The SoapBoxers

And we are down to four. My predictions from a couple of weeks ago are debunked. I think I shall continue to write and work as an engineer rather than trust in my gambling acumen or my sports genius. I had predicted that the Atlanta Falcons would face the Houston Texans in the Super Bowl with the Texans taking home the Lombardi Trophy. The Texans fell to the New England Patriots. The Baltimore Ravens beat the Denver Broncos in a shootout to continue the Ray Lewis retirement tour. The Atlanta Falcons held on against the Seattle Seahawks to at least keep that half of my prediction valid while the San Francisco 49ers beat the Green Bay Packers to earn the other spot in the NFC championship.

This weekend, the games averaged 64 points with the least points by a singe team being 28 points. The highest scoring game (SF-GB) had 76 points. What does all of this scoring mean? At the very least, the rules that have been changes to promote more offense has definitely paid off for the league. The interpretation of the rules has also helped. Very seldom does an offensive face mask penalty get called except on linemen. Offensive pass interference also seems to be a penalty that is destine to be remembered only in history.

Next week should be a pair of good games. Baltimore, Atlanta and San Francisco are trying to break back through to the Super Bowl. New England is trying to get back to make up from the loss last year. Thing of the eventual match ups in the Super Bowl, any of them should be exciting. The San Francisco – Baltimore match up would match up brothers as the head coaches. Personally, I would prefer to see a Baltimore – Atlanta match up primarily because San Fran and New England have already been to the big game so often. It is still too early to plan the decorations for your Super Bowl party, but it is time to send out your invitations and make plans for food.

2012 may be over, but football, both college and professional, are still in the 2012 season. The Pros still have weeks of playoffs to go, but the college ranks will be finishing off this week with a Monday night, crowning of a national champion. This week, let focus on College. So how did the season go? The experts fawned over the SEC all year. It turns out that they were correct. The SEC leads the rest of the conferences with 5 bowl wins and one more chance in the championship game. The ACC, Big XII, Pac 12 and USA all came in with 4 wins. The SEC and Big XII put 9 teams into bowls with the Pac 12 putting in 8 bowls appearances. So who did not do as well? The Big Ten and Big XII both had 5 bowl losses with the MAC having a chance to join them on Sunday night. The Big Ten number is skewed since the two best teams in the conference were not bowl eligible. This forced lesser teams into stronger bowls.

Even now, the experts are talking about the rankings next year. Obviously, the SEC will figure strongly in the predictions and rightly so, but all trends change. A few years ago, the Pac 10 was the best, before that the Big Ten. All these things cycle, although some conferences drift to the bottom never to return. Just two years ago, Notre Dame was on the ash heap of history, but now they are playing in the national championship.

There are also people complaining about the conference realignments. This is a natural part of the sport as each school positions for the best possible financial return on their programs. The demise of the Big East has most of the experts (who are east coast centric) upset, but even in their own analysis, they show that this is an evolution. The Big East is 34 years old (founded in 1979) and was not a football conference until 1991. Teams have come and gone constantly, some by choice such as West Virginia, and some were voted out such as Temple.

These same reporters did not shed a tear when the Southwest Conference evaporated, a conference that included a three time national champion in football and contenders in basketball (men’s and women’s). The Southwest Conference was exceptionally stable, with seven members staying from 1923 to 1991 (when Arkansas left for the SEC), before it dissolved in 1996.

Other conferences such as the Big Ten and Pac 10 have been even more stable, while the SEC has been on a steady growth path to the fourteen teams that now make up that conference (expect this to grow to sixteen for the first super conference). The SEC started in 1932 with ten of the current teams as part of that line up. They had lost three teams by 1966 but gained two in 1991 and two more in 2012. The Big Ten started in 1896 with six of the current teams, adding two in 1899, one in 1960, one in 1990, one in 2011 and two more will join in 2014. University of Chicago dropped out in 1946. Expect the Big Ten to expand to sixteen teams as well to make a second super conference. The Pac 12 started in 1915 with four of the current teams, adding and losing teams to stabilize at eight teams in 1928. Two schools were added in 1978 and two more in 2011. Expect the Pac 12 to become the Pac 16 to become a third super conference,

One conference that has changed dramatically in the last three years is the Big XII. This conference was created from the Big 8 and the Southwest conference when the SWC folded. When two teams left a couple of years ago, the experts were calling for the dissolving of the Big XII and the creation of a super conference based on the Big East. That was interesting in that the Big East at the time only had a couple of teams that could be considered good, while the Big XII still had at least three if not more high quality football programs. Colorado, Nebraska, Missouri and Texas A&M have left with West Virginia and TCU joining. Comparing the impact of these gains and losses based on bowl performance shows that it is pretty much a wash for the Big XII. Two of the teams that left did not make it to bowl games, the other two were one loss and one win in their bowls. The two newcomers both made it to a bowl, and both lost.

