Hans' Thoughts

Into the Lion's Den

2012-01-04T20:41:00.000-08:00

I have attended the Iowa caucuses each election year since we moved here in 2002. In the two prior events, the Democratic nomination was up for grabs and my wife and caucused as Democrats. Our first experience, in 2004, was a fascinating indoctrination into this arcane spin on neighborhood democracy. In 2008, I was an enthusiastic Obama supporter, even rallying neighbors with a pre-caucus reception at our home and walking en masse to the caucus site. But this year Obama is running unopposed. My wife was happy to sit out this year. But I, ever the student of political science and aspiring journalist, went to the county recorder office a few weeks ago and registered myself as a Republican. It was time to see how the other half lives!

January evenings in Iowa are typically below freezing and the land is usually covered with ice. This year, as many of you know, has been unusually dry and warm across the Midwest. It was clear, a relatively pleasant 35 degrees, and devoid of ice and snow. Unlike prior years, my assigned caucus site was not within easy walking distance from home so I unromantically drove my car to the local elementary school.

The rules are clear: the caucus meeting starts at 7:00 pm and late comers will NOT be seated. When I arrived at 10 minutes to 7, there was a huge line to get in. I was allowed through and was given one of the last ballots they had. This was a major difference in format of the caucuses between the two parties. Each political party makes up their own rules for the caucuses. The Democrats hold an open vote: you stand in a corner of the room for your candidate and the party leaders count bodies. Yep- that open! And if a candidate doesn’t meet a certain threshold to be “viable” those voters need to re-choose. Seriously. It’s really weird and really cool at the same time.

The Republicans, however, are much more official. They have a secret ballot. You write your candidate’s name on a blank piece of paper (write in candidates are allowed), and drop it in a box. The votes are counted in a back room with volunteer observers, and the results are announced. That’s it- no reallocation for hopeless candidates. Just one vote and go home. It’s more like traditional democracy, but kinda boring.

Before the vote, however, volunteers are invited to speak for 5 minutes in favor of each candidate. The order was determined by random. First up was the representative for Rick Santorum. He was not particularly enthusiastic, but spoke humbly and honestly. Remarkably, the speaker chose to highlight Santorum’s Foreign Affairs experience rather than his conservative social agenda! Interesting.

Next up was Michelle Bachman. No one volunteered to speak for her, so the Santorum speaker stood to say a few words. He couldn’t endorse her as a leader or a presidential candidate, but he wanted to express his appreciation of her as a person. He teared up as he recalled meeting her on the National Mall in Washington and how impressed she was that she took a moment to focus her attention on his daughter. I may have many negative impressions about Bachman, but this guy’s story was touching.

The rep for Ron Paul was a young, local small business owner and emphasized Paul’s hands-off regulation, cutting of taxes, and fiscal plans.

Jon Huntsman? Anyone? Bueller? Beuller? Lesson here? When you ignore Iowa, Iowans ignore you. Besides, his moderate views had few friendly ears in the room.

Rommney’s rep was a former schoolteacher who lives around the corner from us. She used the blackboard and tried to speak professionally about Romney, emphasizing his business acumen and his ability to accomplish things in a very liberal state. Next up was another neighbor to speak for Rick Perry. He was a veteran, and it was important for him to vote only for candidates with military experience (Paul and Perry). He had also worked and traveled in Texas throughout Perry’s career and had interacted with him frequently. (notice a trend here? Iowans rarely vote for someone they haven’t met!) He spoke very well and enthusiastically for a candidate everyone in the room knew was dead in the water.

The last speaker, for Newt Gringrich, turned out to be the closest neighbor to us, just down the road. He yard is distinctively schizoid, emblazoned with the signs for each and every Republican candidate. This guy wears his GOP credentials on his sleeve. He began his talk by relating a story about our recent windstorm. For his yard, it was a “wind poll”. The Ron Paul sign flew off into the wild blue yonder, as outlandish as the candidate himself. Rommney’s was ripped and split into two, like the two sides of his political personality. Cain’s was just gone- no where to be seen, vanished along with the candidate. Bachman’s and Perry’s went on wild rides, carried by the wind high into the air only to come crashing down to earth moments later. But one sign held firm: the Newt. And this guy took it as a sign (pun intended).

But my amusement with his speech soon ended. To link himself with Newt’s proud role as a Professor of History, the speaker launched into a long description of his own genealogy. It seems he can trace himself back to British nobility and Virginia plantation owners. He said that Newt knows what it means to be an American and that this country is for Americans. Unfortunately, his implication could not have been more clear: America is for white Europeans, not Kenyan-born foreigners. For the first time tonight, I became very uncomfortable. I texted to Kristi that I felt like I needed a shower after that bunch of jingoistic crap.

With the speeches done, we voted by secret ballot and the box was carried away to be counted. Since they announce the results to the room before they call Des Moines with the tally, I stuck around to hear the outcome. In the intervening time, party members were invited to propose planks for the state party convention later this Spring.

The first proposal, to promise to eliminate waste, was a no-brainer and passed by consent. The second was to amend the Iowa constitution to state that Iowans have a right to keep and bear arms. Huh? Apparently the federal government’s second amendment that states this very thing is not good enough for this party. Weird.

The third plank was to eliminate smoking in casinos. A little background here: a few years ago, with a Democratic house, senate, and governor in Des Moines, the state passed a ban on smoking in bars and restaurants but exempted casinos. This proposal aimed to correct the Democrats act of “selling out to the gambling industry” and complete the protection of workers in those facilities. Just one problem: Republicans are against further regulation of businesses, not for it! The proposal was narrowly defeated.

Finally, a woman proposed a plank stating that life begins at conception. This one was met with considerable controversy, with one young college age man standing up and challenging that it was time to “separate politics and religion”. After a spirited debate with a few vocal pro-choice attendees, the “personhood” plank was adopted by a large margin.

Finally, the moment came we were all waiting for; the results. In our precinct, the final total votes were: Santorum 25, Bachman 5, Paul 41, Huntsman 4, Romney 81, Perry 15, Gringrich 22. This was not very reflective of the statewide results, where Santorum tied Romney. Living in a college town, we are far more likely to have moderate voters or independents in the caucus, and they show a strong preference for Romney.

Iowans are now very happy to get on with their lives and to stop getting dinnertime phone calls from each candidate. Your serve, New Hampshire.

Fight On,

Hans

The Day of the Dog and Blow up the Big East

2011-11-29T09:09:00.000-08:00

Sorry I haven’t written in a while. I was working on one story or another and I kept getting distracted by the great games, surprising developments in the Heisman race, coaches getting fired, and the other wonderful things that keep this game so interesting. Last weekend, the family and I went to Des Moines for the weekend, staying in a hotel, indulging on Iowa’s version of foodie heaven (Gateway Market in downtown Des Moines), and filling the car with Christmas gifts. While there, I enjoyed the Court Street District bars while watching USC – UCLA. You need not wonder if I enjoyed the 50 – 0 thrashing of our rivals; it was simply glorious. And it served to highlight the ridiculous farce that will be the Pac-12 championship Friday between the mighty Ducks and the beaten down Bruins led by a lame-duck coach (pun intended).

I had been working on several stories, so I will present two here and the third later on if we ever get a slow news cycle (not likely this year!)

Day of the Dog

Let Hercules himself do what he may, The cat will mew, and dog will have his day.
[1600-1 Shakespeare Hamlet v. i. 286]

You all know the story by now, but it's worth repeating: Saturday the 19th was one of the greatest days in underdog history. Sure, it is possible that four top- 10 teams have lost in the same day before, but never with all of them losing to double-digit underdogs.

The BCS carnage began Friday night with the greatest upset in Iowa State history. The Cyclones have had some big wins in their long and not-very-storied history of pathetic football. They upset Texas last year, bit Nebraska the year before that, and knock off in-state rivals Iowa about every 3 years or so. OSU went into the game with their ticket all but punched for the Big 12 championship at home in 2 weeks. A win over Oklahoma and they get to play for the national title. All they had to do was survive a pesky 27 point underdog.

Oops.

I was working in the ED at the time, and the game was on in every patient room I visited. I had patients even wait for the play to be over before their answered my question, "How bad is your pain?" We knew the game ended when a cheer erupted from the waiting room. Kinda bizarre when you think about it.

A somewhat overlooked top 10 loss occurred Saturday afternoon when Clemson got hammered by NC State. Clemson had clinched their ACC division and had no chance at the BCS Championship, so the game was relatively meaningless. But that's no reason to roll over and play dead!

Things really got interesting Saturday night when ABC offered regional coverage of Oklahoma-Baylor and USC-Oregon. Being in a state with a Big 12 team (the aforementioned Cyclones) we were saddled with the OU-Baylor game. Fortunately, ESPN3 is the greatest invention since wireless internet, and I was able to watch both simultaneously.

My wife fell asleep as we watched the game, me getting more and more excited as the night wore on and the Trojans didn't collapse. I shook her awake after the missed field goal, giddy with the upset. Still smarting from the beating that the Ducks handed her Stanford Cardinal, she was almost as happy as I was. We celebrated the win, not even noticing how Baylor held off Oklahoma for the third major upset in 24 hours.

Blow Up the Big East

As you may have noticed, I have not been commenting in any detail on the rash of conference realignment this year. I was in favor of the development of the 4 16-team super conferences because it would directly lead to a playoff system. The money flowing into those conferences would help the college presidents they don’t need the bowls or the NCAA and they could put together a blockbuster 4 team playoff completely on their own, keeping all the money. Interestingly, the legal principle for this lies in a lawsuit brought by Universities of Oklahoma and Georgia against the NCAA in 1984 (NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma, 468 U.S. 85 (1984). The US Supreme Court declared the NCAA to be in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and sided with OU and UGA that they could pursue television contracts on their own behalf, free of limitations from the NCAA (the lawsuit specifically was in regards to a association of colleges known as the CFA). Not surprisingly, Notre Dame was a key proponent of the case and went on to model the first school to have an exclusive television contract. A model envied and built upon by Texas (UT) in their development of the Longhorn Network.

Here’s where conference realignment is directly related.

For the duration of the Big 12’s existence, UT has irritated its conference colleagues by not sharing revenue. In that league, the rule had been that the teams earn money based on their TV appearances. Since Texas was always on, they got the most. And with the advent of the Longhorn network, they stood to profit solo on the backs of their Big 12 teammates. The Big 10, however, shares all revenue from both bowls and TV, including the added revenue from their Big 10 Network. Nebraska, frustrated with the “eat what you kill” attitude of the Big 12, jumped to the Big 10 the moment they had the chance. As we saw this year, frustration over the Longhorn Network claimed two more victims, Texas A&M and Missouri.

As the Big 12 started to disintegrate, Oklahoma looked to the Pac-12 for salvation, saying they’ve reconsidered the offer they turned down in 2010. They were ready to bring Texas along to sweeten the deal. (Conquest Chronicles, a sweet USC fan blog, has some good sources on this, http://www.conquestchronicles.com/2011/9/22/2443356/conference-realignment-closing-the-book#storyjump) But this September, the Pac- 12 said no. The conference presidents are happy with the current structure of the league and its culture is geared towards slow, careful growth. More importantly, the Pac-12 has revenue sharing like the Big-10 and the Longhorn Network was a non-starter (note- the Pac-10 always shared bowl revenue but TV profits were weighted towards the LA schools. USC and UCLA gave these up when expanding to the Pac-12). As a result, UT and OU were disinvited and left to find their own way to save the Big 12.

Enter the Big East.

Affectionately known as the Big Least, this glorious conglomeration of the best basketball schools in the country somehow have lobbied, cajoled, and bribed their way into keeping an automatic BCS bid despite their smaller membership and lack of on-the-field success. Sure, occasional runs by Cincinnati or Louisville have kept the league competitive, but ever since the defection of Miami, Virginia Tech, and Boston College to the ACC in 2004, the Big Least has limped along as the playground for West Virginia and Pitt. The extra efforts to keep this league in the BCS is evidenced by the NCAA proclaiming last year that TCU’s “data will transfer.” When the TCU agreed last year to leave the Mountain West for the Big East, the years of Horned Frogs wins as MWC members will count in favor of the Big East when determining their eligibility for continued automatic qualifier (AQ) status. Yeah, you read that right!

Now the ACC has poached Syracuse and Pitt, and West Virginia and TCU want out. Although the legal wrangling will need some time to play out, the Big Least is falling apart rapidly as a football conference. UT and OU, struggling to save their league, saw an opportunity and extended invites to West Virginia and TCU. The key concession UT had to make? Yep, you guessed it; all members (including UT!) agreed to revenue sharing! Now it looks like Louisville wants to get in to the Big 12 party as well.

The Big East is dead. Don’t kid yourself- their attempts to add Boise State (In the east? Really? Really?), Air Force (again, east?), SMU, Houston, and Central Florida are simply desperate, poorly planned attempts to rearrange the deck chairs. I look forward to the fall of 2012 when this Big East mess is more settled. I am certain they will lose their AQ status (for the second year in a row, the Big East league champ is unranked!), but another possibility that has been floated is to eliminate the AQ status altogether. This makes sense, as it permits the East Coast hooligans propping up the Big Least charade to save face and move into a system where the larger 12 and 14 team conferences can get more than 2 teams each in the BCS.

Better yet, get rid of the BCS altogether! Bring on the super conferences and the playoff. I’m ready and so is the rest of college football!

Fight On,

Hans

Distractions

2011-11-14T22:21:00.000-08:00

I went to Ann Arbor this weekend to hang out with GoBlue! and Keebz to sample the fine football culture that is the University of Michigan. I intended this blog entry to be an amusing travelogue of the bars and restaurants of Ann Arbor, expecting to write of story of stumbling home through a haze of bratwurst, marzen, and whiskey.

Well, actually, that’s pretty much exactly what happened. After watching the start to the college basketball season on TV at GoBlue’s house, we sipped whiskey flights at my favorite bar, Ashley's. From there, we were drowned by an enormous 9-piece beer flight at the Jolly Pumpkin Tavern and Brewery. Steve also introduced me to Conner's, an Irish pub with murals of James Joyce (I am happy to report that they serve Guinness properly with the appropriate waiting time). Finally, I finished long after midnight at the Heidelburg, a German pub with an arched roof rathskeller straight out of the Beatles' Hamburg day (Marzen. Fantastic. No idea what brewery. Who cares at that point?)

It was a great weekend and I wish I could write of only that. But the tragic and stunning developments in State College have dominated the psyche and the headlines of college football, and I am obligated to comment.

Let me start with the few elements that are not in dispute. The real victims here are the many children who have had their psychology permanently disturbed and have been robbed of joy of childhood. Gerry Sandusky is a very ill, evil man who does not deserve any pity. Athletic Director Tim Curley and Senior VP for Finance and Business Gary Schultz had ample opportunity and legal duty to notify the police and have an investigation initiated in 2002 when then graduate assistant coach Mike McQueary witnessed sexual abuse occurring in the locker room shower.

Other parts of this story are more confusing and open to interpretation. Events unfolded quickly this week. On Wednesday, the board of Trustees terminated the employment of University President Graham Spanier and Head Coach Joe Paterno. A few members of the State College community reacted. ….… poorly. The question that reasonable to ask is: should Spanier have been fired? Should Paterno be allowed to finish this season and then retire? After reading the indictment, reflecting on mandatory reporter laws, and considering the entire context of Sandusky's behavior, I believe firing Spanier and Paterno is justified and essential.

I do not condone, but I understand the emotional reaction of the students to Paterno's firing. In a way, the Nittany Lion family is going through the Kubler-Ross stages of grief. The first stage is Denial ("Sandusky is a slime! JoPa did what was required of him- he turned it over to his superiors"). Then, Anger: the riots of Wednesday night. Next, bargaining ("JoPa needs to leave, if he retires after the end of the football season, that would be ok"). Before one can reach Acceptance, one goes through Depression. That is what we saw this weekend: the candlelight vigil, prayers and flowers outside the Paterno home, and a prayer at midfield amid a stadium in tears. Playing the game against Nebraska, despite the loss, is a solid start to the healing process.

How did we get to this point? The indictment (http://www.crewof42.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Sandusky-indictment.pdf) details the facts of the case as discovered by Pennsylvania Grand Jury. But they are not laid out chronologically. Look at the sequence of events again is this timeline constructed by the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/11/11/sports/ncaafootball/sandusky.html). You'll notice that the 2002 incident witnessed by McQueary is in the middle of the sequence; there were many episodes prior to that. The question to ask here is: what did Joe Paterno know about Sandusky and when did he know it?

On New Year's Day in 1998, Sandusky brought a boy to the Outback Bowl with the team (even listing him as a family member for the travel documents!). Later that year, he takes the boy into the locker room and showers with him, making advances. The boy's mom asks about the wet hair when he gets home and he tells her what Sandusky did. She called the police, wore a wire when confronting Sandusky, and an investigation commenced. Remarkably, the Centre County District Attorney Ray Gricar chose not to prosecute. We can all speculate on how he made this decision (especially weird because Gricar disappeared in 2005 and is presumed dead!), but one thing is clear: Joe Paterno was aware that lurid accusations were made against his then-Defensive Coordinator.

The following year, Paterno told Sandusky that he would not become Head Coach. It is reasonable to surmise that Sandusky's odd behavior was at least a factor in this decision. Sandusky announced he would retire at the end of the 1999 season, which culminated in the Alamo Bowl in San Antonio, Texas. Sandusky also brought a boy to that game, again listing him as a family member. We now know that Sandusky sexually assaulted this boy repeatedly in the team hotel in San Antonio. Although no one could have known of this activity in the room, it would have been obvious to all that Sandusky had brought along another young boy. Paterno would have seen this and must have known about the investigation the year before.

Sick. Wrong. Creepy. Yes, all three

I detailed those allegations from the indictment to provide the proper context for the 2002 incident. (I'm skipping the 2000 incident witnessed by the janitor as this was never reported and the boy was never identified). In this case, McQueary witnesses Sandusky raping a boy in the shower (described as "rhythmic slapping sounds"). He informs Paterno what he saw and Paterno in turn informs his superior (the AD and Senior VP for Finance and Business).

At this point Paterno has completed his legal duty. As an educator (coach or teacher), he is a "mandatory reporter"; he is obligated to report any suspicion of child abuse or neglect (as a health care provider, I am also a mandatory reporter, but more on that in a moment). Once he has made his report to his superior, under Pennsylvania law, he is done. Here’s the explanation: http://news.yahoo.com/psu-scandal-stirs-debate-over-abuse-reporting-laws-210836127.html. Under Iowa law, by comparison, have to ensure that a report is made to child protective services, which in my case is the Department of Health Services (DHS), but I don't have to make that report myself). As we all know now, Curley and Schultz chose to cover up the allegations and did not make a police report (Dicks. Creeps. Assholes. Yes, all three. But we covered that already). So the big question is: should Paterno have noticed that the police were not informed and should he have ensured that to happen?

Yes and no.

A little background here- I have made similar reports before. Fortunately, child sexual abuse is relatively rare and I have only been involved in a few cases. These situations are turned over to a specially trained sexual response team and they take it from there. Once I call this team, I have minimal interaction or knowledge of the case. If the police or out other authority chose not to prosecute, I wouldn’t even be aware of it. Much more commonly, I see cases of suspected physical abuse or child neglect. These happen more often than you want to believe. In these cases, we admit the child to the hospital (a kind of protective custody) and I direct the Social Workers to make a report to DHS. After that, I usually get very little feedback. If DHS determines the child’s environment is safe, I can’t really do anything about it. My point here is that, as Joe Paterno did in 2002, I would report the case and leave it to others.

Does this mean that JoPa did all he could do? Of course not. And he should have done more. He knew full well of the allegations in 1998. He had reason to be uncomfortable with Sandusky’s work with teenage boys. And now he was told of a witnessed sexual assault. He knows full well that the police were not notified by Curley and Schultz. And he should have said or done something about it.

Not yet convinced? Ok, I hear you. I was still unsure at this point. So I went to discuss the case with my Social Worker team in the ER. We reviewed the mandatory reporter law and I described my experience with not doing anything more if DHS drops the case. I described my ambivalence about JoPa’s actions, and then my colleague made a great point. She said, “He knew all this and yet he still allowed Sandusky to come to their sports camps.” Sandusky met his final victims through his Second Mile charity and in high school football practices. It is tragic enough that Sandusky abused all those boys in 2002 and before, but then to have access to more is simply unconscionable.

Therefore, Paterno needed to be fired. Its very sad that the legendary career ended this way, but it had to end (and only weeks ago I was cheering the record breaking win!).

And what about President Spanier? That’s easy. He was Schultz’s boss. He’s responsible for Senior VP’s actions. You’re done. There’s the door.

Saturday began the healing.

Chanting “We Are Penn State” before at the game must have felt so good. A week of shock and horror needed a moment of holding hands and reaffirming that you are part of a larger community. That you are so much more than one twisted child molester. That after a prayer at midfield, you are ready to heal and accept the love of nation that is just as shocked as you are. Let’s get back to football and autumn afternoons and bratwurst and game day pancakes and underdogs and upsets and marching bands and all that is good in this world.

Today we are all Penn State.

Fight on, on, on, on, on,

Hans

Brewery Tour

2011-11-06T21:04:00.000-08:00

Only 28 miles away but in an entirely different world.

I drove from Denver to Boulder for the USC game Friday night. Nearing my destination, I came over a ridge and suddenly I could see all of Boulder below me in its shimmering glory. The entire mood of the world changed when I came into that view. I had struggled through maddening traffic in the ugly sprawl of apartment buildings and big box stores in Denver. Now, the traffic fell away, the setting sun reflected off the newly fallen snows on the Rockies rising above, and the urban sprawl shifted to fields and pastures. The trees were mostly bare with occasional late autumn leaves, even adorned with a falcons sitting on their branches.

I checked into the hotel, a seedy motel just off the interstate. It was one of those places that is really cheap but tries to look classy by adding fake, plastic stained glass and wood paneling that is crumbling and dating from the mid-60's. I quickly put my stuff away and got on the bike path to the campus. I wasn't here for the hotel; I had come for something much more important: beer. . . er . . . uh . . . I mean football!

I walked through campus to the stadium with a couple of other alums. The campus is beautiful; a meandering collection of sandstone colored buildings around serene, well-kept quads. It must be absolutely amazing in the Springtime- the occasional brooks would be filled with snowmelt, wildflowers would mingle among the evergreens, and the occasional afternoon thunderstorm would dance along the towering Rocky Mountains above the town. At the time we visited, Boulder was just recovering from its first winter storm of the season; puddles and mud everywhere, partially melted snow, and the brown leaves were mostly shaken from the trees. But it was easy to see the beauty lying within.

One striking feature of Boulder and the Colorado University (CU) culture is their sometimes obsessive dedication to environmentalism. It took a little getting used to, but the many steps them have taken towards sustainability is big part of why Boulder is consistently rated at the top of most livable city and most healthy city indexes. We walked on a bike path towards the stadium because it happened to run directly from the hotel to our destination. But as slack-jawed tourists gazing at the campus and the tailgating scene, we forgot that these paths are efficient thoroughfares to encourage bike riding for commuters. The local bikers were obviously inconvenienced by me consistently forgetting where I was and having to jump out of their way as they plied their road. I thank them for being very cool about it and not yelling at me. The campus architects tried to account for dumb people like me and designated lanes for bikes and for pedestrians. (PICTURE) I almost got run over twice taking the picture, because I was standing in the bike lane part. < puts fingers in the shape of an L to his forehead >

The Buffaloes made great hosts; very welcoming. I would put them on par with Arkansas and Notre Dame as some of the friendliest schools to visiting teams. (not quite the level of Nebraska, of course. Nothing can ever match Husker Hospitality!). This is a good thing, because I was expecting to be sitting in the CU alumni section.

That's because I had made this trip without having a ticket for the game.

Allow me to explain for a minute my approach to the art of scalping a ticket. I have gotten into some amazing games without a ticket ahead of time. My greatest coup had to be the 1997 USC-Notre Dame game. I passed on the $200 offers from the pros on the street and eventually landed a $40 deal from a Domer fan heading into the stadium. It turned out to be a field pass! It's fairly easy to get into any non-championship game when one is alone. Its also not too hard for pairs. Any more than that and you can't expect to sit together. Each stadium has an area where the scalpers tend to gather. It is never adjacent to the stadium gates, and you can expect it to be relatively free of police presence. It is best to seek out the common approach to the stadium from the major street, not the alleys and quads used by students. Don’t buy from students. At CU, I walked along a driveway from the largest parking lot to the stadium. Hold your hand with fingers indicating the number of tickets you wish to purchase- above your head is best. If you have tickets to sell, hold the tickets in the same way. You will be approached with offers. A few certainties here: the salesman will always say, "these are great seats" (they wont be). They will always start high and will be ready to haggle. Don’t take the first offer. Most importantly, know what the market value of the scalped tickets are before you go to the game. Check StubHub.com and see what the prices are (yes, you could just buy them from Stub Hub, but where's the fun in that?). In this case, the value was not great because CU was doing so poorly; I estimated $60 would be a reasonable value to pay. Also, the price will go down the closer to kickoff (see Notre Dame field passes above). On Friday, I got lucky and found a seller at my pre-established price almost immediately (after the first deal fell through, see rule above). I never expect scalped tickets to be any good, but I karma was shining on me again; they turned out to be 35 yard line, halfway up. Very cool.

I entered the stadium early, eager to see CU's famous mascot Ralphie the buffalo It's a shame the game was at night, because the view of the mountains surrounding the town must be amazing during the day. The Buffs are happy to embrace their mountain home; they proudly display the altitude of Folsom field on the scoreboard (5360 ft). I suppose it is a not-so-subtle reminder to the visiting team that they will feel more winded sooner and serves to intimidate them into keeping the high altitude in mind.

I found my seats, coincidentally situated next to a couple from Iowa! They are from Davenport but their daughter attends CU. We swapped Iowa winter stories and smiled amusingly while Southern Californians shivered and huddled in the 40 degree weather (really, folks- it was dry and no wind. Hardly a winter night by any means! These Trojans need to pack on some extra fat like we Iowans do to get through the cold!). The folks from Colorado, used to enjoying cocoa on the slopes of their many ski resorts, enjoyed frequent visits to stands from the hot cocoa vendors. These guys were awesome- they carried trays of dozens of cups of cocoa along with a can of whipped cream ready to top off each purchase with a fresh dollop of milky goodness.

Next up was the much anticipated run of Ralphie the Buffalo. As a Trojan, it’s hard to admit that there could be a better live mascot than Traveler, the elegant and spirited white Arabian horse that celebrates every USC touchdown with a march down the sidelines to “Conquest”. But having a half-ton buffalo lead your team onto the field chained to 5 sprinting underclassmen is a very dramatic sight. On this night, she (yes, Ralphie is a girl buffalo, a boy buffalo would be just too big) got so excited she broke free of her handlers and made the last half of her run unaided, scattering cowboy-hat-clad boys across the field. She knew the routine well and headed straight into her waiting trailer; she was obviously content to put on her show, get the crowd fired up, and head for home. She didn’t need any wranglers trying to cramp her style! The reaction from the crowd was unanimous- we loved it! I can best describe the feeling as watching an ancient Roman gladiatorial game and rooting for the lion!

