Category → sports
Sam Bradford
I have always liked University of Oklahoma quarterback Sam Bradford but after watching this video, I have an even greater respect for him.
More AP Bias
You may remember that I posted just last week about how irrelevant the AP is in reporting just about anything. I took a screenshot of Yahoo’s News this morning where it posted an AP story about Oklahoma quarterback Sam Bradford winning the Heisman Trophy last night. As you can see in the photo above it is titled “Oklahoma’s Bradford wins Heisman Trophy”. You may notice the picture included in the story is Colt McCoy, the Texas quarterback and the media’s love child. This is pretty typical of what you see day to day with the media. They are so angry that the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) has rated the Sooners number one by computers. They are so enamoured by the South Eastern Conference (SEC) and their poster boy that they cannot eve bring themselves to put the winner’s picture on the story that bares his name. Their dislike of the Sooners is displayed by their putting Mr. McCoy’s picture on there after we have heard about how Texas was cheated by the BCS. As I spoke before, there is no legitimate way to see who is the best when you only play a team once. Anyone can have a bad day. Again, the sports aspect of this is not that big a deal for me but rather the lack of objectivity on the news.
This should not surprise anyone as the AP is typical of the main stream media’s agenda reporting. I have noticed an overwhelming bias against Israel with the AP. Their vicious hatred for Israel is only surpassed by their hatred of anyone with conservative values. You can pick your topic and the AP will purposely only tell the side of the story that benefits their cause. They will misrepresent any cause they disagree with and never apologize when they get it wrong. They get it wrong more than they get it right so I can understand this because they would be apologizing all the time. I am not a crazy sports fan like many Sooner fans are but this story is just as blatant as they come.
This is precisely why I listen to virtually every news story I hear with skepticism. I rarely take what I hear on the news at face value even when it is on video. This is because they edit the videos to only show the parts that benefit their cause. An example of this is their coverage of the Rodney King beating. They only show the part where the police are beating him. They neglect to show the part where he was assaulting the police just prior to this. They barely even mention less than a year later that Rodney King was arrested for trying to run over a police officer in his car. Rodney King is a career criminal that was used as a tool for the media to complete their mission to drive a wedge between groups of people. In this case the entire agenda was to rile up the black population while failing to report the entire story.
I could go on all day citing events that are deliberately misreported by the left wing media and the AP. The purpose of this post is to illustrate examples of their blatant bias. I do not dwell on this too much because all it serves to do is keep everyone upset all the time. I think it is worthy of pointing out though I would not allow yourself to be sucked into their game. The media is not neutral in their reporting. They will almost always support the liberal side of story and belittle those of conservative Christian values. I would suggest you watch them with a critical eye as well and you will see it also.
The AP is Completely Irrelevant
Something that really gets on my nerves is the way people refer to the football national champion as though it can be split. They say this referring to the Associated Press (AP) poll and the Bowl Championship Series (BCS). The give the AP way too much credibility. The BCS is the true measure of a team if that could actually be done. The AP has no bearing whatsoever. The AP use to be a factor in the calculation of the BCS rankings but not since 2004 and in my opinion they never should have been. First off the AP is nothing but a group of arrogant reporters. I say arrogant because they put themselves as judge over important topics in our world. Why is it that a reporter is the one that always governs presidential debates? Who gave them that authority? I would venture to say they gave themselves that authority.
If you pay attention to various news web sites when it comes to sports reporting they will ALWAYS report the AP rankings, and not the BCS, the one that counts. The BCS determines national champions not the AP. The AP is famous for their left wing coverage of Israel. I use to collect newspaper articles that related to Israel and it was about as biased and staged photos that I have ever seen. They make a point of finding Arabic mothers carrying babies in front of Israeli tanks, or armed Israeli soldiers. They barely mention the Arab blowing up a bomb in a bus or grocery store and then spend the rest of the time putting down the Israelis. They never mention the fact that if these Arabs would behave and stop blowing things up there would be no restrictions on them.