Sitting at a total of ten teams, the Big XII does not seem to be in a position to become a super conference, but they could by scavenging from the Mountain West, MAC and WAC. If the political questions could be overcome, the ACC and Big East could merge to become a super conference, but there is some bad blood between those conferences as far as membership goes.

Next year, the NCAA will try a playoff of the top four teams to make sure that they are crowning the true champion. Some of the experts have stated that there should be automatic bids for positions in that playoff. Such predetermined matchups are for elites who are afraid to lose their position to a better team. The four slots should be filled by the four best teams of that year. I do have an opinion beyond what the NCAA has posted. I think that any member of that group must be the champion of their conference. I state this to avoid another same conference championship like happened last year, or the whining that got Texas into the Rose Bowl in 2004 (and I am a Texas Alumni). If you don’t win your own conference, how can you claim to be one of the best teams in the nation?

If super conferences do come into being, a playoff would be inevitable. There are currently 124 schools in the NCAA Division 1 FBS. If there were 7 super conferences of 16 teams each, 112 of these teams would be filtered down to 7 champions. An 8 team playoff would pit these champions against each other and 1 non-super conference team that was qualified based on record (this would allow independent teams like Notre Dame and Navy to have an opportunity to play for the championship). Will it happen? I think so. There is so much money to be made, all of the universities will be drawn to it. The traditional bowls will never go to the wayside, it is too good of an excuse to party and for northern teams to have a warm holiday.

First and evaluation of each of the AFC divisions. In the East, New England is it. They could improve their playoff position, but they are in the playoffs regardless of anything else that happens. This is overall a week division, but Miami and the Jets are still mathematically in the playoff hunt but it takes ties and combinations of losses for either of these teams to make it. In the North, Baltimore is trying to lose their playoff spot and Pittsburgh is equally trying not to get it. Today it looks like Baltimore and Cincinnati will both be in the playoffs. In the South, Houston has the division and unless the sky fall in on them, Indianapolis gets a wildcard berth. In the West, Denver gets the nod. There is not much to be said for any of the other teams in this conference.

Now for the NFC divisions. A few weeks ago, this looked like the boring conference, but things have heated up. In the East, there is a three way tie. What was once the most average division, now is on the verge of possibly having three teams in the playoffs. Washington, Dallas and the Giants all have the opportunity, but will any of they step up? In the North, Green Bay has sown it up with Minnesota and Chicago still grasping at possible wildcard births. In the South, Atlanta had things wrapped up several weeks ago. Last week the pundits pronounced the Falcons dead because of one bad game against New England. That is rather harsh for the number one seed in the NFC. In the West, San Francisco and Seattle need to figure out which will win the division and if the other can win enough games to take a wild card. Although there are three other teams that mathematically could still make the playoffs, it would take a miracle.

This year, parity has played out just like every year, with some of the haves remaining at the top and some of the have nots remaining at the bottom. There have not been that many surprises as far as who are the prime candidates for playoffs now that we are in December, although there have been some games that were surprising in outcome. My predictions are Green Bay – Atlanta in the NFC championship, with Atlanta representing in the Superbowl, Houston – Denver in the AFC championship with Houston representing. On top of that, I will predict Houston winning their first Lombardi Trophy.

It is that time of year. It is the time for office and school parties and other holiday celebrations. Whether you are celebrating Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanza, New Years or just the bowl games, there seem to be parties everywhere. A lot of these parties are pot luck, meaning you have to bring something to share as food. Every year here at the Soap Boxers, I have provided a list of cookies that I like to make and share. Each year I expand the list. This year’s offering is free to download. This year I have added Triple Chocolate Chip cookies and Peanut Butter Chocolate Rollup Candy.

It does not seem like much, but making cookies fills me philosophically (and physically). I spend time with my children, baking and teach them how to make cookies. I spend time with my co-workers sharing the cookies and recipes. I get to eat the cookies (and the dough) and remember back to when I learned to bake and share them as a child.

