All posts by Christopher D. Bennett

Baier, Football, Russell

Week 2 of Highly Inaccurate Sports Prognostication

In Week 1 Jason Baier had probably the greatest sports prognostication week of his life. Admittedly, Week 1 games are always pretty easy to pick, but he only missed ONE game. He missed Grand View beating Drake mercilessly. Yes, once again this year I will not count it against you if you picked Iowa State to win and they don’t. I also won’t give you credit for picking against Iowa State and getting it right. My game. My rules.

So here are the Week 1 Standings:

1. Jason Baier – 17-1 .944
2. Russell Kennerly – 14-2 .875
3. Christopher D. Bennett – 14-4 .778

Although I should deduct points to RMK for being too cowardly to pick a winner in the FSU-OSU game and the Boone-Ballard game.

There is no real reason to dwell on Iowa State’s shellacking. It was maybe the most pathetic thing I’ve seen in Jack Trice Stadium. Up there with their loss to Drake back in 1985. Drake dropped football the next year.

I don’t care how good the Bizon are in their division, there is absolutely no excuse for getting completely whipped by a Divsion Whatever opponent. Especially not 2 years in a row!

We could go over went wrong, but it seemed like everything went wrong. To make matters worse, we lost Bundrage for the season. By far our most explosive offensive threat, gone. 4 plays into the season. On a running play. Maybe this is why Todd Blythe never blocked. As sad and as pathetic as our “new” offense looked, the defense wasn’t much better.

They gave up over 500 yards.
The last touchdown run of the game was over 60 yards by a fat, short dude that I’m pretty sure I could have ran down.
A cornerback was our leading tackler. (Tribune with 11)
A backup safety was the 2nd leading tackler. (Syrie with 9)
Another safety was the 4th leading tackler. (Mutcherson with 8)

The good news about the defense is that their problems looked to be from being in the wrong place and not from missed tackles. It is easier to correct players being in the wrong place than it is missing tackles. Most of the issues on defense come from inexperience. That will be fixed over time (unless we keep getting players thrown out of the game for bogus targeting penalties), but in the meantime, the defense is going to be rough.

The good news for the offense? Until Farniok went out of the game, the offense looked pretty good. After he left the game? The offense looked an awful lot like last year’s offense.

But why dwell on the past? That is what Nebraska fans do.

THE ONLY GAME THAT MATTERS

This week’s opponent: Kansas State. Basically North Dakota State. Only bigger, faster, and stronger. Quarterbacked by a quarterback that wanted to come to Iowa State and we were like, “Nah, we’re good.”

Kansas State is 1 of 2 conference opponents that Paul Rhoads has not defeated. (Okay, technically he never defeated Texas A&M or Missouri, but are we really going to count those turncoats?)

This made me wonder, has an Iowa State coach ever defeated all of their conference opponents.?

Chizik – he ONLY defeated Colorado and Kansas State. Yeah, it could always be worse. Remember that guy?
McCarney – Never beat Texas or Oklahoma
Walden – Never beat Colorado, beat Oklahoma AND Nebraska. Never beat Colorado
Criner – Never beat Oklahoma or Nebraska
Duncan – Never beat Oklahoma, Nebraska or KANSAS!! Did tie Oklahoma once though.
Bruce – Never beat Oklahoma
Majors – Never beat Nebraska, Colorado, or Oklahoma
Stapleton – Never beat Missouri. Tied Missouri once.

That goes all the way back to 1958, when Oklahoma State rejoined the Big 8!

Paul Rhoads has made a career out of exorcising many of Iowa State’s historical demons. I think he will be the first coach since God knows when to have bested every team in our conference. First Kansas State, then Oklahoma.

I know what you are thinking, Iowa State just got crushed by a school that has 1300 students, if you count goats. Which I do.

But one thing Paul Rhoads does well is circle the wagons.

The week before he beat Texas, He lost 52-0 to Oklahoma.

Paul Rhoads circles the wagons. The defense licks it wounds and mans up. They force 3 turnovers. Richardson explodes for a huge game, finally. Touchdowns by West, Bibbs, Nealy, and Daley.