They always refer to the Temple Mount as the Arabs third most holy site while failing to mention that it is the Israelis MOST holy site. They make every story sound like the Israelis are imposing on their land while neglecting to say that the Israelis were there long before the Arabs. They also neglect to show that Israel is a small teeny tiny country less than half the size of Oklahoma while the Arabs own land the size of the United States. It is interesting that the AP and the rest of the left wing media conveniently forget to mention that all the Arab countries around refer to the Arabs as Palestinians exiles while they refuse to let them stay there. There has never been a nation of Palestine. The left wing media specifically the AP cannot tell the whole story on any topic. There is a reason that I refuse to listen to them. The media’s world view is so left wing that anything less liberal than them is considered right wing.
With all this said, there is no way to accurately measure the rank of college football teams in the current way they are played. First of all, there are too many colleges to feasably and accurately do a playoff system. There is no way you can rank colleges that never play each other. Even if they did play each other there would have to be more than one game. As anyone knows, anyone can have a bad day and to say they are a team that is not as good as the team they lost to after one attempt is not being honest with themselves. Even in professional football they play each other more than one time. There is not enough time in a season for every team to play each other even once. It is fun to play the ranking game and claim to be national champions but if we were honest we would have to admit that our system is not accurate. There are always going to be colleges that are good but never get a chance to play the national champion. I bring this topic up because at work people are so wound up about the Sooners and their rankings. They take it so serious like it is such an important thing in life. I am a Sooner fan but I do not think that a ball game is the entire reason for living. I love to see them succeed though it is just a game in the end.
Blessed Family
Sunday loves cooking and I must say that my huge belly is a reflection of that. She has this large dinner planned this evening and the eggs above were just the first thing she prepared. She is such a blessing as she does so much for our family. Yesterday my sister inlaw and her daughter came over for a nice visit. I took a few pictures and below is a picture of my niece Kaylie. She is so cute and fun to be around.
Also last night I watched the University of Oklahoma (OU) Sooners play the number two rated Texas Tech University. Although OU has a long standing winning streak when playing in their stadium, I do not think anyone expected the decisive win the Sooners performed with a 65 to 21 final score. I was amazed myself with the margin of victory. I decided to take this weekend off from doing school work so I could relieve some stress.
The night before last, we watched our Oklahoma City Thunder lose to the New Orleans Hornets with a score of 125 – 80. It was announced yesterday that coach P.J. Carlesimo had been released after our team had lost 10 straight games and 12 out of 13 games. I wish him well and hate to see someone lose their job over the performance of the players but I realize that is how the game works.
This past week at work, I spent nearly three full days watching some of our maintenance people and a contractor do a new maintenance task on one of our airplanes. The upcoming week we have a three day work week and then going to see my father in-law for Thanksgiving. This should be an enjoyable time though I sure wish both of my sons could be with us. This upcoming week should be a nice break. Sorry for not posting very often lately but life has been so busy. I will try to keep this up to date more in the future. Thanks for stopping by.
Embarrassing OU Fan
As a Sooner fan I have pointed out this embarrassing behavior many times to people and they never seem to see it. The Sooner fans that somehow seem to make it on national television often tend to be the Jethro Bodine types that make our state look like we are all uneducated. This photo illustrates how the Sooners are playing the KANSAS JAYHAWKS and this gentleman on the right is displaying his upside down Longhorns symbol. We are not even playing the Texas Longhorns! If that is not bad enough, we lost to the Texas Longhorns just last week. This guy looks like he took a few too many drinks before showing up at this game. I really hate to point these things out because it looks like I am against the Sooners but it is some of the fans that make us all look bad. I paused the DVR and took this picture with my camera.
Why I Say Vote Yes!
In about a week (March 4) Oklahoma City will be having an election to extend a one cent sales tax to renovate the Ford Center and build an NBA practice facility. This initiative will not increase taxes but rather extend one that is already there for 15 months. This date has been strategically picked to sway the NBA in their decision to allow the Seattle Supersonics to relocate to Oklahoma City in their April meeting. I think this is huge and is a significant opportunity to improve our image on a national scale. I am not saying that having a sports team makes people look at us differently over night but rather gives companies relocating here a better image in terms of quality of life.