I enjoy sharing the stories and hearing them. One co-worker told me how her youngest son tried to make some of the cookies in my download. Although the cookies were basically inedible, she was still very proud of him. He tied to bake them himself, and for the most part succeeded. He did not burn down the house, and for both him and her, they tasted of ambrosia. His next attempt was better and she is sure that this year, his product will be good enough to share outside of the family. Having an older brother has really helped him since a teenage boy is willing to eat anything. I have not sampled his work yet, but I am sure I will like it at least for the effort he is putting forth.

My each of you enjoy this holiday time and celebrate as you wish, even if you just consider this a gift giving season without religious affiliation. Even if you do not believe the same way or things that I believe, I wish you joy and I hope you can return that wish.

On Friday December 14, a young man entered an elementary school and killed twenty students and six staff members, before taking his own life. He did this after killing his own mother in their home. It will take detailed investigations to determine the why of this crime, all that any of us can do at this time is to pray for the victims and give the survivors the respect and privacy that they will need to heal.

One of the immediate responses to this crime was a call for additional gun control. Before continuing this discussion, I will say that I do not own a single functioning fire arm, although I do have several muzzle loading pieces that are dry loaded (that means there is a ball wedged in the barrel with no gun powder so it cannot be fired). There are already plenty of gun laws, additional paper will not make this type of horrific event go away. Disarming law abiding citizens will also not diminish this problem. By the logic of stricter gun laws, New York, Chicago and Washington DC would be the safest places in the world. Enforcement of existing law is what is needed to protect ourselves from people bent on senseless murder.

Something that has been overshadowed by the events in Connecticut is a similar attack on elementary school children in China. The assailant used a knife or sword to hack at and injure 22 children, some of them critically. In fact there has been a spate of attacks on school children around the world. It would seem that these criminals are looking for the most defenseless victims. It will take experts a long time and involve much debate to come up with an answer for the Why.

The response to these events should not be to find political advantage, either for more gun control or less. The response should be to grieve and provide solace for the victims and the survivors. We should also rejoice that this type of incident is so rare that it is national news. There are certain number of people who are going to commit heinous crimes, guns certainly make them more spectacular. We have witnessed even more spectacular mass killings with the various bombings around the world (including Oklahoma City) and airplanes (such as the World Trade Center). Let us all hope and pray that these events remain rare and that more are thwarted than succeed. May each one of the victims and all of the survivors find peace.

Last week, a professional football player killed his girlfriend, the mother of his child, then killed himself at the Kansas City practice facility. During half time of the Sunday night game on NBC, the commentator, Bob Costas, took the opportunity to do what he is paid to so, comment. His against guns, thinly failed in quoting from a like minded reporter, set off a firestorm of publicity from both gun rights advocates and gun restrict advocates. My concern with Mr. Costas is not his known attitude towards guns, but rather his response to the event. He did not criticize the criminal who committed the crime, rather he attacked what he perceived a gun culture and even threw in a preemptive defense of football in general as if a root cause can be defined by public opinion rather than investigation.

The terrible events in Kansas City may have been preventable, none of us were inside that relationship. From what has been reported, he shot her several times with his mother and daughter in another room, then left to go to work to kill himself. He had spent the night away from home in questionable activities. If he had not had a gun, would he have been out of control enough to kill her with his bare hands? Possibly, again none of us were there.

This last weekend, there was more bad news for professional football. A member of the Dallas Cowboys was killed during a single car accident where he was the passenger. The driver was another player who has been arrested for intoxicated homicide, meaning he was under the influence and responsible for the death. Mr. Costas again used his pulpit to comment. Again, this is what he is paid to do. His comment again missed the mark. He attacked a culture of alcohol. What he missed is again the personal responsibility. Again he is providing a preemptive defense of professional football.

If we are going to blame a culture, what about the culture of professional sports? Young men and women are given huge amounts of money and told just how great they are. All doors are opened, alcohol, drugs, fast cars, fast women (for the men), and the attitude that you have to prove you are hot stuff every minute of the day. We have athletes in shootings, rape, murder, suicide, DUIs, drugs, just to name a few. When these people are done with their careers, most are dropped onto the trash heap of history, unless they are trotted our when some new hot gun is about to eclipse some measure that they had achieved. A select few get to join the ranks of commentators, but that group is even more select than the limited population who get to play professional sports. And what of the fans? We demand entertainment, encourage outrageous activities and eat up the intrusions into private lives.

