set on its own of between 8-10 reps with 90’s or 95’s was tough. Stranger still, I didn’t seem to have any such power outage on any non-dumbbell chest press exercise. The first time it happened, I just figured I was having an off day: didn’t sleep enough the night before, didn’t eat enough that day, energy was low for some reason, etc. The second time I tried (and failed), I was perplexed and frustrated. The third time, I was just plain ticked-off.
At first, I wasn’t sure what to think. I wondered if it had anything to do with the fact that I had recently dropped a few pounds. (A few months ago, I tipped the scales at 201 lb. I could’ve kept the weight on, but I had found myself playing more and more basketball, and I wanted to see if I could regain some quickness and explosiveness. Plus, I just wanted to see what I looked like a little more lean and toned-up. Right now, I’m somewhere in the 191-193 range.) The fact is that it’s only natural to lose a little bit of strength if you drop some weight. The other (and probably even more relevant factor) relates back to what I said before about playing more ball as of late. Even though I’ve gotten myself into better shape, playing more often has led to a few nagging injuries. Nothing major, but I might have slightly re-tweaked my old shoulder injury, and I did something to my left hand (specifically my index and middle fingers) that still hasn’t healed…I’m not sure if I jammed them or what, but combining that with my previous injuries to my pinky and ring fingers on the same hand (that means I at least still have a good thumb on that hand, boys and girls) makes it tough to grip and balance a weight. In theory I guess that those could account for a little loss in stability and explosive power that might go into dumbbell chest press exercises.
With the new gym equipment, I was planning on trying to use those pieces more now anyway (since I had been deprived of them for years) and use the dumbbells to supplement those exercises, but maybe this was just God’s way of saying, “Slow your roll.” Either way, hopefully some R&R from the heavier dumbbells and being lucky enough to not re-aggravate any of these injuries will allow me to use the 100’s again sometime in the not too distant future.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Madden Update: Season 2
A couple of months ago I wrote a Madden blog post chronicling the difficulties of playing in “franchise mode” under the “All-Madden” skill level. At the time of that post, I was 0-5, and my closest margin of defeat was 17 points. I was hoping to improve enough to eke out at least a win or 2 by season’s end, but little did I know at that time that I was well on my way to an 0-16 season. I think my play did steadily improve as the season wore on (there were 2 or 3 games that I lost by a touchdown or less), but it still wasn’t good enough for even 1 win. In year 2 of my franchise, I fared slightly better. I got my 1st 2 wins against the CPU on All-Madden to finish the year 2-14, and hopefully with a couple draft picks and newly acquired players in the offseason I can improve on that in year 3.
Looking back at that 1st Madden blog, I mostly focused on how impossibly hard the All-Madden setting was. While that’s still true today, the second season of my franchise at least showed me that the All-Madden CPU’s can be beat, and my frame of mind has shifted more towards figuring out ways to win games rather than think about how the games are rigged. Part of the jump had to do with just getting better and applying a lot of the lessons I had learned in the previous season to this season. Obviously, if I don’t continue on that track, nothing else I do is really going to matter a whole heck of a lot. For example, even though my interceptions were way down from year one I still threw way too many of them. Maybe half of those were the “cheating CPU” type, where a CPU defender makes an impossible leaping, diving, one-handed catch, but a good number were just poor decisions on my part.
I’m hoping that aside from my own improvement in play the biggest difference from year 2 to year 3 will be in personnel. Let me just say that I think I picked literally the worst franchise you could have picked to start an All-Madden franchise with. The 2010-2011 Washington Redskins roster was an absolute mess. The years of ponying up big money for veteran free agents and trading away their draft picks left entire units (offensive and defensive line) in shambles, and even more than that caused me to have no depth at virtually every position. The cupboard was literally bare when I started out. I am admittedly pretty good at math and problem-solving, but I don’t have the time, energy, or willingness to do the due diligence of a real-life NFL capologist or GM. As a result, in both of my 1st 2 years I wound up losing the war of attrition. Any injury that occurred resulted in some mop (many times a non-real, Madden-generated player) being inserted in the lineup, and the results were usually not pretty.
Anyway, I believe I have the privilege of having the 1st overall pick in the draft for the 2nd year in a row. Unfortunately, Madden drafts (like real drafts) are a bit of a crapshoot. I picked a defensive tackle with my 1st round pick last season, and the jury is still out on him. He didn’t start, but he served as my 2nd string nose tackle and was in the game for all of my nickel packages. In year 3, I think I’m going to switch from a 3-4 to a 4-3, so he will most likely see more action, but it’s quite possible that he is a bust. (I know the player ratings of my defensive linemen are fairly week, but I thought the linemen’s objective in a 3-4 was to tie up blockers to allow the linebackers to make plays. If they are all able to be blocked by 1 player, it kind of defeats the purpose. Also, the real-life switch of the Skins D to a 3-4 prompted a lot of questions about sticking square pegs into round holes…I didn’t think that would have mattered in terms of Madden, but maybe it does after all.) While he ended up being largely unimpressive, my other early round draft picks could end up improving to the point of being my team’s backbone for a few years. My 2nd round pick was a left guard, who seems to be solid. My 3rd pick, a defensive end, actually wound up starting the majority of the games and led the team in sacks I believe as well. My 4th round pick, a running back, went from being the 3rd down back to the unquestioned starter midway through the year. By the end of the season, I pretty much featured him as my all-around best player on offense, as he led the team in both carries and catches. He still only gained about 3.5 yards per carry, but I think that is about a yard improvement over the team’s overall per carry average the year before. The number of passes thrown his way was partly a function of the conservative way I still had to play on offense, as the majority of his catches were screens and dump-offs out of the backfield, but getting him the ball as much as possible gave me the best chance to win.
So, going into this offseason I think my strategy isn’t going to be so much acquiring a big-time free agent or 2 as much as trying to build up depth throughout my roster…as opposed to the year before where I was looking to fill 6 or 7 starting positions with draft picks and free agents. One position I definitely want to upgrade though is wide receiver, and depending on what type of draft class Madden spits out that might be how I use my 1st round pick (or I might make that my top free agent priority…we shall see). Going into this past season, I knew the position was an area of concern, but I felt that I could get by with a trio of similarly-rated, above average wideouts for 1 year at least…well that theory went out the window quickly because of injuries, and as a result my receiver play suffered even more. Aside from that, I would love to add depth along both lines, at linebacker, and in the defensive backfield. The one blessing of finishing back-to-back seasons with abysmal records is getting a lot of high draft picks. Hopefully, the Madden draft will be as kind, if not kinder, to my roster this season as they were the season before, and I can inch a little bit closer to 0.500 in season 3.
