Saturday was all about the Drake Relays. KC and I left for Des Moines about 8:30am and got back home about 10:00pm, so it was a long day; but WHAT a day! For those of you that don’t know, the Drake Relays are held every year on the last weekend in April. It is one of the major track and field events in the nation. This particular weekend there are two major track and field events, the Penn Relays and the Drake Relays. This year, as in many years past, the Drake Relays hosted many of the athletes that will compete for the NCAA championships and the Olympics. Yes, that’s what I said - the Olympics.

We get our seats through KC’s brother Randy, and they are very good seats. Third and fourth rows at the end of the first turn. When athletes take their victory lap, we can reach out and “slap five” with them (am I dating myself with that expression?) as they go by. In the races and relays where runners have to stay in their lanes, we can hear the grunt of them starting. I could even see some of the fancy stick-on nails that some of the women runners had on. One of my favorites is watching the shot put; and they have world-class shot putters there. Our seats have us only about 25 meters from the shot put ring. We are even closer to the high jump and it was a great competition for that.

The Saturday session, as it’s called, was once again a sellout of 14,000. That means rain or shine the Drake Relays has been a sellout on Saturday since 1967 - 40 years. It was a beautiful day; I’m not sure what the high was but at 7:00pm when we were leaving town one of the bank displays read 77°. It was sunny and pleasant all day. Also, since I missed the Drake Relays last year, I got to see the remodeled stadium and man, is it ever nice! I’m certain the athletes appreciate the great facilities to compete. The only drawback is that the wind was a bit too strong - it wasn’t really noticeable but it was enough to disqualify the sprints that used the south-bound straightaway. (like the 100m dash, the 200m dash, the 100m hurdles, etc.)

Some of the names that did very well:

• Alan Webb broke a 25 year old record for the mile run by running it in 3:51.71, beating the old record by 3 seconds.
• 39 year old Jeff Hartwig broke his own Drake Relays record set in 1998 by pole vaulting 19′ 1/2″.
• Jeremy Wariner, who won Olympic gold in Athens in the 200m and 400m, took second in the 200m to Marvin Anderson despite running a 20.57.
• Amy Acuff, a Drake Relays darling, took second in the high jump to Kansas State’s Kaylene Wagner who cleared 6′ 2 1/2″.
• Christian Cantrell, another Drake Relays celebrity, only put the shot 71′ 3 1/2″; a far cry from his put last year of 72′ 6″, but still enough to win.
• Des Moines’ own Lolo Jones won the 100m hurdles with a 12.77, but it can’t stand as a record because of the wind.
• The Minnesota women’s 6400m relay ran the fastest time in the world with a 19:07.75.
• The Baylor men became the first team since 1944 to win all four sprint relays: the 4×100, the 4×200, the 4×400 and the sprint medley.
• Brittney Riley of Southern Illinois set a new Drake Relays hammer throw record of 237′ 11″. She absolutely shattered the old record, besting it by 31′.
• Joey Woody, another Drake Relays favorite, didn’t do well in his 400m hurdles. In his “interview” he cited new child, new job (assistant track coach for the Iowa Hawkeyes), and new location for why he hasn’t trained as hard. The crowd still loved him!

So, OSU vs. Florida. Florida wins 85-74. Well, I was rooting for OSU; that makes the Big 10 and the Iowa Hawkeyes look better. I wasn’t too upset with the outcome of the game. Florida has the experience of playing together for two seasons, and OSU has only been together with Oden at full strength for about two months. In a team game like basketball, there are no replacement for experience and teamwork. In the years I played league basketball, we beat teams with better players simply because we knew how to win and we knew what each other would do on the floor. It’s the difference between throwing the ball to a spot where you KNOW your teammate will be versus throwing the ball to your teammate after he gets to the spot.

