Thoughts & Experiences from the Mile High City
Metrodome won’t be ready for Vikings game; Snow removal started at TCF Bank Stadium – ESPN.
I’m glad the NFL has come to their senses and will allow the game to be played at TCF field. There will be challenges, but this is the best option and an option that should have been used for the game last Monday night.
Here’s to an outside NFL game in Minnesota. It’s about time!
The NFL should not have moved the Vikings-Giants football game this evening from Minneapolis to Detorit. They had a perfectly good option at TCF, the football home of the Minnesota Golden Gophers.
If you didn’t know, the Metrodome (the home of the Vikings) inflatable roof collapsed Sunday morning under a bunch of snow. It is unplayable.
By moving the game, the NFL is taking the game away from the true Vikings fans and moving it to one of their hated rivals in the NFC North, the Detroit Lions.
There goes the home field advantage an NFL team usually enjoys. They are giving the tickets away to the game, first-come, first-served.
The NFL could have just as easily kept the game in the Twin Cities, played the game outside at the University of Minnesota and kept the game in front of Vikings fans.
Come on NFL, stop ruining the game.
The conference realignment is just nuts.
TCU has left the Mountain West Conference for the Big East. So instead of playing games in Fort Collins, Albuquerque and Las Vegas they will be playing in Syracuse, Boston, and Pittsburgh.
Now the Mountain West Conference is talking with Hawaii about a football only membership and Utah State is lobbying to get into the conference.
The Western Athletic Conference is in real danger of just going away leaving Idaho, San Jose State, Louisiana Tech and New Mexico State in the cold.
This is just nuts. And all because everyone is chasing the millions in the BCS.
Boise State started it all off by moving to the MWC to help the conferences opportunity to be an automatic qualifier into the BCS. But Utah, BYU, and now TCU have left and has really hurt the chance.
The only thing that is real plausible for the Mountain West Conference right now is to merge the WAC and MWC into one mega-conference. It would help its opportunity and generate some good competition.
Let’s bring some sanity to this mess, but I doubt this will happen.
The Colorado Rapids won the Major League Soccer Cup in a physical match, but one that was fun to watch, with a 2-1 OT win over FC Dallas.
FC Dallas started the scoring when David Ferriera scored on a beautiful cross from Chavez when the Rapids failed to mark Ferriera.
But FC Dallas would score no more. Conner Casey got the Rapids even with a goal from his rear when he found the ball in a pile of bodies and put it in.
The rest of regular time no one scored despite efforts from both teams. But in the beginning of the 2nd OT, Kandji kicked a ball off FC Dallas defender John and it found the goal for an own goal.
If you watch the replay, Kandji got a boot to the knee and was unable to finish the game. The Rapids finished with 10 men and withstood a rampant attack by FC Dallas including Pickens making a wonderful diving save.
The Rapids bring home its first MLS Championship and hopefully many more to come.
Go Rapids!
With all this conference re-alignment going on, the time has come for the Mountain West Conference and Western Athletic Conference to merge and become one 16 team conference.
This is how it could break-down.
Eastern (Rocky Mountain)
Louisiana Tech
TCU
New Mexico State
New Mexico
Air Force
Colorado State
Wyoming
Utah State
Western (Sierra)
San Diego State
Fresno State
San Jose State
UNLV
Nevada
Boise State
Idaho
Hawaii (Denver)
The invitations to Texas State and UTSA are on hold depending if LA Tech goes to Conference USA and if TCU heads to the Big East. Hawaii is football only with the remaining teams in the Big West. Denver can take over the other sports left by Hawaii and swap with Utah State in the divisions for the other sports. This will build on the rivalries that already exist in Colorado.
This gives you seven division games plus a rotating game with the other division. It preserves rivalries and shortened travel. This is important because Air Force doesn’t want to play more than 8 conference games because of its commitment to play the other service academies. You also get a championship game that generates a lot of money.
This creates a super-conference in the west and it’ll generate a lot of interest and money for everyone.
The nice thing about this is the conference can get rid of The Mountain (the MWC network that no one likes) and go with a contract with ESPN and get the exposure that everyone wants.
What are your thoughts?
The Western Athletic Conference (WAC) has some explaining to do about its suspension of Shiloh Keo of the Idaho Vandals.
They suspended him for the first-half of their game this weekend versus the Utah State Aggies for his hit on a Boise State University quarterback.
They said it was a helmet-to-helmet hit. But as you can see, Keo hit him with his shoulder into the chest. It was just a violent hit. This is football.
What makes it even more upsetting is that a Boise State University player hit the Idaho QB with a helmet-to-helmet hit that was clearly a hit and it wasn’t flagged. There was even some other questionable calls against the Vandals in the game.
BSU is a good football team, but it appears they are being protected and supported by the WAC officials.
At the end of this afternoons game, Kansas City Chiefs Todd Haley refused to shake Todd McDaniels hand. Instead he choose to lecture McDaniels for some reason.
A reporter for the Kansas City Star summarized that it was probably because the Broncos kept their starters in and running up the score. He said that KC pulled its starters in the game in Denver last year after blowing out the Broncos.
If that is the case, Haley has no justification for that. The score was 35-0 towards the end of the second-half and the Chiefs scored 10 points before half-time. In the second half the Broncos only score 14 more points while the Chiefs score 19 points, including trying onside kicks when you usually don’t expect them.
There was a couple opportunities at the end of the game where the Broncos would have probably tried a FG, but the punted on the first one from the KC 36 yard line and then tried to go for it on fourth and 4 from the 32 yard line of KC.
That is not running up the score. The way the game was going, the Broncos could have put a lot more points up.
It’ll be interesting to see what comes of this, but in my opinion Todd Haley was way off base and needs to channel his frustration over the last two losses and work to improve his team.
Boise State University President Bob Kustra just doesn’t get it. It also filters all-the-way through to its supporters. They have a good football team, but when it comes to everything else they just don’t measure up. They are nasty, mean, uninformed and ignorant.
I’m a University of Idaho alum and I bleed silver and gold. It is a great university and I wouldn’t have gone anywhere else. It is also the Land Grant University in the state of Idaho which means that it provides services through its agriculture extension offices throughout the entire state while also focusing its teaching in agriculture, science and engineering.
Because of this, the University of Idaho has an extensive endowment and last year brought in more that $89 million in research funding (that is 74-percent of all research funding of Idaho’s public universities).
The University of Idaho also contributes nearly $1 billion to the Idaho economy on an annual basis. So for $1 of state money given to the University of Idaho, they return $9 to the state economy.
http://www.ktvb.com/v/?i=107005578
Continue reading “Why Boise State Supporters Don’t Get It and Why I Can’t Stand Them”
This is an incredible football play. I’m surprised that we haven’t seen it before.
North Dakota player suspended for hit that injured DU’s Martin – The Denver Post.
I just want to follow-up on my post from last weekend. I speculated that the WCHA wouldn’t do anything, but I guess they did.
Two games would have been better and appropriate for the hit he placed on Martin. The point I think is that Malone wasn’t going after the puck, he was just trying to hit Martin. That is uncalled for.
Let’s hope Martin gets well and the Pioneers continue on playing well this weekend against Colorado College.
Mile High Soapbox 