There is a major silver lining to Texas pulling out one seriously ugly game against Nebraska last night: it leaves you to feel okay that Cincinnati isn’t getting a shot at the national championship.
The reason? It’s because you don’t now have to ask the theoretical question of whether TCU or Cincinnati was the better team and was more deserving, and sadly, that means in some twisted senseless logic, people will once again feel like the BCS worked. I for one do not believe that it did, but that’s neither here nor there. The point is that in a world where there is definitely tiers even within the BCS conferences, Texas and the SEC winner were always going to be #1 and #2, and it’s hard to argue against it, I really can’t. So, it stops mattering who is #3, #4, any of those.
What it likely also means is that UC will get an opportunity to prove just how good they are, when they likely play Florida. I sense that Florida will be a double-digit favorite, and heck, they probably should beat them, but it will be a very entertaining game. Oh yes, and why should Brian Kelly stay? Because the odds he’ll coach in a game this big at Notre Dame anytime soon isn’t real good, meaning the UC job truly is more attractive than Notre Dame, unless it’s all about money (and I sense UC will call Lindner and tell him to donate another $5 million to keep Kelly around anyways).
There’s probably not a lot of you out there still using a projection TV of any sort, but hey, some of us haven’t spent the big bucks to get the big flat screen just yet! As a result, while I have a 32-inch LCD, our family room TV is a 46-inch Toshiba projection screen. In the tradition of the CRT technology it uses, its recommended resolutions are 480p and 1080i, and the advantage it does offer is that there is zero lag for older games that run on 480i.
But, newer technology plugging in to older TV’s sometimes has its own set of pitfalls, one of which I was able to fix last night. Some games, such as Forza Motorsport 3, and the intros to all EA Sports games, feature an all-white background. When this happens, the screens begins to shake. Not drastically, but enough to give you a headache, big time! It took me about 30 minutes (and a second 360 due to our neighbor) to figure out that for some reason, the TV does not like when the 360 is set to 1080i as the highest resolution, it wants it set at 720p. So, it now is.
This might be one area (albeit for a very small number of users) where the PS3 has an advantage. It allows you to select all of the valid resolutions that your TV supports. So, if you had a monitor that could handle 720p and 1080p only (computer monitor with HDMI in?), you could set it that way and take 1080i out of the equation, or you could keep a LCD screen from ever backsliding all the way to 480i. The XBox 360 only allows for you to set a maximum resolution, so it leads to possibilities where some in-between resolution doesn’t play nice, and you can’t fix it, you’d merely be able to go lower than that resolution.
Problem solved though, interesting food for fodder for future dashboard updates (say that five times fast).
I feel the need to get two things off of my chest that I heard this morning that are either signs that people take certain things too seriously (or don’t value other things), or as possible signs of the apocalypse. We’ll start with the fun one.
Apparently, it’s going to snow in Houston, Texas today. Yes, Houston! Even Galveston, an island in the Gulf Of Mexico is getting a trace. Something is wrong with the world where southern Texas at any point gets accumulating snow quicker than Columbus, Ohio! Still at that, the “realist” take is that in the last 100 years, Houston has had snow 34 times, ever. So, it’s not unheard of, but majorly weird. It is the earliest though.
As a sidebar, I’ve heard 2012 isn’t all that good. Now John Cusack trying to drive around Houston in the snow, that’s quality cinematography right there!
Secondarily, in listening to the Early Show as I woke up this morning, I heard Bob Schieffer (isn’t he floating somewhere around Ric Flair age at this point, between 110 and 120?!) make the following quote about the recent gate-crashing at an Obama State Dinner: “State dinners are part of the symbols of our democracy, like the White House itself, like the pledge of allegiance and the national anthem”. Wait, WHAT?!
Don’t get me wrong, it’s pretty amazing that the Secret Service lets someone in this far without an invite, and if they deem that to be a crime, go right ahead (I’m perfectly fine with the public shaming and hopefully their exit from any reality TV, I could care less for that stuff anyways), but a state dinner is part of the symbols of democracy?! No, a state winner is a way to schmooze some diplomats, overpay for food, and so something completely ornate and political. I value our pledge of allegiance (which if Anthony doesn’t have to say at the start of each school day, I’ll be incensed) and our national anthem (which I will stop for and put my hand over my heart if it’s on TV and Carl Lewis isn’t singing it) are true symbols. Bob, get your head out of your political tunnel vision and look at what real values might just be.
See, that was therapeutic, now go listen to Carl Lewis sing and comment about how I’ve ruined the rest of your day. Sorry!
Chris Henry’s Story Of What Could Have Been
It has not been the best week to be a Bengals fan, the team lost a member of its family this week in Chris Henry to an accident during a domestic disturbance at the young age of 26, leaving a fiancee and three children behind. To say it’s tragic is an understatement, because it doesn’t hit at what’s really been lost here. Yes, those who are cynical can look up, and probably very rightfully say that with his past, his arrests, his maturity issues, that something like this was coming, even with him appearing to turn his life around and figure out how to deal with the fame and stress of being an NFL player. I prefer to look at it in another direction due to my own personal experience. What’s tragic is of course what was lost, a father, an immensely talented young man, but what’s most tragic to me is looking to see what COULD have been.
His death had led me to reflect quite a bit this week on my own losses in life, most notably that of my brother Jeff in 1997. Hard to believe it has been twelve and a half years since he’s been gone. If you don’t know the story, you can search the blog to read more (or keep reading for bits and pieces). There are a lot of very eerie correlations between my brother’s death and that of Chris Henry. Both were about the same age (Jeff was 27, Chris was 26), both had issues in their life and both at times appeared to finally be putting it all together to erase their past demons. Sadly, neither of them could, to some degree, those demons were their undoing.
I look at where I am now, nearly 30 years old (and yes, it’s scary to think I am now older than my brother ever was), married, with a baby boy, and then promptly look back to Jeff, and the saddest thought is to think about what could have been … the relationship we never fully had as big and little brother, any chance he had to put a life together greater than even his own, and what his mission in this world really could have been. I understand now that his missions in heaven where he is now are far greater than they ever could have been on Earth, that’s how I keep myself level thinking about the weird parallel of being an only child with a big brother (which is how it usually was), and seeing such a correlation in Chris Henry’s death brought so much of that back.
In the reactions of his teammates, Chad Ochocinco’s, Carson Palmer’s, you can see those same thoughts really abound, that of promise unfulfilled. I believe it to be true that many if not most people don’t ever fulfill the full promise of their lives, and that’s a more true metric of success than any single material thing or statistic, and as a Bengals fan, it makes me pull for the team even more now than I have before. I do believe their success this year as a 9-4 team in many ways resonates back to their heart and character, something that from a very superficial look through a sports window, I have often questioned. I won’t be doing that anymore. Chad was right on one thing, you can’t question what God’s plan for each person is, but it’s natural to, and sometimes it’s very unfair.
My prayers this weekend are with Chris’s entire family, with the Bengals organization, and with everyone in his life. I pray for them to play even more inspired football this week and for the rest of the year, not for my own selfish wishes as a fan, but as a tribute to the members of the Bengals family that aren’t here now. When Jeff passed away, I went and took a final exam at college the very next day, it was my escape, something to buffer myself from the sadness and grieving for a few minutes. I pray that the three hours the Bengals spend on the field in San Diego serves a similar outlet for the team, and that they rise up and play like they never have before.