Student Teaching-Day 1

First day of student teaching. All in all it went well. There are things I would do differently, things I wouldn't do at all, and things I would do the same. It was not ground-breaking, Earth shattering teaching in anyway. But no one died, and I am heading back tomorrow, so I think those are all positives.

We did introductions and Geography basics. Not the most interesting topic, but I think the kids got something out of it. I am teaching two blocks, one with 10-12 10th graders who I know, and one with 30 9th graders where I know about half of them.

1st block is going to be nice in preperation for 2nd.

At the end of class I showed a quick clip from "Last of the Mohicans" because we are going to be starting pre-colonial American stuff later this week. This is one of my favorite scenes ever:



Which got me thinking about this:



Which has to go down as one of the best Nike commercials of all time.

I love that they borrowed the music from this, the first time I saw this commercial I went nuts.

Student Teaching

Half a week into sort of student teaching, I would have some observations, if I had done more than plan and hang out to this point.

Monday will be a completely different story as I pick of the reins and run with two sections of U.S. History.

As Sid the Sloth says, this is either going to be really good, or really bad.

Just watched the State of the Union Address with D, and I come away feeling both positive and negative about it.

I liked the tone at the end. We will see where this all goes.

Looking forward to the Super Bowl. K.C. was very fun, and the wedding was beautiful.

Labeling, Done

So I am done. I have labeled all 616 (and counting) posts that I have made in the last three years.

Clearly, I have talked about politics way too much. I blame the election.

Going forward, I think it is safe to say that politics will have a much more equal distribution with sports, family, movies, music, books, technology, my phone etc, etc...

I am excited about the changes to The Head and how I can incorporate what I do on a day to day basis with this space.

As I am typing this, ESPN Sports Center is on in the background and I am forced to listen to Mark McGuire tell, and retell what he did and did not do, and why he is the victim, and how hard this has all been for him.

Pardon me Mark, if I don't shed any tears for you. Your neck looks like that of a rooster.

You were a marginal player with a ton of "natural" power. Prove to me that you were not on something when you were hitting bombs in college...

Your career was defined by what outside substances did for your ability to hit for power and keep your breaking down body on the field.

Nothing you, or Tony La Russa says is going to get me to feel even the slightest bit of sympathy for you.

I hate what this has all done to my sport. Thank god no one in the NFL or College Football takes anything illegal...

Bucs Win/Bucs Lose

So the Bucs win, finally. And the Bucs lose. This season is no longer about wins and loses. There is no such thing as a moral victory in a 2-14 season.

What would be a moral victory? Packing it in and playing for as high of a draft pick as possible...

So we can draft Suh.

I am glad Josh Freeman kept the Picks in the single digits this week? Sure. Do I need him to play so good that we win, by three scores? Nope and Nope.

Welcome to the Freeman Era

I would be lying if I said yesterday did not excite me. Maybe after what happened to Penn State Saturday (Daryll Clark, you sir have cemented your place as a guy who sucked in big games) I am just looking for any bright spot in my sports universe.

But hey, after the year that I have had (Penn State in the Rose Bowl, Mets collapse, Mets Epic Fail, Bucs lose last 4 games to miss playoffs) any bright spot looks like the sun.

Josh Freeman got his first start as a Buccaneer yesterday, and the rookie from Kansas State did not disappoint. He threw 3 TDs and one INT. He led the team on a 72 yard scoring drive to take the lead in the 4th quarter. He moved well. He looked generally great and brought a level of excitement to an otherwise putrid Buccaneers season.

I have begun cheering for the Jets. I have a true Jets fan living under my roof. But hard as I have tried, I simply cannot abandon my Buccaneers.

So the Freeman era at least will keep me afloat for a while.

And hey, with any luck, Matt Holliday will be a Met before you can say "Fire Omar Minaya"

What I Learned This Weekend...

I learned that Buffalo Bills fans, as a group, are the most dedicated people on the planet. Period.


They love their team more than I have ever loved anything. It was a life experience spending eight hours in a parking lot surrounded by people who love a thing so much they simply cannot find enough ways to display it.

Take the above picture for example. He is literally wearing a Bills hat, Bills sunglasses, Bills jersey, Bills t-shirt under his jersey, and I didn't check his underwear but I am going to assume they were Bills.

What I took away from the game is that to be that blindly in love with a thing, while wonderful for the person blindly in love, looks really stupid from the outside looking in.

I reminded my Bills fan brothers, as we were walking back to the car following the stomping of my Buccaneers at the hands of said Bills, that Emerson said: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of simple minds"

They responded, simultaneously..."Fuck Emerson, Go Bills"





Never stop believing Buffalo. Never.

Bucs lose

Here are the highlights (lowlights) from Sunday's game with the Cowboys



Two bad field goals and two broken coverages and the rest is history.

I am ok with this team rebuilding this year. I am ok with the fact that we are not going to be real good.

But why in the hell, if we are going to be crap anyways are we not starting either one of our young, talented quarterbacks?

In the NFL, you are either in Super Bowl contention, or rebuilding. We are not in Super Bowl contention this year, so lets rebuild, but lets do it right.

We are going no where with Byron Leftwich. Where you goin'? No where..

We Got a Soldier

We may have missed the boat on Moto Moto (Haynesworth) but the Bucs landed a true soldier when we traded for Kellen (The Soldier) Winslow Jr. Today. This is a good move for us.

