Coffee Klatch

It’s kinda funny, but there’s so much talk about the Colts playing in the Super Bowl Sunday, and Friday is always the big celebration day before games since it’s the last work day, that people have forgotten the so very important holiday that is today: GROUNDHOG DAY!

I mention it partly because nobody’s talking about it today and partly because it’s cloudy here in Indianapolis and getting colder all day today, with a chance of show this afternoon. In fact, it’s starting to flurry right now! So, what does Groundhog Day lore tell us if it’s a cloudy day? Why, it says that the groundhog WON’T see his shadow, so won’t get scared and Spring is just around the corner! Here’s what Punxsutawney Phil says. Woo-hoo!

That being said, GO COLTS!!

Hallelujah! After so many years of having New England as their nemesis, the Indianapolis Colts are finally going to the Super Bowl! And this AFC Championship game was as close and tough as anyone would have hoped for, despite the 21-3 score at halftime. What an amazing second half for the Colts! Now at least nobody can say that Payton Manning hasn’t gotten to the Super Bowl. It’s nice to see an AFC Championship instead of just an AFC South Division Championship. It means so much more. Plus it means going to the Super Bowl! When the game finished tonight, Alaric and I were chanting lines from some recent commercials, like “We’re going to the Super Bowl! We’re going to the Super Bowl!” and “I… get… a Diet Pepsi! I… get… a Diet Pepsi!”
Congratulations to the much-improved Colts Defense, the diligent Special Teams squad, and especially to Manning for finally getting to the Super Bowl. Woo-hoo!!

On a side note, this game was especially important for the city of Indianapolis, which is in the process of building a new Colts Stadium and is hoping to be selected for the next available Super Bowl venue. The city and game had a chance today to demonstrate that they’re able to manage all the details that come with a Super Bowl game.

Also, interestingly enough, the Colts haven’t been in the Super Bowl since Super Bowl V, 36 years ago, when they were the Baltimore Colts. The Bears haven’t been since Super Bowl XX, 21 years ago. Great for both teams and it should be a great game in two weeks!

[tags]Super Bowl, colts, Peyton Manning, AFC, NFL[/tags]

I was feeling the need to blog about this, but thought I’d check to see if I’d written something about this before. Turns out I did, and it was at this exact same point in the NFL season: the weekend of the conference championship games. But my previous post was about a difference facet. Today I’m talking about etiquette.

It is considered rude to sing along to the national anthem when someone else is singing it. The U.S. Code Title 4 Chapter 1 is about the U.S. Flag, how it should be handled and displayed and how it should be addressed when presented when the national anthem is sung. It says how to stand and what to do while the national anthem is sung, but it doesn’t talk about the singing along element.

During the national anthem that was sung before the Colts-Patriots game, not only could you clearly hear people singing along, but the cheering began as early as the “rockets’ red glare.” I think that’s rather rude and an insult to the singer. Why have some special singer come in when you’re not going to listen to more than half of their song?

Was it the custom in times gone by for the audience to stand and sing it together? If so, when did the custom begin of having a guest soloist?

My thought: either be quiet and let the singer sing or else stop bringing in soloists and have the audience sing instead. Both at once is bad etiquette.

To end on a positive note, at least both of the soloists today sang the national anthem with a minimum of those frivolous embellishments that are so irritating.

[tags]national anthem, sports, etiquette[/tags]

The Butler University Bulldogs’ basketball team is still on the rise! As of this week we’re ranked #12 in both the AP Poll and the Coaches’ Poll for NCAA Division I basketball teams. That’s the highest Butler has ever ranked. Woo-hoo!

March Madness here we come!

Last night the Colts lost their first NFL regular season game of 2006. Their record is now 9-1, for two years in a row. But is that a bad thing? Is it good to go undefeated?

My thought is that going undefeated is more of a distraction and a hindrance than something to strive for. If you’re undefeated so far, you’ve got ever-mounting pressure to make sure you don’t lose. The kind of pressure that can cause mistakes. Plus you get the media (and fans) constantly talking about it. Then on the other side of the coin, you’ve got the mentality of always winning that can creep in, causing players to maybe not try quite so hard. If your wins are solid, it can be even worse.

If you’ve lost a game or two, you can still be championship material and be obvious league leaders, but you don’t have the pressure building as each game goes by and you do have the good kind of pressure to try hard because your win isn’t guaranteed.

