Friday’s Song

Hey, Happy Friday people! This song will always be a favorite of mine, you all know it. I think. “Broken” by Seether and Amy Lee.

lyrics at mp3lyrics.org.

Football of all Kinds!

A butt load of stuff is going on. This will be my one post for the week, besides Friday. I have soccer going on (yes, this one did make the team), school (4 of my 6 classes are awesome), college American football starts this weekend, La Liga starts this weekend, and F.C. Porto won their first game! I’m so excited for all of it! Though it’s going to be hard for me to write or comment about much of anything, I’m constantly on go, go, and go now. My team chedule for cheesecake is placed on the side. We should be a pretty good side, during try-outs, during a ten or fifteen minute scrimmage, the “second team” which I was on, beat the first team starters from last year 2-1, and the first team were 2nd in nationals. Though, I should point out that they were very sluggish and very “preseason.” I also should point out, the second team never lost (won 3 and drew 1).

Enough of my gloating… on to the football(s).

The first two games for KU’s football team should be cake. They’re played here, and they’re relatively weak opponents. We should crush them. They also just installed this sweet little new practice field next to the stadium which I walk by every morning from my car to campus. They began working on it this time last year. Also the Gators play Hawaii this weekend. I don’t know if I’ll be able to see it because of work (good ol’ work, just like during the Euros). About half of the sports writers and pundits from ESPN picked Florida to win the SEC Championship this year. The other half picked Georgia, but the consensus is, whoever wins the SEC East will win the SEC title. One person picked Florida to win it all over Ohio State so he’s an automatic friend, and one other person picked Georgia. That was a surprise. In reality, I think Georgia has the team to beat this season. As usual many teams from the SEC will be tough to beat, I just think Georgia has that extra whatever to beat good teams. In my personal opinion, I think whoever wins what used to be “The World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party“, will win the East and the SEC title. I will refrain from saying anything about Ohio State, if you can’t say anything nice… Adam thinks to himself, “#2, Overrated.“

30 August @ 11:30 CDT

	Hawaii Warriors
	#5 Florida Gators

30 August @ 18:00 CDT

	Florida International Panthers
	#14 Kansas Jayhawks

Football of the round kind. Nothing to say about Barca or Ajax just yet. But, Porto (who will be participating in the group phase of the Champions’ League) won their first match against Belenenses.

	Belenenses	0
	F.C. Porto	2

Sort of a rival from Lisbon. 2-0 was the score with Mariano and Hulk, Porto’s newest acquisition, helped get the first win for the 3-time Portuguese champions! S.L. Benfica stumbled drawing 1-1 with recently promoted Rio Ave, but Sporting obtained their 3 points with a 3-1 win over Trofense another promoted squad. An important match this Saturday for Porto going to Lisbon to play Benfica at the Stadium of Lights. I’ll be horribly disappointed and a little pissed if Porto come away with anything less than 1 point. Sporting plays Braga (a pretty good squad) at Braga, Portugal this Saturday and will likely pick up 3 points. Playing a heated rival this early in the season is a little bit weird I think, but what can you do? F.C. Porto’s overall record in the Liga Portuguesa is pretty impressive. Since 1933, 74 years ago Porto has a record of 1,333-375-340 (losses being the last number), scored 4,542 goals and conceded 1,909 and accumulating a total of 3,342 points, while accumulating Portuguese League titles 23 times (Wikipedia).

30 August @ 14:45 CDT

	F.C. Porto
	S.L. Benfica

Friday’s Song

Well, it’s the end of the summer (first day of school was yesterday) and soon it’ll be Autumn for real. I’m late posting this, I know, I know. Today’s song is a song I first heard this year! Where have I been? I fell in love with it the first time I heard it. This fantasic acoustic song “Autumn Leaves” is sung by the late, great singer, Eva Cassidy. She has an awesome voice!

Oh yeah, it’s Friday too!

lyrics at mp3lyrics.org.

Olympics Day ?; Olympic Football Day ?

Yep, I know, it has been a good while, I’ve lost count with the Olympic days and football days, but I’ve been busy with my own football endeavors which hopefully will land me on the university squad. I’ll know for sure ‘yay’ or ‘nay’ by Friday. I played sick all tryout days. I caught something over the weekend, my throat had been sore and Tuesday it was just too much. I slept in and missed both tryouts, I felt weak, I just wanted to lay in bed all day. I ended up waking up at 1pm, but I had to work that afternoon till close. It was a blur-of-a-day I’ll tell you, I don’t remember much from it. I did make to the last two yesterday, still out of it. They ran a timed 40 yard dash during the morning session. I’ve done this before with KCKCC, but I think they did it wrong because then, I ran it in 5 seconds flat, I thought to myself “There’s no way!”, it must have been a forty-five yard dash instead or something. However, today, unofficially, I ran a 4.40, forty. It was unofficial, but I’m still takin’ it! Overall this year, I played like it was fun and played pretty decently (to my ridiculously high standards). Unlike last year when I played like it was work or a chore, no fun, bad play.

