So apparently Concord-Carlisle is awesome at football now?

Last night the Concord-Carlisle vs. Lincoln-Sudbury football score came across my twitter feed.  That is NOT something I ever expected to happen.  In my days as a CCHS Patriot, football was pretty much the opposite of a big deal.  So the fact that a Boston Globe sports reporter was tweeting about it got me interested enough to find out what was going on:

- Last year CC went 10-3 and lost to Duxbury in the Division 2A Superbowl at Gillette Stadium.  Impressive.

- 3 weeks ago they beat Acton-Boxboro for the first time since 1987.  Whoa, 24 years.

- As of yesterday Concord-Carlisle was 9-0 and ranked #8.  Not in the Dual County League, not in Eastern Mass, not just in Division 2, but in the entire state.  Wow.

- And last night they improved to 10-0 by crushing previously unbeaten (and the #6 ranked team in the state) Lincoln-Sudbury 27-0, allowing just 83 yards of total offense.  Unbelievable.  What a thrill it must be for the kids there now.  I think the absolute apex of sports fan-dom is being a student and watching YOUR team win.  Something about the athletes as your peers makes it particularly special.

Well this blog definitely has the smallest target audience of anything I've written.  I'm curious to see what kind of CCHS Patriot readership I have.  And who wants to go to the Bedford game Thanksgiving day?

Bud Light Platinum?

This is the first blog that I've ever knowingly stolen from somewhere else.  I'm big on originality.  But I think it's ok this time because one, I got it from Cosby Sweaters who I write for; two, I'm acknowledging it; three, I've done a little research and have more of my own thoughts to add; and four, the deeper I get into this blog/twitter universe the more I realize that the magical interweb has no rules.

Now here's what I know about Bud Light Platinum: It's going to come out sometime early next year, and officially be introduced with a big Superbowl commercial.  It's also going to be 6% alcohol.  So how can it be "light" if it has more alcohol that Bud (5%) or normal Bud Light (4.2%)?  As I have said before, the calories are in the alcohol.  According to the L.A. Times, Bud Light Platinum will have 137 calories per can, so it is in fact "lighter" than Bud, which has 145 calories (although regular Bud Light only has 110).  But clearly calling it "Light" is more for the value and popularity of the name than for the actual ingredients.

I've read that Platinum will replace Bud Light Wheat, but I've also read that it will replace Bud Ice, and that it is in fact just a slightly modified stronger version.  Honestly I thought Bud Ice was gone 15 years ago when those awesome penguin ads stopped running:

Anyway, Bud Light Platinum poses a major dilemma for me.  Bud heavy has been my standard go to for years, mostly just because it has more alcohol than Bud Light; you know, more bang for your buck.  Do I switch?

"Penn State" will go down as the biggest scandal in American sports history

If I'd written this yesterday I would look like a genius.  I almost did.  But then I happened to catch the end of the WSOP the other night and wrote about that instead.  The past few days the nagging feeling I had about this awful story at PSU was that it would get a whole lot worse before it got better.  And last night it blew up.  From here the possible ramifications are endless.

The student run radio station reported rumors that the senior football players might refuse to play on Saturday.  The game could turn into a riot similar to what just happened on the PSU campus.  It's possible the NCAA might have to cancel the game in the name of "public safety."  And nothing about this story is going to go away any time soon.  There will be a trial.  Maybe several.  And Lawsuits.  Lots and lots of lawsuits.  More information will continue to come out, probably implicating more and more people for failing to take the proper action.  Who knows how far up the ladder it will go?  Most likely more victims will step forward.  The school is going to be dragged back and forth through the mud long into the foreseeable future.  The football program will be decimated.  How can they possibly recruit in the midst of this?  Admissions as a whole will be affected too, why would prospective students want to go there?  Even alumni searching for jobs will have to answer questions regarding the reputation the school may now carry.

So here's why this will be bigger than Tanya Harding, Tiger Woods, and even OJ Simpson.  Those stories were news to all of us, but really were only about those famous individuals and the people they involved.  This touches regular people personally.  EVERYONE with an affiliation to Penn State; who will now all have it hanging on their shoulders for the rest of their lives.  It is what the entire university will forever be known for.