I personally do not by into any of this. Actions are personal. What happened in Kansas City is deplorable, but not unique. Every winter, there are reports of farmers who commit murder-suicide. Are they under the pressures of a professional athlete? What weapons do they use? Sure some are with guns, but not all. There are plenty of car accidents where the driver was under the influence and a passenger died. Are all of them wealthy, high profile personalities? Obviously not.

Let us pray for the families of all those who have died, not just the famous, but especially the young one’s. We can all hope for prayer and hope that these high profile events will make everyone think before making terrible decisions that have consequences.

December is finally here. The college football regular season is complete and the bowl invitations have been made. If your team is in one, the travel plans are in work. The sports talk shows are arguing the merits and weaknesses of each team and bowl pairing. Fans are excited by or bemoaning the season, the rankings and the talk shows.

The Big Ten conference has provided much of the fodder for discussion this year. The two best teams (Penn State and Ohio State) are not bowl eligible, and a five loss team (Wisconsin) is going to a BCS bowl because they absolutely trounced a theoretically better former Big XII team (Nebraska) 70-31. The Big XII put 9 out of 10 teams into bowl games with both of the new comers (TCU and WV) showing well and with 2 of the 4 teams who left (Nebraska and Texas A&M) getting bowl bids as well. The SEC is the SEC and a couple of weeks ago the writer decided that they would be the second half of the championship game. I am not saying that Alabama does not deserve to be there, I am just a little tired of a one loss SEC team being considered so much better than a one loss team from any other conference. In some polls, and SEC team can have two or even three losses and be considered better than a one loss team from anywhere else.

One last college comment, here is a big shout out to the Northern Illinois Huskies! Great season and good luck in the bowl game. Florida state will be a challenge, but you guys are playing on New Year’s Day!

In Pro football not much has changed over the last few weeks. The New York Giants as still slogging away leading the mediocre NFC East. Atlanta and San Francisco have control of their divisions. Green Bay and Chicago have to decide who gets the division and who gets the wild card. Although it looks like Seattle will get the other wild card, there are several other oh so average teams that could take it. On the AFC side, the divisions are pretty much locked up with Houston, Denver, and New England locked in, and Baltimore needing an absolute melt down to fail. The wild cards are also almost sewn up with really only three teams vying for the spots, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and Indianapolis. Indy has to play Houston twice while Pittsburgh and Cincinnati have to play each other.

In the end, the AFC wild card and the NFC north are the interesting battles. If you are a fan of one of the six teams trying to get the last NFC wild card spot, it will be interesting for you, but, honestly, none of those teams have shown well against any of the division leaders.

Yes, that is right, I have successfully completed the 2012 National Novel Writing Month challenge. I have captured 50,000 words of a novel titled “Return to Normal: Volume 1 of the Holleran Chronicles”. I know that this is a pretention title, presuming that there will be additional volumes, but I do have plans to keep writing on this theme. I have a long way to go to actually complete this novel. My first NaNoWriMo attempt took an additional two years to get into a form to publish. That book, “A Changed Man” is available on Amazon – free until the end of the day on Friday.
 

 

It was important that I finish the challenge early if I was to finish at all. We had guests in for Thanksgiving, which had me worried, and my work schedule is going to be crazy the rest of the year. I was lucky in that my guests let me write every day, in fact they encouraged it. I had all of my duties for the Thanksgiving meal completed by mid-morning. I have to set the formal table and make the dressing. Once the dressing is in a dish ready to go in the oven, I am no longer welcome in the kitchen. Too many cooks are a bad thing.

So, here is a synopsis of the book. The main character, Cole, is released from the army and sent out to grow crops and grow children and protect the roads. After exploring the country, he finds a location to settle down. He meets a woman, first known as Ish, later as Hon, and gets married. Ish/Hon’s past is left nebulous intentionally as I plan on making her the main character of volume 2. They have children and have to interact with people moving into the area, some with good intentions, some with bad. A settlement is started near their home as others try to fulfill the kings command of being fruitful and multiplying.

This work differs from my first work, which was a romance, in that there is a lot of violence and no sex. Obviously there are relations as they have children, but I did not include any descriptions, only innuendo. This was actually a lot of fun to write versus the detail of a man and a woman together. The action scenes were also fun.

