Streams of Consciousness

I-O-W-A!! Man, I wish I was in Iowa City this week. This is probably the first time since 1985 that the Hawkeyes have still had a legitimate shot at a National Championship in late September. Wow! If the Hawks can get past Ohio State, and then win at Ann Arbor in a few weeks, they will be in serious BCS territory. ESPN's GameDay crew will be in Iowa City for the first time in about ten years. The game is Saturday night on ABC. What better opportunity can this team have to make a gigantic statement to the nation. I happened to be at the last scheduled night game at Kinnick in 1992, when number one Miami came to town and defeated the Hawks in a decent game. Althougth the Hawkeyes have been number one, they have never defeated a number one team. It's time to do just that on Saturday night.

O.K., I've just now finished barfing after that horrendous display of football put forth by the Steelers this past Sunday. Not only did they drop to 1-2, move two games below two teams in their own division, and lose to the division champion Bungles, they also managed to embarass themselves at Heinz Field. The game might as well have been gift wrapped and delivered to Cincinnati. After three quarters of dropped passes, poor decisions, interceptions, missed field goals and generally sloppy play, the Steelers still managed to enter the fourth quarter with a 4 point lead. Not to worry. They managed to upstage their previous blunders by muffing a punt, committing a very-costly unsportmanlike conduct penalty, fumbling and throwing an interception.....all with about 8 or 9 minutes to play in the game! Absolutley, positively, without a doubt the worst game I have seen the Steelers play in years. This was even worse than the Tommy Maddox inspired loss last year against Jacksonville ...

Jacksonville 9 - Pittsburgh 0 Losing stinks! Especially when it has been nearly ten months since you've last experienced the feeling. However, I'm not all that concerned about the Steelers. Although they were shut out, there were plenty of positives to take from the game, most notably that Ben finally got some playing time under his belt after a horrendous summer. Given the circumstances, I don't think Ben played all that badly. He actually looked pretty sharp on the first two drives, and was a victim of some dropped passes. As usual, he looked best on play action and when driven out of the pocket. Unfortunately, since the running game never matieralized, he was not able to take advantage of play action except in the first quarter. The biggest problem was that the team could not convert on third downs. They got in plenty of third and four or third and three situations, but they just couldn't get a new set of downs. Personally, I would have liked to see a few mo...

I'm back in K.C. after a week's vacation to Myrtle Beach, S.C. Here's how it went down: Overall, I would say that I had a great time, but did not get too much time to relax. Our rental house was fantastic, and we filled it with the following: Sharon, Dominic (age 6), Benny (age 13 mos.) and I My mom Judy and dad "Giz" My sister Lynae and her fiance Mark My grandmother Florence My uncle Rob and aunt Barbara My uncle Gene and aunt Diane My cousin Derek, his wife Tammy, and their two children Trent (age 5) and Kyle (age 2) My cousin Leslie, her husband Jerry, and their two children Jake (age 5) and Justin (age 2) Mark's parents Janene and Steve were there until Wednesday Yes, that is right, we had six boys under the age of seven in one house for an entire week. And, we survived! I was really pleased with our rental house. It was brand new, huge and right on the ocean. There is no question that I like the Outer Banks better than Myrtle Beach, but I like the Oute...