Why I LOVE October

October is obviously the best month of the year and now that it's almost over (seriously, how did that happen?), I figured I'd better put together my little list of reasons why I love it before it's over...

1. Baseball postseason - NLCS, ALCS, and the World Series

2. Start of the NBA season

3. NFL season in full swing...

• 3b. Fantasy football fun!

• 3c. Sundays no longer suck!

4. College Football season!

5. Fall colors and leaves and autumn gorgeousness

6. Cool enough to be comfortable outside [without serious risk of heatstroke (even in the deep south), but not so cold you risk frostbite]

7. Tailgating!

8. Apple cider and hot chocolate with marshmallows

9. Pumpkin everything - pumpkin patches and carving, roasted pumpkin seeds, pumpkin ale, pumpkin cheesecake, pumpkin bread, pumpkin pie... yummm!

10. You get to finish it all up with Halloween - a holiday synonymous with candy, cute little kids that you only have to see before they get overly full of sugar, and dressing however the hell you want!

Athletes Behaving Badly (...or just broadcasting badly)

"I didn't kill nobody, I didn't rape nobody, so that's it." -Manny Ramirez, while explaining why he thought the media should move on from the fact that he was suspended for violation of anti-doping laws

I lied with the title... sort of. I'm actually just frustrated with the announcers for the College World Series. They fawn over various characters on the big stage in Omaha and completely ignore facts and reality. I feel like I blog a bit too much about sports, but I do watch a lot of them and one of the benefits of watching ESPN a lot, for a lot of years at this point, is that I can remember these past indiscretions that these pathetic excuses for journalists somehow forget to mention...

First, Robin Ventura is one of the commentators and has been for years. His colleagues help him re-live the glory days, when he played for Oklahoma State and set records that didn't even have all that much to do with skill (consecutive games with a hit... as opposed to batting titles and RBIs). However, they ignore what Ventura SHOULD be most famous for, which is taking a serious ASS KICKING from Nolan Ryan. Seriously, Nolan Ryan just punches him the head while he has Ventura in a headlock. It's amazing and you should REALLY watch it here on YouTube. And it's the only thing Ventura really did in the majors, but somehow his colleagues spend inning after inning, game after game, year after year, re-living the same minor accomplishments. Honestly, it's not really amoral or anything, it's just part of how I feel like allowing former athletes with borderline narcisstic personality disorders to simply talk for hours at a time is a bad idea.

Second, the bigger problem with athletes today, as spotlighted in the College World Series, is how journalists and commentators ignore enormous indiscretions on supposed role models. Augie Garrido, the coach of the Texas team, currently playing in the finals, is constantly revered for his wins and being a living legend in college baseball. This would be fine if old Augie didn't get a DUI this year. Yeah, he's not the only one to get a DUI - not the first or last famous, infamous, or regular Joe to get one. But the problem is that Augie is a supposed role model. He recruits high school boys and tells their parents that he has a whole program and turns them into model young men. If he's anything like any other college coach, he tells moms and dads everywhere that his program is about more than just the sport, but about learning life lessons and molding these sons into the men they will become. And Augie gets a DUI and a few months later we're all pretending that he's still this great role model for young men, that his actions didn't invalidate the words he's been spewing for years now... shouldn't the people struggling for something to talk about for three or four hours, who are supposed to be journalists, mention this rather than sweeping it under the rug? I thought maybe I'd been wrong about when Augie had this incident, but it was this year, the end of January, as the article is still on ESPN.com here.

I know hypocrisy runs rampant and these aren't really injustices - particularly given that Manny Ramirez gets to go back towards the majors by making a minor league start earlier tonight OR that the governor of South Carolina disappeared, probably to a nudist weekend despite his conservative stance on everything - but it's just frustrating and it's something that annoys me on a regular basis because I just think ESPN should screen and test these people a bit better before giving them three to four hours a night to talk to the nation. But maybe it's just me...

Super-Regionals by the Numbers

It's the baseball equivalent of the Sweet Sixteen, the Super-Regionals! ...And I feel super-lucky to have both my undergrad alma mater and current graduate school in the mix and get to cheer them on! But I noticed some things about this year's teams that I thought I'd share...

The Sweet 16: Louisville, Cal State-Fullerton, Arkansas, Florida State, Virginia, Mississippi, Rice, LSU, TCU, Texas, Southern Miss, Florida, Clemson, Arizona State, East Carolina, & North Carolina

Of the 16 teams...

• 4 ACC teams: ECU, UNC, Clemson, & Florida State
• 4 SEC teams: Ole Miss, LSU, Florida, & Arkansas
• 3 Conference-USA teams: Southern Miss, Rice, & East Carolina
• 3 teams are in Texas: Rice, Texas, and Texas Christian (TCU)
• 3 post season match-ups: Clemson is one of only a few teams that has had post-season games for all 3 major sports this year (a bowl game in football, the NCAA tournament in basketball, and the current berth in baseball)
• 2 in state-rivalries match-up: North Carolina (UNC and East Carolina) and Texas (TCU and Texas)
• 2 Tigers: Clemson & LSU (are the tigers, though only one has a live tiger mascot)
• 0: previous trips to the super-regionals for UVA
  
• 0: teams from last year's championship series (UGA and Fresno State, the runner-up and winner, respectively)
• 1996: last time that Rice didn't win the regular season title for its conference