Let's Go Bears

I've played the Super Bowl Shuffle on average twice a day since Sunday. I'm excited to see my favorite pro team in the big game for the first time since January 26, 1986. Of course I'll be excited if they win and disappointed if they lose, but not nearly as disappointed as say when Miami loses in a big game. The Bears being in the Super Bowl might prompt me to watch 10 minutes more of the pregame show than I usually would. Super Bowl pregame shows are ridiculous if you didn't know already. At least it hasn't come to the point yet where the game still starts and finishes at a decent hour.

As a kid, I used to make a replica of the field because I always thought the Super Bowl field looked cool with all of the extra logos on it. After I made the field, then I would put my electric football players on it and play the game out. It would be great because since I would use crayon, it would rub off on the players' uniforms, so it looked as if they were dirty. Anyway, I think Da Bears win 24-20.

Let's talk hoops:

• Michigan/Indiana. Michigan might as well make their reservations for the NIT. After today, I don't see them beating anyone good on the road or anyone really good at home. Michigan went 29/35 from the line and lost!!!! Indiana hit 10 3s, Michigan hit 2.
• Dayton/Xavier. I couldn't believe my eyes when UD scored 43 in the 1st half. Then the real UD showed up in the 2nd half as X started the 2nd half with a 19-3 run. I thought UD might have a chance since X was without Josh Duncan, but no. X was too much down low, winning the boards by 12 and getting a career high 24 from Justin Doellman. The A-10 might only get one bid again unless Xavier gets hot.
• N. Carolina/Arizona. Talk about a statement. Carolina had no Brendan Wright or Marcus Ginyard and still made it look easy. Granted, UA lost Marcus Williams with an ankle injury, but UNC would've still won by at least 15 if he stayed in. UA has no bench and they play no defense. Mustafa Shakur was outplayed by the freshman Tyron Lawson, who was already good at the beginning of the year and is now stellar. 18 points, 8 assists, and just 1 turnover for the freshman. No Wright, no problem. Deon Thompson and Alex Stephenson are more than capable inside. This was a beatdown similar to the one Maria Sharapova got from Serena Williams last night.
• Oklahoma/Texas A&M. First time watching the Aggies this year and they're not top 10 good in my opinion, but they're good, no doubt. Acie Law is great in the clutch and even though Joseph Jones was a relative non-factor, Antanas Kavaliauskas made up for it and then some. Josh Carter is a nice role player/athlete who can get to the rim and hit the open jump shot. The Aggies aren't a great offensive team, but with their physical defense and discipline, they're a sleeper Final Four team if they get the right draw. Oklahoma will be good with Jeff Capel as their coach. OU was a lot better today than they were vs. Villanova earlier in the year.
• Villanova/Notre Dame. Notre Dame was the stronger team in the end, going 29/37 from the line and limited Nova to 33% shooting. ND needed this win to stop their slide and keep them off the bubble for the time being. If you're Nova, how did you let Colin Falls go off for 23?!?!?! He can shoot and that's it. Curtis Sumpter was back, but his hamstring looked like it was bothering him. He didn't have the lift in his shot that he usually gets.
• Another team heading for the NIT: UConn. The 2nd half of their game today vs. Providence looked like an And 1 streetball game with all of the dunks.
• Big win for VCU at Drexel. If VCU wins the Colonial regular season title outright, they may not have to win the conference tournament to get a bid.
• Memphis is overrated.
• 2 teams you don't want to play right now are Louisville and Vanderbilt.
• Another team going to the NIT: Illinois. The Illini's guards were 5/31 shooting.
• Air Force losing at BYU isn't that big of an upset. BYU is tough at home.
• Duke's home court advantage isn't necessarily their students anymore, it's the number of calls they get from the officials. What horrible officiating at the end of the game.
• I think Winthrop should get an at-large if they win the Big South regular season title. Playing all those major conference teams tough on their respective home floors, you've gotta think they win a couple of those if it's at Winthrop or at the very least a neutral site.
• Michigan St./Ohio St. What a gutty 2nd half by the Spartans. Drew Neitzel is a gamer. I think he got tired at the end of the game because that's the only way he misses those shots down the stretch. Ohio St. helped by coming out flat in the 2nd half. And when you live by the 3, you die by it. OSU's 3s were nonexistent in the 2nd half, consequently they let the lead slip away. As Lewis and Butler go, as I've said, so go the Bucks, and they didn't do anything in the 2nd half. I'll say it again, OSU basketball fans are some of the worst in terms of giving their team a home court advantage. I guess when you can't tailgate and can't identify with anything other than football, they don't know what to do.

Interesting editorial in today's Wall St. Journal about the negatives of ethanol. Higher corn prices would in turn lead to higher livestock prices, that's a given. Another given was that ethanol can't be shipped using oil pipelines. But in terms of energy output, ethanol outputs only exceed inputs at a margin of 1.3 to 1 whereas energy outputs from oil exceed inputs at a margin of 10 to 1. So you would need more ethanol to drive the same number of miles you would with oil. And ethanol increases the level of nitrous oxides in the air, which causes smog. Obviously, the sooner we can switch to cellulosic ethanol, then hydrogen fuel cells, the better off we would be. And this one editorial doesn't turn me off to ethanol, but it got me thinking....

I'm not going to waste any space talking about the State of the Union.

If I'm the Cameron Crazies, I jump on this. An admissions department e-mail sent from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill congratulated 2,700 prospective freshmen this week on their acceptance to the school. The problem is that none of the applicants have been admitted. They won't start finding out until March whether they've made the cut. Oops.