Looking back at that 1st Madden blog, I mostly focused on how impossibly hard the All-Madden setting was. While that’s still true today, the second season of my franchise at least showed me that the All-Madden CPU’s can be beat, and my frame of mind has shifted more towards figuring out ways to win games rather than think about how the games are rigged. Part of the jump had to do with just getting better and applying a lot of the lessons I had learned in the previous season to this season. Obviously, if I don’t continue on that track, nothing else I do is really going to matter a whole heck of a lot. For example, even though my interceptions were way down from year one I still threw way too many of them. Maybe half of those were the “cheating CPU” type, where a CPU defender makes an impossible leaping, diving, one-handed catch, but a good number were just poor decisions on my part.
I’m hoping that aside from my own improvement in play the biggest difference from year 2 to year 3 will be in personnel. Let me just say that I think I picked literally the worst franchise you could have picked to start an All-Madden franchise with. The 2010-2011 Washington Redskins roster was an absolute mess. The years of ponying up big money for veteran free agents and trading away their draft picks left entire units (offensive and defensive line) in shambles, and even more than that caused me to have no depth at virtually every position. The cupboard was literally bare when I started out. I am admittedly pretty good at math and problem-solving, but I don’t have the time, energy, or willingness to do the due diligence of a real-life NFL capologist or GM. As a result, in both of my 1st 2 years I wound up losing the war of attrition. Any injury that occurred resulted in some mop (many times a non-real, Madden-generated player) being inserted in the lineup, and the results were usually not pretty.
Anyway, I believe I have the privilege of having the 1st overall pick in the draft for the 2nd year in a row. Unfortunately, Madden drafts (like real drafts) are a bit of a crapshoot. I picked a defensive tackle with my 1st round pick last season, and the jury is still out on him. He didn’t start, but he served as my 2nd string nose tackle and was in the game for all of my nickel packages. In year 3, I think I’m going to switch from a 3-4 to a 4-3, so he will most likely see more action, but it’s quite possible that he is a bust. (I know the player ratings of my defensive linemen are fairly week, but I thought the linemen’s objective in a 3-4 was to tie up blockers to allow the linebackers to make plays. If they are all able to be blocked by 1 player, it kind of defeats the purpose. Also, the real-life switch of the Skins D to a 3-4 prompted a lot of questions about sticking square pegs into round holes…I didn’t think that would have mattered in terms of Madden, but maybe it does after all.) While he ended up being largely unimpressive, my other early round draft picks could end up improving to the point of being my team’s backbone for a few years. My 2nd round pick was a left guard, who seems to be solid. My 3rd pick, a defensive end, actually wound up starting the majority of the games and led the team in sacks I believe as well. My 4th round pick, a running back, went from being the 3rd down back to the unquestioned starter midway through the year. By the end of the season, I pretty much featured him as my all-around best player on offense, as he led the team in both carries and catches. He still only gained about 3.5 yards per carry, but I think that is about a yard improvement over the team’s overall per carry average the year before. The number of passes thrown his way was partly a function of the conservative way I still had to play on offense, as the majority of his catches were screens and dump-offs out of the backfield, but getting him the ball as much as possible gave me the best chance to win.
So, going into this offseason I think my strategy isn’t going to be so much acquiring a big-time free agent or 2 as much as trying to build up depth throughout my roster…as opposed to the year before where I was looking to fill 6 or 7 starting positions with draft picks and free agents. One position I definitely want to upgrade though is wide receiver, and depending on what type of draft class Madden spits out that might be how I use my 1st round pick (or I might make that my top free agent priority…we shall see). Going into this past season, I knew the position was an area of concern, but I felt that I could get by with a trio of similarly-rated, above average wideouts for 1 year at least…well that theory went out the window quickly because of injuries, and as a result my receiver play suffered even more. Aside from that, I would love to add depth along both lines, at linebacker, and in the defensive backfield. The one blessing of finishing back-to-back seasons with abysmal records is getting a lot of high draft picks. Hopefully, the Madden draft will be as kind, if not kinder, to my roster this season as they were the season before, and I can inch a little bit closer to 0.500 in season 3.
Thursday, May 12, 2011
A Bittersweet Last Ride
This blog is way overdue. In fact it’s so overdue, that the “overdue” version is overdue. As isn’t always the case though, my procrastination actually kind of worked out in my favor this time…my tardiness actually makes this story come full circle. A couple of months ago I wrote a post about the new Dodge Durango. This was kind of supposed to serve as some kind of blog prequel for a major post that was to be written at a later date. I would use it to catalog a bunch of different vehicle options, weigh the pros and cons of each, and hopefully it might even help me come to the most logical conclusion.
My 1995 Ford Ranger was still running at the time, but to say it had seen better days was an understatement. While at that time I was still hoping to get another year or two out of it, I thought it was a good idea to at least start brainstorming about what to get when the time did in fact come. Soon after writing that Durango blog post, the writing appeared to be on the wall for the Ranger. On the way home from New Jersey one particular night, the truck broke down on Interstate 95…as it got towed to our mechanic’s shop, Krissy and I mentally and psychologically prepared for the worst. We had just sprung for new tires on the Ranger less than a year ago, but we had decided that any pricey type of repair from here on out would constitute some serious decision making about the pickup’s future. Luckily (and to our surprise), the truck hadn’t died at all…it had simply run out of gas. You see, for what seems like as long as I’ve driven the Ranger the gas gauge has been busted, and I have simply kept track of the gas using the trip odometer…but that method doesn’t work when someone siphons gas out of your car at night, which I had suspected had happened on at least one other occasion in our apartment complex, and I suspected here again. That was the good news; the bad news was that I had asked the mechanic to just do an overall check of the vehicle since it was in the shop anyway, and he had found a bearing problem in the truck’s rear differential. This basically served as the Ranger’s $800 death sentence. Not to make light of terminal illnesses, but it kind of reminded me of when a doctor tells a patient they only have 6 months to live.
Anyway, I intensified my car-buying research, but that car-shopping blog post still never came. About a month after the “running out of gas” incident, the Ranger really did die. All of the sudden, Krissy and I were down a car, and we didn’t really have time to do as much in-depth research as we had originally wanted, much less write a blog about it. A few days later, we found ourselves at our local Toyota dealer test-driving a brand spankin’ new 2011 Toyota Tacoma. I had toyed around with the idea of getting some kind of sporty looking hatchback or mid-size SUV, but Krissy brought me back to Earth and convinced me that I was and always will be a pickup truck guy…fair enough I suppose. Anyway, prior to actually going car-shopping I had contacted this particular dealership about a particular Tacoma that was listed on their website as being in stock. This Tacoma was a 4x4, but also had a manual transmission, which seems to be a combination that is all but extinct in pickup trucks nowadays. It also was a 4-door and had a full back seat, which weren’t deal-breakers, but they were definitely pluses.
