Team needs to learn from QB

The Detroit Lions don't often give us much to cheer about.
They sure didn't on Thanksgiving when they got destroyed by the Green Bay Packers.
However, over the weekend I got to watch a video that really made me proud to be a Lions fan.
The video, seen here shows Detroit rookie quarterback Matt Stafford in the the Lions recent come-from-behind victory against the Cleveland Browns.
Because the Lions don't seem to be able to sellout Ford Field, the game wasn't shown on TV, and most Detroit fans didn't get to see the game. But the video in nice. It's actually pretty inspiring.
For the game, Stafford played with a microphone on, and it recorded every word he said in the game.
The video starts with some good-natured ribbing of former Lion Shaun Rogers, and ends with an injured Stafford taking the field and throwing the winning touchdown with a dislocated shoulder on his non-throwing arm.
Even with an injury, the young QB rose from the ground, pushed away team doctors and told the coaching staff that he could go back in to throw the ball.
It was pretty cool. It's the kind of thing that can make a city fall in love with a player, even if he does have a tendency to throw interceptions and he plays for the worst franchise in pro sports history.
It shows he has the will to win.
Perhaps it will start to rub off on some of his teammates.

Fall sports were a blast!

As the fall sport season winds down for high school and college it is interesting to see what happened with the area schools.
In football the closest of the four local schools to make the playoffs turned out to be Willow Run who unfortunately finished with a 5-4 record and just barely missed the first round of the post season. After losing the first four games of the season.
Flyer Coach Rufus Pipkins rallied the troops as they rattled off four straight before the season ending lose to Riverview. They did quite well for themselves but in the end the Pirates wanted the win a little bit more than Willow Run and thus the season was over.
Lincoln did win two games in a row, which was a first for them in quite some time. The unfortunate part was that those were the only wins the team had all season.
Splitters’ Ryan Bottorff was named to the Southeast Conference defensive first team as a defensive back and Samii Ismail as a linebacker.
On the offensive first team was Andrew Dillon as a back, Kendall Thompson led the area in receiving as a sophomore and Terrance North was an at-large player.
Honorable mention on the defensive team for Lincoln was Marcus Williams and Omar Robinson. Honorable mention for the offense was junior offensive lineman Dontrell Lemon.
In the first ever battle against Ypsilanti the Rails fell. The interesting part of that was that the Phoenix only managed one win all season and it happened in the rivalry battle between the two Ypsilanti schools.
It was a game that didn’t have the best stats. Neither team was able to do much in the rain and the wind. But in the end Terrance Moore and his team was victorious on the road against Dillon and his team.
Moore was named to the Southeast Conference’s defensive first team for defensive back and Marquis Gollman was an at large player for the first team.
Belleville had themselves a pretty good season and picked up three wins to boot. The Tigers broke a very long losing streak and did pretty well in the Western Wayne Athletic Conference.
Western Wayne Athletic Conference Blue Division all-conference players were junior Brian Bishop who played defensive end and tight end, senior Antonio LaBoda who was a full back and defensive end and senior Eugene Anderson who played split end and defensive back.
These players deserve recognition. I saw each and every one of them plays more than one time this season. I really enjoyed the football season.
The two things that really stick out for me on the season was Lincoln beating Dexter for their second win of the season and watching Belleville drop Redford Union for their first win in over 20 games and the first win since I have been covering them full-time.
Now we get ready for girls’ and guys’ hoop. It should be fun it should be exciting. I hope that I can see some very good games this season.
Win or lose the most important thing is that the kids have fun and use the world of sports as a classroom and continue to learn on and off the court. See you on the hardboards.

Returning to my favorite stadium as a (gasp!) adult...

This evening I will be dusting off a jersey that I haven't worn in over a year. I plan to attend the University of Michigan versus Michigan State University hockey game at Yost Ice Arena this evening.

It's actually the only UofM-MSU home hockey game this year, and I probably couldn't have picked a rowdier crowd to sit in. For those who remember last year, it got so ugly that a heated and unsolicited shot to the back ended up really injuring a UofM player, the MSU attacker was thrown out, and the UofM player's dad snuck into the Spartan locker room to beat the MSU attacker to a pulp. It was ugly, and not very much sportsmanship was practiced at that game.