When companies relocate, they look at many pros and cons about the move, and one of those being the quality of life for their employees. Having an NBA team enhances that quality of life by giving their employees another thing to do on their list. I have lived in a city that had an NBA team and I can tell you that it is a very big thing to have. My wife and I lived in Phoenix, Arizona and I can remember how rabid the Phoenix Suns fans were in their support. You could not avoid getting caught up in the excitement. I was stationed at Luke AFB when the Suns made it to the NBA finals in 1993 and the whole city was so wound up that it was an exciting event. I would be at work and my coworkers would bring portable televisions to work so they would not miss the games. The games were sold out to a point that people were paying to watch them on a huge big screen television at the Cricket Pavilion (formerly the Blockbuster Desert Sky Pavilion).
There are those that think this is foolishness for taxpayers to build an an arena to subsidize rich people. They think it is not right for ordinary citizens to have to pay a one cent sales tax to benefit a few wealthy people that own a sports franchise. You know… if you look at it like that singularly, I could see their point. They speak of hunger, homelessness and many other problems that plague cities and say we should be focusing our money and our attention in those areas. They tout that we are spending money that could be used to help the poor and needy subsidizing wealthy sports owners.
I could not disagree more. If you do not look at the big picture, you will see it that way. By enhancing the quality of life, companies see this as a good place to invest. The citizens and the corporate community have an increased civic pride in their city. Our city suffers from an identity problem and has for some time. When people think of Oklahoma City, they naturally think of the 1995 bombing or some tornado that came through. They often never see it for the great place to live that it is because the only image they see is the image displayed on the news. Since the news almost never tells anything positive, we only get coverage when we have a disaster. This is a great place to live and there are many things to do here.
If we want to be able to tackle some of the problems such as homelessness, poor, and the needy in general, we need to have tax dollars. Tax dollars come from citizens and businesses and are based on percentages and income levels. If we cannot attract companies and people to live here then our tax base is smaller. I have heard quotes around $65 million per year on the money generated by the Hornets while they were here. In two years alone that would offset any costs that would be incurred by this one cent sales tax. I think it would be a huge mistake to be so short sided to miss the point on this Ford Center renovation. As a conservative myself, I do not like wasting tax payer dollars any more than anyone else but this will be money back in our pockets in the end.
A Yes vote puts our city in the national eye in terms of image, and status. It gives people a better sense of what kind of place this is and not just some dust bowl relic. It gives companies an opportunity to see this as a viable place to relocate and bring their employees, money and status. Best of all, it brings a larger tax base to attack those issues that opponents to this measure say are more important. Those issues are very important but we will be better positioned to address those issue. A Yes vote is a statement that we are prepared to move to a higher level and have a sense of civic pride unprecedented here. I love my city and support this measure whole heartedly.
Blogged with Flock
Tags: OklahomaCity, NBA, Ford Center, arena, basketball, bigleague, civic pride, vote yes
Today’s Stuff – February 20, 2008
This week I turned on the satellite Dish Network receiver on a couple of occasions and received a message telling me that if I want to avoid an extra charge on my bill that I need to keep both receivers plugged into the phone jack. I kept verifying the plug was installed and it was so I thought that my satellite receiver must be under the influence of an illegal substance crack. This morning when it did it, I got mad and picked up the phone receiver and found there was no dial tone. I had to go to work so I did not have time to look at it. This evening I search the wiring for broken wires and unplugged the phones with no luck. I finally went to the back of the house and opened the box, unplugged, and replugged the test plug and there was my dial tone. I am thinking that the way it was installed right under a spot where the rain just pours off the house that water had found its way into the box.
You may remember this photo I took during the big ice storm in December where the box had just been enveloped in ice where the water had drained off the house and froze around the box.
This box has to be fixed because it is driving me mad. This house was built with a room added on the back. This add on has virtually no over hang to the roof so when the rain comes pouring down, it drains right down that wall onto the telephone box. I can still hear some very faint popping sounds on the telephone a sign that water is still in the line. Praise the Lord my Internet is still on. You may be asking yourself why I never noticed the phone was off for days while the satellite receiver did. That is easy… We use our cell phones way more than our house phone. Even our kids have cell phones so we call them on their phone rather than on the house phone. Also I use Skype often when I am on the Internet and will likely increase since I have a new job that will be traveling. I have already been told that my new job, still at Tinker Air Force Base (AFB) has some TDY’s temporary duty to other Air Force bases.