The game was effectively over in the 2nd quarter. I give the Buffs plenty of credit for trying, but their defensive backs are horribly undersized. Matt Barkley lit up the scoreboard by throwing to Robert Wood and Marquise Lee all night long; the Buffs didn’t have an answer for their speed or height. By the end of the game, Barkley had set a new school record with 6 TD passes in a game. Don’t look now, but Barkley has more yards and TD’s than Andrew Luck and he is close to passing the #2 QB in the nation, Kellen Moore (Case Keenum of Houston is #1).

As the game winded down, I grew increasingly thirsty. I headed out on a quest for a fine handcrafted beer made with local Rocky Mountain Spring water (no, not Coors). Enter “Brewery” and “Boulder” into Google maps and you get no less than 9 entries in the general downtown area. My plan was to try a flight at each, which soon proved to be an impossible task. But a selective sample was reasonable. I started with Walnut Brewery, an orderly, well appointed pub with lots of room. Their Irish Red was good but overall unexciting, Their Nut Brown was fairly standard. I learned later that Walnut was recently purchased and is now operated by Gordon-Bierch. Like you might expect from a commercial chain operation, the service was efficient and the décor inviting, but the beers lacked that dramatic, homey, individualized taste I was seeking.

Next up was BJ’s Brew House. This was exactly what I had in mind. I sat at the end of the long bar, set up in front of a dozen small beer tanks, and asked for a flight of their beer choices. The bartender was friendly and knowledgable, and quickly served me a flight of 10 flavors complete with tasting notes. The piranha red and the seasonal Pumpkin were both out of this world. Delicious, smooth, unique. A real joy to drink. By the end of the flight, I was starting to get a little winded- the altitude was getting to me (or I had just drank 40 oz of beer in a few minutes, I not sure which). Knowing that I was nearing the end of my rope, I resigned myself to one last stop. With so many left on my list I asked the bartender for a recommendation. He directed me to the Mountain Sun Pub and Brewery.

The Mountain Sun is a quaint, tiny, corner bar and restaurant that obviously believes in three things: progressive, pro-environmental politics, indulgent takes on organic dishes, and independent unique home brewed beer. This place was very hippy. It is also very popular- packed solid at 12:30 am. I tried the XXX Pale Ale, promising an extra dose of hops and barley. I got all that an more- it was the kind of ale you eat with a fork. Impressive and overwhelming. Here’s the rest of their beer menu: http://www.mountainsunpub.com/beer_menu.pdf .

The last stop on my beer tour was Illegal Pete’s, a local institution serving the best burritos available at 1 am. I needed some sustenance to soak up the yeast and barley churning in my stomach. I inhaled the carnitas burrito is a few swallows. Food always tastes better when you’re hungry. And tired. And drunk.

The hotel is on the south edge of the campus. The stadium is in the north end of the campus and downtown is a few blocks to the northwest of the stadium. So I was a long way from my bed; a challenge normally solved with a simple cab ride. But the friendly lady on the other end of my call to Yellow Cab enlightened me that there was at least an hour wait for a ride. Ouch. Against my better judgment (and really, who would actually have good judgment after an evening of football and three brewpubs), I walked back to the hotel. I am actually glad I did. The weather was tolerable, the campus was worth another look, and the stadium gates were wide open, allowing me another stroll through the stands. I hardly noticed the time and found my hotel soon enough, collapsing into a deep, dreamless sleep to begin the recovery.

I know this: Boulder makes for a great road trip and I can’t wait to come back. CU has set the bar high for Utah, whose campus I look forward to visiting in the 2012 season. Colorado is now officially on the list of schools that is OK for Sophie to attend for college. CU is a welcome addition to the Pac-12, not just because we need the wins! The Buffs have a dedicated fan base, a tremendous mascot, and a gorgeous campus, not to mention being in one of the friendliest and most beautiful towns in America.

Fight On,

Hans

The Facebook Diary

2011-11-01T22:41:00.000-07:00

First, a confession and update: I did not post a blog entry for the weekend of October 21-23. It was a big weekend that included a road trip to South Bend, so I intended to write the story. I got busy, got behind, and did not get it done. To catch up, I will give the brief version in Haiku:

Open road to South Bend

Father Daughter Bonding Time

Irish pain Trojan glory

Ok, that was lame.

Sophie and I drove to Sawyer, Michigan, a sleepy little community on the eastern edge of Lake Michigan, a mere 45 minutes from South Bend. We walked on the beach, visited a steam train museum (awesome!) and ate fabulous food. Saturday night, while Uncle Steve (GoBlue!) went to the game, we, along with Grandad (Mouse), cuddled on the couch at our friend's house to watch USC- Notre Dame. We were all stunned by the Trojan performance.. Their emotional intensity and play execution was unlike anything we had seen in years. Where has this team been? Why can’t we play like that every weekend? We had so much fun with USC- Notre Dame we didn't get a chance to watch the Michigan State- Wisconsin game and resulting hail-Mary goodness. USC's success against the Irish left us wondering- could we repeat the magic against Stanford?

For this week's blog, I am trying an experiment. I posted status updates on Facebook all week, many more than I usually post. I am using those posts as an outline; here goes.

Wednesday: I want Floyd back

Floyd of Rosedale is a bronze pig that goes to the winner of the Iowa - Minnesota game. The prize originated as a live pig that the Governor of Minnesota won from the Governor of Iowa in 1934. That first pig, Floyd, came from Rosedale farms and was the brother of the pig seen in the movie State Fair. Iowa lost Floyd to Minnesota last year in a 27-24 debacle in Minneapolis. Prior to that, Floyd had lived in Iowa City for 8 of the first 9 years of our Iowa existence.

Thursday: USC plays Stanford this weekend. It's the one day a year my wife actually cares about football. Thanks, Mr Luck.

The big news around the House household was, of course, the USC - Stanford game. Kristi doesn't care much for football (and I still love her immensely- that just shows how amazing she is!). But when her alma mater has a chance to embarrass the Trojans on national television, suddenly she "discovers" the game again. Now that Stanford has found its winning ways, she gets more snippy than usual. All due to Andrew Luck. Thanks, buddy.

Early Friday morning: http://www.rumdiarythemovie.com/ It has rum in the title. I like it already.

I had a late shift Thursday night and, combined with a late shift on Wednesday night and a day of residency interviews I was effectively in the hospital for 32 straight hours with a short 4 hours of sleep. Needless to say, I was more than a little zonked as I returned home, sat on the couch, sipped rum, and surfed the net. I knew this Johnny Depp biopic about Hunter S. Thompson's early days was opening, so I posted a link to its website and trailer. Johnny Depp + Hunter S Thompson + rum = Hans needs to see this movie before the close of the weekend.

Early Saturday morning: Rum and chocolate: Nice end to a long shift.

Another late shift on Friday, the end of a string of three. I have a tradition in the ER that when I am on my last of a string of shifts I wear special green scrubs (not unlike the fabled green jerseys of Notre Dame) and buy pizza for the department. The nurses LOVE seeing me in green scrubs. When I got home, I was in that usual schizoid blend of exhausted and wired. I was mentally fatigued from making so many decisions about life threatening conditions, but pumped that I was able to touch so many lives. I was worn out from standing on my feet for 8 hours but still tremulous from the constant infusion of caffeine and adrenaline that is the ER. To unwind I often watch mindless TV and sip an adult beverage. As regular readers of this column may note, I have been on a rum kick of late. You can blame the Smuggler's Cove in San Francisco for that. Yes, their drinks are really that good. I discovered that Pyrat XO from Guiana pairs exceptionally well with milk chocolate and cherries.

Saturday morning, 9 am: Go Trojans! Beat the Cardinal!

After a week of anticipation, the big day was here. We gathered in the kitchen for game day pancakes and watched ESPN College Game Day from the Coliseum. The teams were well represented for 7 am on a Saturday in Exposition Park, and the signs were the usual mix of boasting and bitterness. The "winning" sign according to Game Day's Facebook contest was "Andrew Luck wears Skinny Jeans". Cute. But I also liked, "Stanford has Luck. So did the Irish". But my personal favorite was, "Our 75 are better than your 85" (referring to the upcoming reduction in scholarships). After I posted this, a friend pointed out (again) that we are not eligible for a bowl game this year. I loudly replied that tonight IS OUR BOWL GAME!

Saturday afternoon, 5:30 pm: Yard work under blue skies and football all day long. Best Saturday in a while.

I had nothing to do all day but clean the yard and watch football. It was awesome. It was a perfect fall day: sunny, high 50's, no wind. I ran my riding mower and lawn sweeper (new gadget- very cool) to clean all the leaves from the lawn. Yep, almost no raking for me! And I dug trenches so Sophie and Kristi could plant bulbs. We got 90 tulips into the ground and we have another 90 to go plus over 100 daffodils. Every hour or so I took a break and peeked in on Oklahoma State - Baylor (dang- I really thought the Generals were due in that one!), Oklahoma - Kansas State, Illinois - Penn State, and Iowa - Minnesota.

Saturday evening, 6:00 pm: I miss Floyd. And congrats to JoPa- officially the greatest ever

The afternoon games ended, with heartbreak for Hawkeyes and elation for Lions. Iowa led for most of the game with Minnesota, and I was just starting to imagine how great it will look when Vandenburg and McNutt carry the bronze pig off the field and back home where he belongs. But Iowa was out-coached, something that almost never happens to Kirk Ferentz. The Gopher's execution of an onside kick in the middle of the 4th quarter was the best I have ever seen. Floyd must wait another year, stuck in the frozen north. At the same time, JoPa was achieving yet another pinnacle in his remarkable career. In a cold, snowy, figurative and literal white out in happy valley, Penn State battled Illinois to a standstill. In the waning minutes, the Lions scored their only touchdown of the game and took the lead. With no time on the clock, Illinois attempted the tying field goal and hit the upright. State College erupted to celebrate number 409: the four hundred ninth win of JoPa's career, the most of any division 1 coach. Ever. To paraphrase Bob Miller, by passing Eddie Robinson, JoPa "the Great One is now the greatest of them all." (consider yourself a true LA Kings fan if you understood that one. Fun Fact: Bob Miller graduated from the University of Iowa). By the way, if you are somehow not impressed with 409 wins, think of them this way: to get that total, a coach only has to win 10 games a season for 41 years . . . 10 wins, EVERY season, 41 years. Wow.

Saturday evening, 7:00 pm: USC - Stanford kickoff! Game time menu: pan seared scallops in fig sauce and fig - Gorgonzola tart!

Kristi is a very good cook. I am a decent cook. When we cook together, magical things tend to happen. On this night, Kristi brought home fresh figs. Readers on the coast may scoff at us hicks on prairie, but fresh figs are a rare treat here. They deserve to be honored by an appropriate meal. Our usual approach is a fig tart, made by rolling out dough (from Trader Joe's of course), topping with grilled onions, trimmed and halved figs, gorgonzola cheese, and fresh rosemary (you can also drizzle with honey if desired). It is heavenly. Kristi took the leftover figs, dug some frozen scallops out of the freezer, and created an amazing appetizer. She pan seared the scallops in oil, then added wine, butter, and figs to pan afterwards. We poured this fig sauce over the scallops and viola- a two course masterpiece. It paired perfectly with a 2009 Frank Family Pinot Noir, a delightful sweet red with hints of brown sugar, smoke, and fig.

Saturday night, 10:00 pm: Pick 6 on Luck late in 4th! ALL RIGHT NOW!

The Stanford - USC game had been raging for 3 hours. On an electric night in Los Angeles, I have only heard the coliseum crowd this loud two times before: in breaking the streak against Notre Dame in 1996 and de-facto Pac-10 championship against Cal in 2004. With three minutes remaining in the game and the score tied, Stanford lined up to start their drive to take the lead. Luck was promptly picked off by Nickell Robey who returned it 20 yards for the go ahead score. USC was up by 7, the stadium was in pandemonium, and Stanford's will was broken.

Or so I thought.

Luck went to the sideline, tapped himself with his hand, saying "My bad", and went out onto the field to lead the final drive to tie the game and win it in overtime. As far as I am concerned, after that clutch performance in bouncing back from adversity, Luck has the Heisman locked up.

Interesting side note here: the Stanford fight song, played by the infamously irreverent Stanford band, is "All Right Now" by Free. Ironically, the USC Trojan Marching Band (affectionately known as the Greatest Marching Band in the History of the Universe), will play "All Right Now" whenever USC recovers a turnover (ie whenever the opposing team screws up). Therefore, Free was heard more than a few times Saturday night.

Unbelievable shoot out between two great quarterbacks. I'm sorry we lost, but that was one of the best games I've seen in years

In the end, this 3 OT thriller was one for the ages. I would have much preferred that the Trojans had ended on the winning end of things, but this time Luck really was on the Cardinal's side. It was the kind of game that neither team deserved to lose. USC could have done a couple more things to win (not make a personal foul on an incomplete pass on 3rd down on Stanford's last drive, actually go down after catching the ball and calling a time out rather than running across the field to get out of bounds, etc), but in the end the final score is what matters. I have tried to console myself by reiterating what an amazing game it was, but it is still a bitter pill to swallow. Especially when your wife is only too happy to rub it in. Ironically, it was the best USC game since the 2005 Rose Bowl / BCS championship against Texas. Yeah- we lost that classic too. The last "greatest game in history" that we actually won? That would be the Bush Push. Hear that Domers?

After the emotional roller coaster I endured Saturday night, I needed to indulge in cinematic fantasy. Cue The Rum Diary, which I went to see Sunday night. It was not a great movie, but it was certainly entertaining. It was fun, well acted by Depp, and was EXACTLY what I wanted to see. It tells the story of a young writer arriving to a new job in a foreign place where he falls in love with a woman and in love with his new locale. And there was lots of rum drinking. The story is a fictionalized autobiography of Hunter S. Thompson's first job in journalism. The facts are sketchy (anything dealing with Thompson are light on fact!), but we do know that in 1960 Thompson moved from New York to San Juan, Puerto Rico to join a sports periodical that folded soon after his arrival (just like in the movie).

Thompson created the genre known as Gonzo journalism, roughly defined as "wildly" subjective first person where the author immerses themselves into the story- becoming part of the action and driving the choices of the characters. Essentially, this is what "proper" journalism tells you never to do- become the story you are covering. The blurring between memoir, fiction, and journalism is an interesting corundum; something I have struggled with myself in this very column. This made me wonder: do I engage in "Gonzo journalism"? I have a few things in common with Thompson: I got my start in sports writing and I enjoy writing subjective first person accounts of my travels. On the other hand, I hardly consider Thompson to be a role model for me. I would love to be able to write so eloquently, but I am not interested in the abundant chemical stimulation he was known for. He was able to discover philosophical truths through the haze of inebriation. I just write to amuse my readers and record my journeys.

But the story of the Rum Diary did touch me in a very personal way. Ever since I started listening to Jimmy Buffet music I have embraced a secret fantasy to drop out of life, move to the Caribbean, work in an urgent care every day and drink rum every night. One of my colleagues in Emergency Medicine here at Iowa runs a medical mission in Haiti. Although many of our faculty, nurses, residents, and medical students have taken part, I have not yet gone. The biggest reason I haven't gone there is that I am afraid. I'm afraid I would love it too much and not want to come back. I stay stateside for now and keep raising Sophie. When she's off to college maybe I'll finally surrender to the "Buffet fantasy" . . .

When I got home from the movie I announced to Kristi that I would like to drop out of medicine and become a writer, and she could keep working to support me.

She was not amused and told me to go to bed. A cold splash of reality brought be back to Earth, like a fumble in the end zone in triple OT.

Fight On,

Hans

Back to the Bay

2011-10-20T20:55:00.000-07:00

My first San Francisco weekender was in 1989 as a Freshman at USC. As a naive, idealistic teenager eager to "fit in" with the social life of the campus, I recruited three classmates, piled into my Mustang, and headed up I-5 to enjoy my first Trojan Bay-area road game (vs Cal that year).

It was a complete disaster.

I reserved a room at a random, cheap hotel. But I neglected to research its location or how to find it within the city. After driving like a bat out of Hell up I-5 (remember, I was driving a Mustang- it pretty much comes with the territory), we pulled into San Francisco and literally drove up and down the streets looking for the hotel's address. No, I didn't have a map (this was before the smartphone era). And no, I didn't stop to ask for directions (I'm a guy- we don't do that).

My companions, 2 women and 1 man, were all from out of state (New Jersey and Nevada). The women soon realized how unbelievably stupid I was acting and got directions themselves. We found the hotel, a seedy flophouse in the Castro district. For those of you scoring at home, that's two strikes against me. More coming.

We traveled to the game in Berkley by chartered bus and became separated as I sought out some high school friends on campus. After the game, I found the bus back to the city, but my companions were nowhere to be seen. I simply assumed they had boarded a different bus or found alternative transportation and sat down quietly. As the driver fired up the engine and started to pull away from the curb, there suddenly came a furious pounding on the bus door. The driver stopped, opened the door, and my traveling companions clambered up the stairs into the bus. They saw me and were understandably angry that I had not held the bus for them. I couldn't even try to explain. Three strikes.

Leaving San Francisco, we drove over the Oakland Bay Bridge on Sunday afternoon, October 16th,1989. 24 hours later, a 76 foot section of that bridge collapsed amidst the Loma Prieta earthquake.

Since that inauspicious beginning, I have attended well over a dozen USC San Francisco weekenders, and they have all been considerably more enjoyable than the first. I did learn some valuable lessons from that first fiasco. Foremost, I plan my travel considerably more carefully. Before I go anywhere, I locate the airport, hotel, and significant destinations (stadium, restaurants, rum bar, etc) on the map. Thank you to Google for making this step rapid and painless (I need to also thank the late Steve Jobs; I used to print out these Google maps, but now I just pull them up on my smartphone or tablet. But I still review the locations prior to the trip). My wife is well aware of the level of precision to my travel planning. Usually, it just annoys her, but I think she has come to appreciate having an in-house travel agent. My daughter is rapidly acquiring daddy's travel bug. She is a veteran of visiting 20 states and 4 foreign countries, has a burgeoning frequent flyer account (much bigger than mom's), and considers every jet she boards to be "Sophie's plane". She is a very good traveler; and she would be the first to tell you so!

Over the years, I have visited San Francisco many times; it remains my most favorite city in all the world. I have detailed some of my recent visits in this column, and not all are tied to football. My current excursion is supposed to be for attending the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) annual meeting. It was very kind of the Pac-12 to arrange the USC- Cal game to be held on the first night of the conference. Since I would be stuck in meetings all day right up to kickoff, Cal generously offered to move the game from Berkeley to AT&T park in downtown San Francisco, only a few blocks from my hotel (they also said something about construction in Berkeley and a new stadium, but I'm sure that was just a excuse to move the game).

The evening was unseasonably warm, having reached a high of 82 a few hours before kickoff. The park looks out over the San Francisco bay; as the game progressed, the lights of the Bay Bridge came on and the Oakland Hills reflected the setting sun behind us. Later, passing ships were illuminated by a full moon rising over the scoreboard. I was joined by Mouse, khouse, and DocNuge, with vjohnson elsewhere in the satdium. The game was not particularly well-played; my Trojans benefited from 4 Cal turnovers to make up for unusually sloppily play from QB Matt Barkley. In the end, I'll take the win, 31-9, to make it 8 straight over the Bears.

After the game, we joined the hordes walking the streets of SoMa back toward our hotels in Union Square. On the way, we passed the flagship Apple store preparing for the first day of the iPhone 4s, with about a dozen in line 12 hours before opening. At least they faced an usually warm night for October. Hungry for a quick meal, I dragged my dad (Mouse) to a classic SF Weekender haunt: Lefty O' Doul's. Lefty's, named for a San Francisco Seals player and manager named Francis “Lefty” O’Doul , Lefty's has been serving beer and hand-carved meat sandwiches since 1958. The statue of Lefty had been missing its arm, kidnapped by a rowdy bunch of. . . wait for it . . . Iowans! The arm traveled throughout the Midwest for three years, including riding all of RAGBRAI, before being returned anonymously back to the bar. As usual, the place was packed with Trojan alums (it is not cool enough for USC students, they go elsewhere. In my day, it was the Bermuda Triangle in the Mission district, I'm not sure where the kids hang out these days). We got our pastrami sandwiches and local handcrafted beer and toasted the win. Another successful SF Weekender.

The next evening I introduced my residents to Smuggler's Cove, world famous for its Tiki drinks and rum tasting flights (http://smugglerscovesf.com). I have no recollection of the details, but I remember this: The Parisian Blonde was unanimously declared the best drink on the menu.*

So, here's to San Francisco, well-planned travel, warm October evenings, and Parisian Blondes.

Fight On,

Hans

*Parisian Blonde recipe:

1 oz dark rum
1 oz triple sec
1 oz double cream
1/2 oz sugar syrup

Shake and strain into a champagne flute. Garnish with a slice of orange.

Goodbye Steve Jobs

2011-10-05T20:40:00.000-07:00

It would be easy to wax nostalgic about my family's long dedication to Apple products. But the adoration of Apple fanboys is not the most significant legacy to honor. The iPhone and iPad changed the way we look at computers, communication, and the Internet. As we look back on the history of the 21st century, this decade and Steve's contributions will mark a major transition in society. Sci-Fi writers often ponder, what will the future hold? They invent technology and imagine its effect on people and culture. Steve Jobs brought the future to us and we will all be more efficient and more connected because of it. Best of all, Apple products just bring us happiness. And that is the greatest gift of all.

Goodnight sweet prince; And flights of Angels sing thee to thy rest.

Bucky Rising

2011-10-04T21:18:00.000-07:00

My favorite sign at game day Saturday was the one that read, "Everyone here hates Iowa". Hilarious.

Early in the show, ESPN showed a graphic to demonstrate the proximity of the Wisconsin and Nebraska campuses. They had a map with the route between the two schools- I-80 east from Lincoln to Highway 151 and north to Madison. The junction where those two roads meet? Yep, you guessed it- Iowa City. So, yeah, we're pretty much in the middle of this fight. If only the Big 10 had kept Wisconsin in the Central.…i mean Plains .…. er, Rivers .… no. .… it's the Leaders division. Or is it Legends. Big 10 commissioner Jim Delany, in defending the worst names for football divisions ever, decided to keep them for a year because he believes we'll get used to them and stop complaining.

No, Jim, they still suck.

Every other conference in football and every sport I am aware of names their divisions for geography. Even Hockey, who used to honor their pioneers of the game with names like the Smythe division, has shifted to geography. Many alternatives for the Big 10 names have been proposed, made difficult by the intentional mixing of teams from East and West of the time zone border between Indiana and Illinois. Tough shit. Get better names.

The marquee game last weekend between Nebraska and Wisconsin was a great way to start conference play. At least in theory. I thought Nebraska would be more competitive, but apparent the boys in Madison are serious about winning the first championship game in Indianapolis. No one else in the Lakes / Eastern / Legends division looks anywhere near their caliber (with the possible exception of comeback kings Illinois- I'm still bitter about missing that Northwestern pick). Nebraska's division will be competitive, with Michigan, Michigan State, Iowa, and Northwestern looking at least decent. We may just see a rematch of Saturday's drubbing on the first weekend of December.

At this early stage, Clemson looks to be in the driver's seat in the ACC. When time last time you could say that? Alabama and LSU are heads and shoulders above the rest of the SEC. I'll save you the trouble of looking for a calendar- this year's game of the century between them will be on November 5th in Tuscaloosa. The Big 12 is a mess- any of 5 teams could claw their way out of that one, but Oklahoma and Texas will play the first round of the elimination tournament this Saturday. And in the PAC - 12 , things are going pretty much as expected- the winner of Oregon at Stanford on November 12th will get to play host to and beat the crap out of ASU for the first ever PAC -12 championship.

Fight On,

Hans

An Underdog Wedding

2011-09-27T20:32:00.000-07:00

On Friday, we awoke in Iowa City at 4 am and by noon we found ourselves eating Los Angeles' best sushi at Sasabune on Wilshire.

I love modern air travel.

Although it will eventually the end of our species thanks to rapidly transmitted virus (you need to go see Contagion- an awesome movie that is pretty much 100% possible), the wide availability of jet travel can get us anywhere in the world in 24 hours. Fortunately for us, we only needed 8 hours to get from a sleepy midwestern college town in landlocked flyover country to the capitol of the Pacific Rim. Our first stop was one of our two most-missed culinary experiences, Sushi Sasabune (the other, of course, being In N Out Burger). Sasabune doesn't have a menu. You get to eat whatever the chef thinks is good and whatever the fishermen have caught the day before. The classic sign behind the sushi bar reads, "Today's Special: Trust Me". Believe me, you can trust him. The fish is delectable and delicate. It literally melts in you mouth as you are consumed with ecstatic moans of delight. I usually get a little lightheaded and buzzed eating there, even when I don't have sake- a natural sushi high.

We were in town for GoBlue!'s wedding on Santa Monica beach and many fellow poolers made the trip. After lunch, we met up with Mouse and Geodog to walk down the California Incline to the beach. The California Incline is a steep road that clings to the bluffs over Santa Monica, leading from California Ave (very close to Wilshire) down to the Pacific Coast Highway. With a panoramic view of Santa Monica Bay, it is one of the most beautiful roadways in Southern California. Sophie played in the sand with her cousins, we rehearsed the wedding, and went out to an excellent Italian dinner at Il Fornaio.

Awakening to College Game Day, we stumbled sleepily up Wilshire to The Huckleberry Cafe, a local favorite. It is renown for its inventive recipes using local and organic ingredients. We enjoyed a maple bacon biscuit, fig almond tart, chocolate croissant, a scrumptious and huge breakfast burrito, and poached eggs with spinach over heirloom tomatoes and fresh snap peas. Wow. Here's a sample of their menu; ( http://www.huckleberrycafe.com/Huckleberry_MENU.pdf).

Many from the wedding party marched down the 3rd Street Promenade to the local Michigan alumni bar to watch the Wolverines beat the stuffing out of their coach's old team. We wandered through the stalls of the Santa Monica farmer's market, marveling at the quality of the produce at a time that is very late in the harvest for Iowa. Californians can enjoy fresh peaches and strawberries when Iowa's markets have dwindled to squashes and apples (but the apples are really good!). After the Sierra, the thing I miss the most about California is the produce.

