Hell no! We don't "Bowl"!

In light of this year's chaos of close games and mad upsets, no other season in NCAA Div-1 football history has proved that there should be a playoff system. The bowl system they got going on right now is pretty much "hey! You guys play them cause it'll be cool!" Honestly, in any type of sporting event, I don't understand why a champion would be decided in any other way besides a playoff.

Since it's been so crazy this year, ESPN has taken it upon themselves to see what would've happened if such a system existed and they created a ten team playoff simulation using NCAA Football 2008 on the XBox 360. The ten teams are as follows: West Virginia, Kansas, Hawai'i, USC, Ohio St., Virginia Tech, Missouri, Oklahoma, Georgia, and LSU.

I thought this was pretty cool, so here it is; clips from this playoff system (actually it's only the clips from the team that really matters). Enjoy!

1st Round - UH vs USC

http://youtube.com/watch?v=njlYya7fHfE

2nd Round - UH vs LSU

http://youtube.com/watch?v=YC9giv0_rhs

Semi-Finals - UH vs Georgia

http://youtube.com/watch?v=7TYhEiYOWqc

National Championship Game! UH vs West Virginia

http://youtube.com/watch?v=xK40zsP4cEw

Isn't that amazing?! If only there were a playoff system!! I know it might seem a long shot for Hawai'i to run the table like this but hey, the thing that makes UH so dangerous (besides their high powered offense) is the fact that all the players buy into their system and, more importantly, no matter what the situation, they always believe (and find a way) that they could win (it seems like this was a factor in the simulations as well). And that's what they got going for them against Georgia in the Sugar Bowl. Like Appalachian St. when they opened the season against Michigan, Hawai'i is a team that's used to winning (App St. isthe Div II champions for the past two years) and they just don't know any better.

So we'll see how accurate this simulation is come Jan. 1st and hopefully Hawai'i will shut the mouths of all the doubters (even if it is for this one season).

One final thought: If Hawai'i beats Georgia by a sizable margin, Kansas loses to Missouri, and the LSU/Ohio St. game is close, I think Hawai'i will be receiving a number of postseason #1 votes. What do you think? But we'll see because there's always that east coast love factor that you can never predict.

On that note: How does June Jones coach Hawai'i to be the only undefeated team in the nation, to Hawai'i's first ever BCS bowl game and NOT get the AP's coach of the year award?! I bet Colt Brennan's like "Hey, coach! Welcome to the hate wagon!" FYI for all you people already thinking, "He didn't win because of Hawai'i's schedule!" Such ignorance! While Hawai'i's strength of schedule was ranked 117th, Kansas' sported a schedule ranking 110! And that got schedule got Mangino the coaching award and Kansas up to as high as #2 this season! Meanwhile, Hawai'i struggled to get past #16 despite blowing people out! There was even a point in the season where Hawai'i won their game, Kansas had a bye week, and as a result of that, Hawai'i dropped two spots and Kansas went up four! What?! How do you win a game and drop and how to you not play and go up?! Talk about east coast love.

I Am Legend

I love movies. Anyone who knows me, knows that. However, I'm not a big fan of dropping a Hamilton to watch a flick only once. Especially, if you're taking a date. That's $20+ (with outhe popcorn and drinks)!! For one showing!! You might as well just wait for it to come out on DVD and you can buy it for $20 and watch it as much as you want. Even if the movie sucks, you'd be getting more than your money's worth if you just wait. So thank God for the emergence of sites that (illegally) show movies and tv shows like TvLinks and now watchtvsitcoms.com. Since I've been camping on these sites, watching every new film on my computer, rarely has a movie come out (or a girl that I've met) that made want to drop the bills in order to watch it in the theater..that is until I've seen the trailers for Will Smith's new flick, I Am Legend. Hell, that's a movie that I'll watch alone in the theater if i have to.