Man! Have you been listening to the NBA commissioner lately? Things are looking very good for us getting a team here in Oklahoma City. You can read the comments on this ESPN article here. He basically says that the Sonics are inevitably going to leave Seattle. As you know the owners are from Oklahoma City and in November filed to have the team relocated to Oklahoma City. I am getting excited as the days go by. I am watching Shaq play his first game in Phoenix against the Lakers on TV right now. We use to live in Phoenix and just loved watching the Suns when we lived there. We were stationed at Luke Air Force Base near Glendale. I also read an article on the Seattle PI that said the Seattle council is actually warming up to the idea of a Sonics buy out and one of the negotiating points is to leave the Supersonics name in Seattle. I personally think this would be a very good idea because they have a lengthy history in Seattle. Also, I would hate for them forever to be called Seattle. Just recently I heard someone refer to the Hornets as the Charlotte Hornets.
I love the NBA and I really would love to have our own team here. After living in a town that has NBA and experiencing the excitement first hand, I get really excited. I guess that just about covers the events of the day.
Blogged with Flock
Tags: OklahomaCity, NBA, Supersonics, Sonics, Hornets, Seattle, David Stearn, Phoenix
Sooners’ inconsistency
I am no different than most Oklahomans that were so impressed with the Oklahoma Sooners football team. The first four games of the year they scored an average 61 points per game. They seemed unstoppable and destined for a national championship. I too was dismayed at the national media not giving them the star attention that I believed they deserved. The lack of attention in the national media in my opinion was just more anti Oklahoma bias. How wrong I was…
The Sooners went to their fifth game and lost to an un-rated Colorado Buffaloes. The game was an embarrassment but most including me thought this was a aberration, a mistake, a game where the Sooners were looking toward Texas. The Oklahoma Sooners made some terrible mistakes with turnovers and poor execution. The Sooners have not had an impressive win since the fourth game. They have had wins but not very impressive. Yesterday they played Iowa State University and was predicted to win by a large margin. The Sooners barely won the game at all, much less a wide margin. The game ended up 17 to 7 Oklahoma over Iowa State which is a win but it does not feel like a victory. Iowa State lost 6 out of 7 games before playing OU yesterday so it should have been a blow out but the Sooners trailed most of the game. In fact at half time, they were shut out 7 to 0.
This was a bigger embarrassment than the Colorado game. After thinking about it, we should not too upset because it is just a game. These players are young and should be expected to not be very consistent. We were spoiled with the early blow out games giving us a false sense of security. Maybe this time the national media was the ones not being biased and could see some weaknesses that we biased Oklahomans did not. It was sort of a wake up call to me and hopefully everyone else. I think the Sooners are very good and are unstoppable when they play to their potential but they are young and it is hard to have that much discipline as a young college student. I think they deserve our patience and loyalty.
Technorati Tags: Oklahoma Sooners , University of Oklahoma , Oklahoma , Sooners , football , college football , Iowa State Univerity , Colorado University
Looking forward to the Ou Texas game
today is the game we have been waiting for. Larry is coming over and we are going to eat and watch the game.
How ’bout them Sooners?
As a student of the University of Oklahoma I feel I can get away with a certain level of bias here when it relates to the Sooners football. Last night the Sooners played the Tulsa Golden Hurricane at Tulsa and soundly defeated them. This was the fourth game of the season and won with a commanding 62 points over Tulsa’s 21 points. This game was the fourth consecutive game that OU has scored 51+ points in a game. The Sooners have scored 246 points in the first four games. Tulsa did very well in passing and if OU had not intercept a few of them, the score would have been very different.
Many say that OU does not deserve to be ranked very high because they have not played anyone tough this season. I think that is very subjective considering the Miami Hurricanes beat Texas A&M this weekend with a huge margin. If Miami was not very good, then how did they beat Texas A&M so soundly? I am not a huge sports fan but I do like to support our team. There are some Sooner fans that I find an embarrassment. Last night’s game has some Sooner fans in the stands making the upside down Longhorn symbol making reference to the Texas Longhorns. We were not even playing the Longhorns! Every time I see that, I have to hang my head low in embarrassment. I am very proud of our team though. They have been doing very well and represent our state with pride.
Technorati Tags: Sooners , Oklahoma , University of Oklahoma , OU , Texas A&M , Miami Hurricanes , Tulsa Golden Hurricane