We gathered at the beach club with the rest of the wedding party to eat In N Out, sip aged Nicaraguan rum, and watch the afternoon football games. For the 4th year in a row, Texas A & M and Oklahoma State played an amazing, tight contest. This is a match that will missed when the Aggies jump to the SEC next year. Clemson pulled a mild upset of Florida State in a rivalry that has evolved far beyond the Bowden bowl it once was. Many of us were stunned by Temple's drubbing of Maryland, proving that the Owl's close call with Penn State was not a fluke. 5 of us saw that coming, happy to the earn the 9 points for their win. (note: although highly controversial, I liked Maryland's flag-imitating uniforms they wore against Miami. The brown "Turtle" outfit they chose for the Temple loss were hideous. I am so glad USC is above such gimmicks)

The wedding began at 5pm, with guests huddled together against a brisk, cold Pacifc breeze. I was assigned a pair of readings for the event, one from Victor Hugo's Les Miserables and one from Mark Twain. Les Miserables happens to be one of my most favorite musicals of all time (along with Mamma Mia and Wicked), but I have never tried to read the book. As readers of this column know, I am a big fan of Mark Twain (http://underdogcontest.blogspot.com/2008/07/coldest-winter.html). I ever had to teach a literature course, I would definitely include his collection of short stories (along with Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, MacLean's River Runs Through It, Cather's Death Comes to the Archbishop, and Mayle's Year in Provence). Here's the passages that were selected by the happy couple:

"You can give without loving, but you can never love without giving. The great acts of love are done by those who are habitually performing small acts of kindness. We pardon to the extent that we love. Love is knowing that even when you are alone, you will never be lonely again. And great happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved. Loved for ourselves. And even loved in spite of ourselves."- Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

"A marriage makes of two fractional lives a whole; 

It gives two purposeless lives a work,
And doubles the strength of each to perform it. 
It gives to two questioning natures a reason for living 
And something to live for.
It will give new gladness to the sunshine, 
A new fragrance to the flowers, a new beauty to the earth 
And a new mystery to life."
- Mark Twain, letter to Olivia Langdon

To justice to these fine words, I read them as the authors would have: in a horribly mangled fake French accent for Hugo and a perfect Dixie gentleman for Twain.

It was a wonderful party, with dancing, singing, smores, and champagne. I even got to watch the USC-ASU game, to my ultimate demise. I fell asleep after watching the horrifying 2nd half. I tossed and turned all night with nightmares about fumbling the ball in Tempe. When I awoke Sunday for the return trip home I hoped it had all been a champagne induced nightmare. Unfortunately, a glance at the morning paper confirmed my horror. Such a fabulous weekend made bitter by a awful finish. Worst hangover ever.

Fight On,

Hans

PS: After reading an interesting article in the New York Times about paying extra for privileged economy travel (link to article "Practical Traveler"), I signed up for a new American Airlines executive Master Card. With it, I was able to check in, check two bags without charge, and bypass the line at security at LAX. We were at the Admiral's Club travel lounge in less than 15 minutes from drop off. It pretty much rocked. Try it!

What's Really Important

2011-09-13T23:54:00.001-07:00

Every time I take a trip with My daughter, we sit down beforehand with iTunes and select a new movie to download and watch on the plane or car ride. Naturally, the film remains on my pad afterwards. As a result, the vast majority of my 64GB is bloated with Pixar movies, including all three "Toy Story" films. (ok, I keep them around for me as well). For last weekend's trip to San Francisco, the mutually agreeable selection was the Disney classic Mary Poppins. Loaded with classic songs and amusing dance routines, Mary Poppins tells the story of a nanny bringing a family together by indulging in the joys and fantasy of childhood. By the end, the father, Mr Banks, realizes that having fun and playing with his children is more important than being respected as a banker.

Nothing reminds you of the importance of family faster than caring for an ill child.

On the way to San Francisco, Sophie developed a fever and vomiting. Her symptoms were manageable with Motrin and fluids, but it made for a very long first night in the hotel. She is such an amazing traveler; she insisted on going despite the symptoms, ramping up into usual play mode between temperature spikes. As the plane landed at SFO, we discussed our options for the day. The plan to hit the Science museum right out of the gate fell apart. I suggested that we just go back to the hotel, cuddle in bed, eat ice cream, and watch TV (which is pretty much heaven for me). She said she liked the idea and we headed to the hotel. To get there, we had to walk by the cable cars going up Powell St.

Sophie saw the cable cars and it was game over.

She insisted on riding. Despite the viral gastroenteritis, despite no caloric intake for 24 hours, and despite the hour long line wrapping around the square, she had to ride. Her peppy insistence provided me a glimpse into her psyche and sense of values. Sophie inherited my wanderlust and sense of adventure. I'm not happy traveling unless I am going somewhere and finding something new. I am not interested in sitting on a beach with a book- I need to move, connect, and explore. She has a toy cable car at home I brought back from last year's San Francisco adventure (see Football in Exile from 2010: http://underdogcontest.blogspot.com/2010/11/football-in-exile.html) and seeing the real thing represents the essence of this city and the goal of her journey.

We climbed aboard and chugged up Powell street. We got a stern reprimand from the conductor for swinging on the overhead leather straps, but the fun was worth the trouble. Suddenly, she admitted she was hungry. This is a really good thing- she hadnt eaten anything solid for a day. I hadn't eaten much myself- it's hard to have an appetite when you spend all night cleaning up kid vomit. When she mentioned she wanted to eat, I suddenly realized how hungry I was.

We left the cable car in Chinatown (Sophie called it "China Land") and wandered into the first hole-in-the-wall eatery we could find, the Cafe New Honolulu. It was a shoddy little bakery and cafe: what you might get if you took a Parisian Bistro and dropped into Hong Kong and then didn't update the decor for about a generation. I was concerned how her sensitive stomach would react to real food, so I took things slow. No General Tsao's chicken or spicy salt shrimp; I went for basic. I ordered a bowl of clam chowder and some steamed rice. When they brought the soup, I thought I had made a mistake in coming here- it looked runny and thin. But when tasted it, I was surprised- it had a wonderful briny taste; something like fish stock with cream The chowder also came with a bun: a hot, gooey sourdough roll that was just sinful. Sophie piled rice into spoonfuls of the the soup and made a delicious porridge. It might just be the best clam chowder I have ever tasted. And all because we jumped off the cable car at a random street and we were so hungry we ignored the decor. Such is the miracle of travel!

We wandered through Union Square back to the hotel, collapsed into bed with our well deserved ice-cream and dozed as Alabama thumped Penn State and Georgia got nipped by South Carolina in a shootout. When mom returned from her meetings, I left Sophie to enjoy some mother -daughter time and grabbed a cab across town to the Blarney Stone, the official bar of the Michigan Bay Area Alumni Club.

For all those who watched the game, you know how amazing it was. For those of you at the Big House, you were treated to a special moment. I can say that watching the game in a San Francisco bar packed jowl-to-jowl with blue adorned Wolverine fans must be the next-best thing. Having visited the USC bar earlier, I was wearing cardinal. I was a lone speck of red among a throng of blue- one lone salmon fighting against a mighty blue tide. Pooler GoBlue! Was there, screaming and signing at the top of his lungs like the rest of the fools. You know you're a die hard when you blow out your voice cheering for your team 3000 miles from the stadium in a bar. Here's a video of the crowd reacting to one of Michigan's late touchdowns:

The next day I drove across the bay to Berkley to have brunch at the amazing Claremont hotel- a white wooden palace perched above the Berkley campus. In the parking lot was a classic cherry red mustang decorated with just married signs. That's the right way to start your new life together; a send off in the sexiest car Detroit has ever made I was there with pool founder Kurt and His wife Joyce, who have recently given birth to their first child, Declan Hercules. (yeah, his middle name is really Hercules- that's so cool it's worth the teasing he'll get in grade school).

I drove out to the hospital to meet Declan, still in the NICU due to prematurity. He may be young but his will is strong, just like his namesake. Witnessing the joy and wonder of this new arrival was another reminder of the priorities in life. The fragile being, so full of hope and potential, is worth every sacrifice.

Brought together by happenstance and our newest member, the family gathered together for dinner. Faced with the thousands of fabulous restaurants in San Francisco, choosing one to suit the varied palates of nine attendees (including one adorable yet precocious preschooler) can be a chore. As I walked down the street pondering this problem, I thought to myself, can't we just go to some simple steak and potato grill? I glanced to the side, eying a dive-y antique of a restaurant called "John's Grill", and thought, like that place. Then, actually reading the awning, I discovered I had stumbled upon a local legend and a forgotten gem. This is the John's Grill made famous by Dashiell Hammett and his Sam Spade detective novels. This is the restaurant mentioned and shown in the prototypical hard- boiled PI film, The Maltese Falcon. Decorated in wood panelling and plastered with signed photos from celebrities, it even features a glass display case with the Maltese Falcon statue and a collection of signed Hammitt books. I enjoyed their signature lamb chops with a 2008 Chateau Montelena Cabernet while sitting beneath the photo of the man himself, Humphrey Bogart.

On the last day of our trip, I had the pleasure of introducing Sophie to the Golden Gate bridge. Her virus had been beaten and her youthful joy was in full splendor. To most people, the Golden Gate is just a really big, really orange bridge. But to Sophie, it was a magical symbol of this city; a city that she has fallen in love with and her dad right along with her. But sharing it with someone you love brings us all closer together. In the end, the importance of family remained the enduring lesson.

Fight on,
Hans

Never Strikes Twice

2011-09-06T09:18:00.000-07:00

If you don’t like the weather in Iowa, just wait a minute.

This cliché has been applied to many locales (such as Paris), but it is especially true when the Midwest is being assaulted by a line of thunderstorms. Frequent travelers have come to dread hearing the phrase, “thunderstorms in Chicago.” A few bolts of lightning and O’ Hare is shut down for hours, delaying flights across the country. These rolling storms move quickly, turning a blue summer day into a hurricane and then clearing again before the gameday pancakes are cool.

We have had a weird Spring and Summer this year. The Spring was unusually wet and cold, adding an annoying month onto Winter. Our lawns and herb gardens relished the drenching rains, but farmers couldn’t get into their fields to plant: too muddy to plow the soil and too cold for the corn to sprout. Then Summer came, the weather warmed dramatically, and fields got planted. Our cold, wet May gave way to an unprecedented heat wave. With heat indices regularly above 100, working all day in the garden became impossible and the weeds slowly consumed our crop. But hot, humid weather is ideal for the corn’s maturation and the fields quickly made up for their slow start. It is often said that on warm, still July nights you can actually hear the corn growing; it’s an odd squeaking, rustling sound. Crop forecasts became insanely optimistic, predicting a record corn yield. All we needed was a continuation of the “timely rains.”

Then, a strange thing happened: it stopped raining.

In Eastern Iowa, around Iowa City, the rain just kept missing us. It would go to the north or the south. Epic lines of thunderstorms rolling across the prairie would suddenly break into pieces and dissipate right over our heads. Weird. It just wouldn’t rain. Western Iowa, being drenched by record flooding along the Missouri River, breathed a collective sigh of relief. But the tomato plants stopped bearing fruit after a single crop. Lawns grew more slowly, and then turned brown. And the corn yields fell.

On Saturday, we were all hoping for a bit more rain; we just wanted it to start after the Hawkeyes were done with their season opener. That’s what we call a “timely rain”. But less than hour before kickoff, the heavens opened and soaked the field, the stands, the players, and the fans. The game went ahead as scheduled, the doppler images promising clearing skies by halftime. Conditions improved but the in-stadium souvenir stands sold out of dry shirts.

Suddenly, in the middle of the third quarter, a random stroke of lightning erupted a few miles to the west of stadium. The game officials, following the NCAA lightning safety manual (http://www.lightningsafety.com/nlsi_pls/Sports_Medicine_Handbook_lightning.pdf) to the letter, declared a 30 minute hiatus of the game. The Doppler image was impressive: a “pop-up” thunderstorm of legendary proportions had suddenly appeared from nowhere. We knew it was about to rain and rain hard. For nearly an hour the pent-up frustrations of a summer drought were unleashed onto Kinnick Stadium. It was raining so hard it was literally painful. All but a few hundred loyal die-hards headed for the exit. At the time of the suspension, Iowa was leading 34-0 over a FCS school, Tennessee Tech. When a game is interrupted by weather, school officials have four options:

1) Postpone the game and resume play at a mutually arranged later date

2) Consider it a “no contest” and enter it in the books as never happened

3) Count it as a forfeiture by the home team

4) Stop play and count the game as complete with the current score

In most cases, option #1 is not desirable; scheduling another game is just too messy. I am sure that the folks in South Bend would prefer to choose option 2 for their game against South Florida, but that didn’t make any sense for Iowa. I’m not sure when option #3 would ever occur. I had assumed, due the lopsided score and relative non-importance of the game, the officials would favor option #4. This was in fact the decision in Ann Arbor, where the game between Michigan and Western Michigan was called due to lightning with Michigan ahead.

Despite the torrent, the parties involved “wanted to get the game in” and waited 90 minutes for the storm to pass. The players emerged onto the field to play before a nearly empty stadium. The remaining time passed quickly and Tennessee Tech managed to score a touchdown for their efforts.

Weather played havoc with other games across the region that day. Michigan- Western Michigan was called early due to weather, as I mentioned. South Florida was leading Notre Dame at halftime, when the stadium was evacuated due to lightning. Play resumed 2.5 hours later, but was stopped again. The Domers had narrowed the gap in the score; cancelling was not an option. Play resumed and the game finally, mercifully ended at 8:00 pm local time after starting around 2. Poolers following the Marshall – West Virginia game (the last opportunity to knock Gran off her week 1 win) had endure another similar lengthy delay.

At least in LA, where the Trojans played one great half and one miserable half against Minnesota, the weather was perfect.

Fight On,

Hans

Opulence and Indulgence

2011-08-29T21:36:00.000-07:00

Moments before boarding my plane to Las Vegas Friday I texted my two step-brothers the enduring quote from Swingers that reflects the anticipatory thrill of an impending Vegas adventure: “Vegas, baby, Vegas!” Dutifully, they responded independently with another Swingers classic, “You are so money, Mikey!” Ironically, on the long drive to Vegas the characters repeat the Vegas Baby Vegas line in an exhausted daze. This rapid fade of enthusiasm as the physical demands of the city are faced provide a useful foreshadowing to our weekend.

Kristi and I boarded the plane, ready for a split weekend: half as a romantic get-away and half as the bachelor party for step –brother Steve (GoBlue!). On the plane I watched the new Vegas classic, The Hangover, which was considerably funnier the second time, especially en route for a bachelor party! We arrived to oppressive heat rushing us inside to settle into our rooms (after a quick stop at In n’ Out, of course!). I had a room at the Aria, one of the hotels in the new City Center Complex. City Center was an audacious and poorly-timed real estate venture that opened in late 2008 – yeah, that 2008. It was partially funded by Dubai World, the investment company for the Dubai Government that defaulted on its debt and sought restructuring in late 2009 because of . . . wait for it . . . over-building of ambitious real estate projects!

Three years later, City Center is almost completely open (notable exception: a condominium tower that still sits empty and now slated for demolition, having never hosted a single tenant) and the hotels and shopping are doing quite well. Financial disasters aside, the architects and engineers involved managed to create one of the most stunning works of modern urban architecture the world has ever seen. The look is sleek, futuristic, and organic. Although the complex’s expanse widely outstripped the need when it opening, a nod has been given toward sustainable construction; most of the buildings there are gold LEED certified. I was most interested in its reputation for public art, one of the most valuable collections anywhere (and most of it on 24 hour permanent display).

The art did not disappoint. My favorite piece is a set of swirling water vortexes in the shopping plaza, Crystals. The installation consists of a dozen plexiglass tubes that intermittently fill with water and a whirlpool, giving the impression of a small army of tornadoes rising from the floor. We also discovered that the Aria creates work of art daily in their restaurants. Dinner Friday night was at Sage, an American-nouveau cuisine restaurant by Chef Shawn McClain. We enjoyed a tasting menu that included heirloom tomatoes, oysters, pork belly, scallops, and a peanut butter chocolate torte. You can see the menu here: http://www.arialasvegas.com/files/dining/Sage-Signature-79.pdf. They paired my dishes with Belgian beer, including draught selections of Duvel and Chimay. I can safely say it was one of the 5 best meals of my entire life. Pure epicurean Heaven.

Dinner was followed by taking in Ka at the MGM, one of the seven permanent Cirque-du-Soleil shows in Las Vegas (do you remember when Cirque-du-Soleil was a little-known avante garde touring troupe from Montreal pitching a tent on Santa Monica beach? Times have changed . . .) Ka was outstanding, possibly as good as “O”, their water-themed show at Bellagio and the standard by which all Cirque shows should be measured. A unique twist for Ka (aside from the stunning rotating stage that floats and is capable of 360˚ rotations) is that it actually has a recognizable plot, a rarity among Cirque productions.

Late Friday, I was able to join 5 other underdog poolers at Marquee, the latest nightclub to be saddled with the “hottest club in Vegas” tag. Judging by the hordes of twentysomethings in club wear gathered outside the velvet ropes, the Millennials have swallowed the hype. We were escorted to a reserved cabana on the outdoor pool level of the club, provided bottle service with magnums of Grey Goose, and were encouraged to mingle and flirt with dozens of bachelorette parties. I realize I am not the designated generational target audience for this experience, but I find it difficult to make small talk and meet new people while extended House redux mixes of REM, New Order, and Journey (yes, Journey- you read that correctly) are piped into my ears at a brain-melting 100 dB.

Saturday began late, as it often does in Las Vegas. We had a nice lunch at a Tapas restaurant with a friend from Medical School, then wandered off to the tables to pass the time. Normally, I would curl up in a corner of the sports book with a bucket of beers, but the football season had not yet started. That didn’t stop ESPN from broadcasting football, however. The geniuses in Bristol think it’s really cool to use the weekend before college football to show dozens of high school games. Let’s think about this: high school football. Played in Texas. In August. Now most of the time I am just a dumb ER doc. But to be completely fair I am an expert in a couple of things: X-men comic books, James Bond movies, and heat-related illnesses. Broadcasting high school football on national television in August is horribly irresponsible. Every year, football players get into trouble with heat. Although all athletes (from baseball players to RAGBRAI riders) are vulnerable to heat illness, football players are especially so because of several factors. 1) They wear 30 pounds of armor and cover their entire head with a heat-trapping dome. 2) The nature of the sport breeds a counter-adaptive machismo to push yourselves harder to not be “wussy” and drink water. 3) Football practice starts in August and the players experience the peak of environmental heat before they have acclimatized. After exerting oneself in a hot environment for 2 weeks, the body is capable of undergoing physiologic changes to cope with the temperature easier. Many football players enter full-contact practice before acclimatization. The deaths that occur annually in football players occur in August. And they usually occur in high school players. By broadcasting these games, ESPN has created a perverse incentive toward playing and practicing in unsafe environments.

This sport was meant to be played in the Autumn, when the air is crisp and the leaves are gold.

The season is finally here poolers!

Fight On,

Hans

My Favorite Things

2011-08-17T20:57:00.000-07:00

“When the dog bites

When the bee stings

When I’m feeling sad

I simply remember my favorite things and then I don’t feel

So bad . . .”

Rogers and Hammerstein, Sound of Music

When the weather is unbearable, when I’ve been working so many so many shifts I can’t remember the last time I ate a meal sitting down, and when the extent of conversations with my wife are emails, it helps me to remember my favorite things. Naturally, my first most favorite things are the people I love and live with: Kristi, Sophie, and my two wonderful dogs. But I must admit to a few material items I really can’t live without.

What make something special? What is it about an item that imparts value?

Both the form and the function. If a chair is mind-blowing comfy, but looks like crap (ie Frasier’s dad’s recliner), you wouldn’t want it in your house. The Cuisinart is a beautiful device that is helpful for certain recipes, but it is so cumbersome to use and such a pain to clean I refer to it as the “infernal device”. A perfect tool not only does it job, but it looks like a work of art while doing it.

After reflecting on this for some time, I came up with short list of possessions that make me truly happy. When I’ve had enough of this busy academic medicine life and run off to the Caribbean to run a combination acute care clinic and rum bar, these are the first objects that going in the bag:

1) Whiskey stones: Milled in Vermont from non-pourous soapstone, this dandy little cubes sit in my freezer until they are called upon to chill yet not dilute my whisky (or rum or bourbon . . .). Enjoy a wee dram of the Highland’s finest with these and you are truly having a “scotch on the rocks!”

2) Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien, the Collector’s Edition published by Houghton Mifflin: Put simply, this is the greatest printing ever of the greatest book ever. Tolkien’s masterpiece established an archetype for fantasy; it is the first time that elves, men, dwarves, halflings, and orcs are put together in the same world. It literally created a genre. There couldn’t have been Dungeons & Dragons or World of Warcraft without it. Besides that, it is 1216 pages of pure epic poetry. Invent a multiracial fantasy world for the first time with its own mythology? Sure, no problem. Invent not one but two unique languages with their own alphabets and syntax (elvish script and dwarven runes)? OK, it took a little effort, but that’s just for flavor text. But do all that AND compose the entire story into a melodic rhythm that echoes hauntingly off each page? Genius.

3) Shun Chef Knife: About 700 years ago, the Japanese figured out a way to make really, really strong steel. Instead of simply pounding the metal into the proper shape, the metal is folded and hammered out. Then folded again. And again. According to legend, this was done 200 times by the greatest sword smiths of the feudal age (think Hattori Hanzo from Kill Bill). This knife is made the same way. Yes, that’s right- I have a kitchen knife worthy of being held by a samurai warrior. A little bit of bushido for the chopping block. Hell yeah! Ok- in reality, the knife is not made in same way as samurai swords, but it is similar and the thought counts. This knife is so sharp I owned it for exactly 5 minutes before cutting myself with it. This knife makes any recipe an adventure!

4) Specialized Allez Model Road Bicycle: This isn’t exactly Lance Armstrong quality here. When I bought it, I asked the bike store for an “entry level road bike”. Although expensive, it was on the low end of what road bikes can cost. That doesn’t matter. The important thing is that it represents my first real road bike. For the last 10 years I had been riding a mountain bike. Before that, in college and med school, I had used roller blades to get around. Therefore, this is my first road bike since I rode a 10 speed Schwinn to high school. I discovered that bike technology has advanced quite a bit in 20 years! I am constantly amazed by this machine’s efficiency: it is light as a feather and it carries me along like I am flying. It almost make climbing hills fun. Almost. I am definitely happier on days I get to ride my bike to work.

5) The Pathfinder Game Core Rulebook by Paizo Publishing, 1^st Printing, Signed by the authors: This one may need a bit of explaining. But it’s an explanation you don’t really want to know. You may not think this is cool and that’s OK- this is my list of favorite things. Go make your own. Let’s just keep it simple: I have played Dungeons & Dragons for most of my life; I first picked up the game in its really early days, around 1980. The game has gone through many changes over the years and now the trend is to change the rule structure about every 5 years, forcing fans to buy all new books. Paizo, an independent publisher and having no copyrights to the D & D name, said, “Enough!” and created their own game based on the third iteration of the D & D rules. The cool thing is that they created a beautiful book with amazing art that is really fun to read. And the weird thing is that their crazy plan actually worked. The veteran players all dumped brand name D & D like a bad habit and we are all playing Pathfinder now. As of last year, Pathfinder has more players than D & D. So there, evil publishing empire. Way to stick it to the man. Oh, and I have the first printing of the book that sold out in a few days. And I have it signed by the creators. I rock.

6) Olive Wood Risotto Spatula: I picked up this baby in a Hill town in Tuscany on our family vacation there in 2008. This photo is the whole family enjoying an afternoon break in the hil town of Valpaia (that's young Sophie sitting on Kristi's lap). Valpaia is a "factory town" where everyone works for the local Chianti winery. Every evening that week we cooked together in the villa and drank an entire case of local wine (not Sophie). Now, picking up my Italian spatula, I am transported back to that amazing week. The texture and warmth of the wood is comforting - rustic and elegant at the same time. Besides the nostalgia, I simply prefer to use a wooden spatula. There may be more advanced tools in the kitchen, but I am solidly old-tech on this one. It just turns the food exactly the way I want it!

7) Apple iPad and custom case: Anything I write to describe the coolness factor of the iPad is a superlative. The sheer technological sexiness of this device is widely accepted and unquestioned. Steve Jobs can rest easily in the knowledge that he changed computing forever. Now that the web has matured into a part of daily life, Apple has made a friendly little window to put anywhere and peer into the cyber-universe that lies mere electrons beyond our touch. You know those moments in sci-fi movies when the characters are handed an electronic pad to read a report? Yeah- we do that now. The future is here. To take it just one step further, I commissioned a lady at the local farmer’s market to design and make a custom case for me, decorated with an antique street map of Paris. Once people saw it, they wanted one too. Now she can’t keep any iPad case in stock. Order yours today!

These items make for a very pleasant afternoon of riding, reading, cooking, drinking, and watching movies. To this list I should add one more favorite thing: College Football. The underdog pool is only two weeks away. Get ready, Dogs!

Fight On,

Hans

12 Reasons to Love the New Season

2011-04-20T15:02:00.000-07:00

A friend on Facebook posted a link to a trailer for the EA Spors NCAA 12 that comes out this summer. It got me so pumped up I had to scribble a quick off-season blog post. Apparently this year EA has included more of the pre-game rituals for the teams, including our boy stabbing the field with the sword. Take a look:
EA Sports Trailer

One very enthusiastic USC blogger wrote of the highlight reel:

"So tell me NCAA. What does it say about your ability to sanction when EA Sports drops more Trojans in this teaser than Achilles did in the f**king Iliad? It says YOU CAN’T SANCTION THE ENDZONE OR OUR PIXELLATED ASSES. "

I could write this collumn for 10 years and never come up with a line as brilliant as "drops more Trojans than Achilles did".

March Maddness is over, the NBA and NHL playoffs are awesome (except when the Kings blow a 4 goal lead), and campus spring games are peaking this week. But after the Lakers win their latest championship, we will be dragged ino the dead zone in sports, with nothing to do but tend the garden, clean the barbeque, and wait until the end of August.

There are many things to look forward to this season: the first Iowa - Nebraska game, Saturday mornings with Chris Fowler and the crew, and watching Ohio State try to play without Terrel Pyror and Coach Tressel. But the newly expanded Pac-12 is really turning me on. The first conference game will be Utah at USC on Saturday, September 10th. No, I am not going. But one of my nurses is (he's from Utah, but we'll forgive him for that). Our annual Bay Area Game will be a Thursday night affair against Cal on October 13th. That just happens to be the first day of the American College of Emergency Physicians conference in . . wait for it . . . San Francisco, CA. Thanks, guys; I appreciate you planning your conference around my football travel schedule. USC's first of many glorious roadtrips to the Rocky mountains will be Novemeber 5th at Colorado. We might even get some skiing in while we're there.

The NFL continues to talk lockout. I couldn't be more thrilled.