Before I get into my critique on the movie, let's rewind several months ago when I was sitting in the theater, waiting for Transformers to start. The lights dim and the previews start and the first preview on the menu, some new Will Smith flick. This preview was the short one showing Will Smith's character driving through a deserted Times Square in a pimped out Mustang intercut between him working out, hunting a deer, and harvesting some corn. Curiousity engulfed me, as probobaly did the rest of the audience, as I immedietely began running all sorts of scenarios in my head as to what the hell happened to all the people: virus? Tsunami? Meteor? Alien invasion? Then the trailor ends with him in a completely darkened room, his position indicated by a lone flashlight attached to his rifle, and the subtitles "The last man on earth...is not alone." Cut to a close up of a terrified Will Smith as he's slowly turning around to confront a sickening, monstrous sound coming from behind him. BAM! The clip cuts, the screen turns black, and the title fades in, "I Am Legend". http://youtube.com/watch?v=hX773fMkS90

Holy crap! I just about jizzed my pants right there and completely forgot (and stopped caring) what movie I was there to see (which, with the exception of Shia La Boeuf's great acting and Megan Fox's hotness, Transformers was utlimately a two and a half hour toy commercial).

I immedietely put I Am Legend on the top of my "movies to watch" list and even decided that no matter what, I am going to watch it in the theater.

If you haven't seen the movie (or read the book) yet, you might want to stop reading now because there's going to be some spoilers in the following paragraphs.

December 14 couldn't come any slower as I began reading about the novel version of I Am Legend and regretting that I've never read it before. I'm a sucker for stories involving apocolyptic chaos but apocolytic chaos with zombified vampires?! Where do I sign up?!

In a nutshell, the book follows Robert Neville (I can't recall if he's a doctor in the novel) who is the sole survivor of a world wide virus with vampire-like symptoms (ie. they can't handle the sunlight thus are forced to roam the streets during the night). However, they become zombie-like in that their minds de-evolutionize resulting in these irrational, light-sensitive, flesh eating beings who attack anything human, spreading their virus through the air and through flesh wound. They're not the dashing Brad Pitt/Tom Cruise vampires via Interview with a Vampire.

Like the movie, Neville barricades himself in his house only to go out during the day to get food and to methodically go from building to building, killing any vampire he finds (they slip into a deep coma during the day). He devotes every extra moment into backtracking the origin of the virus and finding out why (or in the movie's case, a cure) he is the only one immune. So I'd say that, up until then, the book is very Robinson Crusoe-esque in that the main threat (or fear if you want to call it that) comes from himself as he struggles with lonlieness and despair.

In the book, Neville is captured by said vampires and in a huge and final confrontation, he realizes that there is an underground group that managed to halt the full progression of the virus via serum (they're only sensitive to light). He finds out that they have created a fully functional civilization and that he is their number one nemisis (as he kills their "kind" in their sleep) and it is he who is the mytholgical creature. He is the one who is feared. He is their legend. Thus the title of the book: I Am Legend.

How crazy is that?! That's brilliant!! Here he is, trying to survive, thinking he's doing mankind good by killing off the vampires and finding a cure, meanwhile there's a group of "people" who've contained it, made a civilization and ultimately accepted their mutated state, thus making Neville the bad guy all along. Neville, to them, is in essence George Bush trying to singly impose his once "normal" beliefs in an environment that doesn't exist under those terms anymore. What a mind blowing ending!

This is where the movie get's disappointing...

So as my friend Toka and I (Toka also read the book) were sitting in the theater and we're watching as the vampires ravaged Neville's home after following him there, we began to grow excited as we felt "This is it. The big confrontation is coming up where they capture him and reveal their huge underground civilization where the vampires shutter at the mythological legend that is Robert Neville". But then all of a sudden, just after Will Smith gives the cure to the other survivor, he grabs a grenade and runs into the group of vampires killing them all and killing himself. She then takes the cure to an Army outpost in Virginia that contains other survivors and Robert Neville becomes a legend because he's the one that found the cure. Nooo!

Where's the confrontation?! Where's the underground society?! I excpected at least a huge fight between Will Smith and the main vampire guy who was obviously the boyfriend of the vampire chick who he kidnapped. But nothing! The movie was perfect (more or less) up until that point!