Upon seeing it and test-driving it, we were pretty much sold right away. Along with the couple of features that I thought were must-haves for us, there were a bunch of bells and whistles that I wasn’t originally aware the truck had including Toyota’s TRD (Toyota Racing Development) Off-Road package, power locks and windows, satellite radio, etc. We ended up buying it and taking it home that same night, and we ended up parking it right next to the old broken down Ranger when we got home. I actually felt kind of guilty…it seemed like I had been driving the Ranger (which was technically still in my Dad’s name) for a lifetime, and bringing home another new truck felt something like showing off your new 22 year old girlfriend in front of your 50 year old soon-to-be divorced wife.
The reason this post has now gone full circle due to my lateness is that not only have I delayed writing it for so long that we’ve actually bought a new car, made our first payment on it, and driven it over 2,500 miles, but the old Ranger is finally gone now as well. Ever since we bought the new pickup, the Ranger had sat in our parking lot as we and my parents tried to decide what to do with it. We had a thought to give it to Krissy’s Dad, and maybe he could fix it up and use it just to drive stuff back and forth around town on the weekends. We also thought of selling it to a junkyard for parts. In the end, we decided to simply donate it to Catholic Charities.
Krissy was the one that officially oversaw it getting picked up after I went to work, but seeing the pictures she took on her iPhone of the Ranger being loaded up and towed away were bittersweet all the same. My Dad bought the Ranger brand new…281,128 miles later (over half of which were driven by me) I suppose it will soon belong to someone else after it gets fixed up. To say we got our money’s worth was an understatement. I had mentioned the gas gauge had been broken for some time, but that wasn’t all. The AC was spotty, the radio would never power off, and the middle storage console had been broken and could only be kept shut using a piece of string long since before I even started driving it. The ceiling was all scratched up from a time I had hauled rails to help make a post and rail fence. The only way the rails would fit was if they went through the small sliding door in the backseat into the cab, and any time I went over a bump or sharp turn the edge of one of the rails would pierce the ceiling. There were still small pieces of broken glass in the backseat from when the truck was broken into when Krissy and I were on vacation. On top of all that, the Ranger (even as a new truck) was never made for inclement weather. The combination of its 4-cylinder engine, rear wheel drive, and lack of any appreciable weight in the back over the driving wheels (even if you loaded the bed with snow, cement bags, or whatever else you could find) made for some interesting trips whenever the roads were wet. I could list a dozen times where I either got stuck in mud or ice or did full 360’s (or even a 720 once) in the middle of the street, and only the grace of God and the help of strangers saved me. Still, there are a lot of good memories that accompany that truck. It didn’t have the performance capability of a full-size pickup or even our new Tacoma, but it’s hard to quantify the utility we got from it. A lot of mulch, firewood, garbage, furniture, and anything else you can think of was hauled in that bed. It’s where I first learned to drive stick. It’s the car our old family dog, Dayton, rode in during her last family vacation. It’s what Krissy and I used to take us on a lot of road trips when we were first dating and first got married. Heck, it’s even what we used to haul our wedding gifts home after getting married. So, while it definitely was it’s time to go, bittersweet is definitely the word I would use to describe its departure. While I never technically owned the Ranger, and it wasn’t even technically the first car I ever drove (other family hand-me-downs, an ’88 Ford Tempo and a ’94 Plymouth Voyager, have that distinction), I will always consider it my first car. We can only hope our new pickup, still shiny, new, and with hint left of that new car smell, will last just as long.
New Meets Old
Last Ride
Out With The Old, In With The New
My 1995 Ford Ranger was still running at the time, but to say it had seen better days was an understatement. While at that time I was still hoping to get another year or two out of it, I thought it was a good idea to at least start brainstorming about what to get when the time did in fact come. Soon after writing that Durango blog post, the writing appeared to be on the wall for the Ranger. On the way home from New Jersey one particular night, the truck broke down on Interstate 95…as it got towed to our mechanic’s shop, Krissy and I mentally and psychologically prepared for the worst. We had just sprung for new tires on the Ranger less than a year ago, but we had decided that any pricey type of repair from here on out would constitute some serious decision making about the pickup’s future. Luckily (and to our surprise), the truck hadn’t died at all…it had simply run out of gas. You see, for what seems like as long as I’ve driven the Ranger the gas gauge has been busted, and I have simply kept track of the gas using the trip odometer…but that method doesn’t work when someone siphons gas out of your car at night, which I had suspected had happened on at least one other occasion in our apartment complex, and I suspected here again. That was the good news; the bad news was that I had asked the mechanic to just do an overall check of the vehicle since it was in the shop anyway, and he had found a bearing problem in the truck’s rear differential. This basically served as the Ranger’s $800 death sentence. Not to make light of terminal illnesses, but it kind of reminded me of when a doctor tells a patient they only have 6 months to live.
Anyway, I intensified my car-buying research, but that car-shopping blog post still never came. About a month after the “running out of gas” incident, the Ranger really did die. All of the sudden, Krissy and I were down a car, and we didn’t really have time to do as much in-depth research as we had originally wanted, much less write a blog about it. A few days later, we found ourselves at our local Toyota dealer test-driving a brand spankin’ new 2011 Toyota Tacoma. I had toyed around with the idea of getting some kind of sporty looking hatchback or mid-size SUV, but Krissy brought me back to Earth and convinced me that I was and always will be a pickup truck guy…fair enough I suppose. Anyway, prior to actually going car-shopping I had contacted this particular dealership about a particular Tacoma that was listed on their website as being in stock. This Tacoma was a 4x4, but also had a manual transmission, which seems to be a combination that is all but extinct in pickup trucks nowadays. It also was a 4-door and had a full back seat, which weren’t deal-breakers, but they were definitely pluses.
Upon seeing it and test-driving it, we were pretty much sold right away. Along with the couple of features that I thought were must-haves for us, there were a bunch of bells and whistles that I wasn’t originally aware the truck had including Toyota’s TRD (Toyota Racing Development) Off-Road package, power locks and windows, satellite radio, etc. We ended up buying it and taking it home that same night, and we ended up parking it right next to the old broken down Ranger when we got home. I actually felt kind of guilty…it seemed like I had been driving the Ranger (which was technically still in my Dad’s name) for a lifetime, and bringing home another new truck felt something like showing off your new 22 year old girlfriend in front of your 50 year old soon-to-be divorced wife.