On to the Olympics, which I’ve neglected the past several days. I ended up on Olympics Day 7, Football Day 7, so this might be Olympics Day 13, Olympic Football Day 10? Something like that, I don’t know. We have a final with the Americans and a final without the Americans. For the women tomorrow today they have a rematch with Brazil. The Americans will have their hands full. Shutting down Marta and Christiane may be enough but knowing Brazil or any top club there will be others that will put up the points for them if their stars fail. I’m surprised Brazil crushed Germany like they did. Christiane scored twice, Fromiga is another to watch, I’ve seen her on the scoresheet a couple of times this Olympics as she was there again against Germany. That was a statement match for Brazil as if to say, “We can destroy the world champions, any challengers?” The Americans defeated Japan 4-2. Scoring variety is what the Americans have on their side, but they’ll have to play a near perfect match to win gold against Brazil. Like I said before Germany will easily win bronze.

Bronze Medal Match — Thursday, 21.08.08
Germany vs. Japan
18:00 China/05:00 CDT

Gold Medal Match — Thursday, 21.08.08
United States vs. Brazil
21:00 China/08:00 CDT

For the guys, there was a couple of surprises for me, I don’t know about anyone else. Italy losing to Belgium. I looked at the score saw the highlights and was like, “WTF?!” They were the favorites. Then the other surprise was Brazil on the end of a good ol’ fashioned beatin’ by Argentina. The last beating I can recall between these two was a couple of years ago in the Copa America final, Brazil won 3-0. I still can’t believe it, Brazil got owned. We know Brazil should win the bronze, very disappointing for them. Nigeria and Argentina in the gold medal match…this has happened before during the Olympics. It was in Atlanta back in 96′.

This is vintage football. Look who was referee. Good ol’ Colina!

Yeeeeah…I don’t think that result will happen this time.

Bronze Medal Match — Friday, 22.08.08
Brazil vs. Belgium
19:00 China/06:00 CDT

Gold Medal Match — Saturday, 23.08.08
Argentina vs. Nigeria
12:00 (Saturday) China/23:00 (Friday) CDT

Off topic, how about that Usain (Insane) Bolt! What’s really sick is how easy he makes it look, he’s only 21, and he will probably get better! He had at least a 9.60 in the 100m if he didn’t let up. Ridiculous! Just like Phelps is the perfect swimmer biologically, Bolt could be the perfect sprinter.

Olympics Day 7; Olympic Football Day 7

I’m really tired today, so this’ll be short and sweet, and maybe incoherent at points. The U.S. women faring much better than the men defeated Canada (2nd toughest task thus far) and they were no joke. It took extra time to finish off our northern friends. Thanks to a Miss Angela Hucles early in the 12th minute, and a Miss Natasha Kai (hero of the day) late in the 101st minute.

“Abby Wambach’s pre-Olympic, post-injury prediction rang true. ‘Natasha Kai is, I think, one of the X factors of this team going forward,’ she said. ‘I think she has great things ahead of her. All I can say about Tash is that I think she’s going to make huge impact for us this Olympics in Beijing.’” (Wambach, ESPNsoccernet’s Dolich)

Quarterfinal Results — Friday 15.08.08
United States 2:1 Canada a.e.t.

Brazil 2:1 Norway

Sweden 0:2 Germany

China 0:2 Japan

Semifinals — Monday, 18.08.08
Brazil vs. Germany
18:00 China/05:00 CDT

United States vs. Japan
21:00 China/08:00 CDT

Well, I seriously thought we’d be facing the hosts in the semifinals, but it’s not to be. No one from Group A has survived. Instead the Americans have a second date with Japan and maybe a “break” from what could have been China. If you recall, the U.S. did win 1-0, but that was the group stage. This is more important of a match. Though win or lose each team has a chance to medal, obviously the better outcome would be a win and play for the gold medal. I still think the U.S. will beat Japan…scoring variety is on the American’s side. Though they did knock off China and ripped apart Norway (I still don’t understand how that happened), that’s a pretty good resume for one week. Brazil against Germany for a third time in less than 365 days (I think). Rematch #3. Will Germany prevail, or will Brazil meet the U.S. and give the U.S. a chance at redemption (yes again, I’m that confident) from a year ago? If we recall again, these two (Germany and Brazil) drew in their group match 0-0. If the same repeats this could go to extra time and possibly to penalties. Either way, I think Brazil has the better team and should advance. Marta and Christiane… Germany will take the bronze. One of the surprises is Norway. They’ve dropped their last two matches and were stomped into the ground by Japan not long after winning convincingly against the U.S. They looked like medal contenders from games one and two, now they’ve gone home.

The day I have off, to watch the match at 8am, I’ll be on my way to Lawrence for tryouts for the soccer team. Go figure, I have not see a match yet, because of work and sleep…and work and sleep!

To the guys, no USA, but there’s still football to be played. For the record, Brazil, Argentina, Italy, and Nigeria should win. That is all. Good night.