Some thoughts on the game:

• Greg Oden was an unstoppable force for OSU. Florida had no answer. In the end, Noah had 4 fouls, Horford had 4 fouls and Richard fouled out trying to guard him.
• It only makes sense that CBS carried the game - it’s got the worst reception on our cable provider of ANY channel. I swear we get static channels that come in clearer!
• I just love those Mac and PC commercials (which they showed a few times during the game). The funniest thing to me is that while they are actually humorous, they are all true.
• Is Billy Packer the WORST announcer of all time or what? First he’s telling us what the coaches SHOULD do (and they don’t thank God!), then he’s telling us that the players are tired (which they aren’t), then he’s telling us what the coaches are doing wrong, then he’s telling us what the players SHOULD be doing, then he’s telling us how the refs are making bad calls…. well, you get the idea.
• Shouldn’t Joakim Noah get his hair cut or braided just so it doesn’t hit an opponent in the face and put an eye out?
• OSU couldn’t hit a trey to save its collective life. It has to be one of their worst outings, which is a credit to the Florida defense.
• How dirty did Billy Packer’s knees get in order to have this job? (Yeah, that’s kinda gross, but he is truly awful)
• The NBA draft should be very talent-laden this year. Most of the Florida team, along with Oden and Conley (if they go pro) should go in the two rounds. Then there’s Durant, Hibbert, and a host of other players.
• Why is it that Billy Packer does everything but openly root for the east coast teams?

Don’t know if you can tell or not, but I think Helen Keller would be a better basketball announcer than Billy Packer.

So the games didn’t turn out as well as I’d hoped.

This weekend is going to be all about football. It will start on Friday. The local high school, Muscatine, has its homecoming game this week. Friday night, Muscatine (currently ranked #9 in Iowa class 4A) hosts Bettendorf (currently ranked #1 in Iowa class 4A). Ought to be a good game. At this point, I am not sure if I’m just going to listen to the game or if I’m actually going to the high school to watch it. I’m leaning toward watching it, but who knows?

Saturday afternoon, we are going to Pella, Iowa to watch Central College (currently ranked #15 in AFCA Division III poll) host Wartburg (currently ranked #22 in AFCA Division III). This has been a game that decides the Iowa Conference representative to the Division III football playoffs in the past several years. Central’s team is built around quickness, but they have good size to go with it. Central’s Vance Shuring is averaging just over 80 yards pre game while Central as a team is averaging about 170 yards a game. Cental QB Tim Connell is averaging 192 passing yards and 55 rushing yards per game. Wartburg’s Dan Hammes is averaging just under 100 rushing yards per game and Josh Van Rees is averaging 83 per game. Last year Hammes ran all over the Central Dutch for 199 yards. Wartburg QB Dan Bauder is averaging 127 yards per game in the air. This game has all the makings of excellent Division III football.

And then, Saturday night is the BIG one. That’s right. The #13 ranked Iowa Hawkeyes host the #1 ranked Ohio State Buckeyes in a key Big 10 matchup. Lots of hype around this one - ESPN Game Day will be in Iowa City all day on Saturday. Two years ago when Ohio State was ranked #23 and Iowa was unranked, Ohio State was heavily favored to come in and beat Iowa because Iowa had lost it’s four top running backs to knee injuries. I believe the Hawks averaged something less than 50 rushing yards per game that year. As it turned out, Ohio State was beaten 33-7 pretty much single-handedly by Drew Tate’s passing and scrambling.

This year is an entirely different scenario. Ohio State looks very strong. I’ve always thought a lot of the Ohio State coach Jim Tressel based on the way he handled the Maurice Clarett fiasco; he runs a clean and classy program. The Buckeyes have an excellent running game and Troy Smith, their quarterback and Heisman hopeful, is doing a great job of guiding the team. Their defense looks less formidable than it has in the past couple of years, but it was among the best two or three in the nation the last couple of years. They have a LOT of team speed, especially in their receiving corps (and Iowa has inexperience at the defensive cornerbacks).

Iowa will have to play a near-perfect game much like they did two years ago if they want to beat the Buckeyes. Fortunately the team is in good shape and no major players are injured at this time. The Hawkeyes are a balanced team this year. While Albert Young hasn’t regained last year’s rushing form yet, they Hawks are still averaging about 150 yards a game on the ground. Drew Tate is looking well this year also. While he missed the Syracuse game with an undisclosed abdominal injury, the team is averaging about 230 yards a game passing. The Hawks have a strong defensive front four and even though they lost two linebackers in the first two rounds of the NFL draft (Chad Greenway and Abdul Hodge) they have a very good linebacking corps.

Like I said, it ought to be a great game!

Our season wrapped up last night as we won the league tournament for the upper division. Our church slow pitch softball league is divided into an upper division that is a bit more competitive and a lower division. Both profess to promote fellowship, sportsmanship and participation. Of the teams we played in the tournament, we were the only team that played women and high schoolers. Even though it’s a co-ed league, we were the only team in the upper division who had regularly played women. One is our regular second baseman and the other alternates at catcher and right field. We’ve also played other women during the season. As far as high schoolers, we played five regularly (one of these was also one of the women). It was just really fitting to beat teams that don’t (and probably wouldn’t) play anyone but men aged 20-35.