The reason this post has now gone full circle due to my lateness is that not only have I delayed writing it for so long that we’ve actually bought a new car, made our first payment on it, and driven it over 2,500 miles, but the old Ranger is finally gone now as well. Ever since we bought the new pickup, the Ranger had sat in our parking lot as we and my parents tried to decide what to do with it. We had a thought to give it to Krissy’s Dad, and maybe he could fix it up and use it just to drive stuff back and forth around town on the weekends. We also thought of selling it to a junkyard for parts. In the end, we decided to simply donate it to Catholic Charities.
Krissy was the one that officially oversaw it getting picked up after I went to work, but seeing the pictures she took on her iPhone of the Ranger being loaded up and towed away were bittersweet all the same. My Dad bought the Ranger brand new…281,128 miles later (over half of which were driven by me) I suppose it will soon belong to someone else after it gets fixed up. To say we got our money’s worth was an understatement. I had mentioned the gas gauge had been broken for some time, but that wasn’t all. The AC was spotty, the radio would never power off, and the middle storage console had been broken and could only be kept shut using a piece of string long since before I even started driving it. The ceiling was all scratched up from a time I had hauled rails to help make a post and rail fence. The only way the rails would fit was if they went through the small sliding door in the backseat into the cab, and any time I went over a bump or sharp turn the edge of one of the rails would pierce the ceiling. There were still small pieces of broken glass in the backseat from when the truck was broken into when Krissy and I were on vacation. On top of all that, the Ranger (even as a new truck) was never made for inclement weather. The combination of its 4-cylinder engine, rear wheel drive, and lack of any appreciable weight in the back over the driving wheels (even if you loaded the bed with snow, cement bags, or whatever else you could find) made for some interesting trips whenever the roads were wet. I could list a dozen times where I either got stuck in mud or ice or did full 360’s (or even a 720 once) in the middle of the street, and only the grace of God and the help of strangers saved me. Still, there are a lot of good memories that accompany that truck. It didn’t have the performance capability of a full-size pickup or even our new Tacoma, but it’s hard to quantify the utility we got from it. A lot of mulch, firewood, garbage, furniture, and anything else you can think of was hauled in that bed. It’s where I first learned to drive stick. It’s the car our old family dog, Dayton, rode in during her last family vacation. It’s what Krissy and I used to take us on a lot of road trips when we were first dating and first got married. Heck, it’s even what we used to haul our wedding gifts home after getting married. So, while it definitely was it’s time to go, bittersweet is definitely the word I would use to describe its departure. While I never technically owned the Ranger, and it wasn’t even technically the first car I ever drove (other family hand-me-downs, an ’88 Ford Tempo and a ’94 Plymouth Voyager, have that distinction), I will always consider it my first car. We can only hope our new pickup, still shiny, new, and with hint left of that new car smell, will last just as long.
New Meets Old
Last Ride
Out With The Old, In With The New
Friday, April 29, 2011
Hoodwinked
Ever been hood-winked before? There probably isn’t a worse feeling in the world. I consider myself a pretty hard person to pull a fast one on…although I might occasionally behave in a way that might suggest I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed. Still, I like to think that there are a whole lot of people out there who are a heck of a lot more gullible than me, but I think I may have been “had” this time. Krissy has been trying to sell an old phone of hers on Craigslist for awhile now. She hadn’t had much success, especially in trying to sell locally, and as a result it got to the point where the initial ad expired. So, on the second ad we made we decided to consider non-local offers as well. This time around, one person in particular seemed especially interested in the phone; however, he was listed as being from Nigeria. A couple of red flags went off right away. First, this guy was really persistent, and he was offering about 50% more than our asking price for the phone. Why would you want a used phone that much, and why would you be willing to pay as much for one as a new phone? The second thing is that even if this guy had good intentions, Krissy and I haven’t had much luck in eBay/Craigslist transactions when it involves mailing things. We have done well when it ends up being someone local and we can make the exchange face-to-face, but we had gone 0 for 2 when the transaction involved mailing stuff across the country (and this was halfway across the world). The last thing was this: this guy was from, of all places, Nigeria? Isn’t that where all those so-called African princes are from who try to solicit money through spam email? That should have made us call it a day right there.
Despite the red flags, we decided to sell the phone to the guy anyway. (This part I blame more on Krissy than myself.) After agreeing, we got an email that just didn’t add up for some reason. It was requesting the tracking number, and it was giving a shipping address to send it to. The email “appeared” to be coming from PayPal, but the name on the shipping address didn’t match up with the name of the guy we thought we were selling to. I decided we should try to call the whole thing off right then and there, and I responded to the email requesting to call off the transaction and cancel the payment. I got a someone terse email back the next morning saying that the transaction could no longer be cancelled as the charges had been credited to the buyer’s account, and that if we didn’t ship the phone “legal action” could be taken. What really drove this point home for me is that I had also created a PayPal helpdesk ticket requesting for the transaction to be cancelled, and they responded that if the transaction was already pending that it could be refunded after the fact but not cancelled at this point…this is where the scammer lucked-out because at that point I wasn’t sure if the emails I was receiving were really from PayPal or not, but I knew that the PayPal helpdesk response was “real.” (The problem was that I don’t think the official helpdesk person actually looked up my individual case, and instead they were just speaking in general terms about the cancellation policy. If they had looked it up, they would have seen that the buyer didn’t even have a real PayPal account, and that there wasn’t even a pending transaction at that time because no one had attempted to pay me. More on this in a minute…)
While I blamed the events of the last paragraph on Krissy, this paragraph is all on me. Not wanting to get sued, kicked off PayPal, or face other “legal action,” I pretty much panicked. I used my entire lunch break one day to run home, grab the phone, and take it to the post office to ship off to Nigeria. The shipping process was a nightmare in itself: $40 and about an hour’s worth of hassle…if you’ve never shipped anything internationally before, there is a crapload of paperwork and stuff you have to fill out. Anyway, at that point I figured here goes nothing, and I had pretty much bought into the fact that this was a legit transaction. I was mostly concerned with the phone just getting there safe and sound, as the lady at the post office said that about half the time these international shippings get sent back because something wasn’t filled out right or one of any number of other things that could have gone wrong went wrong. As requested, I sent the tracking number to the email address that had emailed me before, but each day they would request something else. After I sent the tracking number, they basically responded that that wasn’t good enough, and they wanted a scanned copy of the post office receipt. Once that was done, the money would be credited into my PayPal account. Looking back at it now, I suppose they were just fishing for my credit card number. The request made me suspicious again at the time, but my credit card info wasn’t on the receipt, so I obliged to their request.