I attribute my success to several thing. First, this was not my first attempt. I avoided the urge to edit and rewrite, I will have time enough to do that later. Second, I have been thinking about this story for almost a year. Third, I set aside time to write and since I have been under a lot of stress (work, kids in college, election, etc.) I have used the writing as a method of relaxation and transfer of emotion (you know you just cannot pull out a sword at work now-a-days).

I don’t know if writing can be used as relaxation for everyone, but it sure works for me. My wife prefers exercise which would be my last choice. That is one reason she is healthy and slender, while I, though health, am far from slender, can we say obese?

A note on statistics: 50,000 is about 75 pages of 11 point text in MSWord. The plan to follow is about 1,667 words per day to finish in 30 days. Here is a graph of my progress this year.

What you get if you succeed is a printable certificate and a selection of Icons to use in facebook, in your book, on your web page or on emails. Here is one of the icons that I got for completing the event.

Even if you do not get to 50,000 words, you still have the benefit of capturing your ideas on paper (or on your computer). Keep writing!

Football

This weekend was wild in the world of football. First on the college ranks, the championship picture went topsy-turvy. Both number 1 Kansas State and number 2 Oregon fell. Now Notre Dame is the only undefeated (that can compete for the championship, so we cannot count Ohio State). That makes one half of the game easy to set, but now there are eleven one loss teams that want that other spot. Now we should be down to six after conference championships, even there are three contenders in the SEC and a couple of other conferences that do not play championship games. (I have always had the opinion that if you do not win you conference, you should not be considered for the BCS championship game.) So, unless there is another shake up like this week, there will be plenty of people complaining about who gets chosen for the other side of the championship equation.

This last weekend also means that my Notre Dame friends will not be cheering for Texas on December 1 when they play Kansas State, unless of course they are afraid of playing Kansas State in the championship game.

In the NFL, the picture is getting much clearer as teams separate. On the NFC side, although not done with much strength, the Atlanta Falcons continue to lead. Chicago is keeping ahead of Green Bay and the Giants and 49ers are the default leaders of two week divisions. On the AFC side, Houston is leading again without a lot of punch this week. Baltimore is in the driver’s seat for second with New England and Denver as the default leaders of two more week divisions. The wild cards are also almost set in the AFC with Pittsburgh and Indianapolis making some separation even though they both lost. The NFC wild card is a bit more difficult with Green Bay, Tampa Bay and Seattle all in the hunt. This is way to early in the season to actually predict the final standings, but the character of all of the teams is becoming much clearer with only six games left.

NaNoWriMo

We are past the half way point of the NaNoWriMo. We only have one more weekend left, so you actually need to be much more than half way done. There have been a number of pep talk emails sent out by the NaNoWriMo staff. This is the point in the effort where you have captured most of the ideas you had floating around at the beginning of the effort. No what? You are not alone, even professional writers hit this plateau. This is my fourth effort, so I have been thing about this story line for most of the year, especially since I failed last year. I am at 35,000 words, which is well ahead of schedule. This may sound great, but now I face the Thanksgiving holiday with guests arriving any minute, and kids coming back from college. I just cannot plan any large batches of time to write, even if the ideas keep flowing.

Whether you are a NaNo or not, keep writing. There Is nothing to fear but blisters on your fingers.

I am at the half way point of my NaNoWriMo effort. I got to 25,000 words over the weekend, which is the best I have ever done it the four years I have been participating. But this is where the hard part begins. I have captured most of the ideas that I have had swimming around my head before November started, so now I have to come up with the next part of the story.

I hope that each of you is writing and having some success. The point of this competition is to get your story captured, or at least started. You are actually only competing against yourself and the calendar. I have to be brief so that I can continue on my novel. Like most of you, I do not get much time to write. I have mostly been grabbing the hour to two after my wife goes to bed which results in a very tired Martin at work. This weekend, once chores were done, I had the luxury of several hours to write. I hope to have more success next weekend and Thanksgiving weekend. I will be taking vacation from work the week of Thanksgiving, but that will not necessarily result in additional hours to write. We have people coming into town and we have to prepare for the holiday.

My first NaNoWriMo effort is available on Amazon: A Changed Man. It will be available for free download later this month, we will post it here. So good luck and good writing.

On college football, I must say it even though it is difficult (being a University of Texas graduate), but way to go Aggies. First loss for Alabama in how many years? Good work.

On professional football, to all of my Atlanta Falcon friends, good run. You had to expect to lose eventually, too bad it was to the Saints. Here’s hoping that you do not see another loss until you meet my Steelers in the Super Bowl.