Creighton Soccer, College Cup, and a Few Good Reasons to Watch

December in college soccer is baseball’s October.  Creighton men’s soccer has played into December several times since the program restarted in 1990.  However, before last weekend, only once had the team hosted a game in December.  In that sweet sixteen game in 2007, the Bluejay’s season ended after a goal was nullified because Chris Shuler is too tall, his stride too stunning, and his headers too immaculate.

Last weekend, the Bluejays welcomed South Florida to Morrison Stadium for an elite eight game.  After Creighton’s home city became Snowmaha, and the field was incapacitated by several inches of snow (in Minnesota we call this a Paul Bunyan dandruff dusting), the game was postponed to Sunday.  Unfortunately for the Bulls, their south Florida warmth wasn’t enough postpone elimination when MAC Hermann (for football people, read: Heisman) candidate Ethan Finley’s scored the winning goal in OT winning goal.  

So, they Jays are on to the Final Four for the fourth time.  Why should you care?

Think Local. Drink Local. Protest Local?

I like the phrase “all politics is local.” The things that are most important are the things that are closest to you. Incidentally, those are often things you know the most about and have the most power to influence. That’s why I spent a semester as an editor begging UW-Madison students to stop writing about Israel-Palestine and another year on an editorial board sounding off on things like the what to name the new union and the University muscling Brothers Bar and Grill off its corner. Being able to recognize issues you want to influence is only half the battle – you have to know whom to lobby to make your voice heard.

College Football Musings: Part II

As my dad keeps telling me, life’s not fair. So I guess that is as good an explanation as any for what happened Sunday night.

College Football Musings: Part I

Some things just can’t be explained. Mysteries of life if you will. What happened Saturday night in Indianapolis, however, was not a miracle. It was simply cause and effect.

I am the 15%...Who Voted

There are Occupy Wallstreeters that are concerned about the 99%.  Well, I’m concerned about the 85% - the percentage of people that didn’t vote in Tuesday’s local election

Elections in my house are commonly referred to the Super Bowl – and not because both highlight people with a horrendous tendency to commit sexual misconduct (see: Cain, Herman; Clinton, Bill; Roethlisberger, Ben; and Favre, Brett).  However, on Tuesday the local election results were not the top story on WCCO’s 10 o’clock new…or the second or third.  It took until about 10 minutes into the newscast for Frank and Amelia to report that it was Election Day.

Road Ragin'

So Ann Arbor has been having a bit of a pedestrian crisis over the last couple of weeks. It seems like a good chunk of it was spurred on by this video (I’ll let you judge for yourself), but there is definitely some truth to the idea that many parts of Ann Arbor just aren’t very pedestrian friendly.

The question for the city then is how to fix this problem and the answers – at least so far – have been fairly predictable. More laws and more money.

The Springsteen Draft

Ed Note: This post is based on a draft conducted between Joe and Patrick over 20 days in July. For ten rounds, Patrick would pick a song followed by Joe. At the end, the song lists were compared by an impartial expert and Patrick was declared the winner. What follows is those picks and the authors' commentary. Special thanks to Christine Duda for being that impartial expert.
Go ahead and pick your own winner in the poll on our sidebar.

Round 1
Patrick Carter: Badlands
Joey Labuz: Rosalita

JL: Gotta admit, this was a Mario Williams-scale surprise for me. The very first pick in the draft with so many songs to choose from and Carter takes...the song I had always though of as The Promised Land’s little brother. It’s a good song, and the crowd is certainly rocking, I just don’t think any song set in South Dakota can hold a candle to Rosie.
PC: There are two reasons that this version of Badlands was the first pick: its an instrumental jam session and the fans in Barcelona.  Ok, so most versions of Badlands are jam sessions, but the crowd in this video is amazing.  Howabout that version of “Rosie”? Wow.  Speaking of fans, I wise I were at this concert: Bruce and the boys playing follow the leader and hide-and-go-seek while playing - incredible.

Tobacco ban should go up in smoke

First off, I would like to acknowledge that this is a post about chewing tobacco and dip in baseball. I know neither of those involve smoke - I just needed a good title.

"Smokeless" tobacco is no better than cigars. Or cigarettes. Chewing tobacco is just generally bad for you (apologies for the strange voice-overs).

Since it is bad, America does not want its children to pick up the habit. Happy to play the part of Helen Lovejoy are Reps. Henry Waxman and Frank Pallone. They want Bud Selig*, Major League Baseball, and the players union to ban smokeless tobacco from the field.**

Boo Bishop-Bashing Board. Hooray Church!

In the Minnesota Daily last week, the Editorial Board presented quite an appalling proposal.  Their piece suggested that people of faith – specifically Minnesota’s Roman Catholic Bishops and Minnesota Catholics – do not have a right to express their beliefs in the public arena.

According to the the article, because the Minnesota Bishops are on the wrong side of the pending gay marriage amendment, they should not be able to persuade state legislators and lead advocacy campaigns.  This is a flawed argument because the right to participate in these activities is not dependent on where one stands – otherwise public discourse would be futile.

Vikings Week? Weak.

It’s Vikings Week in Minnesota!

Why not NSC Stars Week? They are in the NASL championship (yes, I did have to look that up) this weekend. Or how about  Minnesota Lynx Week? They won the championship a couple of weeks ago.  Or even Nebraska Week?  There will be legions of Cornhuskers flocking to Minnesota this weekend for the UMN-UN football game.  And Nebraska will probably have the largest win of any team playing in the state this weekend, so why embrace a pro-tourism ethic and call it Nebraska Week?

Gameday Etiquette

I suppose there isn’t a much better way to introduce myself to the blogosphere than this: I graduated from the University of Wisconsin in May of 2010.

So yes, I guess that was the freshman and sophomore me (and the upperclassman me and the whenever-the-situation-calls-for-it me) that football coach Bret Bielema and athletic director Barry Alvarez were talking to when they sent this email a week and a half ago. You see, the Camp Randall students have this thing – I won’t get into whether or not it’s a “tradition” – where one section yells “eat shit” and another section returns “fuck you.” The exchange goes back and forth a couple of times until it stops.