This morning I checked my PayPal account, and still there was nothing…no new money, not even a pending transaction. Later in the morning I got another email from “PayPal” saying basically this: through no fault of the buyer, PayPal actually mistakenly charged the buyer twice for the transaction, thus putting double the amount I was supposed to get into my account. I couldn’t see any of that money in my account yet, but rest assured that the buyer had already been charged, and this transaction could only be reversed by me if I refunded half of that money into the buyer’s account. I was instructed to do this immediately, and I would be refunding the guy pretty much blindly because it’s not like I was seeing double the original agreed amount of money or even the correct amount in my PayPal account. To top it all off, the email was rife with misspellings, incomplete sentences, and bad grammar. The previous emails (aside from the “real” PayPal response) all contained an error or 2, but I thought maybe PayPal was outsourcing their technical support to India or something…the writing in this email was ridiculously bad though.
If red flags had gone up before, big fluorescent flags were going up now. I first contacted the PayPal helpdesk again (the real one), and reported what had been going on, but shortly after doing that I decided that I wanted a more immediate response. I called PayPal’s contact number. My brain was moving at 1,000 miles per hour, but I’m pretty sure I heard the technician say that they had no record of anyone using PayPal with the buyer’s email address, and I’m damn sure that they said there were no pending transactions going on with my account at this time (I think my most recent PayPal transaction according to her was in 2009.)
Even though I think we got off lucky in the end, I could barely contain myself from throwing my phone against the wall once I hung up. I mean, in reality all we lost was the $40 it cost to ship the phone, the hour I spent at the post office, and possibly the phone itself. The $40 and the hour we can never get back, but who knows what will happen with the phone itself. Maybe this Nigerian address doesn’t even exist. Maybe I didn’t do something right when I was filling stuff out like the post office lady said, and it will get sent back anyway. Even if we never see that phone again, it wasn’t being used by us anymore. Sure, we could have made a couple bucks off of it or given it to someone we know, but in the end we won’t miss it that much. What really kills me is the stuff we almost lost. A better scammer would probably have stolen my identity by now, and spent all our money somewhere in the Bahamas. Some assassin movie would probably say about a good assassin something like, “If you know he’s there, you’re already dead.” I think the same kind of idea applies here. We were lucky in that regard I think. I for damn sure wasn’t going to send this bust any money before we actually saw a dime ourselves, so the little overcharged/refund ploy was never going to slide, but the fact that I got strung along far enough to even ship the phone and send this mop package tracking info and all that just burns me up…especially since the whole situation didn’t smell right to me in the first place…especially since with my job I should know this cyber-security stuff like the back of my hand. Do you know how many seemingly endless and useless online training videos I’ve had to sit through about this stuff? And yet I was still almost a victim…kind of embarrassing to tell the truth.
I guess I feel fortunate, but it kind of took the perfect storm for me to buy in, or almost buy in I should say, to what was happening. First, aside from a couple of spelling errors, this guy’s emails were on-point. The logos, banners, and stuff made it look just like an official PayPal email. Even the email address had PayPal in the name. For me to buy in though, I had to think the fake PayPal emails were real, and after I got that helpdesk response back from PayPal basically saying the same thing the “fake” emails had been saying all along they almost had me hook, line, and sinker. After that, I really did think I might get sued or something if I didn’t cooperate. If not for greed or just plain incompetence, this scam artist probably would have had us. I guess $40 and a used phone is an appropriate price for a life lesson though.
Despite the red flags, we decided to sell the phone to the guy anyway. (This part I blame more on Krissy than myself.) After agreeing, we got an email that just didn’t add up for some reason. It was requesting the tracking number, and it was giving a shipping address to send it to. The email “appeared” to be coming from PayPal, but the name on the shipping address didn’t match up with the name of the guy we thought we were selling to. I decided we should try to call the whole thing off right then and there, and I responded to the email requesting to call off the transaction and cancel the payment. I got a someone terse email back the next morning saying that the transaction could no longer be cancelled as the charges had been credited to the buyer’s account, and that if we didn’t ship the phone “legal action” could be taken. What really drove this point home for me is that I had also created a PayPal helpdesk ticket requesting for the transaction to be cancelled, and they responded that if the transaction was already pending that it could be refunded after the fact but not cancelled at this point…this is where the scammer lucked-out because at that point I wasn’t sure if the emails I was receiving were really from PayPal or not, but I knew that the PayPal helpdesk response was “real.” (The problem was that I don’t think the official helpdesk person actually looked up my individual case, and instead they were just speaking in general terms about the cancellation policy. If they had looked it up, they would have seen that the buyer didn’t even have a real PayPal account, and that there wasn’t even a pending transaction at that time because no one had attempted to pay me. More on this in a minute…)
While I blamed the events of the last paragraph on Krissy, this paragraph is all on me. Not wanting to get sued, kicked off PayPal, or face other “legal action,” I pretty much panicked. I used my entire lunch break one day to run home, grab the phone, and take it to the post office to ship off to Nigeria. The shipping process was a nightmare in itself: $40 and about an hour’s worth of hassle…if you’ve never shipped anything internationally before, there is a crapload of paperwork and stuff you have to fill out. Anyway, at that point I figured here goes nothing, and I had pretty much bought into the fact that this was a legit transaction. I was mostly concerned with the phone just getting there safe and sound, as the lady at the post office said that about half the time these international shippings get sent back because something wasn’t filled out right or one of any number of other things that could have gone wrong went wrong. As requested, I sent the tracking number to the email address that had emailed me before, but each day they would request something else. After I sent the tracking number, they basically responded that that wasn’t good enough, and they wanted a scanned copy of the post office receipt. Once that was done, the money would be credited into my PayPal account. Looking back at it now, I suppose they were just fishing for my credit card number. The request made me suspicious again at the time, but my credit card info wasn’t on the receipt, so I obliged to their request.
This morning I checked my PayPal account, and still there was nothing…no new money, not even a pending transaction. Later in the morning I got another email from “PayPal” saying basically this: through no fault of the buyer, PayPal actually mistakenly charged the buyer twice for the transaction, thus putting double the amount I was supposed to get into my account. I couldn’t see any of that money in my account yet, but rest assured that the buyer had already been charged, and this transaction could only be reversed by me if I refunded half of that money into the buyer’s account. I was instructed to do this immediately, and I would be refunding the guy pretty much blindly because it’s not like I was seeing double the original agreed amount of money or even the correct amount in my PayPal account. To top it all off, the email was rife with misspellings, incomplete sentences, and bad grammar. The previous emails (aside from the “real” PayPal response) all contained an error or 2, but I thought maybe PayPal was outsourcing their technical support to India or something…the writing in this email was ridiculously bad though.
