2011 Arena Bowl

As I write this, this years Arena Bowl is about to start in about a half hour or so. Why write this now? Because I plan on watching the game tomorrow, and I’m assuming all my readers (hi mom) aren’t going to watch the game anyway, so I can safely prognosticate all over this blog (ewww! Not on the rug! gross!).

Last week Arizona beat Georgia at home, I watched the replay of that game on the web. One of the radio announcers for Arizona sounded as if he was annoyed by everything and I mean EVERYTHING, fans, players, officials, Sirius satellite radio, when the game cut for commercial....you name it, he was whining about it. He really got on my nerves....I really didn’t have a point about that, just felt the need to mention it. You suck Arizona color commentator guy!

I also watched the Jacksonville Sharks take down the Georgia Force a few days later. I felt bad for Georgia, fighting the good fight with a back up QB. A QB with a huge gash on his hand butterflied up to try and control the bleeding. Georgia looked as if they were fighting an invisible wave of relentless energy from both the other team and the fans. All to try desperately to stay in the game against the Sharks who seemed to score with ease.

Those Shark fans got on my nerves though. One of them actually reached over the boards in the end zone and grabbed onto a Force player and HELD him there....all in the noble pursuit of trying to steal a game ball....you sir, are a douche. Thanks to him Jacksonville got a 15 yard penalty against them, but who knows how far the Force player could have run without being held by some drunk in the stands. There were a few more fan interruptions in the game, but that one really pissed me off.

Expect another blog venting my annoyance of grown men, most of whom are older than I am, fighting/scratching/clawing/knocking little kids over to get a football in an indoor or arena game or a foul ball in baseball. I just don’t get it....more on that another time though.

Anyway back to that game.... The rowdiness/loudness of the crowd added to the general feeling of inevitability of a Jacksonville win. I had that feeling about last year’s Arena Bowl in Spokane whose arena is cleverly referred to as “Deaf Valley” due to the loudness of the fans. They seem a little better behaved though, so they have my respect.

The Sharks fans obviously do not, but Jacksonville is going to Arizona for the Arena Bowl, so they’d have to live without their fans “Help”. This continued sense of inevitability of a home team playoff win is why I might end up rooting for the Sharks.

Another mark on the side of Jacksonville is Aaron Garcia. Aaron is like the Brett Favre of the Arena League (minus all the interceptions, yearly annoying retirement talk and text messaged photos of his weiner) and he is going to to the Arena Bowl for the first time. He’s been around for 14 years and never been to an Arena Bowl despite holding about every record the league has. He’s on the short side (which is why he was never NFL material I’m guessing) but he’s one of the toughest S.O.Bs to ever play ball. He’s the kind of guy you can’t help but root for.

On the other hand Arizona is one of the few Arena League originals that has managed to stay around and intact after all these years. The others being Tampa Bay and Orlando. So it’d be good to see an old school team like them win the championship.

So who do I think will win?

Jacksonville just played a game on Monday in Jacksonville and has to fly all the way across the country to play on the road today (Friday). Arizona has the best record in the league but almost blew a huge lead against Chicago and played uninspired at times. Trandon Harvey is a question mark for them as well. He was mysteriously absent during their victory against Chicago.

I’m guessing based on the game being in Arizona I would pick them to win, but wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t. To summarize, I don’t see a clear winner and I don’t even know who I’ll be rooting for. But that’s arena football for you, and I wouldn’t have it any other way, especially for the Arena Bowl, what a way to end the season.

Blogging Blind

I promised everyone (all none of you) that I would write a non-sports related blog. As I start this I have no topic, I have no outline, I have no embarrassing bathroom related incident in mind. In other words, I am blogging blind. Ooooooo! That’s a better title, brb...fixed.

Okay, I asked everyone to vote on my first blog topic, no one actually did. My mom attempted to, but suffered some technical difficulties, 3 others ‘voted’ in the comments section but never sent an email as requested. I hate to split hairs like that, but those were the rules folks.

The consensus seemed to be people wanted me to write about my unfortunate incident with water leaking from stuff in my basement and giving me a brand new phobia of slowly dripping water from unexplained sources. I actually started that blog before realizing that it was neither funny nor all that interesting, perhaps I should have made something up about slipping in the freshly leaked water and busting my ass. My loyal readers (mom) would really like that.