First of all, I really care about hockey. I watch football, yes, but hockey is by far my favorite sport to follow. As such, when I was a Wolverine student myself, I had season tickets all four years of college and I traveled to all the playoff games in Grand Rapids, Lansing, and wherever. I was in the student section obviously, and I always wore my favorite yellow jersey and a cowboy hat.

This is my dilemma. I'm not a student anymore. I'm stealing my Mom's seat to attend the game with my Dad, and what that means is that my seats are in the exact opposite side of the rink from the student ticket seats I had behind the UofM bench. So what am I supposed to do when the C-Ya cheer starts?

Obviously I can't still say it right? I mean there might be children. Then again, there have always been children and I bet the words are CLEAR as DAY to everyone else in the arena. I know that for a fact because I was like five when I first started going, and they had the cheer back then. I like to think I learned all my swear words from Michigan hockey games. I make my Mom and Dad very proud.

But now that I'm an adult, I'm supposed to be responsible. Before I was a blank face in a unified student crowd. I could say whatever I wanted to, and there were no repercussions. Even when they had their supposed "crack down" (which I'm sure they're pretending to do every year), it didn't really change anything. I mean what were officials going to do, kick out hundreds of students? Have you seen the ushers lately? They're really not physically in the best place to handle all those raging drunks and hockey fans.

Now I can't do that. If I say that cheer at any kind of audible level, my new usher will either be too shocked to know what to do with me or he'll kick me out for good. Plus all my neighbors will glare at me and forever give my parents their Judgey McJudgerson faces.

It makes me sad. I miss being a student sometimes and I really miss being a student fan. I miss standing for the whole game and heckling the visiting goalie. I miss feeling totally comfortable hugging the stranger next to me when we score a goal. If I did that now someone would take out a restraining order.

So I'm officially old. And tonight I'm going to have to come to terms with that fact. But maybe it won't be so bad... because at the end of the day, the real reason I go to games isn't to swear and yell and act like an idiot, right? Granted, those things make it more fun, but I mean I do love watching the team and I love Michigan hockey. Hopefully that's enough. Also, I've rewritten the actual cheer to be more adult-friendly. So I have that to fall back on.

"Ohhhhhh C-YA! Chump (this is actually what they say here, but I don't think this is so bad), phallic word, Wuss (actual word), Amuse-bouche-bag, facehole, finger pricker, cheater (actual word), female dog (practically the actual word), girl who has sex for monetary exchange, girl who sleeps around, pooh face (the actual word is the one that gets people thrown out, and I can't think of a good substitute)."

The point is that I'm trying...

Soccer player is a bad example

**Update 11/13/2009**
The following link (http://www.newsy.com/videos/soccer_violence_from_head_butts_to_hair_pulls) takes an in-depth look at the soccer game and the player's indiscretions through the coverage of multiple news sources. So in case you missed the rundown of what happened, here you go. It was provided by Newsy.com, a site that combines multiple news sources to analyze single events.

I really like to watch the highlights on ESPN and I really like it when they feature other sports that don’t get a lot of national recognition but what I don’t like is when those sports get the recognition for the wrong reason.

This was the case on Monday morning when I was watching my favorite sport clips from the weekend and came across this player from a women’s college soccer game. This player, Elizabeth Lambert, from New Mexico was involved in some vicious attacks on the field during a soccer game against Brigham Young University (BYU).

For whatever the reason Lambert’s actions were not all caught by the officials. The one they did view drew her a yellow card after she kicked the ball into another player’s face at very close range. Some of the other acts she committed were far worse than that and she got away with them.

One of those acts actually had her pulling the hair of her opponent and pulling the girl to the ground. The videos of these incidents were viewed all over the world and by Saturday morning the junior defender from New Mexico had been indefinitely.
Lambert made a public apology for her action.

“I let my emotions get the best of me in the heated situation,” Lambert explained. “I take full responsibility for my actions and accept any punishment felt necessary.”

I really want to know if that is enough. I mean this girl set back college soccer a few years with her actions. I have watched some crazy things in sports and seen some that were just as bad or worse than this. But the standards seem to be different for women’s sports than they are for the men.

I guess the reason this shocked me was the attention that it got from the media and the play it got on national shows. It almost seemed like maybe they should go and drug test the girl because she was not performing like any athlete would in their right mind.