If red flags had gone up before, big fluorescent flags were going up now. I first contacted the PayPal helpdesk again (the real one), and reported what had been going on, but shortly after doing that I decided that I wanted a more immediate response. I called PayPal’s contact number. My brain was moving at 1,000 miles per hour, but I’m pretty sure I heard the technician say that they had no record of anyone using PayPal with the buyer’s email address, and I’m damn sure that they said there were no pending transactions going on with my account at this time (I think my most recent PayPal transaction according to her was in 2009.)
Even though I think we got off lucky in the end, I could barely contain myself from throwing my phone against the wall once I hung up. I mean, in reality all we lost was the $40 it cost to ship the phone, the hour I spent at the post office, and possibly the phone itself. The $40 and the hour we can never get back, but who knows what will happen with the phone itself. Maybe this Nigerian address doesn’t even exist. Maybe I didn’t do something right when I was filling stuff out like the post office lady said, and it will get sent back anyway. Even if we never see that phone again, it wasn’t being used by us anymore. Sure, we could have made a couple bucks off of it or given it to someone we know, but in the end we won’t miss it that much. What really kills me is the stuff we almost lost. A better scammer would probably have stolen my identity by now, and spent all our money somewhere in the Bahamas. Some assassin movie would probably say about a good assassin something like, “If you know he’s there, you’re already dead.” I think the same kind of idea applies here. We were lucky in that regard I think. I for damn sure wasn’t going to send this bust any money before we actually saw a dime ourselves, so the little overcharged/refund ploy was never going to slide, but the fact that I got strung along far enough to even ship the phone and send this mop package tracking info and all that just burns me up…especially since the whole situation didn’t smell right to me in the first place…especially since with my job I should know this cyber-security stuff like the back of my hand. Do you know how many seemingly endless and useless online training videos I’ve had to sit through about this stuff? And yet I was still almost a victim…kind of embarrassing to tell the truth.
I guess I feel fortunate, but it kind of took the perfect storm for me to buy in, or almost buy in I should say, to what was happening. First, aside from a couple of spelling errors, this guy’s emails were on-point. The logos, banners, and stuff made it look just like an official PayPal email. Even the email address had PayPal in the name. For me to buy in though, I had to think the fake PayPal emails were real, and after I got that helpdesk response back from PayPal basically saying the same thing the “fake” emails had been saying all along they almost had me hook, line, and sinker. After that, I really did think I might get sued or something if I didn’t cooperate. If not for greed or just plain incompetence, this scam artist probably would have had us. I guess $40 and a used phone is an appropriate price for a life lesson though.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Back Spasm Blues
I have written a lot about injuries over the years, but I feel like out of the "common injuries" (the somewhat serious injuries that aren't quite serious enough to send you to the hospital or keep you out of action for too long like ankle sprains, achilles strains, pulled hamstrings, etc.) a lower back strain is by far the worst. Most other injuries can be worked around or favored or something. Because it's in your core, when you have a bad back literally every movement (or lack of movement) affects it. You're driving and you turn your head to check a blind spot...ow. You roll over in bed from one side to the other...ow. You stretch your arm to grab that one plate or whatever that is just within your reach in the top cabinet...ow. Your back isn't like other parts of your body. If your arm, shoulder, ankle, or whatever hurts, then that's what hurts. If your back hurts, your back hurts, but if you are doing something with your arms or legs (like lifting, running, jumping, or shooting a basketball) it hurts then too. One of the worst parts about having a bad back is that one of the "activities" that aggrivates it the most is simply sitting. So, for anyone who spends a decent portion of their day sitting at a desk at their job or during class (not to mention driving), this sucks. While stretching and walking can help, the best thing you really can do for a bad back is to just rest...and apparently even resting too much can have a negative effect! According to WebMD, too much inactivity can cause a bad back to be weakened.
Anyway, the obvious reason why I bring this up is because my back spazzed-out earlier this week. We had played football on Saturday and basketball on Sunday, and my back was a little stiff come Monday morning, but I didn't pay it much mind. Later in the afternoon while sitting at my desk at work, I leaned forward to get a better look at something on my computer, and it took all my strength to not yelp in pain in the middle of the office. I guess this illustrates not only how painful back injuries are, but also how delicate your back is, as it only took the most subtle of movements to basically turn me into a 70 year old man. I spent the rest of the day trying to be as productive as possible while simultaneously trying to move as little as possible. The spasm had set off some type of physiological response as well, as I pretty much sweated through my shirt the remainder of the afternoon.
That was Monday, and today is Thursday. It's improved slightly each day, but it's still there. I've been in a work training all this week though, and the 8 hours of sitting a day hasn't exactly been my cup of tea. Yesterday, I gingerly tried to work out, and my back seemed to hold up ok. Still, I don't think I've messed my back up this bad since high school, when I took a charge against some guy on Dematha who was built like a middle linebacker. That time, my back didn't get better for about 2 months, but that was partly of my own doing...the injury happened in the middle of basketball season, and instead of taking a week or 2 off when it happened I instead tried to tough it out. This allowed me to play through the season while only missing a game or 2 (as well as a half dozen practices), but I wouldn't doubt that it also prolonged my injury. This time, hopefully I can rehab at my own pace, and this back pain won't drag on too long.
Anyway, the obvious reason why I bring this up is because my back spazzed-out earlier this week. We had played football on Saturday and basketball on Sunday, and my back was a little stiff come Monday morning, but I didn't pay it much mind. Later in the afternoon while sitting at my desk at work, I leaned forward to get a better look at something on my computer, and it took all my strength to not yelp in pain in the middle of the office. I guess this illustrates not only how painful back injuries are, but also how delicate your back is, as it only took the most subtle of movements to basically turn me into a 70 year old man. I spent the rest of the day trying to be as productive as possible while simultaneously trying to move as little as possible. The spasm had set off some type of physiological response as well, as I pretty much sweated through my shirt the remainder of the afternoon.