Would it be cool for a team to go the whole season undefeated? Sure it would! But I think that’s tougher and much more traumatic for the players than making a solid run for the Super Bowl.

And just the same, the Eagle are GOING DOWN this Sunday evening!
[tags]nfl, football, undefeated[/tags]

Another hard-fought game has ended with the Colts beating the Patriots 27-20. Like last year, Indianapolis was considered the underdog and not many people thought they’d win. It was a good game between two great offenses. It was Indy’s defense that stepped up in the end, getting FOUR interceptions off of Tom Brady (who only had 4 others all season) and allowed NO touchdown passes.

It went right down to the end, when New England was heading down the field to try to get a touchdown and tie the game, when Cato June got his second interception of the night with less than a minute left in the game.

Of all the games the Colts have scheduled this year, tonight was expected to be the toughest and most likely to lose. I’m not saying they’re going all the way, but we’re at the halfway mark and the Colts are over the hump (Denver & NE). Eight more to go! And since Miami beat Chicago last night, they’re the only ones left undefeated. On to Buffalo!

For those who haven’t heard, the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) is an international, non-profit educational organization which studies and recreates the Middle Ages. There are over 30,000 paying members worldwide, plus untold scads of non-paying participants. There are local groups all OVER the place! Check out the map. If you want to see a list of the kingdoms and what “mundane” lands they cover (or find a group near you), check out SCA Geography. You can find a history of the SCA, a list of activities, resources for newcomers, and tons more on the SCA website. Better still, visit http://www.scademo.com/ for a thorough, well-put-together “tutorial” about the SCA. Their demo describes the SCA as “full-contact Ren Fair with better garb and fewer pirates.”
Basically, if it went on in the Middle Ages (loosely defined as pre-1600 A.D.), there are people in the SCA who do it. Except for maybe the Bubonic Plague. But if you contacted your local group, you’d probably find people that were actively doing combat, cooking, costuming, heraldry, music, dance, brewing, calligraphy, illumination, archery, stained glass, metalwork, literature, and more. You can learn about these kinds of things by DOING them, not just by reading about them.

Events include tournaments, revels, feasts, wars, demos, and that kind of thing, ranging from small, local events to jumbo/LARGE ones. The Pennsic Wars, for instance, often have 8,000 fighters on the field at one time. The largest that I’ve ever fought in was about 100 people. Still way cool, though.

And here’s a picture that I found on Flickr:

Well, Alaric’s last football game was yesterday. Short season (just 6 games), yes, but it’s a 7th- and 8th-grade league, not high school.

The good news: THEY SCORED FOR THE FIRST TIME!! An actual TOUCHDOWN!

The bad news: They didn’t get the extra point but the other team did when THEY scored. Final score 7-6.

Still, it was a huge boost for the guys. And now the season’s over and they can relax and celebrate. I think they’re doing pizza and a movie together as a team sometime in the next couple weeks. Great job, “Junior Saints!”

Today was Alaric’s team’s SECOND football game! They’ve made a ton of progress in the last week. Today the defense really stepped up. They were able to hold the other team a couple of times and make them punt. They also stopped a couple of 2-point-conversion attempts and ended the game with an interception. They still didn’t score, but their opponents got less than half the points that last week’s opponents got.

Definite improvements! They actually looked like they knew what they were doing anyway. And for a team where 2/3 of the boys are playing their second-ever official game, that’s pretty good!

Yesterday was Alaric’s first football game. It was the team’s first game also, since the team was just formed this year as a feeder for the Lutheran high school. Two thirds of the 7th and 8th graders had never played an official game before yesterday. So it was really interesting. Oh, I forgot to mention that they were playing against a long-established team that won their division last year.
I have to say that they got out there and worked and tried. For a first time, it could have been much worse. It was a clean game, with only one penalty the whole game. No offsides or false starts or things like that, which could easily have been a problem with a new team. I did observe during the game that there seemed to be a problem with tackling, and, sure enough, Alaric told me after the game that that was what they were going to work on more this week.

I guess you can only cover so much material in just three weeks when you’re starting from scratch. Conditioning and stances and procedures and routes and all that is a good start. Hopefully they’ll get better at tackling this week and improve for this next week’s game. The season is only six weeks long, with games every Sunday afternoon. So, one down, five to go.
[tags]football, junior-high, sports[/tags]