With 2 new PAC teams, 1 new Big-10 team, and all the color, triumph, and pagentry that is college football, who needs the pro game. Besides, without pro games underdog poolers will be able to choose three college games every weekend. That way, I can be wrong about three informed choices rather than wrong about two and get one random NFL pick.

Fight On and see you in August,

Hans

Des Moines Knows Beer

2010-12-13T13:13:00.000-08:00

Just a picture and a quick note: I had an overnight in Des Moines last week and discovered the "El Bait Shop", a bar based on 1970's Mexico beach bar decor.http://www.elbaitshop.com/ What makes it cool is the EXTENSIVE collection of American microbrews, most on draught (photo).

Next door is the High Life Bar, a turn in the opposite direction. There, they only serve American beers introduced in the 1970's. The decor is something out of a Cohen brother's movie, screaming blue-collar and Carter-era Milwaukee. http://thehighlifelounge.com/story.html

The same group also operates the Royal Mile, a pub specializing in British beers and scotch (http://royalmilebar.com/). Upstairs from the Royal Mile is the Red Monk, specializing in, hold onto your hats, BELGIAN BEERS! YAY! (http://www.theredmonk.com/)

Fight On,

Hans

BCS Maddenss and NCAA Hypocrisy

2010-12-11T22:38:00.000-08:00

It's official- Cam Newton has won the Heisman in a landslide over runner up Andrew Luck (the second consecutive year a Stanford Cardinal player has finished second in the ballot). Now only time will tell if the New York Athletic Club will have vacate a trophy for the second time. Reggie Bush became the first earlier this year when he gave back his trophy because his family received undue benefits when he was playing for USC. Vince Young, the runner up in 2005, was not given Bush's trophy- the 2005 winner was vacated. It took 5 years for the NCAA investigation to run its course and for Bush to come to a decision about his trophy (actually the case is still not completely resolved because the appeal process continues and USC officials will next testify to the NCAA next month). I have to wonder if it will be another 5 years before the Cam Newton controversy is resolved.

The NCAA made a rather odd decision on the Monday before the SEC Championship. Auburn officials, investigating the reports that Newton's father asked for money to "deliver" Newton to Mississippi State during recruitment, declared the player ineligible. The next day, the NCAA reversed the decision, saying that there is insufficient evidence that the player knew of his father's actions (all together now: Bull Shit). Therefore, if a player is unaware of illegal activity by their family or people "representing" them, then the player is cleared for participation. This, of course, set off a firestorm of outrage and confusion from sportswriters across the nation.

The controversey did not go unnoticed by USC Athletic Director Pat Haden, who expressed confusion about the policy. Per the LA Times:

"In the Reggie Bush case, when the parent [did] something inappropriate the kid and the school suffered . . . .I was always told the parent is the child, that's what we've been telling our kids. If the parent does something inappropriate the child suffers the consequences."

Haden, not surprisingly, plans to use the Cam Newton decision as part of their appeals testimony next month.
For now, Cam Newton will play and get a chance to win a national championship against Oregon on January 20th. Then, he will get drafted into the NFL and make millions. In the mean time, the NCAA will do its do dilligence and slowly carry out their more compelete review of the allegations. Several years from now, they may decide that Auburn knew of Cecil Newton's shopping of his son's talents. Or, as evidenced by the sanctions handed down to USC, Auburn should have known about it. If so, then the NCAA will punish players that have not stepped onto the field yet; players that have never met Cam Newton or his father. Hardly seems fair.

Fight On,

Hans

PS: TCU has announced their decision to move to the Big East as of 2012. I certainly dont blame TCU for seeking a league with an automatic qualifying (AQ) status, much as Utah in their joining of the Pac-12. What is interesting here is how the move will affect the automatic qualifying status of TCU's current league, the Mountain West, and their future league. The BCS is in the process of assesing the performance in terms of top 25 finishes for all the teams in the all the leagues. This is supposed to provide a pathway for non-AQ leagues to enter the BCS, none more so than the Moutain West, home of 2 of the 3 non-AQ "BCS busters", Utah and TCU.

Get this: the BCS comissioner says that TCU's "data will transfer". That is a HUGE statement. What it means is that TCU's recent success (top 10 finishes and 2 undefeated seasons) will count in FAVOR OF THEIR NEW LEAGUE!!! Yes, dear readers, the Big East, who has another unranked team in the BCS this year (UConn, playing Oklahoma, OUCH), will benefit in having their AQ status PROTECTED becuase TCU will join them in the future. Dan Wetzel is right- the BCS is all about a few schools protecting their power and their paychecks.

Really Bad Day

2010-11-29T21:40:00.000-08:00

A funny thing happened Sunday morning. You probably didn't notice it, but I did. The sun came up, the air was breathable, and there were no cats and dogs living together. It is very reassuring to learn that after Iowa loses to Minnesota AND USC loses to Notre Dame in the same day, life will, in fact go on. As RoJo dropped the wide open winning TD pass or as Mitch threw the final game ending interception, I prepared for the End of Days.

Anyway, I know that someone at work was happy about the Domers pulling off the first win over SC since 2001. I snapped the photos above last month when I happened to park next to a contemporary of my college days. My car is the one with the USC 93 plate . . . oh . . . you knew that already? Good.

As an aside, Subarus are very common in Iowa City. It has more to do wth the adverse weather conditions of the area rather than with the auto preference of a certain sexual orientation group common in our town.
As described in a Subaru ad, here they dont ask what kind of car you drive, they ask what color is your Subaru.

I just couldn't resist this one last dig at the Domers. They have been through some long, lean years, and yet they never lose their spirit. That is an admirable quality. They may lose to Navy and Tulsa but they still have some of the best tailgaiting in the Midwest. If you can't be successful, at least enjoy doing it poorly, as per the Cub fans.

Fight on,

Hans

Football in Exile, Part 2

2010-11-17T05:46:00.000-08:00

Consistent with this week's Hans's thoughts, I too was in San Francisco on Saturday. Like Hans, in these situations, I "seek common ground; we seek out ones of our own kind."

To that end, I learned that we can add one more to Hans's list of SF "official bars": The Republic on Scott St. at the corner of Lombard. Owned by a Northwestern alum, the Republic hosts a weekly gathering of Cats fans, including this weekend for our annual "upset" of the Hawkeyes.

Thus, when I arrived at 9 a.m. for the game, I was not surprised to find a group of purple-clad fans already sipping on bloody mary's. (By the way, thank goodness I no longer live on the west coast. How do you folks handle such early games?). However, I was surprised by the sheer quantity of the purple-wearers.

As it turns out, this Saturday, The Republic was not just Ryan Field West. Rather, Saturday also marked the annual match-up of the purple-clad Williams College Ephs and the also-purple-clad Amherst College Lord Jeffs. (Another aside: if Wildcats is one of the most generic mascots, than Ephs and Lord Jeffs may be two of the most bizarre.)

Frankly, I didn't know they even televised the Amherst-Williams game. In fact, I didn't even know they had football teams. But, there they were, courtesy of the Republic and the New England Sports Network.

Thus, on Saturday, I spent the morning at the most obscure gathering of sports fans in America. Northwestern, Williams and Amherst. I love college football.

The Ephs rallied from a 10-10 halftime tie to carry the day in the 125th annual edition of Battle for Northwest Massachusetts by a final score of 31-16.

By the way, I don't know if housing both sides of a rivalry in the same bar is such a good idea. After NU beat Iowa, I headed to the Buena Vista, home of the first Irish Coffee in the US, for an Irish Coffee, obviously. There too was a large contingent of Iowa fans, clad in yellow and Ricky Stanzi jerseys. That I was accompanied by my mom may be the only reason my purple shirt made it out of there still on my back.

This week, it's on to Wrigley Field for the NU-Illinois game, which will host ESPN's Gameday crew. Did I mention I love college football?

Go Cats,

NoahG

Football in Exile

2010-11-14T15:50:00.000-08:00

In our wide ranging travels, we often find ourselves in strange cities on game day, away from our beloved home stadium with its grilled bratwurst and autumn leaves. In these cases, we seek common ground; we seek out ones of our own kind. Throughout this country, the binding ties of University life have fostered regional alumni clubs and a network of “official bars” for the gathering of the faithful.

This week, my job took me to San Francisco to speak at the Essentials of Emergency Medicine conference organized by Mel Herbert and USC. (Essentials of Emergency Medicine) I love San Francisco- it is consistently number 1 on my list of favorite worldwide cities (Chicago is #2 followed very closely by Paris and London, LA barely cracks the top 10). I am happy to just walk the streets and see the amazing people here, or taste the wonderful and expensive restaurants, or enjoy the gorgeous views of the bay. I have previously written about the City by the Bay in this blog. Check out “Coldest Winter”: (Coldest Winter)

On this trip, we spent the first few days attending the amazing conference, then going out to dinner and drinks in the evening. The time was filled with wonderful, warm-fuzzy kind of moments. We took the streetcar (photo above) to Fisherman's Wharf for dinner at the famous Alioto's, drinks at the Chieftan irish pub, family style dinner at Buca di Pepo, then drinks at Smuggler's Cove. If you haven't been, Smuggler's Cove is an incredible bar specializing in rum drinks and dedicated to keeping the kitsch Tiki-bar style alive and well (Smuggler's Cove) And they succeed. Although it is decorated with the most awful collection of tiki torches, fishing nets, and a two-story waterfall, there is no doubt that it is very cool. Its the kind of place that is hard to find and you are kinda nervous when you approach the nondescript blacked-out door. But when you enter, you are very glad you came. The staff was friendly, engaging, eager to work their rum magic, converting skeptics into fanatics. I was doing great, pacing myself, trying rums from the far reaches of the Caribbean, and then I ordered a MaiTai.

Crap.

If you have read "Coldest Winter" you'll understand. You would think I would have learned.

We were together the whole time, one big happy residency family, coming together as a team. Then Game Day arrived. Immediately following the conference, we split to the four winds across the hills of San Francisco, each heading for their own "official bar".*

USC Trojans: Green's Sports Bar, Polk Street
Nebraska Cornhuskers: Final-Final, Baker Street
Iowa Hawkeyes: ALSO Final-Final, (boy, that's going to be awkward come next Thanksgiving)
Oregon Ducks: The R Bar, Sutter and Polk
Wisconsin Badgers: Ace's Bar, Sutter and Hyde
Missouri Tigers: uh. . . well . . .they don't have a bar. Our Tiger alum went along with the Husker and joined the fun at Final-Final.

As we watched our respective games, Nebraska marched towards the Big 12 north championship, Wisconsin wore out Bucky's arms with a 83 drubbing of Indiana, USC completed its sweep of the Arizona schools, and Iowa got schooled YET AGAIN by Northwestern (poolers, if you haven't figured out to pick this game every year, you haven't been paying attention). But all these games were overshadowed by what was happening just across the bay from us in Strawberry Canyon.

Cal has struggled this season to say the least. They are the only team that made the USC defense look good, and that's embarrassing. So it seemed that the vaunted Oregon offense could take a week off before hosting Arizona next week. This game was such a forgone conclusion that none of the usual networks carried the game; it was broadcast on Versus. (By a remarkable coincidence, this is the same network that carried USC-Stanford two years ago when Stanford was a 45 point underdog. And we all know how that one turned out) As the game wore into the 3rd and 4th quarter and the Quack attack had still yet to emerge, more and more heads turned toward that game. Sorry, Ducks, you should have lost that game; Cal had the winning field goal made before they had to re-kick it. Oregon better take this second lease on life and run with it all the way to Glendale.

Fight On,

Hans

*PS:This didn't really happen. As you all know, the Wisconsin and Iowa games were played in the morning. I would never let the truth get in the way of a good story. But the official bar list is accurate.

Wierd Day

2010-11-12T14:42:00.000-08:00

The family and I took a day-trip to Chicago last Saturday, and we were away from the TV for most of the games. Thanks to the wonder of the internet, I was able to stay on top of all the pending upsets (thank you Dearl) and catch up on key events when I got home later that day (thank you ESPN).

I was entranced by the Iowa State - Nebraska tussle in Ames. This game was particularly significant because it represented the last conference game between the two teams. They may not play again for a decade or more. The series, dating back to 1896 and played every year since 1920, has been owned by Nebraska, 85-17-2. One of those precious few Cyclone wins came last year and spawned one of the greatest locker room celebrations ever (Locker Room Celebration Video). How would this series end? Would the Huskers keep rolling on the way to the Big 12 title game? Or would Iowa State, fresh off of its only win over Texas in history, upset the mighty Big Red? Go Blue and I thought it could happen, needing every 19 of the points the upset was worth.

The Cyclones led for much of the game, until Nebraska pulled away, 24-10 in the 3rd quarter. Knowing the Blackshirt's reputation for defense and the Cyclones lack of an explosive offense, I put away my phone and kissed those 19 points away. Next thing I know, the game is in overtime, with Nebraska scoring first and kicking the convential PAT. Iowa State scores on their series in OT and line up for the extra point. But they go for the win and execute a fake. The holder lofts a floater to a wide open tight end, but it is snagged by a leaping Blackshirt instead. Game over. Series over. What a finish!

I give Paul Rhoads all the credit for going for two. That's a great call and most of the Cyclones I have heard from agree. In a way, this was the perfect ending for the series. Nebraska needed a win to continue their march toward the title in their last year in the league. And the Cyclones needed to give them a going away present. Iowa State succeeded in everyone's hearts. But not on the scoreboard. Ross Mathiasen, one of my residents and a Husker, was at the game. He said this week, "what a weird game."

Aparently, he didn't watch the USC- ASU game.

THAT was a weird game. In the course of the evening, there was an interception returned for TD's by EACH team, a 100 yard kickoff return by ASU, a blocked extra point returned for 2 points by USC, a couple of missed field goals including hitting the post, and a blocked punt by USC. Wow! What a wild ride. I am was very glad to see USC finally win a close one.

Another wild ride took place in Salt Lake City. In what was billed as the biggest sporting event in Utah since the Olympics, TCU met Utah in a battle of undefeateds. Unfortuantely for the Utah fans who had paid several hundred dollars for scalped tickets, the game was ugly early and often. TCU dominated to become a clear legimate contender for the BCS championship. There is no way that a one loss team (even from the SEC) will get in ahead of an undefeated TCU.

Fight on.

Hans

TCU UTAH

Election Day

2010-11-02T08:20:00.000-07:00

These Ducks are really, really good.

I spent Saturday night watching USC try to hang with Oregon; and they did, for about 2 and half quarters. But then the Duck offense kept rolling and Matt Barkley and company couldn’t keep up. As the Trojans struggled through the last few painful minutes, I switched over to Titanic, showing on TBS. How appropriate- a story about a excessively opulent anachronism that goes down in a hubris-laden disaster. On this same weekend last year I wrote that Oregon had ended the Carroll era at USC. Not only was I correct, but they are now the standard bearer for the conference. From a completely selfish standpoint, I am glad that the Pac-12 with the two divisions goes into effect next year. That way, we don’t have to play Oregon every year and only need to focus on beating our division opponents: UCLA, the Arizona schools, and Utah/Colorado. If this year is any indication, only Arizona and Utah poses a challenge. Utah will be a tough date and I expect the Utes to win that game for the next couple of years. Utah at Oregon will make a great Pac-12 championship

Iowa had a great game against Michigan State last weekend and climbed back into the Big-10 race. One play from the blowout made ESPN’s top plays for the day: a spectacular one-handed by receiver McNutt. But that was not the best play of the game! The most amazing play, one that is easily the play of the year so far for Iowa, was a bizarre hook and ladder pick-6 interception return for a TD. Check it out here: Sash to Hyde. What is cool about this play is that pick-specialist Tyler Sash made the grab, and then tossed it behind him to Mica Hyde. Sash could have gone a long way on his own- there was plenty of open field in front of him. But he tossed it to Hyde anyway. Why? Obviously it was something they had practiced before. But also Mica’s brother happens to also play defense for Michigan State. So, Sash ensured that the Iowa Hyde brother got something to brag about over Christmas dinner!

As Iowa and Nebraska met their obligations in cutting the number of undefeated teams down to 5, I stumbled onto ESPN's sportsnation website: http://espn.go.com/sportsnation/polls . They had a number of polls about the BCS "candidates": the 5 undefeated plus Alabama, asking who should be number 1, who is more deserving, Boise State or TCU, etc. What is really fun with these polls is to click on the "view map" after you vote and see the regionalization of these topics. When asked if a one-loss Alabama should be put ahead of an undefeated Boise State, the regions were very clear: everyone in the SEC thinks Alabama should be there and most of the rest of the country picked Boise State. There was one notable result: a majority of voters in Oregon chose Alabama! I guess the Ducks dont want to lose to Boise State by a knockout like the start of last season!

Fight On,

Hans

Epic Weekend

2010-10-22T21:33:00.000-07:00

I apologize for not writing in a while, but the hospital has been keeping me busy. As you peruse the standings, you might notice that most of the House brothers are having a rough year. Our dear leader sits in dead last, even behind Gran. The Underdog pool is a game of skill- the same players often lead the field, like MiniMike and his wife GopherGirl. But the Underdog pool is also a game of inches- a couple of missed field goals here and a few fumbles there and you end up in 38th place like me. But while the leaders scrap and struggle for the few precious points to hold off upstarts RickRob and BShedek, the rest of the us can relax and enjoy the joy of college football for what it is.

What an amazing weekend it was!

Halfway through the season, we were really lucky to get so many top 20 matchups, including two meetings of undefeated teams. I could have watched football all day, so I did. Mostly, I sat in the first aid station at Kinnick stadium, babysitting the drunk freshmen and watching on the monitor the game outside my door: Iowa – Wisconsin. It was back and forth all game and, as expected, came down to the wire. In the end, the Badgers played mistake-free ball and earned it. No trip to Pasadena this year for Hawkeye fans; it looks like another New Years in the Outback or Capitol One bowl.

I was thrilled to see Missouri put the BCS human vs computer debate to rest with their upset of Oklahoma. When I looked at the standings, I thought the Sooners were due for a stumble, since they had barely beaten Air Force and Cincinatti. Now, the national championship race is focused mostly in the west, with Oregon, the TCU/ Utah winner, and Boisie St scrambling for the top. Auburn, Michigan St, and now Missouri are right behind. With USC playing Oregon next week, could a number 1 fall for the 4th week in a row?

In anticipation of the Ducks visit to the Coliseum next week, I enjoyed watching their rout of UCLA. Of course, it is always fun to watch UCLA lose. But the artistry with which the Oregon offense moves the ball is nothing short of magical. The statistical accomplishments of that offense is truly astounding. After the first 4 games, they were on a score a minute pace- they had literally scored at least one point for every minute of game time. Right now, they sit at a mere 0.92 points per minute. But I noticed how quickly they scored and how they are constantly trailing in time of possession, so I looked up their points per minute of possession. For every minute the Oregon offense has the ball, they have scored 2.2 points!

I was also thrilled to see the plan for the Pac-12 divisions and excited that it will start next year (Colorado was somewhat in doubt over their Big12 buy out). They kept the teams paired with their rival, but split California schools: USC/UCLA, Arizona/ASU, Colorado and Utah will be the Pac-12 south and Cal/Stanford, Oregon/OSU, Washington/WSU will be the north. Yet they will have a guaranteed crossover for the California schools, so USC will still play Cal and Stanford every year (yes, I want to play Stanford every year- I want every chance I get to get back at that jerk Harbaugh . . . grumble, grumble). It was the best possible result for the LA schools. Most of our games will be within a 6 hour drive, and we get to make a mountain road trip to Boulder or Salt Lake City every year. Best of all for me in Iowa, I now have direct flights to half of USC’s schedule!

The big surprise in the Pac-12 plan came with their championship game. Unlike everyone else, they are not going to hold it at a neutral field! The team with the best record will host the game! So Utah could find itself traveling to Eugene for the first Pac-12 championship game.

What a country!

Fight on,
Hans

Football 2.0

2010-10-07T19:04:00.001-07:00

I awoke last Friday to thunderstorms in Las Vegas. The sky was overcast, the ground wet, and the light artificial. I boarded a plane and emerged in Iowa at the end of a perfect Indian Summer day: the sky was crystal clear and robin-egg blue. The light from the slowly setting sun illuminated the farms and fields with a bright enriching glow. The contrast between the dull, hungover depression of Vegas and the vibrant energy of the heartland could not have been more apparent.

Following my week in Vegas, I was happy to get back home. Besides playing with my daughter, I had two ER shifts to work. I was scheduled to be locked up in a plexiglass cubicle during the most exciting three hours of football Saturday night: Oregon- Stanford, Alabama-Florida, USC-Washington, Iowa- Penn State, and Boston College- Notre Dame. With the Iowa game raging just across the street, we expected to be flooded with patients before and after, but be relatively quiet during the game. In reality, the ER was surprisingly calm the entire time- all our patients were too busy watching football.

Enter the blessing of new football technologies.

First, I must give credit to the amazing website Dent Earl has developed. Wow. I am discovering new, wonderful features of that site on a daily basis. I love the graphical analysis of the results and picks. I love the continuous updates during game time. I even appreciate the rotating languages of salutations on the home page. DEARL, you rock! I kept the site open and watched as my picks went down in flames one by one.

Another amazing advance in football entertainment is ESPN3. When I saw the ads for it, I was highly skeptical. I assumed its was yet another subscription service that may or may not work in your area and was not worth the money. I am thrilled to report that I was wrong- not only was I able to get it on my local carrier, but the service is free. That’s right: free. The quality of streaming picture was perfect. And I was even able to select two games to project simultaneously. Even better, the site works in our hospital, behind the vaunted hospital IT firewall.

So there I was, saving lives, curing disease, teaching students, and I hardly missed a snap of the USC-Washington debacle! Different year, different stadium, same kicker and same result. Why didn’t I pick Washington?

Fight On,

Hans

PS: To all the Nitany Lions out there: I am sorry Iowa beat you again. But at least this time the result was never in doubt. The Hawkeyes came through on my promise to put the game out of reach early. I am sure Penn State is happy they get a break from the Hawks for a few years.

Vegas Baby. Vegas

2010-09-26T12:26:00.000-07:00

The house always wins.

An enduring mathematical principle related to casino gambling is called “gambler’s ruin”. While you may be adept at calculating the odds of drawing an inside straight with the river card remaining and you may be a whiz with maximizing your probability while holding a “13” while the dealer shows a “7”, you cannot escape gambler’s ruin. The principle has to do with bankrolls. As a player, you have a pre-set gambling budget and, at some point, you will stop playing due to losses. As a casino, you have relatively more infinite resources and will keep playing. Two piles of money, one small and one big. Eventually, the big pile will end up with the money and the other will crawl into their hotel room to sleep off their margarita-induced hangover.

I arrived in Las Vegas Friday night armed with a remarkably valuable tool: the collective wisdom of the world-famous underdog pool. 44 people thinking together will always be smarter than 1. I pulled out the list of popular picks and filled out a parlay card with the 4 top games (Oregon State over Boise State, Central Michigan over Northwestern, NS state over Georgia Tech, and Wyoming over Air Force). Then, because I was feeling clever and very proud of myself, I filled out two more cards: one with purely my opinion and one that was a blend of my picks and the pool’s picks.

You can guess which one of the three came through.

The card with my own picks died quickly when Virginia Tech shut out Boston College 19-0. The hybrid bet did very well, getting 4 of 5 correct, but in parlay bets, close isn’t good enough. The only game I missed was one of my own choosing: I took Texas, giving 7 points with over UCLA. It seemed like a no brainer to me. UCLA had no chance against Texas in Austin! But, dear friends and neighbors, that is why we play the games. That was easily the biggest win of Neuhisel’s Bruin career. The pure-underdog-pool selections came through, with Central Michigan, Oregon State, Wyoming losing by less than the spread and NC State thumping Georgia. I walked away with enough for a nice dinner, happily handing the money back to the casino in exchange for a plate of foie goise with a view of the strip. See: like I said, the house always wins.

Another storyline from this weekend was the Pac-10 asserting itself in a big way. I already mentioned UCLA’s head turning upset of Texas. Stanford rolled over Notre Dame on the road, Oregon State held serve in the track meet with Boise, and Utah, soon to be a member, took San Jose State behind the woodshed 56-3.

When the new rankings were released this morning, I was very pleased to see that Stanford is finally ranked in the top 10 along with Oregon. It’s about time. They whipped UCLA 35-0, beat the living shit out of Wake Forest, and dominated Notre Dame in South Bend. Game Day just made it official: they will be in Eugene next week for this week’s game of the century, Stanford at Oregon.

As evidenced by Oregon, Stanford, and Boise’s rankings, the west coast is finally getting the respect it deserves from the east coast voters. As we enter the conference play part of the season, however, the Pac-10 is going to hurt its reputation when the members start beating on each other. Arizona escaped with a 10-9 win over Cal last night, but there is plenty of blood to be shed in the Pac-10 round-robin Hell. This is the second-to-last incantation of the Pac-10 round robin, with a conference championship game coming in 2012. Just in time for USC to return to Bowl eligibility.

Fight On,

Hans

Yeah, Sure, You Betcha!

2010-09-19T22:09:00.000-07:00

We had a great weekend in Minneapolis: a long road trip with Sophie, meals with the extended family, and a long list of sporting events to view. It was one jam-packed weekend of sports for Minneapolis. We saw more jerseys in one 24 period than I care to remember. I am used to traveling to small college towns where the Saturday match is the only game in town. But here in Minneapolis, the Twins faced the A’s for a three game series in a critical pennant race period. On Saturday, the Golden Gophers were hosting the Trojans. And on Sunday, the Vikings faced the visiting Miami Dolphins.

One thing I can clearly say about Minnesotans: they are proud of their unique heritage and won’t miss an opportunity to tell you about their state’s accomplishments. We stumbled out of bed down to the hotel restaurant for some game day pancakes, and were greeted by a menu heavy with local flair. Their game day pancake was a “wild rice pancake served with choke –cherry syrup and Minnesota back bacon.” Honestly, I’m not sure if I know what half of that description says. The conversation revolved around the Twins game the night before, “Have you seen the new stadium (Target Field), it’s really beautiful You really need to go to a game there.” Never mind the fact that I find baseball boring and that I have no attraction to the Twins as a team.

Walking outside the hotel, the locals took the effort to point out the bronze statue of Mary Tyler Moore tossing her hat into the air. Yep- its true, right there on Nicolette Mall; Moore’s perky reporter character drew the attention of the nation to Minneapolis, so Minnesotans are happy to bronze the moment for eternity. Here’s the opening of the show if you don’t remember: Mary Tyler Moore Opening Sequence

We visited the Hennepin public library, an impressive work of modern architecture. The money invested in public literacy and art is a handy reminder that Minnesota is happy to be the number 1 most educated state in the nation (Iowa is number 2). Not content to let Portland monopolize green advancements in city planning, Minneapolis now features bike rental kiosks similar to the successful program in Paris. They have also added light rail to their already impressive transit system, with a train going from downtown to the airport and on to, of course, the Mall of America. How better to get the visitors in and onto the shopping. Kristi and Sophie took the rail to the Mall from downtown and found it to be remarkably convenient. Best of all, after you get to downtown you can walk to just about any building and never go outside because of the "skywalk" links. Pretty handy for those famous Minnesota winters.

