I always enjoyed watching him pitch in a Braves uniform because I knew he wasn’t out there trying to overpower the batters – he was trying to (and succeeding) outsmart them.  Don’t get me wrong, I like watching pitchers that can throw in the triple digits.  It’s fun to watch batters try to catch up to it.  But it’s fun to watch batters being made to look stupid by someone who throws a 90 MPH fastball.

After he left the Braves, I didn’t keep up with him all that much.  I think he was with the Dodgers for a year before I realized he’d left the Cubs.  But any time I happened across a game where he was pitching, I sat down and watched it.

Baseball will miss Maddux, and I’m sure he’ll miss it as well.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see him in some sort of coaching or manager role for a team somewhere down the road.

Fulmer has been the head coach at UT for 17 years, and in 1998 UT won the national championship after an undefeated season.  However, in the years following, the football program has gone downhill.  They’ve won SEC division titles and been to several bowl games, but they haven’t seen the same success as they had in past years.

My personal opinion is that this has been a long time coming.  This is the SEC.  We’re supposed to be great, but we haven’t been.  The attitude with a lot of high school recruits is that they don’t want to play for coach Fulmer.  Eli Manning is a perfect example – he played for Cutcliffe rather than Fulmer.  The idea was that Cutcliffe did more for his older brother Peyton as an offensive coordinator/quarterback coach than Fulmer did.

I don’t hate Fulmer.  But I do think that UT kept him longer than they should have.  When local recruits wouldn’t even play for him (Brandon Warren), a red flag should have gone up.  Yes, I know Warren is there now, but his decision was an automatic one when his grandmother became ill.

Some people feel sorry for Fulmer.  I don’t.  Well, maybe I do to a point – the whole deal probably could have been handled better to possibly save some public embarrassment, etc.  But it’s not like he is struggling to make ends meet.  He’s better off than any of us can ever hope to be, financially speaking.  Looking at it from that perspective, I have no sympathy.

Maybe I’m just a cold-hearted person.  But the UT Football program has needed a new direction for a long time.  The years to come will be rough – the new coach and his new staff (I hate to see Chavis go, but he probably will) will take a while to build their type of team.  But if UT can hire a staff that can be true to the SEC attitude of greatness, it will be worth it for the team.

My purpose for this post is simply an interesting observation I made.  I caught the news of the win this morning on the news.  You know, the same old stuff for any team that wins – X team hasn’t won a World Series since 19xx.  This town sure is excited.

That’s where it turned different.  The next scene it showed looked like a huge riot in some 3rd world country.  Minus the burning cars.  There were fires in the streets though, and people shooting off roman candles made it look all that much more like a big riot.  It looked almost like people launching RPG’s everywhere.

Now, my mind may be exaggerating some of this, but this was my honest-to-goodness first impression of the scene.  Just an interesting observation…

But then America began getting professional athletes from home and from abroad, in an effort to guarantee victory.  Only on the American teams would you find Asian, Hispanic and African athletes.  For the China teams, you’d only see Chinese athletes.  For Mexican teams, you’d only find Mexicans.  I’m not a racist or anything, but does something seem a little off?  Yes, I agree that there are a lot of people from around the world that simply love America and want to live here.  But Americans should represent America – not everyone else.  I won’t go into a lot of the politics that are going on behind the scenes to get these foreign athletes to compete for America.

Which brings me to my real reason for hating the Olympic games lately.  For the past several cycles of the Olympic games, it seems that you hear about nothing but the politics surrounding the games.  I’m sure 99.9% of you are aware that the games are in China this year.  Lots of people are protesting the games because of how China is violating human rights.  I honestly just simply haven’t cared for the past few years because it’s always ‘something’.  I realize the world is falling apart politically, but when its stories are mixed in with everything, it gets a little tiring to hear about it.  I suppose the key here is that I, along with many of you I’m sure, need a break from all the political mumbo-jumbo every once in a while.

So if I don’t care, then why am I even bothering to write about it, you may ask?  I suppose this is my own little form of protest.  Although I technically don’t care enough about it to protest, so I guess this is more of a 4-paragraph essay about me not caring.

Anyway, I’ll stop ranting now.  I’m for the Giants if you haven’t figured that out by now.  I’m happy for Eli that he has made it this far this quickly.  The Giants gave the Patriots a good run for their money earlier in the year.  Maybe they can hold them off this time and get the title.  Anything for the Patriots to lose.

When he went pro, he went to Indianapolis.  He didn’t do all that great to start with, but he learned the pro game extremely well.  He learned it so well, in fact, that he is currently one of the best, if not the best quarterback in the NFL today.  The way he reads defenses is probably the best in the league.  To see him change a play at the line of scrimmage is a normal sight.  You’d almost worry if he didn’t change the play.

Alas, anyone who has followed the playoffs knows that the Colts didn’t make it past the first round.  They lost to the Chargers, and it really was a great game.  They kept stealing the lead from each other pretty much the entire game.  But San Diego kept it in the end.

So now who am I rooting for?  GO PACKERS!  I’ve liked watching Brett Favre ever since I was a kid.  I think it’s awesome how he’s come back after the troubles he’s had on the field.  He’s even talking about staying another year from what I’ve heard.  Favre doesn’t approach the game like a job, as most other quarterbacks do, even Manning.  Favre genuinely looks like he enjoys the game – he acts like a little kid out on the field sometimes.  I’d like to see him and the Pack make it this year.