We had won the “winner’s bracket” last week on Thursday. Monday night, the first game was between teams to determine the winner of the “loser’s bracket”; the second game was to play us. We were demolished. The other team came out and scored 10 runs in the first inning and we never recovered; heck we didn’t score until the third inning. We ended up losing by 12 runs, but it wasn’t even that close. We were simply outplayed. That gave us our first loss in the tournament, so we had to play the same team again the next night. What a difference one day makes. The next night, instead of 10 runs in the first inning they only scored 3. We answered with 4 in the bottom of the first, and the game was afoot.

It was actually a fun game; the blowout games are never fun for me. The lead changed pretty much each half inning. I know a number of the players on the other team (JD, Chad, Kevin, Santos, Buddy, Doug) and we needled each other all night; complimenting each other on good plays and razzing on bad plays. It was all done in fun, at least on my part. I played shortstop, as I had all season, and made a number of plays. I committed one error on a hot liner hit at me that caught me on an “in-between” hop. I did make a nice double-play turn at second and ran down a couple of pop ups. Austinator (my nephew) played third and made a couple of very nice plays in the field. I also went 3-4 at the plate, scoring two runs and driving in four, including the tying run in extra innings where we eventually won.

All in all, I thought it was a very nice win. Our team has played all year with one thought in mind - to have fun. We didn’t have the best regular season record and were seeded fourth in the tournament. It was really nice to see all the folks on the team play well at tournament time and come through like they did. And the church really backs the team. There were church members there who do not have kids/spouses on the team; they just showed up for the fellowship. The only drawback to the entire night (and season) is that it isn’t my home church; my home church has lost membership recently and we don’t have enough to field a team. I play on a different church’s team thanks to Rick, who initially got me on the team. Still, that is a minor drawback as we all had a great time!

So I’m in Minneapolis working on transitioning a company to our domain. A co-worker and I head to Old Chicago for lunch; nice pizza buffet, by the way. And guess who ends up sitting three tables away…

I thought I’d write a bit about the Iowa Hawkeyes playing in the Outback Bowl against the Florida Gators this year. Iowa lost that game 34-27. Let me tell you, I don’t think the game was what either team expected. I also don’t think it was a game any of the fans expected.

I’ve been pretty busy with soccer practice and games and homework so I haven’t really had any time to post. Not much to post about anyway, nothing exicting’s going on. My team just got our butts kicked by Bettendorf, or as I like to call them, Buttendork. (lame, but that’s the best way I can think of to make fun of them). We got totally rocked by them. The final score was 8-1. Ouch.

Big Orange Michael might have an inkling about the essence of this post because he is a huge fan of his team, the Tennessee Volunteers. I received this email from my dad’s S.O. (they aren’t married even though they’ve been together for over 20 years) and I liked it so much I’m going to post it:

OH-MY-GOD! What a game! I can’t use enough superlatives to describe the ending of this game. LSU had scored to make the score 25-24 (LSU lead) and there were about 45 seconds left in the game. Iowa then completed three straight passes before Drew Tate dropped the bomb to Warren Holloway for a 56 yard touchdown as time expired. It was a storybook ending to a storybook season for the Hawks. Holloway, a backup tight end in his last game as a Hawkeye, got a perfect pass from Tate; he shunned off a tackler (who missed but still got a piece of him) before zooming in to the end zone for the game-winning score. Time had expired before he crossed the goal line. If there has been a more exciting finish to a bowl game this year, I have yet to see it.

The entire game was defense-dominated. LSU has a great defense, and Iowa’s is one of the best in the country. A lot was made of LSU leading the SEC in rushing with just over 200 yards per game. Today, they had a total of 118 yards; if Alley Broussard hadn’t broken a big run of 74 yards at the end of the first half, they would have had much less. I think maybe the SEC run defenses were not quite as good as those in the Big 10. Also, LSU was supposed to have this vaunted defense; at times offensively Iowa looked spectacular against them, amassing 345 total yards of offense.