Iowa State 28 Kansas State 24

OTHER CYCLONE STATE GAMES

Iowa struggles to get by Ball State
Drake rebounds to knock off Truman State
Grand View punishes Graceland

BIG 12 MATCHUPS

(4) Oklahoma pounds Tulsa
Oklahoma State puts 70 on Missouri State
Kansas nips SE Missouri State
Texas barely gets by BYU
West Virginia creams Towson
(10) Baylor shuts out Northwestern State
Texas Tech (a team wildly overrated by Jason Baier) struggles to get past UTEP

TOP 25 MATCHUPS

(8) Michigan State beats up on (3) Oregon in a rare Big Ten Power 5 win.
(11) Stanford manhandles (15) USC

BIG TEN GAME OF THE WEEK

Michigan knocks off (17) Notre Dame

SEC GAME OF THE WEEK

Tennessee over Arkansas State but close.

PAC 12 GAME OF THE WEEK

Arizona over UTSA

ACC GAME OF THE WEEK

(5) Ohio State pounds Virginia Tech – Another rare Big Ten Power 5 win, if you consider the ACC a Power 5 conference, which I don’t.

Coach Mac Bowl Watch

SMU over North Texas, sorry Coach Mac, rebuilding year.

NO FUN LEAGUE Games of Moderate Interest

As you may or may not know, I don’t live in or have ever lived in:

New York
Washington D. C.
Philadelphia
Dallas
Minnesota
Green Bay
Detroit
Chicago
New Orleans
Atlanta
North or South Carolina
Tampa Bay
Seattle
San Francisco
St. Louis
Miami
Boston or New England
Buffalo
Baltimore
Cincinnati
Pittsburgh
Cleveland
Houston
Tennessee
Jacksonville
Indianapolis
Denver
Oakland
San Diego
Kansas City

So, I don’t really have any passion for the NFL. Most of my picks are based on whether or not Tony Romo plays for a particular team or not.

Seahawks over Packers
Saints over Falcons
Ravens over Bengals
Bears over Bills
Chiefs over Titans
49ers over Romo
Broncos over Colts
Lions over Giants
Cardinals over Chargers

Friday Night Lights

Boone Toreadors pound the Gilbert Tigers. It was embarrassing enough to lose to a town without a grocery store last week. No way it happens twice. Plus Tigers? That is like not even trying with your nickname.
Fort Dodge Dodgers over the Sioux City North Stars. I hate nicknames that try to get cutesy.
Audubon Wheelers over the IKM-Manning Wolves. Wolves are a badass animal, but as a sports team nickname – G-E-N-E-R-I-C. You are a half step away from being the Wildcats.

As always, please feel free to place your predictions in the COMMENTS section.

Black & White, Nature, Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day 0122


Storm clouds.
Clouds

Sometimes when I look at clouds, I think about pedophiles.

Did it get really dark in here? Let me explain. Well part of the story.

A guy I knew from high school, (I definitely wouldn’t call him a friend. A friend of a friend) ran an email discussion group. An actual friend of mine invited me to join. He knew I enjoyed science fiction (to a degree) and fantasy (to a lesser degree) and so he felt that I might be a fresh voice in this discussion group that was a cacophony of noise.

That is my way of saying that I didn’t fit into this discussion group at all. These guys would type out a thousand words about how letter 72 on page 365 of THE LORD OF THE RINGS movie was not exactly the same as it was in the book.

There was also much discussion about the CGI that George Lucas added to his old timey Star Wars movies. Even if I tried really, really hard I couldn’t care at all about 99.9% of their discussions. When I did respond to the threads, it was mostly just trolling to see if I could get a reaction.

Then one day, the guy that ran the group sent out an email with a few attachments. One of the attachments was a collection of pictures of a girl who was the daughter of a couple of his co-workers. About 9-10 years of age I would have guessed. The second attachment was a short story, going into explicit detail about the author having sex with the girl. Thankfully, I don’t remember much about the story other than it ended with the girl’s father calling them to come downstairs for waffles.

This same guy also ran a website he called something like MASTER OF CLOUDS. Although I don’t remember the exact name of the website I do remember the website’s tagline: “The web’s #1 source for high quality cloud pictures.”

While there is obviously more to the story, that ends in me losing respect for lots of people and the Cloud Master losing his job, I’ll just leave it that this is the reason that sometimes when I look at clouds, I think of pedophiles.

A reason that you don’t want inside this brain.