That was Monday, and today is Thursday. It's improved slightly each day, but it's still there. I've been in a work training all this week though, and the 8 hours of sitting a day hasn't exactly been my cup of tea. Yesterday, I gingerly tried to work out, and my back seemed to hold up ok. Still, I don't think I've messed my back up this bad since high school, when I took a charge against some guy on Dematha who was built like a middle linebacker. That time, my back didn't get better for about 2 months, but that was partly of my own doing...the injury happened in the middle of basketball season, and instead of taking a week or 2 off when it happened I instead tried to tough it out. This allowed me to play through the season while only missing a game or 2 (as well as a half dozen practices), but I wouldn't doubt that it also prolonged my injury. This time, hopefully I can rehab at my own pace, and this back pain won't drag on too long.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
NCAA Inception
Dreams are always a funny thing, but I can’t think of a more mind-bending dream than the kind I had last night (oddly enough, it’s probably the most simple kind of dream you can have). Sometime in the middle of the night I woke up, staggered to the bathroom to relieve myself, and then stumbled back to bed. Once I got back to bed, I initially had a hard time falling back asleep…or at least so I thought at the time. At some point I realizd I was dreaming, but in my dream I was lying in bed in the middle of the night trying to go to sleep. So I guess I wasn’t actually having a hard time falling asleep, and instead I was asleep, but just dreaming of having a hard time falling asleep. I felt like I was in my own little version of Inception , and I needed Leonardo DiCaprio to come spin his little top to make sure I was in reality and not some other dimension.
I filled out my NCAA bracket this morning, and I can honestly say that I couldn’t feel less confident about my picks. This college basketball season has been as topsy-turvy as ever. Without getting too deep into it, I believe the reason is that the overall college basketball talent pool has really taken a hit the past few years. Obviously, the days of having the best college players stick around until their junior and senior years have been in the rear-view mirror for over a decade now, but it just seems like the one-and-done players have had a cumulative effect on the game over time, and what we get is a watered-down product. It saddens me because college basketball has long been my favorite sport to follow, but it is the reality of the situation, and I’m not sure the NCAA and the NBA are collectively willing to do anything about it.
Anyway, back to the topic at hand…the landscape of this college basketball season changed dramatically the day Duke freshman guard Kyrie Irving got injured. At the time, Duke was undefeated and the clear-cut #1 team in the country. The prevailing thought was that with Irving in the lineup, Duke was so much better than even the other best teams in the country (Kansas, Pitt, etc.) that they could possibly make a run at an undefeated season. Duke still finished the season with a #1 seed in the NCAA tournament, but who’s to say that they are any better than any other team seeded one through four now? Combine that with the precipitous fall of some teams (Michigan State was ranked as the #2 team in the country preseason and backed into the tournament as a 10-seed) the somewhat unexpected rise of other teams (San Diego State, BYU, and Ohio State), and the streakiness/inconsistency of another group of teams (North Carolina, Kansas State, UCONN, and Syracuse), and we have ourselves a mess. In past seasons, even if the early part of my bracket stinks I at least have had a good idea who would advance deep into the tournament. I have had years where I will barely pick half of the games right for the opening two rounds, but I will have almost all of the Elite Eight teams, Final Four teams, etc. picked correctly. Last year I picked fairly well, and I think my picks were in the top 10% in both ESPN and Yahoo’s nationwide tournament challenges. This year, I literally have no idea what I’m doing…and this is coming from a guy who watches a lot of college basketball. I might as well be picking games based on mascots and uniform colors.
In the East Region, I have mostly chalk all the way through. I picked 11-seed Marquette to beat 6-seed Xavier. I like this Xavier team, and Xavier traditionally does very well in the tournament, so this could very well be a foolish pick…but I also like this Marquette team, and I think they are better than their seeding. If I had any balls at all, I would take George Mason to beat Ohio State in the second round. This George Mason team isn’t just “good for a mid-major.” They are just plain good, and I feel like Ohio State is susceptible to an upset if the right team comes along, but I just couldn’t pull the trigger on it. Making matters worse, I have Ohio State winning this region by beating West Virginia and Syracuse in the third and fourth rounds respectively…so, no pressure, Buckeyes. In a couple other minor upsets by seeding, I have a physical veteran West Virginia team beating young and athletic Kentucky, and I have Syracuse’s zone taking down North Carolina.
My picks in the West Region are either going to make me look like a genius or a complete idiot. In the first round I have a wildly inconsistent but talented Tennessee team beating Michigan in an 8-9 game, I have 12-seed Memphis upsetting 5-seed Arizona, and I have 11-seed Missouri beating 6-seed Cincinnati. In the second round, I have 7-seed Temple taking down 2-seed San Diego State. I originally had Missouri upsetting Connecticut as well, but I switched the pick (you can even see that I crossed out Missouri and wrote UCONN above it on my original sheet). I am a big fan of the Big 12 teams this year. Plus, I don’t think UCONN is that good outside of Kemba Walker, and I think they will still be gassed from playing five games in five days in the Big East Tournament. Anyway, I digress…in the third round, I have Texas knocking off Duke and Temple taking down UCONN to set up an Elite Eight matchup of 4-seed Texas and 7-seed Temple, and I have Texas beating Temple to win the region…like I said, either a genius or an idiot.
The Southwest Region is probably the most boring section of my bracket, so I will keep it short. I basically have chalk the whole way through unless you count 9-seed Illinois beating 8-seed UNLV in the first round and 3-seed Purdue beating 2-seed Notre Dame in the third round as “upsets.” Eventually, I have top seed Kansas beating Purdue to advance out of the region.
While I had more upsets in the West Region, the Southwest Region is the wackiest section of the bracket to me. You have a #1 seed, Pitt, who currently has the label of “best program to never make a Final Four.” You have arguably this year’s best mid-major team, BYU (who also has probably the best individual player in the tournament). You have two mid-majors who have been so consistently good over the years that they are no longer really considered “mid-majors,” but who are having down seasons, Butler and Gonzaga. You have one of the most up-and-down teams in the field, Kansas State. You have the team with probably the most overrated seed of the tournament, Florida. And you have the team from a small school who I thought had a good chance of upsetting their first round opponent before the bracket even came out, Belmont. Anyway, I have three upsets by the seedings in the first round: Old Dominion over Butler, Belmont over Wisconsin, and Gonzaga over St. John’s. In the second round, I have Gonzaga upsetting BYU. I almost always pick Gonzaga to win a couple games in the tournament, and they almost always fail to do so (at least over the past few years). I’m wondering if as an 11-seed this year that they have been so overrated in past seasons that they are actually underrated this year. There’s a part of me that is telling myself to get off the Gonzaga bandwagon, but there’s another part of me that says they’re due…I guess we will see. In the Elite Eight, I have Pitt beating Florida to win the region.