"Where'd you go to school?  Oh, Penn St?  Eww, yuck.  Sorry."

The World Series of Poker is NOT for winners

I got home from closing the bar last night around 230 am, and turned the TV on ESPN for Sportscenter.  But it hadn't started yet because the World Series of Poker Final was still going on, much longer than expected.  I watched it for the last 15 minutes or so, and was shocked by the results.  Not because of who won, or how it happened, but by what the final payouts were.  These two on the right played one on one against each other for 119 hands over a span of about 7 hours.

Eventually the kid in the hoodie finally took all the chips and became the WSOP champion.  His prize: 8.7 million dollars.  But here's what I think is nuts: the serial killer looking guy on the right who finished second won 5.4 million dollars.  What???  Where's the drama in that?  What's the point of hours and hours of televised "all ins," back and forth lead changes, and one guy finishing with EVERY chip, if 2nd place is 62% as good as 1st place?  Even the guy who finished 3rd and was long gone still won 4 million dollars.  Imagine if you played poker with your buddy all night, took everything he had, but then said "hey, nice job finishing second, let me give you back 3/4 of your money."  Because basically that's what happened.  Weak World Series of Poker.  Weak.

You know what the real move is in that situation if you're one of the last 3 and guaranteed tons of money?  Admit you don't care what happens and play like a lunatic.  Crack some jokes.  Get drunk.  Wear some crazy clothes.  Try to get the most out of your time on national TV and extend your 5 minutes of fame as long as possible.  Kind of like how Roy McAvoy lost the US Open but was still the winner in "Tin Cup."

The "anti-homeless guy" bench

Ok, this probably isn't some brand new state of the art technology, but I'd never noticed it before until yesterday.  There's a boardwalk along a canal on the Cambridge side of the Charles River, just off the Longfellow Bridge.  I took a stroll along it for the first time last night.  I'm sure it was built fairly recently, and it's well lit and open all night.  If you live in Boston and don't know what I'm talking about, I definitely recommend going for a walk down there, it's pretty nice.  Anyway, there's several benches along the way that would clearly be popular places for the homeless to sleep when the weather is nice.  But they're not, because of the attached metal bars that make the benches impossible to lie down on.  Are these a new thing?  Anybody ever seen them anywhere else before?  I don't know why, but for some reason I'm very impressed by this.  Well done "anti-homeless guy" bench designer.

The rarity of a Pats home loss, and a Tebometer update

My biggest gripe from yesterday is that I hate when pass interference calls decide games.  Regardless of whether they're legit or not, it's just a crappy way to determine an outcome.  Moving on, the Patriots losing a home game is a VERY rare thing.  Since Tom Brady became the starter a little over ten years ago, their home record is a combined 69-14.  If you throw out the 5-3 home mark from the '08 Matt Cassel season, Brady owns a 64-11 career home record.  In fact, in 5 of his previous 7 seasons as the Pats' QB, New England went 8-0 at home.

But here's one more totally random stat that doesn't bode well for the rest of this year: in every full season that Brady has been the starter (and the Cassel year too), when the Patriots haven't gone undefeated at Gillette they've finished with a 5-3 home record.




TEBOMETER UPDATE:

If you're not familiar with the "Tebometer," read this.

Yeah, I know the Broncos won and Tim Tebow rushed for 118 yards yesterday, blah blah blah.  But, only two starting QB's threw for fewer yards, and not a single one was more inaccurate.  With his epic 10-21 (for 124 yards) performance, Tebow's career completion rate now stands at 48% (86-179), down .1% from last week.  He has yet to go over 50% in any game this year.

What's your take on daylight savings time?

I think it's dumb.  I have for years.  Now that definitely has something to do with the fact that I usually work at night and rarely get up early in the morning.  But I think even if I did, I would still prefer it to be light out in the early evening instead of the early morning.  Doesn't the average 9-5 office person hate leaving work in the dark every day?  Isn't it kind of depressing?  I'm curious to see what other people think about this.  Today the sun is going to go down soon after the start of the Patriots game.  That's weird.  I know that in Arizona they don't observe daylight savings time, and they still seem to get by ok.  Vote in the poll on the right and tell me what you think.