We made our way across town and across the Mississippi to the campus of the University of Minnesota. The “stadium village” part of town now actually has a stadium, the brand- new TCF Bank Stadium. All the locals couldn’t stop talking about how gorgeous it is (along with Target Field), and they’re right, it is impressive. It’s a comforting blend of modern architecture with the brick façade one expects from a college stadium. The seats are benches, but sufficiently wide for Midwestern butts filled out by a few too many fried cheese curds. The stairs and tunnels have ample room so we never felt crowded or had a bottleneck getting in or out.

The Trojans played better than their previous games; even dare I say played a balanced game in the 4th quarter. Still, their mistake prone defense and ridiculous number of penalties is going to make the Oregon and Stanford games a joke- can we just concede now and move on? Lane Kiffin has plenty of more work to do, even if the abundant team talent is starting to shine through.

After the game we all gathered at Buca Di Bepo for some hearty and filling family-style Italian food. Minnesotans were again proud to note that the chain started right here in Minneapolis and the "original is still the best, of course." The next morning, we chose to skip the Walleye hash (there are only so many things you should do with fish, even if it is a local specialty). Unfortunately, we couldn't get into Key's bakery, famous for their amazing cinnamon rolls.

Minneapolis is a lovely city: a fine place to visit and live. We had a great weekend and can't wait to do it again. But I should be careful about stoking the Minnesota ego- they're awfully proud of themselves already.

Fight On,

Hans

PS: Yes I saw the ending of the Notre Dame- Michigan State game. It was one of those rare moments that makes college football great, like Boisie State's hook and ladder and statue of liberty in the Fiesta Bowl. It was almost worth having a heart attack over (Yahoo Story). Get well soon, Coach Dantonio- the Spartans come to Iowa City on October 30th and I am the doctor at the game. I don't want to be doing CPR in the locker room.

I love my job

2010-09-14T08:15:00.000-07:00

I love my job.

I had the pleasure drawing the night shift for Friday and Saturday night on the weekend of the Iowa-Iowa State game. This is arguably Iowa’s biggest rivalry game, ahead of Minnesota and Wisconsin (but soon to be outpaced by the “farmageddon”* that will be Iowa-Nebraska). For the state, this is the most important sporting event of the year. Just as in Los Angeles where every home can be identified as blue or red on the day of the USC-UCLA game, Iowans hang out their black or red this week. Also as in LA, many homes have split allegiances- this game pits brother against brother, daughter against mother, and uncle against cousin. For Iowa State, they pretty have a two game season: Iowa and Nebraska. Considering their usual level of football achievement, they don’t have much else to look forward to (I better be careful- my Program Coordinator is a pooler and a Cyclone and reads this blog).

[* credit: Pat Forde, ESPN]

The Saturday of the Iowa – Iowa State game, when played at home in Kinnick Stadium, is the ER’s busiest day of the year (just ahead of black Friday with all those shoppers trampling each other to get to the $30 blue ray players). And I got the night shift- sweet! I screwed my courage to the sticking place, arranged for some extra medical students to sew up the many lacerations, and poured a double mocha in preparation.

Friday night wasn’t too bad. Just the usual overnight ER crazies. Soon after my shift started at Midnight, the place was completely full, and we sent out the students in teams to tackle the lacerations and broken legs and other delicious trauma. We saw the usual heart attacks, strokes, and brain bleeding. There were college women with bladder infections, young men with toothaches, and nursing home patients with falls. Nothing too wild and it all moved through fairly efficiently. We had the place cleaned up nicely by 6 am.

I returned home and got to work immediately on the Game Day pancakes, which taste even better when you are tired and hungry. I also put bratwurst in the slow cooker to simmer while I slept (recipe below). I went to bed at 8 am, and slept the dreamless, comatose sleep of the mentally and physically exhausted. It felt as good as sleeping off a margarita hangover after a Jimmy Buffett concert, but without the toxic side effects.

I awoke at 2:36pm to the smell of cooked brats and the sounds of Hawkeye football. I piled the brats onto buns and mustard (spicy brown of course, no French’s here) and collapsed onto the couch to watch all the games (the brats are even better with a dark beer, but I had another shift in a few hours). Fortunately for me, the geniuses at the networks had stacked all the great games into the same time slot: Iowa – Iowa State, Ohio State- Miami, Florida State- Oklahoma, and Michigan – Notre Dame. Besides Penn State – Alabama and my beloved yet inept Trojans, those were the only games of the day I had any interest in. Sure, most turned out to be dogs, but how often do you get three national championship rematches in one day! (Ohio St/Miami, Florida St/OK, Penn St/Bama) For bonus points, can you name the years for each?*

I headed back to work early, at 8pm, because I knew there was a bad moon rising. The university has instituted a new policy of limiting tailgating in an effort to reduce binge drinking. We will have the scientific results on its effectiveness later this year, but early anecdotal reports suggest that we have less drunks getting into trouble at the game. As I walked into the ER Saturday night, I wondered if this means we will have less drunks getting into trouble outside the game.

[*2003, 2000 , 1979]

Uh . . . . that would be a no.

The “grease board”, or list of patients in the ER, was covered in complaints related to trauma, assaults, and yes, alcohol. (We haven’t used a grease pencil on the grease board since 2004) I gathered my slightly smaller, slightly less enthusiastic team of students and waded into the fray. After four hours of broken noses, cut feet from broken bottles, and more car accidents than I can count, I thought we had the place under control.

Then the bus unloaded . . . again.

Around 2 am, the waiting room filled completely with more lacerations, more accidents, and a few weird medical cases (what happens in a town full of bars at 2am? Hmmm). There was the worst case of “flesh eating bacteria” that I have seen in a while. We had an old man try to bleed to death from a ruptured kidney (not fun). And we had a couple of really bad, really deep lacerations that the patients just couldn’t explain. One man cut his elbow down to the muscle, alongside the dozens of parallel superficial cuts that are characteristic for a borderline personality . . . er . . . I mean “emotional intensity” disorder. When asked repeatedly what happened, all he would divulge is that he and his friends were “playing with knives.” There you have it kids: don’t play with knives.

Another woman presented with multiple lacerations on her left hand that she says happened when a glass broke in her hand. On a day with so much imbibing, that story is not unusual. But what was weird is that her hands, feet and part of her chest were covered in dried blood. It was quite a bit more than I would expect for a simple cut on the hand. As we went about cleaning her up, there was a palpable sense of conflict in the room between the patient and her husband. We found more cuts on her hand, legs, and one on her buttock (I still can’t explain that one). In the two and half hours it took to clean and close all the wounds, my medical student wisely asked about domestic violence. Just as with the man who played with knives, we never got a clear answer. The man left part-way through the treatment and it was obvious that he was at least partially at fault in the accident that caused the glass to break. But I think there were more than one or two glasses. The woman, although very upset, had the clarity of thought to call her mother into the ER and went home safely to mom’s. There is no mandatory reporting in Iowa for domestic violence, but the woman was encouraged to seek help and protection if needed.

This case, along with the man with the knife to his elbow, made me reconsider my role as a physician. Normally, I take care of whatever injury people incur, protect the children and elders with the force of the law, but let responsible adults go their own way and make their own choices. Here were two consenting adults that were in situations increasing their risk of harm. Should I remain on the sidelines as I always have? Or should I intervene myself in their lives to promote their security? I am still uncertain on the answer, so I have maintained the default and have done nothing. But these two cases made me think about it.

I love my job.

Fight On,

Hans

Bratwurst Recipe:

(this is made for a large crock-pot. For smaller units, use half the quantities)

1 dozen fresh, uncooked bratwurst

1 large onion, chopped

3 tart apples, peeled, cored, chopped

1 jar sauerkraut

1 bottle really good dark beer, like Guinness

3 – 4 cans really cheap ass beer, like Keystone light

Combine all the ingredients in a large slow cooker, cook on low for 6 hours. Remove the brats (they will be starting to fall apart- that’s OK) and reserve the cooked onion/apple/sauerkraut mixture. Serve the brats with buns, mustard, and a few spoonfuls of the cooked sauerkraut. For a more smoky flavor, try finishing the cooked brats for a few minutes on a hot grill. If you don’t have 6 hours to cook the brats, you can brown them in oil first, then cook on high for 4 hours in the slow cooker. The low and slow approach is definitely tastier!

The First Games

2010-09-09T22:28:00.000-07:00

Wow! What an opening weekend!

Sure, we didn't have a slew of upsets, and props to the poolers who managed to pick one of the couple of dogs to win. But we had some great games! Utah's thrilling win over Pitt was the appetizer. Michigan and Notre Dame each opening their seasons well made for a decent soup and salad. Our entree of the TCU-Oregon State slugfest was delicious. And oh, what a dessert! To open the season with a championship-quality match like Virginia Tech - Boise State, to go down to the wire, to have so much riding one game- the first game. Wow.

Another first occurred last weekend- I took Sophie to her first football game. It was a pretty special moment. We talked about it all week, and Sophie picked out her outfit days before. On the day prior to the game, Iowa held its annual Fryfest, a celebration honoring legendary coach Hayden Fry. There were brats, beer, Hawkeye t-shirts, music, and black and gold everywhere. When Fry's teams won a big upset, they had a tradition of dancing the hokey pokey in the locker room. This year at Fryfest, the organizers planned to break the world record for number of people dancing the hokey pokey at one time. I am happy to report that we pulled it off, with over 7200 dancers, Sophie and I among them.

On Saturday, we awoke to the wonderful aroma of game day pancakes. We parked by the mall, then walked to the train. Iowa City has a train that runs from a remote parking area up into the neighborhood around the stadium. I think Sophie enjoyed the train more than the game. Maybe next time we will might ride the train back and forth all day!

The game was . . well. . .. it was not Boise State - Virginia Tech. In fact, I couldn't see much of the action at all- I was too busy fetching pretzels and keeping Sophie from jumping off the bench. But it was so worth it.

I can't wait for next time.

Fight On,

Hans

Ready for Autmun

2010-08-26T17:51:00.000-07:00

Kurt, the big dog, and Joyce stopped by my house this week on their way out to California to move to Napa Valley. It is wonderful to have relatives in Napa Valley; we visit for Thanksgiving or Christmas and get a wine-tasting vacation out of it. Not to mention the totally sweet inside info Kurt will be passing along to me on which winery clubs to join.

But I digress. Kurt's visit and the recent weather have me thinking about only one thing: football.

As did the Northeast and the Southwest, Iowa had been mired in an awful heat wave this month. Although summer in Iowa can be miserable on occasion, August is usually pleasant. But this month's heat indexes of 110+ on a daily basis began to wear on my soul. The skillet-like searing heat from my leather car seats sucked my will to live. Then suddenly, on Tuesday, August 17th, the air cooled, rain fell, and the sunlight vanished. And it was wonderful. I slept comfortably for the first time in weeks, Despite the rain, every one's mood improved. Why? Two reasons: 1) People were not miserably hot for once and 2) It reminded everyone of a cozy Saturday at Kinnick stadium with 70,000 of your closest friends.

The gentle warmth of summer sunshine is wonderful, but the oppressive Midwestern humidity is miserable. Give me the warm afternoons and cool evenings of autumn anytime. As my friend at work says, "hoodie sweatshirt weather is the best!" I walked my dogs last night after sunset under a bright full moon, with the cicadas humming in the trees, deafening vuvuzelas of nature, calling the end of summer and the start of the great season.

Amid the fading summer, Kurt and Joyce came to visit. Eager to show them the best flavors of Iowa, we greeted them with classic Chicago style deep dish pizza, a heavenly pie an inch deep in cheese. The resulting atherosclerosis is completely worth it. For lunch the next day, we cooked up five dollars of Iowan gold: a baker's dozen ears of corn. The best method is to remove the silk, wet the ears, and then throw them on the grill in the husks and all. About 10 minutes and one turn later, and the moisture in the husks has steamed the corn perfectly. Add butter, butter, and more butter and you're ready to pack on more coronary clot started from the pizza the night before. For dinner, we completed the culinary extravaganza with some Iowa pork. Yes, most pig eaten in this country comes from Iowa, but we keep the good stuff for ourselves. Washing it down with a 2004 Stag's Leap Cabernet didn't hurt either.
Naturally, talk at dinner centered around football. Mostly, the many possible arrangements for the new Big-10 divisions (see my plan below) and the future promise of Pac-12 road trips to Colorado and Utah. We shared tales of college football traditions, or underdog pool lore, and plans for road trips this year. We sent Kurt and Joyce driving off into the the sunset, headed for South Dakota, the Badlands, Mount Rushmore, and, of course, Wall Drug. Sated by the final summer meal, comforted by the cooling weather, and tempted by anticipation of another great season.

7 more days. I can't wait. And Sophie gets her first football game on September 4th.

Fight On,

Hans

PS: The current talk in the Big-10 offices centers on trying to "game" the divisions so that Michigan and Ohio State can meet in the championship game. Yes, they are two most common league winners, but I think this manufacturing of a title game is a mistake. What happens if one of the two (say, just for argument's sake, Michigan) goes through a long dry spell? And clearly, they need to play each year. Hence this idea of a "one guaranteed crossover game". Weird. Works for Michigan and Ohio State, but Iowa has two rivals, Minnesota and Wisconsin. With the addition of Nebraska, we have a third. And yes, you have to pair Nebraska - Iowa. I can not emphasize enough how stoked the pig and corn farmers are about that game. To best preserve rivalries and ease of travel to games, I would split the conference by time zones: if your school is in the Central time zone, you play in the central division. If your school is in the eastern time zone, you play in the Eastern division. The league would be split like this, with pairs of rivals:

Central

Iowa - Nebraska
Minnesota - Wisconsin
Northwestern - Illinois

Eastern

Ohio St - Michigan
Michigan St- Penn State
Indiana - Purdue

I know what you're thinking: that's crazy, the eastern division is way too loaded. Yes, but so is the Big 12 south! Actually, if you look at the last 20 years, it turns out that Eastern members have won or tied for the title 22 times, yet Central teams have won or tied 17 times (counting the 5 times that Nebraska played for the Big 12 title). That's not too bad.

Conference Upheavals

2010-06-15T20:46:00.000-07:00

What an amazing week for college football!

It is not often that college football makes such frequent, numerous, and stunning headlines in June! This is supposed to be the season for MLB, enjoying another Lakers-Celtics series, awarding Lord Stanley's Cup, and, this year, watching the "world's game" from South Africa. But NCAAF grabbed the nation's attention with expansion, sanctions, destruction of the Big 12, and, now, the saving of the Big 12 (well, now ten, but who's counting anymore).

The addition of Nebraska to the Big 10 is a natural fit. I know they have been pretty bitter since the origin of the Big 12 that revenue is not evenly distributed- Texas really collects more than enough to keep Bevo fed. But now they will share in the deep pocket wealth of the Big-10 network and gives the network a team with a national fan base. With all due respect to Cyclone fans, the Nebraska - Iowa State games were never that thrilling for the Cornhuskers. But everyone in Lincoln and Iowa City is simply thrilled about the upcoming annual "Corn Bowl". If nothing else comes of the conference re-alignment, the Iowa - Nebraska games will . .. .be . . . legendary. My basement guest room is available- let me know if you want to travel to the first Corn Bowl in 2012!

Meanwhile, on the left coast, the Pac-10 tried to raid the Big-12 with ambitious plans to assemble the all-star super conference. I love the addition of Colorado- like Nebraska, they have been fighting for the scraps from Bevo's trough since the Big 12 inception. Now, they join the egalitarian Pac-10 to see an even share of the Rose Bowl payout. As was specified by the quality demands of the league, Colorado is a member of the AAU (of note, Utah is not AAU, but neither is Oregon State and Arizona State, so this is not a deal breaker for further expansion, Utes)

But Texas and her ladies-in-waiting decided to stay put after all. I wish I had written this blog last weekend, when I began to suspect that Texas would say no to the Pac-10. Why should they move west? They have a pretty sweet deal as it is. And now they have two less teams to help support? There is even talk of starting a U- Texas TV network- sorry, no Bevo TV for me!

The other big news, of course, is the USC sanctions. We all knew they were coming, we just didn't know how bad the wrist slap was going to be. With 30 scholarships and a 2 year ban, it turned out to be more of a hay maker. Ouch.

The reaction from Trojan Nation was swift and severe. My Facebook friends list exploded with comments, which might be summarized by the following: 1) We deserve some punishment. 2) This is primarily Reggie Bush's fault. 3) The NCAA went too far. 4) Mike Garrett or Pete Carroll or the NCAA is the Anti-Christ.

I read most of the report myself and I was struck by several things. First, the language used by the NCAA is just about as unintelligible as that spoken in academic medicine. Next, the behavior of Reggie and his family was shockingly unethical, but it took several pages of digging to find the offense USC committed as an institution. I as I read it, one assistant coach knew about Bush's benefits and should have sounded the alarm. I also sensed a hint of hypocrisy: the report railed against USC's actions that "struck against the heart of amature sport" yet the committee "considered" and did not impose a TV ban. So, the money that USC's TV appearances generate is good enough for the NCAA's coffers but not for the atheletes they exploit to get it.

Don't get me wrong- I fully acknowledge the institution had "lost control". But the scope of the infractions that were proven (and maybe that's the point- there is an assumption that many more existed), does not seem to deserve the worst punishment since SMU's death penalty. The latest required reading to fly off Facebook land is an editorial by a USC journalist: http://usc.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1094248. I may not agree with all of his points, but his play-by-play comparison to Miami's sanctions of the mid-90's is interesting. Also, if players families are not to get any more benefits than any other students, should we examine the tithe rate at Daddy Tebow's church in Florida before and after the Heisman win?

I may be trying to play down the seriousness of USC's crime, but I will not write here defend our Athletic Director. In my end of the season column about Uncle Pete leaving (Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road), I criticised Mike Garrett for hiring Lane Kiffen, a man known to have committed recruiting violations the moment he set foot in Tennessee, on the eve of NCAA sanctions sure to include probation. Now, he has gone too far. Last Thursday, on the day the sanctions were announced, Garrett addressed a dinner for boosters in San Francisco. To a large room, he actually said, "As I read the decision by the NCAA, all I could get out of all of this was … I read between the lines and there was nothing but a lot of envy, and they wish they all were Trojans,”

Being an employee and a manager at a university, I know that demonstrating grossly unethical behavior is grounds for immediate dismissal. Garrett should be fired immediately. There is no excuse for being so flippant at a moment of such national scrutinity. Garrett is not just some drunk frat boy or one of my facebook friends, he is an university official. And not just that- he is the HEAD OF THE ATHLETIC DEPARTMENT! The only person more responsible for responding to the report is the USC president. So the new president, Max Nikias, who takes office in August, should take the next logical step and show Garrett the door.

So what does the current team do now? Kiffen has his work cut out for him: not only does he have to follow the second most successful coach in USC history, not only does he have to prove that his only two prior head coachng stints were flukes, but now he has to recruit with 10 less scholarships to award each year. The freshman are stuck- they face a deteriorating recruitment base and a tougher leage by the time they are juniors and seniors. Seniors can jump ship now, but they are just looking ahead to the NFL draft. What is left to play for?

In Major League, when the Cleveland Indians learned they would fired at the end of the season regardless, Catcher Tom Berringer replied, "Then there is only one thing left to do. . . Win the whole fucking thing."

USC will keep thier 2003 championship- it was an AP title and the NCAA has no juridiction.

USC will keep their 2004 championship- no, not that crystal football thing, I mean the AP title they ALSO won that year.

And, if they run the table, and there are no other undefeated teams, they can win the AP title for 2010.

Fight On,

Hans

PS: The World Cup sucks. Sorry, Kurt, I really tried to watch it. But between limited scoring (only Germany-Austrailia exceeded 2 goals aside), uncertainty when the game actually will end thanks to "added time" (ask Slovakia about that after their draw with New Zealand), and the vuvuzelas, I just can't take it. Watching the USA- England with a hornet's nest buzzing the ENTIRE TIME, I started to get a headache. The game was more enjoyable on mute. I got a Facebook post from a friend in South Africa- he said the match was one of the best sporting event he had ever seen. OK- USA's win over Columbia in Pasadena ranks in the top 10 for me. But my friend noted the fans singing "America the Beautiful" and the dancing. Sorry- I missed that on TV. I only heard the hornet nest drowning out my will to live. Lose the horns, people. Then maybe I'll watch again. Maybe.

Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road

2010-01-17T13:56:00.000-08:00

The golden lane to football heaven has abruptly ended. Like the children on the cover of Shel Silverstein's classic Where the Sidewalk Ends, I am trembling as I peer down into the unknown. both fearful of the change that is upon me and insatiably curious about what the future may hold.

First, I must explain why this blog is so late. It is simply becuase the story keeps changing. I sat down last week to write a nice travelogue about Los Angeles, describing a picture-perfect 48 hours in West LA including sensory overload with Avatar 3D on IMAX and the worlds greatest sushi. Then, reports began to circulate that Pete Carroll was leaving USC for the Seattle Seahawks.

Annually, around this time of year, the LA Times climbs all over itself claiming that Carroll is leaving for the NFL. Yes, every year since about 2004. If you believe the Times collumnists, Carroll has signed with Arizona, San Francisco, Miami, and the Raiders twice. Pretty much wherever USC's top draftee goes, the Times thinks that Carroll is going with him. And every year, Carroll releases a statement that he is happy at USC and is not going anywhere. And the news calms down by February and we all start to focus on the NFL draft.

But this time, there was no accompanying denial from Carroll. So I sat up and took notice, quicky moving from "denial" to "anger". Why is he leaving now? That jerk! One bad season and he jumps ship? What a wimp! I had just come to grips with not winning the Pac-10 every year and now Uncle Pete is gone?

Then I read that it's "not a done deal" and "he won't be team president" of the Seahawks. With still no comment from Carroll, I moved into "barganing": if Carroll doesn't get the full control of the team from Seattle that he wants, he won't leave, right? Nice thought, but it was confirmed a day later that he really is leaving and he said goodbye to his players with a text message. (Definition of cruel: dumped by text message, as in Up in the Air).

At this point, I was slipping into "depression" (the 4th of the 5 stages) and, worse yet, my vacation was ending and I would soon have to face the invetiable questions at work: "What do you think about Pete leaving?", "No more Pete Carroll, huh?", "What is USC going to do without Pete Carroll?", and "What flavor of hemlock would you like to drink?"

The question I struggled the most with is why. Why leave USC for the NEL? Is it the money? He's the second highest paid NCAA coach (and rumor has it that he has a contract clause making him the highest paid every year so was due for a raise thanks to Mack Brown of Texas). Is it the attention? LA is a pretty big media market- bigger than Seattle. Is it the challenge? Maybe- Carroll was not very successful in the NFL, so maybe he believes he needs another shot. USC was his first college head coaching job and it turned out that his "rah-rah" style is well suited for the college game. Then that begs the obvious question, why would Seattle want to hire him? Sure, he is one of the biggest celebrity coaches in the world, so it would bring some much needed hype to their struggling team. But does that mean he can coach? Seattle fans were pretty mixed about the hire when discussing it on the radio talk shows in the days following the announcement.

That leaves us with the question of the looming Reggie Bush sanctions. Time for a little digression: remember Reggie Bush? The Reggie Bush before he donned the black and gold of the Saints and starting dating Kim Kardashian, a woman famous for . . . dating Reggie Bush. Bush's performance against the Arizona Cardinals is what I am talking about - it reminded me of Reggie back in the day, when he juked Fresno State for that brilliant cutback touchdown.

But anyway, the point is that following the Bush era at USC, Yahoo Sports uncovered a string of unpleasant dealings between his family and a San Diego sports agent. They received, among other things, cash, cars, and a rent free home. We all expected a major brew-ha-ha with the NCAA and sat holding onto our hats waiting for the storm.

But nothing happened.

Bush had graduated, he deftly avoided giving a deposition in the case, and USC was "complying with the investigation." As the months, then years, dragged on, I wondered if anything was to come of the investigation. Since no news agency except Yahoo Sports reported any original information on the case, I began to wonder about the validity or significance of the story. Every news outlet, from Sports Illustrated to ESPN, stated that "Yahoo Sports reports . . . " I was surprised no one interviewed the agent making the allegations indpendently. Maybe that's significant, maybe not.

Now it seems that the NCAA will actually do something about these violations. Reports (by more than just Yahoo) indicate that USC will meet with the NCAA in late February. The timing of this is interesting- is Pete Carroll bailing just as the dreaded sanctions finally are handed down? I reached the final stage: acceptance.

Then, just as I pulled out my laptop to start writing this, the story changed again. Lane Kiffin was announced as the new head coach.

Whoa- where do I start with this one?

Is this a good hire? A "celebrity" coach with a well-known personality and someone with USC connections. Or is this a bad hire? A controversial trouble maker taking his third coaching job in three years. The LA Times poll results were split evenly. For me, I was disappointed at first. Although Kiffin was part of the team of assistants that led USC to consecutive titles in 2003 and 2004, he was not my favorite coach. He had the unfortunate role of taking over as Offensive Coordinator from the legendary Norm Chow. I thought the USC offense didn't regain its ingenuity until Kifin left for the Raiders and Steve Sarkisian took over the play calling. Interesting fact about that move: Sarkisian was offered the Raider job first, and declined it, opening the door for Kiffin. Sarkisian held out for a college head coaching job, which he got at Washington this year and proceeded to make the most of it.

Kiffin, as we all know, was soon fired by the Raiders with Al Davis calling him a "liar". We all took this to be the usual mad ravings of the senile Oakland GM, but maybe there is somethng to it. After only one season with Tennessee, he leaves the program and its recruits behind. The Volunteer fans react by rioting in the streets and burning mattresses. Not classy, but understandable. And he brings with him to USC his dad and Defensive Coordinator, Monte Kiffin, and Line Coach and recruiter Ed Orgeron.

At this point in the story, I show my first smile in a week.

Ed Orgeron is back? AWESOME! Coach O is well known and well loved by all the USC players and students. He is the loudest, scariest, coolest coach ever. When he left USC after the 2004 BCS Championship to coach Mississippi, we wished him luck and were sorry to see him go. When Kiffin took the Tennessee job, he pulled a minor coup by getting Coach O to join him. And the quality of recuiting was immediately apparent- the Volunteers shot up to the top 10 in recruitung classes. In fact, other SEC coaches were a little annoyed that Orgeron was helping this young upstart fill the ranks in Knoxville.