Now that this has been said I want to say I don’t condone violence of this nature in any sport and that even includes hockey and wrestling. Players have to stay within the rules and guidelines presented to them.

No player coach or team should be aloud to be bigger than the game or more important than the rules. This incident does not set a good example for the younger players in any sport. I can only imagine if my daughter has seen this tape and now I would have to explain to her why this full-grown woman was seemingly crushing the player from BYU.

No thanks, I don’t think that job description of father and sports reporter allows me to be a commentator for WWE Wrestling.

Maybe I am wrong and maybe my opinion doesn’t really matter but I feel that this issue needs to be revisited and maybe looked into with an investigation. I am not ready to cross that bridge and how women’s athletics become like cage fighting. So hopefully when Lambert is older and more responsible she can sit down with her own children and explain to them what mommy was doing.

Yankees win, again

I really can not say I am very happy with the winner of the World Series. First I really wanted the Detroit Tigers to at least get in the playoffs which they didn't.

But off all the other things in the world to have the New York Yankees win for the 27th time in team history seems a bit much. Granted they did it so I guess that means they deserve it but I so wanted to see Chase Utley hit one more home run to break Reggie Jackson's WS home run record.

That being said I guess I will tip my hat to the Bronx Bombers they are the best team money can buy so they must be doing something right.

There is always next season but who can tell what will happen. Now it is time to concentrate on the Detroit Lions (not) and maybe in a few months when they make the playoffs I can start talking about off-sides and two-minute penalties and start thinking about the Detroit Red Wings.

Better late than never...

The Pigskin Picks from this weekend are going up a tad later than usual, but you'll understand when I tell you why. NaNoWriMo has officially begun and I have officially spent hours writing something not work related. I also spent hours working on things that were work related. QED I was busy.

I did get pretty far though. We're supposed to write about 1,667 words each day to stay on track. Right now I'm just over 3,000 which is honestly really sweet. I found a good song and I grooved. I didn't quite put on the leotard and dance around my apartment like my friend Beth, but I did celebrate with some leftover Halloween candy.

Also, side note. Halloween trick-or-treaters really missed out on my doorstep. I had the jack-o-lanterns and the gourds out... I had my ghost (his name is Boo) ready to greet people... and I invested in the best candy ever. And then what is my prize? One single trick-or-treater. She was a witch and she was eight and she was alone. ALONE! After getting over the scary fact that her parents weren't accompanying her, I then felt bad for this little girl who also had no friends to go around the neighborhood with her. *Tear*

Also... the best story ever from Halloween. A friend of mine for some reason lives in a neighborhood where it is acceptable to go trick-or-treating early. Don't ask me why. So Friday night she stocked up on candy and the doorbell rings and this is basically what happens:

My Friend (thinking she's the coolest grownup ever): Oh, hello little boy. Take as much candy as you want!

::She holds out the bowl filled with Snickers and Milky Way candies::

::Little boy looks at the candy::

::Little boy looks at the candy some more::

Little Boy (quite indignantly): I already have that candy.

My Friend: Your costume is stupid!

Little Boy: Nuh-uh!

My Friend: *slams door*

So a lesson to all those kids out there. Don't be selfish little toads, because we can and will take you down a level. We have the verbal capacity to do it.

Ok back on track... pigskin picks. Results of the picks from this week are in bold. The standings are below the results. The week did not go as planned for me. In fact, I had the WORST week of the entire season. I mean, a lot of us didn't do well. Lots of home team wins. A lot of things went way wrong this week... namely all the college and professional games we picked. But at least I made a great Superwoman on Halloween night. And I got to watch a wide range of awesome Halloween movies all... day... long...

Milan at Adrian
Chelsea at Carleton Airport
Grass Lake at Manchester
Bedford at Pioneer
Gabriel Richard at Jackson Lumen Christi
St. Louis at Detroit
Michigan at Illinois
Michigan State at Minnesota
Eastern Mich at Arkansas
Alma at Adrian College

Standings:
1. Mike Larson--This Week: 6-4 Overall: 76-24
2. Jana Miller--This Week: 5-5 Overall: 74-26
3. Don Richter--This Week: 8-2 Overall: 74-26
4. Ed Patino--This Week: 7-3 Overall: 73-27
5. Dave Merchant--This Week: 7-3 Overall: 71-29