So, after all the craziness I was talking about, I have three #1 seeds and a #4 seed that was the #1 ranked team in the country at one point this season in my Final Four. Hypocrital? Maybe…like I said though, I have little to no confidence in any of these picks. I have Ohio State beating Texas and Pittsburgh beating Kansas to advance to the title game, and I have Pittsburgh winning the whole thing. Truthfully, this Pitt team scares the hell out of me. They are tough and deep, but their tournament history is not great. They have been a top three seed almost every year for the past decade, and they have never made a Final Four. Three things make me think otherwise this year though. First, similar to my reasoning for Gonzaga winning a couple games this year, they’re due. Second, I think most of the other top seeds in this region won’t even make it to the second weekend of the tournament. Third, even if my second point isn’t true, this is the weakest of the four regions, and they should be able to handle anyone in their path. I say, might as well go for broke. Let it ride!
I filled out my NCAA bracket this morning, and I can honestly say that I couldn’t feel less confident about my picks. This college basketball season has been as topsy-turvy as ever. Without getting too deep into it, I believe the reason is that the overall college basketball talent pool has really taken a hit the past few years. Obviously, the days of having the best college players stick around until their junior and senior years have been in the rear-view mirror for over a decade now, but it just seems like the one-and-done players have had a cumulative effect on the game over time, and what we get is a watered-down product. It saddens me because college basketball has long been my favorite sport to follow, but it is the reality of the situation, and I’m not sure the NCAA and the NBA are collectively willing to do anything about it.
Anyway, back to the topic at hand…the landscape of this college basketball season changed dramatically the day Duke freshman guard Kyrie Irving got injured. At the time, Duke was undefeated and the clear-cut #1 team in the country. The prevailing thought was that with Irving in the lineup, Duke was so much better than even the other best teams in the country (Kansas, Pitt, etc.) that they could possibly make a run at an undefeated season. Duke still finished the season with a #1 seed in the NCAA tournament, but who’s to say that they are any better than any other team seeded one through four now? Combine that with the precipitous fall of some teams (Michigan State was ranked as the #2 team in the country preseason and backed into the tournament as a 10-seed) the somewhat unexpected rise of other teams (San Diego State, BYU, and Ohio State), and the streakiness/inconsistency of another group of teams (North Carolina, Kansas State, UCONN, and Syracuse), and we have ourselves a mess. In past seasons, even if the early part of my bracket stinks I at least have had a good idea who would advance deep into the tournament. I have had years where I will barely pick half of the games right for the opening two rounds, but I will have almost all of the Elite Eight teams, Final Four teams, etc. picked correctly. Last year I picked fairly well, and I think my picks were in the top 10% in both ESPN and Yahoo’s nationwide tournament challenges. This year, I literally have no idea what I’m doing…and this is coming from a guy who watches a lot of college basketball. I might as well be picking games based on mascots and uniform colors.
In the East Region, I have mostly chalk all the way through. I picked 11-seed Marquette to beat 6-seed Xavier. I like this Xavier team, and Xavier traditionally does very well in the tournament, so this could very well be a foolish pick…but I also like this Marquette team, and I think they are better than their seeding. If I had any balls at all, I would take George Mason to beat Ohio State in the second round. This George Mason team isn’t just “good for a mid-major.” They are just plain good, and I feel like Ohio State is susceptible to an upset if the right team comes along, but I just couldn’t pull the trigger on it. Making matters worse, I have Ohio State winning this region by beating West Virginia and Syracuse in the third and fourth rounds respectively…so, no pressure, Buckeyes. In a couple other minor upsets by seeding, I have a physical veteran West Virginia team beating young and athletic Kentucky, and I have Syracuse’s zone taking down North Carolina.
My picks in the West Region are either going to make me look like a genius or a complete idiot. In the first round I have a wildly inconsistent but talented Tennessee team beating Michigan in an 8-9 game, I have 12-seed Memphis upsetting 5-seed Arizona, and I have 11-seed Missouri beating 6-seed Cincinnati. In the second round, I have 7-seed Temple taking down 2-seed San Diego State. I originally had Missouri upsetting Connecticut as well, but I switched the pick (you can even see that I crossed out Missouri and wrote UCONN above it on my original sheet). I am a big fan of the Big 12 teams this year. Plus, I don’t think UCONN is that good outside of Kemba Walker, and I think they will still be gassed from playing five games in five days in the Big East Tournament. Anyway, I digress…in the third round, I have Texas knocking off Duke and Temple taking down UCONN to set up an Elite Eight matchup of 4-seed Texas and 7-seed Temple, and I have Texas beating Temple to win the region…like I said, either a genius or an idiot.
The Southwest Region is probably the most boring section of my bracket, so I will keep it short. I basically have chalk the whole way through unless you count 9-seed Illinois beating 8-seed UNLV in the first round and 3-seed Purdue beating 2-seed Notre Dame in the third round as “upsets.” Eventually, I have top seed Kansas beating Purdue to advance out of the region.
While I had more upsets in the West Region, the Southwest Region is the wackiest section of the bracket to me. You have a #1 seed, Pitt, who currently has the label of “best program to never make a Final Four.” You have arguably this year’s best mid-major team, BYU (who also has probably the best individual player in the tournament). You have two mid-majors who have been so consistently good over the years that they are no longer really considered “mid-majors,” but who are having down seasons, Butler and Gonzaga. You have one of the most up-and-down teams in the field, Kansas State. You have the team with probably the most overrated seed of the tournament, Florida. And you have the team from a small school who I thought had a good chance of upsetting their first round opponent before the bracket even came out, Belmont. Anyway, I have three upsets by the seedings in the first round: Old Dominion over Butler, Belmont over Wisconsin, and Gonzaga over St. John’s. In the second round, I have Gonzaga upsetting BYU. I almost always pick Gonzaga to win a couple games in the tournament, and they almost always fail to do so (at least over the past few years). I’m wondering if as an 11-seed this year that they have been so overrated in past seasons that they are actually underrated this year. There’s a part of me that is telling myself to get off the Gonzaga bandwagon, but there’s another part of me that says they’re due…I guess we will see. In the Elite Eight, I have Pitt beating Florida to win the region.
So, after all the craziness I was talking about, I have three #1 seeds and a #4 seed that was the #1 ranked team in the country at one point this season in my Final Four. Hypocrital? Maybe…like I said though, I have little to no confidence in any of these picks. I have Ohio State beating Texas and Pittsburgh beating Kansas to advance to the title game, and I have Pittsburgh winning the whole thing. Truthfully, this Pitt team scares the hell out of me. They are tough and deep, but their tournament history is not great. They have been a top three seed almost every year for the past decade, and they have never made a Final Four. Three things make me think otherwise this year though. First, similar to my reasoning for Gonzaga winning a couple games this year, they’re due. Second, I think most of the other top seeds in this region won’t even make it to the second weekend of the tournament. Third, even if my second point isn’t true, this is the weakest of the four regions, and they should be able to handle anyone in their path. I say, might as well go for broke. Let it ride!
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