The game was made, though, on special teams. Iowa blocked two punts, scoring on one of the blocks. They also managed to pin LSU to some poor field position on many other punts and on kickoffs. Plus LSU, after getting an offensive pass interference call and then an illegal motion call agains them, missed an extra point. David Bradley, Iowa’s punter who was inconsistent at times during the season, averaged 49 yards per punt.

Notes:

• This season is even more amazing when you consider that the Hawks were “making do” with their fourth and fifth string tailbacks. Marcus Schnoor, Jermelle Lewis and Albert Young all went down this season early with injuries and are STILL not able to play.
• Kirk Ferentz has placed another great memory in Hawkeye history with this win. The Hawks were picked middle of the Big 10 pack at best this season and end up winning on Jan 1.
• Who the heck is the ABC-TV color announcer Ed Cunningham and why didn’t he have ANYTHING good to say about the Hawks? All he could talk about all day is how good LSU’s running game was. Take away the 74 yard run at then end of the first half and they got a total of 44 rushing yards. HEY ED! WAKE UP, BUDDY!
• My town was amply represented in the Iowa Hawkeye Marching Band. At least six of the Marching Hawks are from Muscatine.
• As usual, Iowa’s fans follow them to the bowl games. There were estimates that of the 65,438 seats in the Capital One Bowl that over 30,000 of them were Iowa Hawkeye fans.
• Dr. Jerry Punch, the on-the-field ABC-TV announcer was excellent. He had pertinent things to say about both Iowa and LSU. Also, Gary Thorne, the play-by-play guy, did a good job. As Meatloaf sings, “Two out of three ain’t bad”.
• Muscatine is also doing well in the player area. The Hawkeyes have reserve offensive lineman CJ Barkema, who played his high school ball here in Muscatine. On a side note, his brother Ben Barkema was a receiver for the Iowa State Cyclones, who won the Independence Bowl on Dec 28. (Ben caught 2 passes)
• Congratulations to LSU and in particular to Lou Sabin, their head coach, on a hard-fought yet relatively clean game. Even KC commented that both teams were helping their opponents up after monster hits. Also, there were very few penalties in the game. Coach Sabin is leaving LSU to coach the NFL’s Miami Dolphins. Good luck, coach.

Congratulations, Hawks, on a great season.

The “big game” was yesterday evening. You see, my brother (whose birthday was Friday) went to Iowa Wesleyan College and I went to Wartburg College, though not at the same time. I graduated from college when he was a sophomore in high school. We both were on the basketball teams but logged very few minutes. Both are fine colleges and have good academics to go along with competitive sports teams (he refers to Iowa Wesleyan as “The Harvard of the Midwest”!). Last night, the Knights (Wartburg) hosted the Tigers (Iowa Wesleyan) at Knights Gymnasium. Heck, we played the Tigers when I was a Knight and I am pretty sure they played when he was a Tiger.

To give you a little background on last night’s game, the Tigers were ranked #9 in NAIA Division II (they had lost to Culver-Stockton earlier that week) and the Knights are always tough in NCAA Division III. I fully expected the Knights to get beat, but on their home court (the same court I played on) I knew they would be competitive. Well, competitive doesn’t begin to describe it. The Knights blitzted the Tigers 92-61. The Knights seemed to be more athletic than the Tigers, although the Tigers had a few talented players. It seemed that the Knights had the edge in the middle but it all came down to defense. The Knights held the Tigers to 38% from the field while shooting 57% themselves. Another telling statistic was that the Knights shot 44% from 3-point land while the Tigers only shot 29%. The other statistic that jumps out is that the Knights blocked 10 shots to none for the Tigers.

On a personal note I saw both my freshman basketball coach, John Kurtt, and my varsity basketball coach, Lewis “Buzz” Levick, there. While I didn’t play all that much, Buzz knew exactly who I was before I could get my name out (and I don’t look a whole lot like I did then!). Simply amazing. Buzz was Wartburg’s men’s basketball coach from 1965-1993, went 510-226, won 14 Iowa Conference championships, made 13 postseason tournaments, reaching the NCAA quarterfinals twice, named Iowa Conference Coach of the year 9 times, and one of 65 coaches who have won 500 or more college basketball games at the time of his retirement. I’m a guy who was on the team for four years but didn’t really play all that much - my minutes played is very close to my games played. It is truly amazing that he remembers me.

Tempers flared and players were pushed over the edge in the Pacers-Pistons game last night. The game turned into a riot with the fans participating and reaching new lows. I watched a good portion of that game and here’s how I see it.