But there is a down side to the good recruiting results. He seems that Kiffin and Orgeron are slightly less than ethical about their practices. Maybe it was just being green and not clear on all the rules, maybe it was intentionally flaunting the NCAA stiff restrictions, but Kiffin racked up several minor NCAA violations in is short Volunteer tenure. He earned a slap on the wrist from the NCAA and the ire of the SEC commissioner, who had to repeatedly discipline Kiffin and his big mouth.

But, in the end, Kiffin (ex-offensive coordinator), dad Monte (defensive genius the best part of Tennesse's performance this year), and Orgeron (ex-line coach) are all coming to LA. From a coaching standpoint, this is EXACTLY what the Trojans need. Most of us die-hard fans, frustrated with the inconsistent play this year, felt that Carroll had lost too much of his assistant coaching talent to other jobs (like Norm Chow at UCLA and Steve Sarkisian at Washington). Now, two of the peices were coming back, bringing the great Monte Kiffin with them.

And a report began to circulate that a deal was in the works to steal Norm Chow from UCLA! Wow! This is too good to be true,

Uh . . . yes. . . is it too good to be true. Chow used the turmoil at USC to pressure the University of California regents to boost his contract, becoming one of the only state employees this year to see more, not less, money every payday. But if Chow had come back to USC, he could have mentored Matt Barkley into Chow's 4th QB Heisman trophy (the others were Ty Detmer at BYU, Carson Palmer, and Matt Leinart). Don't choke on your bratwurst, Hawkeye fans- you know that's true.

Ok- back to Lane Kiffin and USC. Now remember how I wondered why Carroll would leave now. And that the NCAA may be finally getting around to the Bush sanctions next month. And that Kiffin had a few minor violations in his brief time at Tennessee. So that should make us all ask: WTF is Mike Garrett thinking?

Mike Garrett is USC's Athletic Director and first Heisman Trophy winner, most famous for being the person who hired Pete Carroll. More recently, questions have been raised about sacrificing academics and recruiting ethics in pursuit of the almighty dollar. Exhibit A: OJ Mayo. Mayo was the top basketball recruit two years ago and NBA rules required him to play one year of college before truning pro. To everyone's shock, he picked USC over anywhere else in the country. Tim Floyd, the USC basketball coach at the time, claimed that Mayo "came out of nowhere" and "contacted him". It turns out that a $1000 pay off to one of Mayo's advisors (read: agent, but college players aren't allowed to have agents) was what landed the one-year star. Mayo left, Floyd resigned, and the innocent players on the very-overachieving Trojans squad this year are left to suffer the punishment of not being eligible for post-season play (despite being 1/2 game out of first with wins over Arizona, ASU, and UCLA!)

On the Friday before the Pete Carroll story broke, USC starting RB Joe McKnight announced he was leaving early for the NFL. Apparently, the Land Rover he was driving around town that he had "borrowed" from a friend just happenned to belong to OJ Mayo's "advisor". Eeek- this is really starting to stink.

In the atmosphere of allegations, looming sanctions, and deterorating ethics, Garrett wants to bring in a coach famous for making trouble and being a "liar"? WTF? Oh, yeah- USC's President, Steven Sample, is retiring this year. I have a feeling a new President may want to clean up Garrett's offices at Heritage Hall

I have a theory.

Getting some key assistant coaches back is the best part of the whole ugly, awful mess. Kiffin can't possibly fill Carroll's shoes and will relentlessly be compared to him. If the NCAA sanctions are harsh, Kiffin may struggle even more. Best case scenario, Carroll's recruits thrive under Kiffin and son's system and compete for the Pac-10 title the next few years. Worst case scenario, we lose to Notre Dame AND UCLA this year and alumni start grumbling. Maybe Kiffin lasts 3 years before being asked to resign. Just about the time the NCAA sanctions run their course.

By then, Norm Chow will be ready to move over from UCLA, Steve Sarkisian will be ready to come back from Washington, and maybe the Seattle Seahawks will be looking for a new coach. Welcome home, Uncle Pete!

Call it insatiable optimism, myopic fandom, or being stuck in the barganing phase of dying, but I can be allowed to dream.

Fight On and thanks for a great year, poolers!

Hans

Someone Call the Fashion Police

2009-12-01T21:25:00.000-08:00

Dude. There are just way too many new uniforms this year. Its getting out of control, even by Oregon standards.

It all started in June, when Oregon unveiled a new set of uniforms incorporating the Nike Pro Combat Gear pad system. OK, nothing shocking there- we all know that Oregon is the offical Nike proving ground for college football. Ever notice how Oregon seems to change their uniforms each game? That's because they do. They now have 80 different possible uniform choices (not a joke- you read that correctly) . The head coach picks the uniform for the week with input from the players, team captains, Phil Knight, and Carson Kressley.

It seems that other schools want to be just as cool as Oregon. Only apparently they don't realize that changing uniforms each week is really not that cool. This season, and mostly in the last few weeks, TCU, Florida St, LSU, Baylor (Baylor? Really? Really?), UConn, Tulsa, Florida, Missouri, Clemson, and Ohio State have triumphantly "unveiled" new uniforms. The google search for new uniforms is really quite amazing:
Google Search Unveils New Uniforms

What started with Nike propagates with Nike. The company convinced 10 (or 11, depending on whose press release you read) college football teams to change uniforms in the middle of the season to promote their new line, the Pro Combat Gear. I won't rehash Nike propaganda by describing it. but it's relevant to point out that it uses carbon fiber in some of its elements. Some schools, most notably TCU and Missouri, took the carbon fiber thing to the next level and created special black mesh decorated helmets to wear with their changed unforms. Anyone who saw the annual Border War between Missouri and Kansas knows exactly what I mean. Hey, Mizzou, put down the carbon fiber and slowly back away.

Why the rush to change uniforms? In some cases, such as Missouri, they're changing to a pretty dramatic degree. Really like the new pads? OK, the University of Washington got the Pro Combat Gear, and their outfits look as classic and beautiful as they always have. Ohio State chose to debut their new Nike uniforms at the rivalty game with Michigan and went with a retro throwback look (that the Buckeye fans hate). Michigan wore throwbacks, too- the same helmet design they used a century ago. But that's whats cool about Michigan- they've always worn those helmets. Reliable and classic. Just like Penn State, Notre Dame, and USC. Can you imagine the Domers trading their gold helmets (painted with real gold) for black carbon fiber monstrosities? Yeah, I didn't think so.

On a different note, I do need to give a wag of the finger to my beloved Uncle Pete. Throwing a 44 yeard pass with 55 seconds left when you'e up by two touchdowns is NOT cool. The root of the Carrol's lapse in sportmanship starts with Jim Harbargh. He got to Carrol's ego with his 2 point conversion attempt when Stanford was leading 48 - 21. The LA Times has placed equal or more blame on UCLA coach Rick Neuheisel, saying that by contesting the game and calling time outs, he was asking for it. But Neuheisel was under no obligation to conceed the game with a minute left. UCLA had every right to call those three time outs- make the trojans complete three safe snaps. It happens at the end of one-score games all the time. But the bruins were down by two scores. Pate figured that if Rick didn't feel like playing nice he wouldn't either. Hey coach, a word: Jim Harbaugh had left the colesium two weeks ago. Don't worry- he's not leaving to coach at Michigan quite yet. We'll get our shot at the Cardinal in one year.

Fight On,

Hans

PS: Please vote in the Heisman poll on this page!

Winter of our Discontents

2009-11-17T19:21:00.000-08:00

After being blessed with a week and a half of the latest Indian Summer on record, low pressure and rain has moved into the great plains. With it comes a cold, bitter wind that slaps your face and yanks at your ears, reminding you that winter is just around the corner. Time to finish all the outside work, time to bring the corn in, and time to put away the mower. By Thanksgiving next week, we will be snuggled warm and toasty within our prairie homes, a roaring fire in the hearth and a succulent turkey in the oven. The end has come to the season.

Winter has also descended on Pete Carrol's era of dominace in the Pac-10. To a man, all ten head coaches agree in a conference call this week that the rest of the league has caught up to the talent of the Trojans. Being eliminated from the BCS hurt. Losing the third game of the season hurt. Getting smacked by a whopping 55 points hurt a lot. Losing at home to an in-state rival really hurt. But the worse part of the loss to Stanford for me is that Pete's last remaining streak came to an end: the No- Loss November is finally no more. Why is this significant? Because in past years, if USC had a shot at the league title but needed to "win out", we could count on a November run. The ability to turn it up a notch in what USC fans call "the playoffs" of November was a defining characteristic of Pete Carrol's teams. Finish the season, Pete. Beat UCLA, be happy about the Sun Bowl, then purge the assistant coaches. I wonder how much Norm Chow would need to bribed to move 7 miles east. . .

Hats off to Toby Vandenburg's son for his amazing performance against Ohio State that exceeded everyone's wildest expectations. Toby is an ER doc in Keokuk, Iowa and sometimes teaches at our program. Sure, Toby's son threw a couple of game-losing interceptions, but if he recievers hadn't dropped a couple of the bullets that almost ripped their hands off the Hawkeyes would be smelling roses about now.

Speaking of roses, I traditionally give my wife a dozen roses on the day (usually around now) that USC clinches the Rose Bowl. Oh well. So I was going to get them to celebrate Iowa beating Ohio State. Oops. Of course, if Stanford manages to climb out of the scrum in the wild west of the Pac - 10, she'll get her roses after all. (Here's a surprising stat: Oregon State controls their own destiny for the Rose Bowl.) There are so many possible scenarios remaining for the Pac - 10 title, I almost hope Oregon beats Arizona next week just to make it clear. Maybe I should just get her roses anyway.

I really hope Texas gets upset (not likely) in one of their remaining games because I would love to see TCU play the SEC champ for the national championship. The Frogs are playing amazing football right now. If you watched College Game Day's Broadcast from Fort Worth this weekend, you saw the Horned Frog's hand sign: an index and middle finger bent like you're going to poke someone's eyes out. This got me thinking about all the hand signs for Texas football teams. It turns out that pretty much eveyone in the old South West Conference has a sign: Hand Signs of the SWC. When I saw TCU, now the media darling of the underdog world, flashing a sign I had never heard of, it made me think that they just came up with something recently because now they're hot and want to be in the same sentence with Texas (see the first sentence of this paragraph). Well, I was partly right. Burka's article linked above suggests that TCU was the last to adopt a sign. Classic sign that everyone can do: Texas. Coolest sign if don't live in an area plagued with handgun violence: Texas Tech. Hardest sign to make: Houston (even Spock would have trouble with that one).

I was looking forward to writing an article on football hand signs. I am also working on one about the schools with horses as mascots. Too bad Traveler has to go away for the winter.

Fight On,

Hans

These Go to Eleven

2009-11-10T18:28:00.000-08:00

I got to see Spinal Tap on the big screen the other night. Our local art house plays cult films on Sunday evenings, and I finally made it to a showing. I was very impressed that the movie still seems fresh, relevant, and bitingly satirical 25 years later. Here's the best clip: These Go To Eleven. Based on the string of upsets on Saturday, the volume on the underdog pool is definitely cranked up to eleven.

The weekend was full of great upsets, and I can't possibly mention them all. The biggest one was Nothwestern over Iowa, but it seemed like everyone knew it was coming. 11 poolers picked it. The lead story on college game day was the likelyhood of each undefeated team staying unbeaten- with Iowa picked dead last with only a 36% probability of surviving the season unscathed. And, worst of all, Sports Illustrated had the gall to put the Hawkeyes on the cover. ESPN's Pat Forde put it a little harsh, but I think he has is mostly right:

One year ago almost to the day, The Dash offered sincere thanks to Iowa for knocking 9-0 Penn State from the ranks of the unbeaten and saving America from another beatdown of an overmatched Big Ten team in the BCS National Championship Game.

This year, the thanks flow in a different direction from Iowa City. The Dash is sending balloons, kazoos and party streamers to Northwestern for exposing fraudulent Iowa. The Wildcats spared this great nation from having to listen to more earnestly deluded Hawkeyes fans explain why their team deserved a shot at the national title, despite a string of underwhelming victories against suspect competition.

Listening to Iowa's attempts to twist logic was like watching John Goodman try to fit into Prince's jeans. Not pretty.

Now everyone knows the truth. Even Iowans, who are free to return to reality

.
Ironically, had Iowa quaterback Rick Stanzi had not been knocked out by an ankle injury in the second quarter, Iowa could have easily scored at least 8 more points and would have won the game. Now Hawk fans have to face Ohio State in Columbus without Stanzi and may have to change their airline tickets from Pasadena to Orlando.

I really should have known this, but ESPN revealed that teams that beat USC under Pete Carrol rarely win the following week. I am happy to learn that defeating the Trojans uses up every ounce of karma the universe has bestowed upon a dog. Oregon was the latest to fall victim to this let-down, but give due credit to Stanford. Jim Harbargh has his offense burning Texas Tech style high-octane fuel and could finish 3rd or 4th in the conference. USC better be prepared when the Cardinal come to visit this Saturday, or I will never hear the end of it from my wife (Stanford, '91). And no, I will not be placing a bet with her. I lose those bets more often than I care to remember.

Brian Shedek (BShedek) had a very good weekend. Although he is a die-hard Hawkeye fan and should have been heartbroken by the Northwestern loss, he knew it was coming and capitalized on in by pulling down 35 points and doubling his season total. His day got even better when his cousin, a defensive back for Navy, led the Midshipmen to a stunning upset at Notre Dame . . . again. The Navy win has caused the national media to start calling for Charlie Weis' head, but I am not sure I want him to be fired (what do you think? Vote on the poll to the right). He's a great villian for Trojan and Wolverine fans (right, GoBlue! and Khouse?). Also, the Domers have been in every game this year and have to be one of the most entertaining teams to watch. They really are three plays away from being undefeated. If Clausen stays for next year, they should have a great ride. Maybe. Then again, they will probably lose to Pittsbugh and Stanford this year and finish 7-5

Although Ohio State's upset was only worth 4 points, the degree in which they mauled Penn State was impressive. It seems that Terrell Pryor has finaly figured out how to throw the ball to the Scarlet and Grey and not the other colors. The Buckeyes are peaking at just the right time and the Hawkeyes are in big trouble come Saturday.

I have to give a honorable mention to Wake Forest, who took Georgia Tech to overtime and almost sent the ACC's "Wheel of Destiny" spinning like a top. An old adage of the underdog pool remains in effect: pick the Demon Deacons at home in conference games, but never take them on the road.

In honor of the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, ESPN Gameday visited the Air Force academy and their game with Army. The opening was impressive: the cadets stood at attention in quiet remberance as Chris Fowler described the mourning of the murdered soldiers at Ft Hood. But as soon as the F-16's finished their fly-over, the cadets broke out their previously hidden signs and banners and starting cheering like crazy. Here's President Obama's opening address for the show: Obama

Although there was great football on all day, I didn't watch very much. We were blessed with 70 degrees and full sunshine, which is unheard of for Iowa in Novemeber. As one local DJ described it, on a scale of 1 to 10, the weather rated an 11. We happily spent the whole weekend outside, cleaning up the garden, planting bulbs for spring, and playing wth Sophie and the doggies.

Have a great Veteran's Day.
Fight On,

Hans

PS: Here's a very nice article about Iowa Football that appeared in the Wall Street Journal of all places:
Iowa Football

The End of an Era

2009-11-01T21:00:00.000-08:00

We all knew this streak would end eventually, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less. The lead picture above, taken from the LA Times, says it all; the dejected Joe McKnight walks off the field with specter of the Grim Reaper looming over his shoulder. On a frightening, wet, and loud Halloween night in Autzen Stadium the Oregon Ducks handed Pete Carroll his worst USC loss . . . ever. It was the worst loss by the Trojans in over a decade (since 1997). A defense that was in the top 10 in the nation against run found itself run over. Duck quarterback Jeremiah Masoli looked better than Vince Young ever was as he threw and sliced the Trojan D on the way to 44 points. In the third quarter, I found myself looking up the date for the Holiday Bowl in San Diego.

The big winner last night was Boise State. Now their opening night victory over Oregon looks even better. The human pollsters recognize this and put Boise just behind Cincinnati, and ahead of Oregon by a couple spots. But the computers were apparently switched on after September 5th and never saw the Broncos dominate the Ducks. 5 of the 6 BCS computers rank the Ducks ahead of Boise State! As a result, Boise State has virtually no chance at the BCS title game. But an at-large bid is looking increasingly likely (the automatic bid for a non-BCS league team will get taken by TCU if they win out).

Texas and Florida silenced their critics with big wins on national TV, rolling on toward the BCS championship. Iowa, however, insists on thrilling their fans by spotting a lead to each of their opponents then scrambling back in the second half with deep passes and a blistering defense. It kinda makes you wonder how well they would do if they ever managed to play a complete game. They are firmly in the driver’s seat for the Rose Bowl and will likely face Oregon on New Year’s Day. Considering how well the Ducks played last night, I seriously doubt that Iowa would survive the bowl game if they surrendered a lead of any kind,

Despite the devastating loss for the Trojans (talk about elevated expectations- 2 losses and the season is considered a disaster), I had a great weekend. Sophie, Kristi and I went to Pennsylvania to spend Halloween weekend with Sophie’s aunts, uncles, and cousins. Sophie got to go on her first trick or treating experience, which she thought was pretty much the coolest thing ever. For more on that, check out her blog at http://www.sophiehouse.blogspot.com/. We stayed at the Spring Creek Inn, a lovely Victorian mansion on the shores of a serene fly fishing creek. The lodge is run by underdog pooler Mike Gruendler (MG@PA). Also in attendance was your commissioner khouse, plus Geodog, GopherGirl, MiniMike, and, of course, Gran. The Spring Creek Inn was originally built in 1860 as a brewery, and, nestled into the nearby hillside, has a deep beer-aging cave not unlike a wine cave you might find in Bordeaux or Provence. We gathered up our champagne and candles, and journeyed into the cave to toast the season and toast the family.

The next night is when Sophie discovered the joy of trick or treating, especially the candy that comes with it. But all the sweets in her bag couldn’t erase the bitter taste in my mouth after that Oregon game.

Fight On,

Hans

Just Like Christmas

2009-10-28T12:24:00.000-07:00

“300 Spartans won’t be enough”

-Sign on BP station in Iowa City before the Iowa – Michigan State game last Saturday

I love college football Saturdays!

I get so geeked up for the excitement, pageantry, uncertainty, and celebration of football and Americana. The game day pancakes, ESPN College Gameday, the rivalries, bratwurst and beer, upsets, blowouts, last second wins, games that stretch on into the night, and college game day final shared with a glass of whiskey.

Honestly- the night before a Saturday with a good slate of games is like the night before Christmas. I am so excited and my mind is so full of spreads, schedules, and possible scenarios that I have trouble sleeping. I think to myself, “Just fall asleep and Saturday will be here.”

Last Saturday was no exception: would Texas stumble at Mizzou? Could Boston College extend its winning streak over Notre Dame? Would BYU end TCU’s BCS dream? Can Kirk Ferentz get his first win ever in East Lansing? Can USC get revenge on Oregon State without looking ahead to the Pac-10 championship next week in Eugene?

Although few upsets materialized, the day was hardly a disappointment. Jimmy Clausen and his Cardiac Kids hung on for a thrilling win at home over BC. The shootout between Oregon State and USC was thrilling, although unexpected (bad omen for next week). If you love offense, you had to love Nevada’s 70 – 45 win over Idaho. If you hate the forward pass, you had to love Navy’s win where they didn’t attempt a single throw. And the collective scream across the cornfields by Hawkeye fans when Rick Stanzi hit the winning TD as time expired scared the Hell out of the pigs. (Seriously- people who were downtown and in the streets were startled by the sudden eruption from every occupied bar and living room in the city).

Those who love the underdog pool love it because it gives us a chance to root for underdogs we may not like or even know anything about. Rooting for the underdog and seeing David triumph over Goliath is the essential element that makes college sports as popular as they are. This video from Iowa State’s unbelievable win at Lincoln (their first since 1977) embodies the true spirit of every dog will have his day. Watch it and love it, poolers: Congrats, Cyclones.

Fight On,

Hans

The Road From the Dome

2009-10-21T20:38:00.000-07:00

The best thing about the biennial road trip to Notre Dame is staying and playing in Chicago before and after the game. The worst thing about the trip is driving to and from (especially from ) South Bend to Chicago. When the game comes down to the final play, whether it be a push from a running back or a deflected goal line pass, all 80,795 people leave at the same time. Some head to the dorms, some head south to parts of Indiana, but the vast majority head down the same two lane interstate toward Chicago.

This year, we discovered a new alternative. The beach communities of southwest Michigan are a mere 45 minutes from the stadium. Clustered atop sandy dunes covered with deciduous forest, there stands a series of vacation homes, arrayed along the picturesque lakeshore. In Chicago, the vast expanse of Lake Michigan never feels like a sea. Here, where the forest edges up to a soft beach, gently curving into the horizon, I could be fooled to think this is an ocean. Not that it really matters- lake or ocean, Sawyer, Michigan is a beautiful and peaceful sleepy little resort.

Kurt House (khouse) , Barbara House (babs), John House (Mouse), Steve Chinn (GoBlue!), and myself all met up in Sawyer at a friend’s house the night before the game. We came from all directions- Iowa City, Chicago, Ann Arbor- and gathered together to celebrate the season, to honor our hosts, and share the experiences of the great football road trip. Our hosts served a sumptuous meal of roasted red pepper soup and lamb chops. I brought the wine, digging deep into the cellar to try to match the varied palates of the event. We served a Frank Family Chardonnay (liquid crème brulee), a Foley Pinot Noir (barbecue sauce), and dueling Napa cabs: Heitz Cellar (nutty vanilla) vs Neal (blueberry pie).

The ride to game in the morning was short and scenic. The weather was partly cloudy and cold with a gentle yet bitter wind (or “Midwestern Brisk”, as the stadium announcer said proudly). The campus, dressed in her finest autumn color, was beautiful as always. The grotto was crowded yet hauntingly spiritual. The basilica’s gold walls and altar glittered in the filtered midday light. The Golden Dome’s shone brightly over the quad. And, just when our appetite had begun to return, we smelled the brats. Never before has pulverized roasted pig flesh tasted so good. But it would have been even better if we had any of that Foley Pinot left over. . .

Here’s to 8 more years.

Fight On,

Hans

PS: She got no love from our fearless pool organizer, so I will give a shout out to the only pooler to pick the Purdue Boilermakers over the Ohio State Buckeyes. Babs picked up a hefty 14 points for the win. Although this stunning upset hurt Iowa’s strength of schedule (and USC’s), it was cheered loudly across the cornfields. It means that Iowa now has a game to give in its race to the first Rose Bowl since 1990. Maybe the Hawkeyes will meet the Trojans . . .

The Longest Day

2009-10-13T20:36:00.001-07:00

On Saturday night/ Sunday morning last weekend, I had the pleasure and honor of working the longest, toughest, and scariest ER shift of my entire career. And I would love to do it all again. But not anytime soon! Here’s my diary from the adventure.

Saturday, October 10, 2009, 5:05pm: Arrive at the hospital, passing tailgate parties on the way in. Swoon over the forbidden aroma of peppermint schnapps and hot coco.

5:10. Collect ER doctor fuel (aka double mocha w/ whip) at the hospital Java House.

5:30. Walk across the street to Kinnick Stadium, check in for duty at the first aid station. Run inventory of the medications, especially checking on the quantity of ibuprofen available.

Iowa fans have a pathologic dedication to tailgating. I have actually done scientific studies on this and presented data on it at regional meetings. Most Iowa home games start at 11am. For these games, fans start drinking at 7am. Sometimes, the game is later, at 2:30pm. For these games, the fans start drinking at . . . 7am. Once in a couple of years, the Hawkeyes will play a special game at 7pm. For these games, fans will start drinking at . . . you guessed it . . . 7am. In 2006, Iowa hosted Ohio State in a highly anticipated night game. There was so much hype around the game that ESPN’s Game Day crew came to Iowa City, thrilling the locals. I worked the first-aid station that night, also. We stocked up on extra bags of IV fluids and arranged for an army of medical students to be ready to help with placing IV’s on all the hundreds of drunks we were expecting. Surprisingly, we didn’t see all that many. But we gave out more tablets of ibuprofen for fans with headaches than any other day in history (in fact, we ran out).

Why?

Iowans were so looking forward to the game that they showed up on campus at 7am, starting drinking, then stopped in the afternoon so they could sober up for the game.

We had 70,000+ Hawkeyes with hangovers!

5:55pm. Popped down onto the field to check out the new high-tech turf (not bad). While I was there, Kirk Herbstreit walked out of the tunnel, fresh off of his flight from Baton Rouge. I got to say hi and welcome him to Iowa while he chatted with Daniel “Lion Tamer” Murray, the place kicker.

6:00. I stood in the end zone, protected by the goalpost netting, under punting practice. Looking up at the little pigskin bombshell hurtling toward me, I marveled at skill and bravery of punt returners.

6:30. My very first patient of the long night arrives, after kicking his leg into the stands and getting a laceration to his shin. I start to sew the leg and show a medical student how to place his first-ever suture. He failed. In a quick pre-game rush, we see another laceration, this time on a finger, and 2 nose bleeds (one from trauma, one spontaneous).

7:10pm, Michigan kickoffs to Iowa with the temperature at 30 degrees and a wind chill 24 degrees, unseasonably cold for October 10th. I start seeing a man who is having frequent falls.

7:25. Finish with the man with falls (not a stroke, not syncope, and not an acute trauma, so nothing to worry about right now). He was the last patient in aid station; it emptied out right after game started.

7:36. Sit down in a wheelchair to enjoy the game on closed-circuit TV. The Wolverines and Hawkeyes exchange TD's. I am stunned by the Colorado- Texas score (14-3, 2nd quarter)

8:06. Patients start showing up again. I treat a broken toe and a man with SOB (that’s shortness of breath, not son of a bitch). Come to think of it, this patient was kinda of a pain. . .

8:36. Uh oh. Here come the hangovers. We treated three headaches at once. Also at this time, we discovered there is a 6 sec delay between the live game and our video. It sort of ruins the fun because we know before the play if the Hawks are successful.

8:45pm. Game at halftime, and we expect a rush of patients. I see that the Colorado - Texas score returned to reality. I treat a treat lip laceration from a fall in the stands onto the face, another headache, and a paraplegic with an upset stomach.

9:06pm. Halftime ends and the expected rush never materialized. Treat another upset stomach.

9:14pm. Watch a nice drive by Iowa, and treat a lady with back spasms.

9:36. I stepped out to the stadium tunnel to watch a series on the field. When I get back to the first aid station, we start an IV on a dehydrated drunk.