I think mostly I just wanted to use this sentence “My laundry room was taking on water like a very slightly wounded submarine”. Other than that I really didn’t have much to go on. This became all the more prevalent as I rounded the corner through paragraph number two in the now ill faded and incomplete “Leaking Water” blog....perhaps I’ll release it as some sort of B-side on a single or something....bloggers can do that right? No? Well crap!

Drastically switching topics, as late summer turns to even later summer I am reminded of the dreaded “going back to school thing”. Back during my school days I always hated school, hated getting up early, and pretty much hated everyone AT school, but two things about “even later summer” I always enjoyed, the return of football and fresh back to school supplies. As I promised a non-sports related blog I will skip the first thing and move on to the second. I always had a plan, a well organized plan, armed to the teeth with three ring binder paper, folders, and fresh pencils. All of this fell by the wayside in little to no time, as the realities of day in day out school set in and I became lazier and lazier about my plans. But every year at this time I thought things would be different, THIS would be the year I stayed organized and got straight A’s and...what? I have to get up early AGAIN?! @#$# it I’m just gonna shove my homework in THIS folder,...that’s good enough, I’m 9, I got shit to do! These legos aren’t gonna spread themselves all over the floor of my room on their own you know? And the Princess? She’s screwed unless Mario and I come and get her and she’s always in the last Castle you look you know?

This yearly scenario has mostly eluded me in my adult life the only lingering symptom is my inability to enter and exit Office Depot/Max (I can never remember which is which, but does it really matter?) without daydreams of a well organized filing system, everything in it’s place and perfectly put away and easy to find and.....screw it, I’ll file it later....

There, not bad for blogging blind eh? As for the not too distant future you can expect another sports blog (sorry it’s Arena Bowl Preview time) and the after that the Bieber blog which I know you’ll love. After that I’m not sure where I’ll head, perhaps I’ll finally vent publicly about the locker room behavior at the gym I belong to.

For right now though, I just need to file this in the correct google docs folder and label it and.............screw it I’ll just email it to Dave to edit.

AFL Playoffs: Round 2

Looks like I was 3-1 with my predictions. My Preds did exactly as I thought they would. Not a close game but not a blowout either. Not as many penalties as I though they would commit, still a lot by any normal teams standards, but not bad for them. I blame coach Pat O’Hara...speaking of which......

Penalties and fumbles are usually the sign of bad coaching and I was never really high on Preds Coach Pat O’Hara, I was hoping he would get let go. Low and behold I just visited the AFL site to double check the brackets while writing this and apparently he’s been fired, dismissed, @#$^ canned outta there. I am somewhat pleasantly surprised as they made the playoffs both years he was head coach but the Preds always seem to be winning in spite of him instead of because of him. Hopefully they don’t hire some total gomer and can keep things going next year for hopefully their 20th straight visit to the AFL playoffs in their 21 years of existence.

Sorry,...got a little sidetracked there...back to the prediction recap

My only miss was the Georgia/Cleveland game as I said in my blog predictions thingy, “I could see this one going either way”. So good for Georgia for picking up a win on the road, tough to do anytime, but especially in the playoffs.

Thankfully Chicago knocked Dallas out of the playoffs, they earned the right to be rooted for by me for the rest of the playoffs and for the foreseeable future, although I can’t see myself being too disappointed if #1 seeded Arizona knocks them out in the Conference Championship round.

Arizona did beat the defending champ Spokane Shock in the first round but it was a close one. I would have liked to have been able to see that game, certainly less painful than watching my Preds lose. Before I go around gloating at my prediction skills I believe I said something like “I’ll flip a coin and go with Arizona as they are the home team” so just got lucky on that one.

Now to conference championship predictions, I’ll take Arizona over Chicago, although a Chicago upset wouldn’t surprise me. I haven’t seen that much of Chicago this year, but what I’ve seen of Arizona I’ve really liked. But this is arena football, anything can happen.

On the other side I see Jacksonville keep on trucking past Georgia. This one would surprise me a bit as I’ve never really been big on Georgia all year, but they just keep hanging around, I see that ending for them this weekend though.

So there you have it, I’m looking in the magic Smitty Crystal Ball (tm) and seeing a Jacksonville/Arizona Arena Bowl this year.

I promise I am working on a non-sports related blog,...thanks to everyone who suffered through another sports blog.