I walked out of the movie theater in complete awe of that cocktease of a movie. I had the condom out and ready to go...and nothing (metaphorically speaking). It's like going to watch Titanic, waiting for it to hit the iceberg, then all of sudden it docks in New York, everyone gets off the ship and the credits roll. Sure everyone's happy at the end but come on! You can't take out the amazing mind blowing twist at the end!

I truly didn't understand the decision to change this ending. The book usually is always better than the movie only because due to time constraints a lot of back story, character development and other details have to be left out but this is ridiculous. I would've given it a 5 out of 5 up until the last fifteen minutes of the movie. But now:

Rating:

3/5 Vampire-Zombies
(and that's only because Will Smith is such an amazing actor.)

Dogfighting: The New Event in the Westminster Dog Show

Seriously, it should be. What better way to portray "My dog is better than your dog" than having your dog kick it's ass? And we'll hold the event after the grooming event because, come on, we don't want to ruin your poodle's perm.

If you can't tell where I'm going with the blog by now, you must've been living under a rock over these past months. I speak of the recent events inolving the Michael Vick dogfighting case. Am I the only one who feels that they're going too far with this case? It's frickin' dogs! Don't get me wrong, it's a pretty sadistic act and there should be some type of repercussions, but come on! They're taking away the man's life and everything he's ever worked hard for! Over some stupid mutts! I'm sure they were cute and all, but they're dogs!

Now I know there are some people out there saying, "But it's inhumane! They're dogs! They're living beings too! What about their rights?!"

Their rights?! That's the biggest bullshit argument I've ever heard! They're dogs! Until everyone in the country becomes a vegetarian, everyone gets rid of their pets and lets them run free, we get rid of all zoos, and every hunting ground is closed - let's keep dog's "rights" out of this. On top of that, I want to see a huge march of animals waving flags, holding picket signs, and protesting for the right to vote, drive, and work. Until then, I don't want to hear anything about "animals rights".

Yes, dogs may have the right to "live" (if you call eating, shitting on your carpet, and humping your leg "living"), but it's a sport like any other.

You mean to tell me that it's OK to have a white man pay thousands of dollars to go into a gated "forest" to shoot Bambi's mother in the face with a rifle for "sport" but as soon as a black man plays Don King for Odie and Snoopy PETA gets their panties in a bunch?! Oh yeah, cause that's "hunting". I'm sorry, but if there's a restaraunt near the entrance, it's not "hunting". And it's also not "hunting" when you could actually say, "There goes the deer, it's running towards the fence! Don't worry though, we'll surround it in the corner."

And Cheney shot a man in the face with his "sport"! The face! Well, not the face but still! And what happened to him? Nothing! And who the hell hunts quail?! Are they even a threat?! They don't even fly! Hunting quail is like hunting penguins. You walk behind them as they waddle in packs and then you shoot them in the back of the head. How the hell did Cheney shoot someone else while hunting quail?!?!

If "hunting" is legal and considered a "sport" in the US, then why not dogfighting? It's a sport in many other countries. Hell, you probably even did some sort of "dogfighting" when you were a kid. I mean, who hasn't bought a couple of fighting fish only to put them in the same tank to watch them go at it?

But I've digressed..

My main beef is how they treated this talented young man, who's never otherwise broken a law in his life, like a genocidal, Hitler-loving, satanist. They took this case of man who's worked hard all his life, brought his family out of the projects, gave millions to Atlanta's inner city kids programs, and turned it into a witchhunt. The same people who were once praising him and giving him their love (the NFL commssioner, the Falcon's owner, the media and the fans) are suddenly throwing stones of malice. No, I take that back - boulders.

What does this say about the character and priorities of those who are blowing this way out of proportion? What does this say about America's?