First off the background: the Pistons beat the Pacers in what was arguably the most physical playoff series last spring; it was definitely the lowest scoring playoff series since the inception of the shot clock in 1955. Tempers were always flaring during that series. Indiana, as do most teams in the playoffs, tended to run a slowdown style while still looking for the fast break. Detroit was more than reminiscent of the “Bad Boys” Pistons of the 80’s and 90’s, only playing more physical and having less offensive talent than their heralded predecessors. In this game, the Pacers were handing the Pistons a loss; not just any loss, but a humiliating loss. The score at the time of this incident was 97-82, and it hadn’t been that close in a while. The game was physical from the outset because I don’t think Detroit knows any other way to play; Indiana wasn’t backing down or being intimidated and neither the Pistons nor their fans liked it.

Next, the incident that sparked the entire thing: Ben Wallace (Pistons center) received a pass in the lane and was fouled hard and pushed in the process by Ron Artest (Pacers forward). While Wallace never hit the floor, he was quite angry at Artest and came at him and shoved him about 10 feet. Yeah, Wallace IS that strong. Artest got up and basically walked away. He was assessed a foul and went over to the scorer’s table. Now I will be the first to admit that Ron Artest has some kind of chemical imbalance in his brain. He does the goofiest things on the floor sometimes and off the floor a lot of the time. However, in this instance he kept his cool. He walked away from Wallace’s taunts (Wallace was assessed a technical foul). He then laid down on the scorer’s table (strange, yes, but not out of the ordinary for Artest). Then some fan threw a drink at him, cup and all. The cup hit him in the head and splattered all over him. Artest went berserk and went after the fan. Rick Mahorn (one of the original “Bad Boys” now a radio commentator for the Pistons) did the smart thing and stepped in to help break up the fight. Then another fan punched Artest from his blind side. Next Pacers Jermaine O’Neal and Stephen Jackson stepped in to help their teammate (who was hopelessly outnumbered by the fans who were all throwing stuff at Artest by this time, the nearest fans punching and kicking him) and immediately were set upon by the fans. Jackson took a couple of punches to the head and O’Neal was sucker punched a couple of times as well.

The game was called at this point (45 seconds left in the game) and an attempt at creating order was made. But the fans would have none of it. They continued to throw anything and everything at the Pacer bench and at the Pacer players and staff as they retreated to the locker rooms (escorted by security). One particularly stupid fan threw his/her folding chair at Jermaine O’Neal as he was being escorted off and took out one of the security personnel. Even Larry Brown, the Piston’s coach, couldn’t help. He pleaded with the crowd to calm down, but to no avail; he ended up tossing the microphone to the announcer in disgust. From what I saw all of the Pacers were in a rainstorm of drinks, popcorn, nacho chips, and anything else the fans could lay their hands on.

The end result: Ron Artest, Ben Wallace, Jermaine O’Neal and Stephen Jackson have been suspended indefinitely by the league, pending investigation of the incident. It looks as though the players are going to bear the brunt of this one. Heck, the league front office has issued a statement apologizing to the fans for what happened. APOLOGIZING TO THE FANS? Gimme a break!

My opinion: the fans need to rein it in. After the initial incident between Artest and Wallace, tempers cooled down in a few seconds. While there are players who don’t like other players in the league, each player respects the other and Wallace and Artest are no different here. It picked up when a fan threw their drink (cup and all) at Artest. It was later followed by a number of things thrown at the Pacer players. What is it with some fans who think they can do ANYTHING they want because they paid admission? Don’t get me wrong, what the players who went into the stands did was not right; however, no player would have gone into the stands if the fans had maintained decorum. What bugs me most is that the league is blaming the players for this!

I look at it like this: if someone came in to your place of work and threw drinks and food (and eventually a folding chair) at you, would you sit there and take it? Would you walk away? I didn’t think so. While it IS just a game, it is these guys’ jobs. People watch them and cheer/jeer them all the time; they are second and third guessed in the media and on sports talk radio all the time - that goes with the job. I DON’T think that having things thrown at you by the crowd is a part of the job description for a professional athlete. I also don’t think that throwing your drink/food/chair at an opposing team member shows that you support your team. While I believe that the four players in question should be fined and suspended some amount of games not to exceed 10, I also believe that certain fans NEED to be brought up on assault charges - ESPECIALLY the one who threw the chair.