So Much For That

So it looks like Albert Haynesworth won't be stomping on any heads in a Pewter and Red anytime soon: http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=3939011








Moto Moto won't be clogging the middle of the Buc's D-Line anytimes soon. Dan Snyder strikes again.

The Bucs are a whopping 61 million under the salary cap, so here is to hoping that they begin adding pieces instead of continuing to remove them.

"Who's My Favorite Player?"

I would be lying if I said I was not suprised, disappointed, and sad that the Buccaneers decided to cut ties with 11-time Pro Bowler, and lifetime Buccaneer Derrick Brooks yesterday. Brooks was the type of player who you would forget was on your team because he did his job with such a quiet professionalism and was so good at doing it that you just grew comfortable knowing he was there.

"Who's my favorite player?"


The Buccaneers also cut ties with former Walter Peyton Man of the Year Warrick Dunn, for the second time yesterday. Basically it was a really sad day for me as a Bucs fan.

Take the time to watch if you don't know Warrick:

In Honor of the Superbowl

lets all take a moment to remember the greatest football player to ever don the helmet and shoulder pads. Every year I watch college football and the draft looking for the exceptionally fast, 250 plus pound fullback that can replace Mike Alstott in my heart and mind. To this point, no such person exists. Peyton Hillis of the Broncos thought he might make it, but I am not impressed. And Brandon Jacobs plays for the Giants so he is out.

So until that day, I'll just cling to my Alsott memories.

Awesome.

Enjoy the game. or Not.

Congratulations

Timmy's Cardinals are no longer stinky.

Sunday is going to be fun. I love Donovan McNabb, but I have to cheer for Timmy's Cardinals. He defines the term "Die Hard".

A Pittsburgh-Arizona Superbowl would be Awesome.

John Lynch Retires

The Dude Could Flat Out Hit. Period.

Dexter "the Bane of My Existence" Jackson won Superbowl MVP because Lynch told him prior to the play exactly what play was going to be run.

Jon Gruden had coached the Raiders the year before. Bill Callahan, like an idiot didn't make any drastic changes to the offense (hence why he no longer has a job). The Bucs spent the week before the game learning everything about the Raiders offense.

There was a video from NFL Films showing Lynch telling Jackson prior to his INT for a TD exactly what play they were going to run, literally telling him where to stand.

I love John Lynch. That is the type of player I was in College. I was not nearly fast enough, strong enough, or athletic enough. I made up for it by being smarter then the people I was playing against.

John Lynch can flat out hit.



Yes I realize these are all Broncos highlights. I could not find any good Bucs stuff.

This is sort of sad for me. It is the end of an era. Lynch, Alstott, Sapp. When Barber and Brooks are gone it will mean the end of an awesome thing.

These players defined what I loved about football since I was in middle school.

The Tampa Defense, and Tony Dungy do not get credit for what they have meant to the game as a whole.

Basically every team that is not playing a 3-4 is playing a version of the 4-3 that Dungy and Monte Kiffin revolutionized.

People talk about the Bill Parcells coaching tree, or the Mike Holmegren coaching tree.

How about Dungy. Try Herman Edwards (DBs coach under Dungy, and John Lynch's first position coach), Lovie Smith (LBs coach) Rod Marinellie (D Line), Mike Tomlin (DBs after Edwards) among others.

I know it sounds insane. But I attribute the 2002 Super Bowl win to Dungy, not Gruden. Sorry.

And in case you forgot how awesome he is:



Someone who reads this once referred to it as "poetry in motion"

Mike Alstott

His Number was retired in Tampa Sunday night.

I know this may seem like a silly thing, but I did not care about NFL football until I was in 9th grade. I was playing Freshman Football, I was the tailback. I ran over a teammate on the goal line in practice one day, and he compared me to Alstott. I had no idea what he was talking about.

I did some research, and in 1998 I became a Bucs fan. Actually I became an Alstott fan, who liked the Bucs. From 98-02 the Bucs represented all that I love about football. Good D, great running game, smart coach, and Alstott.

I Hate Jon Gruden, but I cannot stop watching the Bucs.

The NFL Draft

There was a time in my life where the weekend of the NFL Draft was as good as a holiday weekend to me. I would spend the previous season watching more college football than any human was ever meant to consume. I would watch the Senior Bowl practices, review the results from the Scouting Combine, and analyze the pre-draft rankings.

There was a time when I would watch all 18 hours of coverage. I would take notes on which teams drafted which players, where they went to school and how they graded out. I would then spend hours creating and editing every player and detail on Madden for Play Station. It would literally take me hours.

I watched about an hour of the draft this year and was decidedly disinterested. I don't know if it was that my Buccaneers had a boring pick (20th), or the top players just were not that exciting. But for whatever reason, the draft just did not interest me. Maybe it has to do with the retirement of my favorite player, Mike Alstott, and my inability to latch onto anyone else.




I have had a weird relationship with the NFL for years. I do not like the Buccaneers coach (John Gruden), so I am not all that interested in them. I play fantasy football, but am no where near the savant that I am when it comes to fantasy baseball. Maybe it was my years of playing football, watching so much film, thinking about it non stopped, year round, that I have just sort of grown away from it.

Maybe it was the birth of Aviendha, or the fact that the Bucs, and Penn State are clearly mediocre and not getting any better, but I just do not care that much. This comming from the guy who watches literally 5-6 baseball games a week start to finish.