Well I haven't written on my blog in forever. Thats what happens when you have 16 credits of ridiculously hard science classes, a job, and of course an amazing girlfriend. A guy's gotta have priorities right? Luckily in three weeks I'm finally graduating from BYU. Which means all that time spent on studying will be focused on having an amazing summer and actually enjoying myself. It also opens up time to actually write about the Mariners, who I will be following very closely as always. I'll also be posting about other thing besides the Mariners over the summer, mainly providing previews for the Seahawks, and BYU football and basketball.
I wish I would have had time to write about all the great sporting events that have gone on over the last couple of months. I've failed to write about the World Baseball Classic, which I absolutely loved! Even though my Dominicans or Americans couldn't take home the gold, I was still happy to see the USA actually put up a fight this time (pictured below). Hopefully next time both the Dominicans and the USA will take it even more seriously and show people who the real baseball countries are. People who say that event shouldn't be played don't love baseball. It's great for baseball
Then there's March Madness. I can't say enought about college basketball. It's so full of emotion every year. I still can't get that picture out of my head from 3 years ago when Gonzaga's Adam Morrison was just crying his guts out on the floor (pictured below). I love it almost as much as college football. In my mind, college football has a better product but fails to provide the fans with what they want, or what should be done, which is a playoff similar to college basketball. I'm not saying 64 teams, but I think an 8, 12, or 16 team playoff is a drastic improvement over the BCS.
When I have more time to post in the summer, I'll go over BYU's basketball season and discuss what needs to be done to take this team to the next level of advancing in the NCAA tourny. They had a great year though. Three straight conference championships is an amazing accomplishment and coach Rose (pictured below) should be proud. He, in my mind, is an amazing coach and has done miracles with the BYU program, which I cannot say about Bronco.
Finally, I going to Vegas for the first time and its going to be amazing! We're going to see the Mariners play their final game of spring training on Saturday so hopefully I'll have some pictures up next week about the trip. It'll be good to actually get an unnofficial spring break and catch some rays! Oh ya, we'll be staying at the Mirage (pic below) if anyone wants to party it up.
2 comments:
Woah. A not-so-subtle jab at Bronco. Please expound.
Rose has maximized the talent he has had at BYU. I could go on forever about some of the bad coaching moves I've seen from Bronco. First, his record in big games (TCU and Utah plus a few good non-league teams) is not good. 0-5 in 2005, 3-2 in 2006, 3-2 in 2007, 0-3 in 2008. Many of those wins were very close games where we were favored and should have easily won. The only one that I can think of that we won and weren't favored was the TCU game in 2006. And the two times we beat Utah, we were very fortunate to even win those games. Those records are very subjective, as far as choosing which games are tough games, so you can argue the other side as well.
Most of my complaints stem from coaching strategies/philosophies that Bronco uses. I'm not a big fan of the whole "football as the 5th priority thing." I'm a fan of everything in its place. There is a time for football and a time for school, family, faith, etc. I think other teams have a huge advantage over us because they prepare like football is their #1 priority whereas we prepare like football is our 5th priority. Now I agree that family, faith, and school are all more important in the big picture but that does not mean that you prepare any less for football. The limited practices for last year's bowl game is a perfect example.
Mostly I can't stand some of our game plans. First on offense, which I realize isn't Bronco's game, but he still should have some say into what goes on. We are too vanilla. We don't have a running game that goes north/south which would utilize our big OL. Instead we try to pull our OL and go east/west on all our running plays. Not utilizing Unga's power style is a mistake. In the passing game, we should use more screens to slow down the pass rush. We don't even have them in the playbook, supposedly b/c they say "it doesn't fit our style"? what? How does not using a great play not go into our style? It would keep the defense on its toes and slow down the pass rush.
Now for defense. How can we blitz only %10 of the time? That is ridiculous. I've never understood the philosophy of "bend but don't break". Be aggresive! Dont rush 3 guys everytime. I'm not saying blitz every play. But mix it up. Keep the other teams offense guessing. The biggest mind boggler is that we play our DBs over 10 yards off and give the other team a free 10 yard play whenever they want. Oh and we never practice with pads or practice tackling which results in poor tackling technique and lack of toughness that we saw all of last year. Yes it might keep us healthier but ends up as a negative result.
Wow I went on way too long but I just needed to vent a bit about some things that are frustrating to watch as a fan. There are plenty of other things I could go over but don't have the time or energy to discuss. Maybe I'll post about them later.
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