The man's going to jail for soliciting dog fights and we wonder why our countries prison systems are so terribly overpopulated and expensive. Does he really need to go to jail? He's not some rapist or murderer to where we need to keep him locked up from human contact. Are they afraid that, if he's free, he's going to start soliciting fights between the neighborhood children? They could've just fined him a couple mil and expeled him for a couple seasons but instead they took the man's whole life away and maybe he'll be able to apply for work in the NFL after he's free. There are players who've beaten their wives and kids, "accidently" killed people while playing with guns, and killed people due to DUIs; and what do they get: a fine and probation. I'm sorry but a human being's life is a lot more important than a frickin' dog...or maybe that's just me.

The man's suffered enough in money loss and public humiliation, all these people who want Vick to lose everything are the actual sadistic ones who love watching the downfall of celebrities and love to kick a man while he's down. These people are the reason why other countries hate the hypocrisy of our "democracy". There's a hundreds upon thousands of innocent people dying over the lies a man told to go to war with Iraq and instead of dealing with that, we'd rather deal with the lies some football player told about killing a dozen or so dogs. Go figure.

If Vick's going to jail for his lies, shouldn't Bush go to jail too?

Technological Advances

So I just got a new computer yesterday and might I say that it is, how do I put it..beautiful. In fact, I decided to make this my first blog written from this amazing juggernaut of a machine. To give you some specs: 19in widescreen monitor, 2.6ghz, duo processor, 4 gigs of ram, 260 gigs of space..for starters. For those of you who don't speak nerd and have no idea what any of that means, let's just say that it's pretty bad ass! Faster than any computer on UW campus (more or less). Not to shabby for just a shade above $900 (I found it in the outlet portion on dell.com).

So this is my new baby! The ultimate video editing machine! I'll be doing all my video projects on this puppy and I'm glad that I don't have go all the way to campus anymore just to edit little clips. However, I really wanted to save up for a MacBook Pro, but those things are so damn expensive! The MacBook that I wanted ran for about $1999! And that was BEFORE I added the things that I wanted! But oh well, this is more than enough!

Now excuse me as I continue to surf the web, play a video game, and edit a video on my computer...at the same time! Peeeace!

The 2007 Heisman Race

The votes are in and it's official, Florida's Sophomore Quarterback, Tim Tebow, is the winner of this year's Heisman Trophy.

I don't know. I'm pretty disappointed but I'm not surprised that he won. Personally (and realistically), I think McFadden should've won; followed by Brennan and then Tebow. Hell, I would thrown Dixon higher than Tebow because we now see how incredibly important he is to Oregon now that he's out. Don't get me wrong, it would've been nice to have someone from Hawai'i finally recieve the Heisman trophy, but there's far too much east coast bias amongst the voters to recieve a fair result (before the UH-UW game, ESPN announcers were saying that over %20 of the Heisman voters had already turned in their vote! BEFORE the UH game! Call me crazy, but if it was my job to vote for the Heisman winner, I'd at least know a little something about the finalists or AT LEAST watch their games..but what do I know). Honestly, I'm surprised that Brennan even got an invite and I'm sure he is too.

There were a number of things that irritated me about the whole process this year.

The thing that irritated me the most about this whole thing was that the main argument, and just about the ONLY argument, that sports announcers had for Tebow was that "his numbers are something we've never seen any college QB put up" (20+ TDs passing and rushing), which is interesting because if it really were about putting up "stats that no one has ever put up before" then Brennan would have won it last year when he broke the records for passing TDs, yards, and efficiency in a season. People seem so blinded by their east coast love to the point where I saw an announcer on ESPN ramble on about how "amazing" Tebow's 51 total TDs are this season. Where was this same talk about Brennan's 63 total TDs last season? He had more passing yards and TDs last year than Chad Henne and Troy Smith COMBINED and didn't even get invited!

Yeah, yeah, I know some people out there are saying "He didn't get invited last year because he's in a system! He's a system quarterback!" Which is completely true, he IS in a system and he's always the first to admit it, but he runs it better than ANYONE has ever ran it before. There were announcers discounting Brennan because of the system saying, "If we vote in Brennan this year, should we have voted in Timmy Chang last year?!" Come on! Timmy Chang had NOWHERE NEAR an efficiency level as Brennan, and while he did put up a high number of yards, keep in mind that Chang was at UH for six years! (I heard also that he didn't even get his diploma during those six years, but that's another story) So, OF COURSE he's gonna get a high number of yards and TDs if you're playing on a team for six years! Brennan was there for only three years and not to mention Chang's TD to INT ratio, which I'm making up but probably not that far off when I say 3:1.