9:46. Another vomiting drunk comes in. Also, a woman brings her 10 month old baby in to change his diaper in a warm, comfortable place. She turns out to be Iowa TE Tony Moeaki’s sister and the infant is Tony’s nephew. I tell them that Tony is my favorite Hawkeye and I have met him a few times (which is not good when you’re a ER doc. That’s not a HIPAA violation, because Tony’s injury problems are a matter of the public record)

10:00pm. Uncle Tony scores the go ahead TD, his second of the night.

10:15. Florida beats LSU, which means I missed 2nd pick. Crap. Michigan driving, double crap. Forcier pulled by Rodriguez. Interesting.

10:29pm. Game winning interception by Brett Greenwood for Iowa.

10:30pm. My shift is supposed to start in the ER across the street, but I have to stay in the stadium until the fans leave. It can take a while for 70K people to file out, especially when they are celebrating their biggest win in a long time.

10:50pm. I arrive in the ER for the shift and take sign out from the person I am relieving. My first patient is the one patient I sent directly from the stands to the ER without evaluating him in the first-aid station. I love continuity of care! It turns out to be the right decision- he needed to be admitted, no question.

11:35pm. A patient with back pain and a herniated disc. And a nursing home patient with frequent falls

Sunday, October 11th, midnight: An older man with fever and cough. Probably has the “old man’s friend”, pneumonia.

12:30am. I saw a mom and her 6yo son with flu. Neither get Tamiflu prescriptions. Welcome to the rationing of health care.

12:50. Our first trauma “alert”, a man who fell 40ft out of a tree stand used to hunt deer. Both I and my resident wonder what he is doing in a tree stand when deer season doesn’t start for at least a month. (the last full moon was the Harvest moon when the fields start getting cut. The next full moon, still a couple weeks away, is the Hunter moon, when the cleared fields and bright moon make it easy to see the deer at night) Our head nurse, who is much smarter than both of us, remind us that bow-hunting deer season is in effect.

1:23am. I took sign out from colleague, the last staff physician on duty besides myself. I noticed that I hadn’t seen all that many patients and I have had time to chart and keep notes for this diary. It makes me think that it’s not all that busy. But these are dangerous thoughts for ER docs. We never say the “q” word or the “s” word while working. (quiet, slow)

1:45am. I supervise the anesthesia for aligning a badly fractured elbow. Around the same time, the paramedics arrive with a drunk who was found passed out in the bathroom of buffalo wild wings with his pants around his ankles. Not pretty.

2:00am. The ER is starting to pile up and I start to lose track of the patients (see entry for 1:23am, above), so I grab my intern and walk around to every room. She tells me about a cab driver who was assaulted by his customer. Rough job.

2:09am. There is a man here who walked into a metal sign, slicing his head open. An artery has been cut- it’s gushing down his face and I confirm the rate of pumping matches his heart rate exactly. I get my medical student to hold direct pressure on the head while I figure out how to stop it.

2:39am. A drunk student is brought in as a Jane Doe. Also, a crushed toe, another 3 drunks, and 2 young children with fevers. I am starting to feel a little anxious.

Approximately 3:00am. The gates of Hell, previously straining under the stress of the contained abyssal chaos, suddenly burst asunder. Yes, dear reader, at this point, all Hell breaks loose.

A mini-van with 5 teenagers swerved to miss a deer and goes tumbling into the ditch. Our helicopter and several ground crews have been dispatched to bring in the injured. We start seeing our department fill with injured teenagers on backboards, crying, faces crushed, and we do our best to keep up. One goes in trauma 3, then trauma 1, then room 23, then room 16, then room 11. We don’t even find out until over an hour later that they are all from the same accident.

At the same time, we have a woman who slipped and fell in the bathroom of the Union Bar, cutting her chin. And a patient with severe pancreatitis. And a teenager from a car crash with bleeding inside her brain (not related to the victims above). And, most frightening of all, a 6 month old baby in shock carried into the ER in her mother’s arms.

The baby is pale and listless. I am now officially scared shitless.

My mind went blank. My initial thought was, I have no idea what to do. But somehow, between the energy drinks consumed tonight and the milligrams of adrenaline coursing through my veins, I slowly calm down and let my training take over. His airway is open and clear. He’s breathing fine with a good oxygen saturation. But that color and heart rate is really, really bad. OK, so the problem is circulation. We can fix that. Does his heart need to be shocked? No, he’s not in an arrhythmia, his heart is just running really, really fast. Normal, but fast. I think. No, I know. I’ve got to know. I’ve got to be right about this. He needs fluids. Lots of fluids. As calmly as possible (concentrating with every word), I ask my nurse to start an IV and give a bolus of fluid. If she can’t get the IV with a minute or two of trying, I tell her, I am going to put an intra-osseous line into him (and intra-osseous line is a hard needle driven into the tibia to deliver fluid or medications. It’s extremely easy, fast, and effective, but we don’t line punching through bone if we don’t have to.) She gets the IV (her adrenaline level was pretty high, too) and we start treating the child. He starts to improve for now.

Remember that patient with the nasty head wound? Well, he’s still bleeding. Only now, he’s starting to go into shock. He’s getting confused, an elevated hear rate, and he’s starting to look a little pale. Unable to tie off the bleeder with sutures, I grab a staple gun and start shooting away into his head. I’m desperate, but amazingly, it works. I manage to get the bleeding stopped and we get an IV going so he can recover some of the plasma now decorating our floor.

The teenagers with the mini-van crash? They’re mostly fine. Just scared and a few cuts on their cheeks, chins, and eyelids. But one of them is having trouble speaking. Then he spits up blood. Then he starts coughing and choking on the blood from a broken maxilla (the bone for the upper teeth). We immediately put a tube in his throat to keep him from suffocating and the trauma surgeons, bless their souls, took it from there.

Our team was stunned by the onslaught of patients. Our resources were totally overwhelmed. But somehow we started to get a handle on the situation. The infant in shock had a line and labs and a bed in the Pediatric ICU. The head bleeding was controlled. The airway was protected from the broken face. The other boys and girls were bumped and bruised but somehow were safe. The two other children with fevers did not have dangerous infections. And I even found a moment to close the chin laceration from the Union Bar.

6:20am. I helped my intern perform a spinal tap on a patient who had been waiting all night for a diagnosis. The test was normal, thankfully. Meantime, my resident had a chance to revise my messy head staples so that it looked pretty good. And the patient was feeling much better.

6:30am. My relief starts her shift.

6:40. Closed another chin laceration on a teenager from the mini-van

7:05. The nurse of the really sick baby asked me to escort them up to the Pediatric ICU, “just in case anything happened”. The tests, so far, were normal. I started breathing easier when the baby was in the caring hands of the ICU nurses. I still can’t figure out what caused his problem. As of this writing, the case is still unclear, but a bacterial infection of the colon is the leading theory. If Gregory House were a pediatrician, this might be a good case for the show.

7:48am. I buy croissants from Java House for Sophie and Kristi

7:53am. Leave hospital 14 hours and 48 minutes after I entered it. It was the best croissant I’ve ever had.

Fight On,

Hans

A Harvest Moon Over River Street

2009-10-03T20:19:00.000-07:00

I followed the ESPN Game Day crew to Boston this weekend and visited brother Kurt (khouse) and Joyce (JCH). It was an amazing weekend, full of history, architecture, guinness, great food, and some of the most amazing football games yet this year. Kurt prepared an itinerary for my arrival, and I it describes the variety, indulgence, and unique flavor of this trip better than any blog I could write:

11:50 AM: Hans arrives in Beantown
12:00 PM: Kurt picks up Hans at Airport

12:15 PM: Kurt and Hans drive to Painted Lady (Kurt and Joyce's abode on River Street) in Cambridge to drop off Hans’s bag

12:15 – 1:15 PM: Kurt & Hans have lunch at the Miracle of Science

1:30 – 2:30 PM: Explore MIT

2:30 – 4:00 PM: Kurt lectures at MIT

4:00 – 4:20 PM: Hans and Kurt walk across the Longfellow bridge to Mass. General Hospital and the Liberty Hotel to Meet Joyce et. al. for drinks.

4:30 – 6:30 PM: Drinks at the Liberty Hotel

6:30 – 7:00 PM: Walk to rendez-vous of Ghost and Gravestone Tour

7:00 – 8:30 PM: Ghost and Gravestone Tour

8:30 – 9:15 PM: Wander around Quincy Market and toward the Boston Common

9:30 – 11:30 PM: Steaks at KO Prime

11:30 – : Return to Cambridge for long night’s rest

Saturday October 3rd 2009

9:30 AM: Kurt begins cooking Bacon, Eggs, and Gameday Pancakes in Kitchen

10:00 AM: Chris, Lee, Kirk, and Desmond come over

1:00 – 4:00 PM: Drinks and college football games set #1 at The Green Dragon Tavern, drink Sam Adams the beer while sitting in the same seat once occupied by Sam Adams the patriot

4:00 – 7:00 PM: Drinks and college football games set #2 at The Tavern at Central Square

7:00 – 8:00 PM: Go to Wholefoods Market to get Brats and Beer

8:00 PM: Watch USC/Cal and Miami/Oklahoma (set #3) while drinking beer and eating Brats

10:00 PM (Joyce goes to sleep)

Midnight: Hans and Kurt enjoy scotch with Gameday Final

Fight On,

Hans

White Out

2009-09-28T19:48:00.000-07:00

With the eyes of the college football world set on State College, I decided to branch out and get some "local feel". I would like to introduce Chris House as this weeks's guest collumnist:

When my brother Hans suggested that someone from State College should write a “Hans' thoughts” so that it could better capture the atmosphere when Penn State hosts the Hawkeyes in front of a 110,000 strong “White Out”, I agreed to take on the challenge. I immediately thought of how great it would be to be able to give everyone a chance to better understand our little college hamlet in the Alleghenies. First, there are several certainties that one can count on year after year.

First and foremost, it rains a lot in State College (average of 38 inches precipitation per year).

Second, the students will leave town and miss a beautiful summer.

Third, either volleyball or fencing will win a national title.

Fourth, Joe Pa will be back again for another season.

And finally, one Saturday night as the leaves start falling off of the trees, all eyes will be on the Nittany Lions as they pick up the pigskin under the lights of Beaver Stadium. In other words, game day will come to Happy Valley once a year. I imagined that Saturday night, I would see the Nittany Lions get revenge on the Hawkeyes for ending their undefeated season last year. Well, Iowa had other plans.

It was great to enter Beaver Stadium and see the over 21,000 strong student section. The energy of a Penn State home game is fabulous and that is why State College is one of the meccas of college football. In spite of the cold weather and constant rain, the total stadium attendance was a remarkable 109,316, and almost everyone stayed until Daryl Clark threw his final interception. But, alas, I am getting ahead of myself. The first three quarters of the game went like a heavy weight prize fight.

The decision for Round one (first quarter) went unanimously to Penn State. The decision was primarily due to Daryl Clark connecting with Chaz Powell for a 79-yard touchdown pass the first time Penn State touched the ball. Apparently, Iowa was banking on another State College near certainty, that when favored at home in the rain, Joe Pa will run the ball on the first possession of the game.

The second round clearly went to Iowa based on the ultimately important safety and a 41-yard field goal. The third round was a defensive battle ending in a tie - two heavyweight prize fighters battling to a clear draw.

At this point, with the score at 10 to 5, it looked like the cold rainy night was going to end with a Penn State victory. Both offenses were clearly struggling to make yards, let alone points. This game was going to be remembered as a hard, fought, defensive battle in the rain. However, the fourth quarter did not continue this storyline. Instead, the forth quarter demonstrated why cold rainy nights are for the dogs! Iowa’s Adrian Clayborn blocked a punt and returned it 35-yards for a touchdown. Penn State’s effort to regain the lead sputtered due to a slippery ball and a few tipped passes. Iowa was victorious, pulling off a stunning and well deserved upset right in the Lion’s den. The few Hawkeye fans, clothed in “safety yellow” ponchos, had plenty to celebrate assuming they did not catch a cold. Now, the Nittany Lion’s season long playoff is likely over, but don’t worry, Joe Pa will be back next year.

In other news, Fresno Sate again failed to deliver as a great dog on the road. Number 3 Cal taken behind the woodshed at Oregon, Bobby Bowden also failed to get the win, and North Carolina goes down.

And our moment of zen: To end Indiana’s attempt at an upset at the Big House, they hit a philosophical paradox, can there ever be “irrefutable video evidence” that no one had clear possession of the ball? Apparently, not.

Surprise, Surprise

2009-09-27T20:29:00.000-07:00

About 2pm Central on Sunday is when we get the update. I know that is the time I can check ESPN.com or Yahoo sports to get the new AP football rankings. But short of the annual final BCS poll, it is hard for me to remember a rankings I anticipated more than today's. After 4 top 10 teams tumbled this weekend (and a 5th, LSU, really should have), I knew the polls would be different. But with the stumble by Florida State, the embarrsment by Washington, and the resounding thud by Miami, the pollsters had their work cut out for them. Incidentally, I won a bet with by co-workers in the ER then I predicted Iowa would debut around 12 - 14. And to our faithful poolers in State College, I again apologize (sort of).

Beaver Stadium with its intimidating "White Out" is certainly an impressive setting for College Game Day and I was very pleased to see Kirk, Lee, and Chris camping out in Paternoville and munching on Mrs. Paterno's cookies. The Nitanny Lions opened the game with a brilliantly executed play-action fake on the first play, whipping the "White House" into a frenzy. But credit Kirk Ferentz and the Iowa Hawkeyes for not losing their composure and sticking to their slug-it-out, scrappy game plan. The Hawkeye defense played lights-out, explifying Defensive Coordinator Norm Parker's philosophy of giving "six seconds of Hell" to their opponent on every down. With the win, the undefeated Hawkeyes are suddenly legitimate Big-10 conference contenders. Amazingly, they even look better than USC right now.

Fight On,
Hans

A Taste of Ann Arbor

2009-09-20T14:42:00.000-07:00

Let us deal with the elephant in the room first: USC’s “stunning” loss to Washington yesterday. It shouldn’t have been that surprising; die-hard USC fans like myself, Kurt, and my dad (Mouse) saw it coming. Dad, Jim Keatley (jimkeat), and I even went so far as to pick it in the pool. Although I would suspect that Jim’s status as UW alum had a little more to do with the pick, dad and I found that 23 points helps to ease the pain of getting knocked out of the BCS championship . . . again. Why did we see this coming? USC always stumbles against an unranked league opponent, Matt Barkley and Taylor Mays were hurt and their status was questionable, and, oh, yeah, UW is coached by USC’s former Offensive AND Defensive Coordinators. So, they kinda knew pretty much exactly what we would do. I hope USC’s offense gets better in a big hurry, because we have a few tougher games than Washington ahead- like the entire month of October (Cal, Oregon State, Oregon, and Notre Dame).

I would prefer to spend the rest of this week’s musings on a topic more enjoyable- my visit this weekend to Ann Arbor and the orgy of football and food that followed. On the flight here I started reading The Billionaire’s Vinegar by Benjamin Wallace, the amazing true story about the sale of wine purported to be owned by Thomas Jefferson. Wallace’s descriptions of wine flavors and connoisseurship of ridiculously old vintages of Bordeaux wines (100, 150, or even 200 year old wines being opened and tasted) reminded me of almost capricious nature of “official” tasting notes. While an expert may be able to detect hickory, lychee, blueberry, slate, chocolate, tobacco, and bacon all in the same drink, the rest of us will just nod and say, “I don’t know – it tastes pretty good to me.” Which is fine, unless we’re chewing gum while we’re trying to taste it. While I’ve tried to absorb and describe the layers of subtle flavors in a tasting, I find that an impressionist critique is much more satisfying. If a wine invokes a memory of a summer picnic and licking the chocolate off a dripped strawberry, just go with that. And why just stick to wine- try it with beer, whiskey, or anything else.

With this in mind, my hosts for the weekend, Steve (GoBlue) and Beth, took me out upon my arrival to The Black Pearl, an elegant but not ostentatious martini bar on Main Street. Main Street in Ann Arbor is an impressive collection of art galleries and fine eateries. It’s just one of the several reasons that this, along with Madison and Iowa City, is one of my favorite towns in the Midwest (and it’s a lot friendlier than Columbus). We sat down to a late evening / post-call meal of lobster bisque (dad’s is still the best), tuna tartar, and fried calamari (always makes me remember the Plaza Mayor in Madrid). I sampled a set of their signature martinis:

• “The Black Pearl Martini”: A pear-blueberry martini with elderflower that tasted like an upscale sex on the beach, so how about a "sex in a beach cabaña"

• “Espresso Martini”: Vodka and kahlua with espresso served over streaks of chocolate. This is what The Dude would drink if he had class.

• “Pomojito”: A minty, tart, and sweet concoction that vacillated between tropical fruit and cough medicine. It tasted like having a sore throat on vacation in Aruba.

Saturday morning brought a groggy walk across the street for game day pancakes and a stop at the local barber shop for a game day haircut. Chatting with the second-generation barbershop owner, he told me about Michigan’s fierce dedication to tradition, with alums displaying a natural aversion to change. This helps in part explains some of the hostility towards new coach Rich Rodriguez. But the Wolverine offense is awaking, as displayed by their performance on the field against Eastern Michigan. We enjoyed the game in the uncannily quiet Big House under perfect weather (it is weird how not loud 108,000 people can be). But we left early in the 4th quarter, because we wanted to be sure to get a good seat at the sports bar for the incredible college football smorgasbord due on at 3:30 eastern.

We settled in to a large table at Buffalo Wild Wings. OK, yes, it’s a chain restaurant that completely lacks any local color, but they had the highest sheer number of screens per square inch, so it was perfect for our purposes. And our purpose was to watch as much of the afternoon games as possible. In one time slot, we saw Nebraska-Virginia Tech, Oregon-Utah, Michigan State- Notre Dame, Arizona- Iowa, Tennessee and, of course, USC- Washington. All amazing games, and several being decided in the final minutes.

We stumbled out onto State Street a few hours later, bellies laden with buffalo wings and hearts heavy with sorrow. The best therapy? Hot fudge sundaes at Ben and Jerry’s. This was followed by the second best therapy: whiskey and beer at Ashley’s. Ashley’s is quite simply one of my most favorite bars in the whole world. It’s right up there with the Hemingway Bar at the Ritz in Paris, The Sanctuary in Iowa City, The Salisbury in London, and Pat O’Brien’s in New Orleans. Ashley’s beer list is uncompromising, extensive, and thoroughly annotated. And the 50 single-malt scotches they also serve doesn’t hurt, either. I started with a couple of local brews from Holland, Michigan:

• New Holland Dragons Milk: A strong ale with a bourbon flavor and malty aroma. It was like drinking chilled Kentucky Bourbon in a European nightclub.

• Dragonmead Lionhearted Ale: Very sour, yet had a surprisingly great depth in flavor. Like breaking up with a high school sweetheart only to hook up with the head cheerleader the next night

Then I finished with a vertical tasting of whiskeys. I sampled 4 different blends of the same distillery, Glenmorangie.

• 10 Year Old Single Malt: This was battery acid, but tasty battery acid, like being slapped in the face for saying something very clever yet offensive.

• Sherry Wood Cask: This one had a strong vinyl aroma, like stretching out naked in the back seat of a freshly polished ‘72 Cadillac

• Maderia Wood Finsh: The aromas of oaks and smoke blended with a sweet brown sugar flavor. It was my favorite of the night, conjuring up images of running like hell out of a Portuguese wine cellar because it's on fire.

• Port Wood Cask: This was battery acid that smells like port wine. A rich full flavored whiskey that still burns the hell out of your tongue. Like toasting your mortal enemy with a glass of port in a moment of truce only to discover that your glass is laced with cyanide.

Drunk and full, we capped off the night with a showing of Inglorious Basterds by Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino’s homage to WW II movies and Spaghetti Westerns, The movie was indulgent, dramatic, over-the-top, and rife with male fantasy. A perfect reflection of our entire day.

Fight On,

Hans

PS: Another really cool ting about Ann Arbor- they have little fairy doors arranged at random places around downtown. Weird, but cool. Sophie would love this place. http://urban-fairies.com/

Bad Manners

2009-09-13T22:40:00.001-07:00

Over the past years, I have made a number of road trips. I have attended USC road games from coast to coast. I have had the pleasure of enjoying Big-10 games in Iowa, Minnesota, Penn State, Michigan, and Northwestern. In my travels, I have seen beautiful campuses, huge stadiums, talented bands, and entertaining traditions. I have also experienced the best and worst in campus hospitality.

The best places to visit as an opposing team are:

1. Nebraska

2. Notre Dame

3. Arkansas , Alabama (tie)

The Nebraska fans are amazing. I can’t count how many tailgate parties I was invited to. Every single person I met welcomed me to Lincoln. I can’t wait to go back. Notre Dame is my favorite Trojans rival to hate. But South Bend is my favorite road trip. Gorgeous campus, fabulous traditions, and the students are always so eager to make your visit more pleasant. Too bad their team sucks. I will never forget our trip to Arkansas in 2006- Southern Hospitality is not a cliché in Fayetteville. My dad has seen USC play at Alabama twice (1970, 1978), and confirms this hospitality was warm and welcoming there as well. I have fellow USC alums that attended the game in Auburn in 2003 and commented on the classy fans they encountered. I am tempted to think that this applies to entire SEC, but then I remind myself of LSU (see below).

The worst places to visit, I am sorry to say are:

1. Ohio St

2. Virginia Tech

3. LSU

Considering I just got back from Columbus, I feel qualified to comment specifically on the Buckeye’s well-known reputation for hostility to visitors. The details in a moment. Elsewhere, Virginia Tech fans are awful. OK- this is based on two games in DC, but there is no way I am ever going to Blacksburg after the snide comments, open hostility, and druken myopia I’ve experienced. Maybe LSU fans are civil to anyone not named Nick Saban, but as far as Trojans are concerned they just can’t let go of the split national title in 2004. In fact, if you dare print the words “2004 split national title” in a periodical or newspaper, you will immediately receive reams of nasty emails from Baton Rouge.

This weekend, we held a mini family reunion in Columbus. The epic contest between the Buckeyes and Trojans was conveniently located within driving distance of three family epicenters (Iowa City, Ann Arbor, and State College). I have had the displeasure of entertaining Buckeye fans in Iowa City for Hawkeye games and I have heard from others that the Crimson and Grey are usually a bit obnoxious. I assumed it would be worse on their home turf, but I tried to approach the visit with an open mind. I knew I would be reporting my findings here in this column.

It was, sadly, worse than I expected. Outside the stadium, in the two hours prior to kickoff, I was physically assaulted at least twice (two blatant, unprovoked shoves and one shoulder bump that might have been accidental). We heard dozens of insults and trash talking. Mostly along the lines of “You’re going to have a long night tonight” and “USC sucks.” All the more impressive considering that we won 35-3 the previous year. Enough beer has a fascinating effect on reason and perspective. In all that time, we only met two people that were friendly and interested in carrying on a conversation with us beyond a mascot-related slur. One was the mayor of a small town (professional nice) and one was totally blitzed (chemically nice). We even got fleeced by the parking lot dude- he demanded $40 despite standing near a sign clearly saying $20. (why didn’t we just leave and park somewhere else? I wasn’t behind the wheel and wasn’t paying the bill). Their sign outside the hospital proudly proclaimed that they made it to the "top 21" hospitals in America. Top 21? 21? Really? I can't imagine what spot they got on that list.

We walked along the river (or is it an open sewer?) to the stadium, which is just huge. By the way, after I visit Texas and Tennessee, I will have attended a game in each of the 8 largest football stadiums in the country. Inside the stadium, the pre-game festivities were impressive. The “dotting of the I” done at the end of Script Ohio is the coolest marching band routine I’ve ever seen. And watching the Navy ROTC work the mainsheet of the giant American flag in the end zone, raising it like a spinnaker sail for the national anthem, was also very cool. But my admiration for the Buckeyes ends there. I was very happy to see USC play them tight. I was elated and literally jumped for joy when Joe McKnight saved our butts on the final drive. Matt Barkley grew up in a big hurry in those 95 yards! I was so happy to have won, so glad to hear the silence of 102,000, and so eager to get the Hell out of dodge.

Then I realized we might have to face these bozos again in Pasadena on New Years Day. Crap.

Fight On,

Hans

Boston for the Harvest Moon

2009-09-07T23:09:00.000-07:00

That was quite a dream...and its funny because I had a very similiar dream. Although my dream ended with a herd of Rams running all over a heard a Buffalo.

Boston in Early October with the Harvest Moon is as good as it gets...believe me.

Earth and Skye

2009-09-06T20:29:00.000-07:00

The air is starting to turn cooler here in Iowa. I am keeping my eye out for change in the foliage color. The first to turn is the soybeans in the fields, and I saw a few patches of yellow on Thursday. Although summer’s heat has faded, the evenings are still pleasant enough for long moonlit walks with the dogs. The moon this week has been simply amazing. It turned full just the other day, shining with a bright, blue glow that drenches the countryside in its magical spotlight. I was amazed to see my garden lit up like a jewel at 2 in the morning. And Jupiter, a steady white spot in the southern sky, has been riding along with his daughter Diana all week. I have been able to enjoy this celestial spectacle because I recently worked a string of night shifts, adopting a temporarily nocturnal schedule. The lack of normal sleep is worth it- my walks with Skye and Denali through this dreamy landscape are about as vivid and enchanting as any real dream could be.

Saturday, however, I had a real dream- one of the most amazing dreams in recent memory. I had nestled myself into the angle of my sectional leather sofa, with my trusted guardian Westie, Skye, at my feet. The pain of the previous evening’s ER shift was settling in my head: the drunks, the assaults, the suicide attempts. The best therapy for 8 hours of sorting through the worst of human anger and neurosis is a long and peaceful sleep. On this wonderful, beautiful, bright and clear Saturday, I looked forward to washing away a night’s work with a long journey through the dreamscape.

My dream began with Navy pushing Ohio State to the brink in the Horseshoe. Then Iowa blocking not one but two last-second game winning field goals by Northern Iowa. My dream went on, becoming more bizarre: I saw Michigan win a season opener. Then, Notre Dame displayed a potent offense. I dreamt of a USC starting a true Freshman quarterback, and looking good while doing it. The dreamscape turned south- I saw Cowboys beat up on Bulldogs and set up themselves for a run at the title. Then, the dream turned nightmarish- Sam Bradford falls awkwardly onto his throwing shoulder, tearing ligaments, diminishing chances at a repeat Heisman trophy, and crushing BCS hopes for the Sooners. At the same time, there was triumph: BYU pushed the Mountain West Conference just a little closer to ending the monopoly by the BCS’s big six. In the few precious moments just as the dream ends yet reality has yet to become lucid, I saw Bama struggling with Virgina Tech and LSU being tested by Washington.

I can only hope for more of this dream season!