It's messed up that Brennan BARELY got invited because he's a system quarterback while Tebow won the Heisman BECAUSE he's a system quarterback!! Now if that doesn't show east coast bias, then I don't know what does. Yes, Tebow fans, he IS a system quarterback and it isn't necessarily a bad thing. I'm not saying that Tebow isn't a good QB, but if you have 100 rushing attempts over your starting running back, you ARE a system QB and you'd BETTER get 20+ rushing TDs (especially when the coach is calling your number everytime you get in the redzone). Brennan's been dealing with the "system QB" label for three years and June Jones calls Tebow a system QB once and he gets his panties in a bunch! Relax man! It's what got you the trophy!

The only thing I could agree on about this year's Heisman race is that while the bias is still present, a lot of bias was thrown out out the window and for the first time, disregard conference, disregard records, disregard grade, it really was about the best player THIS YEAR (kinda). Had it been this open minded last year and had it really been about THE BEST PLAYER OF THE YEAR, Brennan would have been the obvious choice...or at least one of choices. I don't understand how you lead the nation in passing yards, TDs, passing percentage/efficiency, break over 20 passing records, have the #1 offense in the nation and NOT get invited or even MENTIONED for the Heisman! He was the best...LAST YEAR. But, unfortunately, and not surprisingly, it took Tebow (an east coast player) to break the biased east coast minds who overlook individual talent (which is what the heisman trophy is meant for), forcing them to take a step back and finally say "You know what? Let's ACTUALLY give it to the best person of the year even though they're a sophomore. Even though they're not undefeated."

So congrats to Tebow for opening the door for underclassmen, system quarterbacks, and teams with an record. He DID deserve it this year, but how convenient is it that it took an east coast guy to break the stereotypes imposed and the bias of east coast voters. It took an EAST COAST player to finally have "system quarterback" be refered to in a positive light. It's kind of like, the Bush adminstration and everyone telling them "The war's gotten out of hand, it was a bad idea" and them not listening until Bush's mom says something. Then they're like, "You know what? I guess it's time for us to be rational."

In the end, Hawai'i people are just bitter because we know Brennan should've won it last year and by the time anyone even bothered to take a glimpse at the prolific passer that is Colt, it was a year too late. I think year's Heisman race reflects the past two presidential elections perfectly. The result is dependant on the people in power (religious republicans = east coast media) rather than fairness.

But you know who is probably even MORE bitter...Darren McFadden. The guy didn't win it last year because he was a sophomore. So he skips the NFL draft to come and win it in his Junior year, only to lose again to, guess who? A sophomore! HAHA. I'm sorry, but you can't write better irony than that!

Popping the blogging cherry

OK..So here it is, my first ACTUAL blog. I know I've written little notes and asides every now and then on Facebook but I've decided why not give this a try, given that I'm stuck at a computer all day at work.

I'm starting this blog for a number of reasons. Of course there's the reason that I pointed out to you above, then there's the desire to keep in touch with my family and friends and let them know what I'm up to, but mainly it's because of my friend Will aka Big Will and his never ending stories of how "fun and addicting" blogging is. (you probably know him from the number of Swahili videos we've made in the past year). If you haven't seen his blogs, check it out, it has some good stuff: http://bigwills2cents.blogspot.com/

So here it is guys and gals. We'll see just how "addicting" this stuff is. I'm sure I'll put it to good use for as anyone who knows me knows, I do have a lot to say, given the right topic. Oh yeah, I'm importing this blog into Facebook so if you're reading this on there and are so bored to where you actually care to look at the original blog posts, here's the link:
http://clihi.blogspot.com/

Catch you guys later.