Fight On,

Hans

PS: The current full moon, although occurring in September, is not really be the Harvest moon- its too early. The Harvest Moon is the full moon nearest the Autumn equinox (September 22), and that’s when the majority of the harvest actually happens. Depending on the source you read, the current moon is the Corn moon or it doesn’t have a real name. This is the one year out of three when the Harvest moon will occur in October. (October 4th, when I visit Kurt in Boston for some moonlight pints of Guinness in the North end)

All this talk about food is making me hungry

2009-08-28T22:43:00.000-07:00

For the last month, NPR and other sources of my news have been obsessed with food and food culture. The current fad on radio magazine programs is to talk about food, food movies, the benefits of fine foods, cooking, the foodie lifestyle, and especially food movies. I didn’t realize that the food movie is a recognized genre. All this foodie craziness stems from the recent release of Nora Ephrom’s Julie and Julia. It tells two stories together- that of Julia Child and her life in France and also about some wanna-be writer with a blog.

Actually, I have been looking forward to this film for a long time. I read Julia Child’s autobiography (My Life in France) in June and fell in love with it on many layers. First, there was the inspiring story of a tall, rather obnoxious American from Pasadena living in Paris and pursuing her dream of bringing French cooking to the USA. What she lacked in grace and beauty she made up for with unyielding fearlessness and an endearing character. Next, I developed an appreciation for a person I could only vaguely recall from my childhood. I knew her better from Dan Akroyd’s classic finger-butchering parody on SNL then from her show on the then-fledgling WGN in Boston. Hearing her words describe cooking in France and the US following World War II, I better understand the context into which her cookbook entered and exploded. Finally, there is the sublime seduction of an American in Paris, describing new foods, sauces, wines, cultures, tastes, accents, words. From the flaky croissant to the ubiquitous baguette, even the most simple of dishes become an art.

In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell tries to identify factors that lead to exceptionally accomplished people. He argues quite convincingly that talent is not simply innate. It is cultivated. In a gross over-simplification of his premise, Gladwell finds that “outliers” have an interest, get a unique opportunity of timing to develop that interest, and practice a ridiculous amount of time (10,000 hours at least). Julia Child, who arrived in France at age 37 without cooking in mind, proves that it is never too late to pursue a second career. Following Gladwell’s principles:

1) Julia developed a taste for world culture while working for the OSS (precursor to the CIA) in China – yes, she was a spy.

2) Julia developed an interest in French cooking when she tasted the Sole Meniere in Rouen, their first stop off the boat

3) Julia found herself in post war Paris, the wife of a embassy worker, and looking for something to do with her time.

4) Julia was surrounded by the greatest chefs, wines, and foods, all eager to share their techniques with this endearing yet loud and tall American

5) She practiced constantly, awaking at 6:30 every morning and would cook until late at night. All day. Every day.

Julia Child became, well, Julia Child. Upon returning home to the USA and selling ridiculous editions of her cookbook, she shattered the trend toward casseroles and TV dinners. She taught America to cook. And we all eat better because of it.

I have visited her kitchen. It’s in the Smithsonian Institution, in the basement of the American History museum. As I stared at her dozens of pots and pans (she was a kitchen gadget freak), a video was playing with highlights from her WGN show. In those few minutes, Julia taught me how to make an omelette. I had been making them for years, of course, but they never turned out quite right. She showed me that with a change in technique, the result is totally different. I now make them like Julia and they are fantastic.

But my favorite dish for breakfast during Autumn has to be Game Day Pancakes. Julia knew that ingredients and measurements are important. But the technique for preparing the dish and the setting for the enjoying the dish are even more important. So, with that in mind, here is my recipe for

Game Day Pancakes:

1 Box Complete Pancake Mix

Filtered Water

Enough butter to harden your arteries on sight

Pure, real maple syrup, from Vermont or Quebec

In a bowl, pour out 1 cup of mix per person in the house not too hungover to eat. Add ¾ cups of water for each cup of mix. Mix batter until smooth. Prepare a griddle (not a frying pan- those are for fish and crowded mushrooms, not pancakes) with medium-high heat. Let it get just hot enough to be dangerous. Gently coat griddle with cooking spray, making sure a little of the spray falls short of the stove top and cascades to the floor where it can be enjoyed by the family Labrador. Drop pancake batter in 4 – 6” rounds across griddle. Turn them when the bubbles on top start popping. Cook the other side briefly, no more than a minute.

Flip completed pancakes onto a waiting plate, piling them at least three stacks high in a little mound. While still hot, smear with enough butter to draw disapproving looks from your wife. Then add a little more. Then drown the whole pile in thick, sweet maple syrup.

Turn on ESPN college game day and enjoy the pile. I suggest pairing the pancakes with a vintage 2009 Florida Noveau Orange, the fresher the better. Then, until Corso dons the headgear, fall asleep and dream of beating the Bruins / Cyclones / Domers / Tigers / Tide / Gators / etc.

Fight On,

Hans

In Spite of it or Because of it

2009-01-01T13:14:00.000-08:00

As we huddled around our dining room table, enjoying tarragon chicken and glazed pear salad, a blizzard raged outside our window. A blast of arctic air soared into the Midwest and ran smack into some unseasonably warm moisture from the Gulf, driving the temperature down 50 degrees in a matter of hours. This dramatic collision of fronts just overhead of us in Iowa City meant we got showered with ice. Within minutes, the interstate was coated: glistening and frictionless. As cars swerved and trucks jackknifed, it was clear to everyone on the road that they would rather be at home sipping chardonnay with their tarragon chicken.

Winter has thus far been pretty rough. Winter storms, ice, snow, sub zero temperatures. And that was just December. I asked my guests the evening of the blizzard, “Do we love Iowa because of Winter or in spite of it?” The answer, it seems, is neither. It is hard to love chunks of ice blocking your driveway and the hour of back breaking work needed to clear it. No one smiles when struck by a 20 knot wind gust carrying a -30 wind chill, capable of freezing bare skin within minutes. Midwesterners long for the warm sun of Florida, Arizona, or California as their car slides across and off the road into the ditch.

But Winter is not all bad. It is a real and essential element of Midwestern life. It is not that we live here in spite of the winter- we live here and learn to cope with it. We recognize its importance in nature’s cycles: the moisture locked in the snow and ice is held until Spring when it can swell the rivers and soak the fields with nutrients. Pests are eradicated by freezing. Trees and flowers sleep quietly, saving their energy for the big show in Spring and Summer.

To cope with Winter, you must recognize and indulge in its rare joys. Like the glistening of sunlight through the trees decorated ornaments of sparkling ice. Or cross-country skiing on an inch of fresh powder while bald eagles soar and hunt fish in the river alongside you. Or awakening after a long night of howling wind and blowing snow to find the world hushed, calm, at peace, and blanketed in white. Or taking in a hockey game played on a local pond. Or taking in a hockey game played at a local outdoor stadium, like Wrigley field. Recently, we took our daughter sledding for the first time- she loved it (see video). I felt warmer inside with each giggle and shout for “more”

Mostly, however, Midwesterners retreat indoors in the Winter months, with good reason. It is a time for bonding with family members and celebrating the holidays. December parties are generally family affairs, while winter parties for friends and co–workers are held throughout January. The isolation and darkness leads us to seek periods of light and merriment, with sumptuous food and great wine.

Winter seasonal cooking can be wonderful. It is time for game meats, like duck and venison. Root vegetables can be harvested late and stored for weeks. I used to like carrots until I discovered the parsnip. Now I know that the humble carrot is merely a poor cousin to the sweet and delicious parsnip. We find ways to put pears into dishes, like chopped endive salad with glazed pears and blue cheese. Winter is the time for citrus fruits: our kitchen counter is buried with oranges, tangerines, tangelos, and lemons. Yesterday I collected my first bag of blood oranges, which I consider to be my most special Winter treat. I can only get them here for a few months starting in January. I invented a dessert to enjoy them with:

Sangre del Inverano (Winter’s Blood)
1 Blood Orange
Blood orange
sorbetto*
1 tablespoon chilled vodka

Quarter the orange and cut
the slices into bite-sized eighths, placing them in a cocktail glass.
Using a melon baller, add several small scoops of sorbetto. Drizzle with
vodka. After eating the oranges and sorbetto, be sure to drink the melted
concoction that will result in the bottom of the glass. That’s the best
part!
*Ciao Bella makes a wonderful sorbetto that is available at most fine
food stores, such as Gelson’s, Bristol Farms, Wegeman’s, or Whole Foods.

The most rewarding experience for me during this winter has been watching football with my young daughter. Although only 19 months old, she recognizes and can say the word “football”. Last week, we stumbled upon the Meineke Car Care Bowl between North Carolina and West Virginia, a game in which I had no legitimate interest. But the contest was so well played and so exciting, we sat and watched, cheering for players we had never heard of. As we snuggled into the couch and pulled the blanket up tighter, I was thankful for arrival of winter.

Fight On and have a great 2009,
Hans

Travel Medicine Talk

2008-12-08T21:15:00.000-08:00

Just an experiment to see if this google document thing works the way it is supposed to.

Goodbye to Kinnick North

2008-11-25T12:16:00.000-08:00

Way to finish the season, Hawkeyes. 55 - 0 to close out the Metrodome.

Nuff Said

Bad BCS Moon Rising

2008-11-17T17:38:00.000-08:00

There is a nasty controversy on the horizon in college football. But that's nothing new for the BCS!

Thanks to the 6 conference monopoly that begrudging allowed this system, the 6 conference champions are guaranteed a spot in the top bowls, no matter how bad those conferences are. This means that that whoever stumbles their way to the top of the Big East, Cincinnati or Pittsburgh, gets in. And despite their best efforts, someone will eventually win the chaotic ACC. So that will result in two teams lower than #18 playing in the BCS.

It gets worse.

The Pac-10 is not helping. It is so top heavy- a couple of good teams and a lot of really bad teams, that Oregon State can run the table and win their first Rose Bowl bid since the mid 1960's. That puts a third low-ranked team (likely around #20) into the BCS. Ouch.

Then, there are the BCS busters. One team between Utah, Boise State, and, possibly, BYU will finish in the top 12 and get an automatic bid to one of the four BCS bowls. This minor break with the monopoly is well deserved and past due, but it does lock up one more precious spot.

So what's the problem?

Look at this week's top 10 in the BCS:

1.Alabama

2.Texas Tech

3. Texas

4. Florida

5. Oklahoma

6. USC

7. Utah

8. Penn St.

9. Boise St.

10. Ohio St.

If the season were to end with these standings (with Utah and Boise State both undefeated):

A. Alabama and Texas Tech would play for the championship (I think it will be Florida and Oklahoma, but we'll ignore that for now)

B. Penn State would play in the Rose Bowl

C. Utah would get an at-large berth

D. There would only be 3 at-large spots left between Texas, Florida, USC, Oklahoma, Boise State, and Ohio State.

Look at that list again.

Only 3 teams between Texas, Florida, USC, Oklahoma, Boise State, and Ohio State get to play in the BCS.

Wow.

The Bronco's undefeated season would go unrewarded.

The Buckeyes can forget about yet another Fiesta Bowl.

If the Gators are a lock, then someone between the Longhorns, Trojans, and Sooners is going to be awfully disappointed.

And this does not begin to address the possibility of a non-conference-champion playing in the BCS title game. Oh yes- it could happen. We could even see two non-conference-champions in the title game. I won't spin your head further with those scenarios.

Fight On,

Hans

PS: Bad Moon Rising was originally released on the Green River album by CCR (1969). If you already knew that, then you must be living somewhere in the Sacramento Delta . . .

Hans

Hope For Change in the BCS

2008-11-10T20:43:00.000-08:00

It’s November, and you know what that means: Pete Carroll will be trying to keep his No-Loss-November streak alive, the Minnesota Gophers will start to wonder if their open air new stadium is such a good idea, the tundra will begin to freeze in Green Bay, and we’ll all start bitching about the BCS. Proponents of a playoff system got a huge boost last week from our newly crowned president-elect (for a complete review of Iowa’s experience with the election, check out Sophie’s blog at http://www.blogger.com/www.sophiehouse.blogspot.com) . On Monday night football, on the eve of election day, Barack Obama was asked what the one thing he would change about sports and said that it was about time that college football decided its champion with a playoff, suggesting an eight team field. Without plagiarizing Dan Weztel’s outstanding 11/5/08 Yahoo column too much, Obama reflects the mood of the nation with this opinion on vital policy (http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/news?slug=dw-obamabcs110508&prov=yhoo&type=lgns) .

The debate over the need for a playoff is so pervasive that we all need to ask the critical question: who exactly is against the idea? As near as I can figure it, the people against it do not number more than 23: the commissioners and presidents of the Pac 10 and Big 10 conferences. And that’s about it. 23 people holding up the wishes of 300 million? That’s not very democratic. In the spirit of hope and change ushered in by the remarkable events of Election Day 2008, it is time to move the BCS into its next logical step: the “plus one” game. The infrastructure is in place for this four team playoff- now all four major bowls play a game near New Year’s day and one venue hosts the “BCS Championship” a week later.

The race for this year’s BCS became slightly clearer last weekend. Thanks to the leg of Iowa City native Daniel Murray, Penn State was effectively eliminated from the national championship race. Now, JoPa will have to “settle” for a Rose Bowl date with USC, assuming they can beat Michigan State (which is not a done deal by any means). Murray, on the other hand, gave up a full ride playing soccer at Kentucky to walk on for his hometown Hawkeyes. What seemed like a crazy choice last year has now yielded him everlasting fame and fortune. He will never have to pay a bar tab in Iowa City . . . ever.

Florida’s impressive play of late has moved them up in the rankings and landed them in the SEC championship game. Assuming the Gators and Tide stay perfect until then (again hardly a done deal- see “2007 season” for more details), we will have a national semi-final for the BCS in the SEC Championship. So says Brad Edwards of ESPN, and he is usually right. The SEC champion’s opponent is a little more murky but it is a safe assumption that they will come from the Big 12. Texas Tech controls their own destiny for now, but they face their stiffest test of the year Saturday when they travel to Norman and take on the Oklahoma Sooners. An Oklahoma win will result in a three way tie atop the Big 12 south, with each team having beat the other (OU beat Tech who beat Texas who beat OU- ouch). The Big 12 tiebreaking procedures for a three way tie read as follows:

1.The records of the three teams will be compared against each other
2. The records of the three teams will be compared within their division
3. The records of the three teams will be compared against the next highest placed teams in their division in order of finish (4, 5 and 6)
4. The records of the three teams will be compared against all common conference opponents;
5. The highest ranked team in the first Bowl Championship Series Poll following the completion of Big 12 regular season conference play shall be the representative
6. The team with the best overall winning percentage [excluding exempted games shall be the representative
7. The representative will be chosen by draw.

Since Tech, OU, and Texas can finish with only one loss each (to each other), methods 1- 4 are bypassed. That leaves #5, and the fate of the Big 12 champ in the hands of the BCS voters. Since pollsters usually punish teams that lose late, in the aforementioned scenario, Texas Tech would probably get the short end of the stick and Texas has the edge at this point. But we’re getting way ahead of ourselves- let’s see what happens Saturday.

Fight On,
Hans

PS: An Oregon State- Penn State rematch in the Rose Bowl? It is not as ridiculous as it may sound. Although folks in State College cringe at the thought of it, if the Beavers win out they still are the Pac-10 champs over USC. And looking back at their season, they only have one bad loss- the opening day stumble to Stanford. Since then, they have only lost to two teams, both of whom happen to be in the top 10 (Penn State and Utah). If they can get by Cal (unlikely) and Arizona (impossible) in the next two weeks, the Civil War would decide the Rose Bowl. Personally, I wouldn’t mind seeing USC being “forced” to accept an at-large BCS berth and play Alabama in the Sugar Bowl or Utah in the Fiesta Bowl. We’ll see . . . .

Ghouls, Goblins, and Transvestites

2008-11-03T18:04:00.000-08:00

Saturday saw the World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party in Jacksonsville, Florida. Except that, since 2006, the SEC has asked TV networks to stop using that nickname becuase it glorifies the binge drinking that tends to occur. But tradition is hard to stop, and two years later, everyone still knows the Florida - Georgia game as the Cocktail Party. Memo to the NCAA: changing the title of the game will not suddenly end binge drinking associated with this or any other football game. You should see the number and complexity of beer bongs here at the Hawkeye games!

Similarly, the Texas-Oklahoma classic at the Texas State fair was known as the Red River Shootout for 100 years until 2005. I suppose the stuffed shirts of the NCAA found "shootout" to be a little too violent. To heck with 100 years of tradition. But on Saturday night, sprayed across national television, were the mascot, fans, and even coach of Texas Tech with their hands in a gun shape, proudly waving on their gun slinging Red Raiders on to victory over Texas. This "Guns Up" hand sign was developed in 1961 to counter the very common "Hook em Horns" sign, flashed throughout Texas all year long. Will the NCAA crack down on this one too? (interesting side note: the gorgeous black stallion rode by the "Masked Rider" of Texas Tech is probably the oldest of the current live horse mascots in the NCAA, dating back to 1954. Others include Chief Osceola of Florida State, the mounted Cavalier of Virginia, and, of course, college football's greatest mascot: Traveler, the Trojan Horse.)

Political Correctness is the principle of public relations that avoids offending anyone. This, of course, can easily become an exercise in futility. In an attempt to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one. Think of elevator music or the color beige.

Halloween is one night of the year that PC takes a back seat to libido. Sure, there is still plenty of innocent fun among children dressing up and begging for candy (Sophie wore an adorable penguin costume). But Halloween has become a predominantly adult holiday, especially on college campuses where risque apparel is now the norm. Downtown Iowa City, blessed with record high temperatures this weekend, was packed with superheroes, pirates, and nurses, all trying to outdo each other for outrageousness and offense to Midwestern sensibilities.

We made it out on Halloween night for a treat: a showing of the Rocky Horror Picture Show at the local art house theatre. This is a film that revels in shocking sensibilities, purposely challenging conventional social mores. The point of the movie, I think, is that everyone can be corrupted by giving in to their natural sexual insticts. Either that or its just a silly sexy romp in drag with some good songs but a patheticly bad plot.

As a veteran of the Rialto in Pasadena, Balboa in Newport, and the Nuart in West LA, I am pleased to report that the Rocky Horror fans in Iowa are sophisticated, enthusastic, and knew all the classic shout out lines. And they added a few more audience jokes I had not heard before. The best costume by far was a spitting image of Tim Curry's Frank N Furter, right down to the garter belt and nylons. It was a glorious 100 minute bachnalia before we all returned to our quiet, unassuming corn and pig farmer lives to watch some great football.

Fight On,

Hans

Destination Foods

2008-10-26T20:21:00.000-07:00

Another Saturday, another day of feasting on college football.

As an indicator of how great the matches were, a game between two undefeated top-10 teams was NOT on national television! Thanks to the infinite insanity of ABC/EPSN, Texas vs Oklahoma State was only “good enough” for regional action. And for those of us in the Midwest otherwise forced to put up with Michigan – Michigan State, only ESPN game plan saved us from watching something that was meaningless outside the Great Lake State. But with Texas- Oklahoma, Texas Tech- Kansas, and Virginia- Georgia Tech, we had plenty of tasty appetizers leading up to the big entrée: Penn State at Ohio State in the dreaded horseshoe. JoPa’s first win in Columbus in 30 years is certainly reason to celebrate, although it sounds like the good people of State College celebrated a little too hard. Makes you wonder what would happen in the streets of Centre County if they make it to the BCS Championship and win it all.

For dessert, I had the pleasure of taking in the USC-Arizona game from the friendly confines of the USC alumni bar: the Goose Island Brew pub in Wrigleyville (that’s the suburb of Chicago surrounding Wrigley field for all you living on the left and right coasts). The game was as close as I had expected- this was the one I had picked out back in June as the mid-season league game on the road that would give Pete Carroll his annual stumble. Of course, at the time I had missed the Oregon State road trip; I have to thank the Beavers for causing Pete’s stumble a little early.

All this talk of indulging in edible delights got me feeling a little hungry and I headed down the cold and windy Chicago streets for a warm, cheesy pie of comfort. The best pizza in the world is made in Chicago, and the best pizza in Chicago is made by Giordano’s. With all due respect to devotees of Gino’s East (and I really don’t want to step in the middle of that debate), Giordano’s is the Mount Everest of Chicago-style pizza. Imagine a succulent quiche packed with mushrooms and veggies. Now imagine that instead of egg as the medium, those ingredients are suspended in hot cheese. MMMMMMMM. Healthy? Of course not. A ridiculous amount of calories ? Sure. Worth it? You betcha!

If you do go to Giordano’s, one brief word of advice: one slice of this deep dish is equivalent to 3-4 slices of “regular pizza”. Eating two pieces of Giordano’s is a very large meal. To make it worse, it can really sneak up on you. You have been thinking about it all 4 hours on your drive from Iowa. You walk into the restaurant and you are overwhelmed with the beautiful sent of baking bread and melting cheese. By the time you wait 30 minutes for your pie, you feel like you are starving. When the pizza arrives, you dive into the first slice, polishing of the plate of molten cheese with nary a thought. So you reach for a second slice – why not? You always eat at least two slices of pizza anyway. Halfway through that second slice, it hits you. Bubbles of pure cholesterol begin racing through your veins. Your arteries begin to stiffen and petrify. Your swollen stomach draws an ever larger volume of blood to support its attempt at digestion. Your brain, already pickled by the pitcher of Goose Island Ale you chugged while waiting for your pie, shrinks from the lack of circulation. Your head spins, your belly swells, and sheer force of will manages to get the last few bites into your mouth. You pay your bill, waddle to the street, collapse into a cab, and wake up 15 minutes later in front of your hotel.

And you can’t wait to do it again!

Fight On,

Hans

PS: Giordano’s is a “destination food”. A meal that you miss when you leave it and are willing to drive a little further just to get. In and Out is another perfect example of a “destination food”. I want to hear about other’s destination foods- add it to the Bark Like a Dog post.

The BCS is Back

2008-10-20T20:33:00.000-07:00

The first BCS standings have been released and the top three are no surprise (and probably accurate). The BCS wacky ranking system is every one's favorite punching bag, and I am no exception. Goofy results from chaotic upsets and exclusion of deserving teams plague the BCS every year. But heck, it gives us something to talk about. Take this column for example. I was fresh out of heartwarming stories about perfect fall weather in the heartland or teaching my daughter to make game day pancakes or tailgating at the nation's best stadiums.

As much I love to pick on the BCS, they did get at least one thing right: holding the first rankings until half way through the season. By ignoring the essentially arbitrary pre-season ratings, unsubstantiated biases are supplanted by a reflection of the teams real performance. This season is a perfect example of the value of this system: the top 3 teams in this week's BCS rankings started the season outside the AP top 10.

When the season started, the top 4 were interchangeable between Georgia, Ohio State, USC, and Oklahoma. All of these supposed "teams of the century" now have a loss, and Georgia and Ohio State are struggling to remain relevant in the national title race. With 8 undefeated teams, BCS bashers are salivating over the possibility of continued controversy and anger at th close of the season. But there's plenty of football left to play and past years have proven that the standings will get jumbled by the most unlikely of dogs. Of course, folks in Auburn will remind everyone of 2004 when there were three undefeated teams from BCS conferences. I doubt an undefeated SEC champion will get screwed this year.

Of course, if Alabama, Texas, and Penn State do win out, then the Nitany Lions will be this year's Auburn. This should come as an outrageous injustice to the folks in State College: Geriatric JoPa has been on top of the game for decades. He has 5 undefeated seasons to be proud of. But only one national championship! No team has been snake-bit by the lack of playoff more than JoPa's Lions.

See you in Pasadena, Joe.

Fight On,

Hans

Indian Summer

2008-10-12T18:55:00.000-07:00

"The air is perfectly quiescent and all is stillness, as if Nature, after her exertions during the Summer, were now at rest."
John Bradbury, 1817

Everyone knows what an Indian Summer is: a period of still, warm weather following a frost, preceding winter, usually in October or November. But there is considerable more controversy over the origin of the term. The May 17, 2005 USA Today published an excellent review of the subject. References to the term have been discovered as far back as 1778. At that time a French-American soldier-turned-farmer wrote,

"Sometimes the rain is followed by an interval of calm and warmth which is called the Indian Summer; its characteristics are a tranquil atmosphere and general smokiness. Up to this epoch the approaches of winter are doubtful; it arrives about the middle of November, although snows and brief freezes often occur long before that date."

-St. John de Crevecoeur, "German-flats, 17 Janvier, 1778”

Theories abound about the original intent of the term. It may be because this period was the time of harvest of the native American crops and the fruitful hunting that can take place. Or that native American raids on colonial settlements peaked during the autumn before halting for the winter. Since it is a meteorological phenomenon unique to North America, European settler’s referred to it as the “Indian’s Summer”. One source even attributed it to a maritime tradition for European ships plying the Indian Ocean trade. Ships would be loaded maximally during the fairest sailing season, the “Indian Summer”. Some ships would even have hull marks indicating load level for the period, marked “I.S.”

Connections, however, to the term “Indian Giver” are more rare. A few sources pointed out that early settlers with a disdain for the locals likely called this period the Indian Summer because it is essentially a “false” summer; implying that all things “Indian” are not to be trusted. Indian Giver refers to a person to takes a gift back after it is given. A common economic practice among native tribes would be to give a gift and then expect a gift in return as part of a trade. When their new European trading partners did not understand that the gift they received was to initiate a trade, the Indians took the gift back. A century later, the term Indian Giver took on new meaning as white negotiators promised native tribes one thing, then took it back in the next “treaty”.

Whatever the source of the term, we in Iowa are currently reveling in a gorgeous Indian Summer. The air is calm and clear, the sun is bright, and daytime highs reach well into the upper 70’s. The local restaurants brought their sidewalk tables and umbrellas back out of storage, the corn and soybeans are sitting in the fields un-harvested and drying in the sun, and the downtown streets are thronged with inebriated students. We had a week or two of cool weather: the sweaters got unpacked from the basement, the apples in the trees turned a sweet juicy red, and you could just begin to smell hints of smoke on the air as home fires were burning. Last week’s games were played in this “football weather”: warm enough for fans in sweatshirts and cool enough for players to work hard and not get overheated. But this week we are back to summer time temperatures and we don’t mind one bit.

We barbecued burgers in shorts and t-shirts and feasted on farm fresh tomatoes. We harvested dozens of bundles of basil, blending it into 40 pints of pesto to freeze and enjoy in the deepest, coldest part of winter (homemade pesto in January tastes like a little touch of summer). We played on the lawn with our babies, drinking beer and hoping the sunshine would never end. And when the sun finally did set, we headed inside to watch multiple games on two projectors: Penn State- Wisconsin, Florida- LSU, and Missouri- Oklahoma State. Drained by the hot sun, numbed by countless bottles of Sierra Nevada Porter, and engorged on chips, guacamole, and tamales, we slipped into a deep coma on the couch, dreaming of the endless summer.

Fight On,
Hans