S. Evan Townsend's Blog, page 47

Strength

Time once again for the 52-week blogging challenge. Today's prompt is "Strength."

Strength is interesting. I've never been a very physically strong person. My upper body strength has always been lousy. Even when I was in the military, I usually just barely passed the physical strength requirements. And forget doing a pull up. I've never managed to do one of those. I did once achieve running a seven-minute mile. I was proud of that. Of course, you watch marathons on television and in the 25th mile they're doing four to five-minutes miles.

But there's more to strength then pumping iron. There's strength of will. For example, it takes a lot of will to write a novel. And I've done that quite a few times. You could say writing a novel is my "marathon."

I've always had a strong brain. A little dyslexic (never was a good speller) and sometimes it gets confused. I will type a word that sounds like the word I want. And often I spell "how" as "who" (same letters, different order). It's strange.

I remember in college people carried planners and they would write down deadlines such as tests and when papers were due. I never did that, I carried it all in my head. Now I put everything in my phone because in my aging brain, I can't carry it all in my head anymore.

How are you strong? Let me know in the comments.

College Football Rivalries

One of the (many) fun things about college football, is the rivalries. Probably the most famous one is Ohio State and Michigan.

But the Pac-12 has some rivalries, too. Most are based on geography (same state or city). Some are based on past history. The Pac-12 usually, but not always schedules rivalry games for the last game of the regular season.

For example, USC and UCLA (both in Los Angeles) is a rivalry. And Stanford and Cal are rivals (same metro area).  And of course Arizona and Arizona State, Oregon and Oregon State. And Washington and Washington State.

But at the University of Washington, we also hate Oregon. For me, this is because they beat us a lot in the past few years (the last two, 2016 and 2017, UW won). And they were insufferable about it. Also, Oregon has a lot of Phil Knight (Nike gazillionaire) money to buy good coaches. So there's a bit of envy going on for Washington fans. Just be assured, Washington fans hate Oregon. To me, the Washington State rivalry is friendly. The Oregon rivalry is war.

In terms of teams I want to beat it's Oregon first, then Washington State, then USC, then Stanford, then the rest.

One interesting rivalry is Colorado and Utah. I kind of think this was a "wag the dog" rivalry. They are the last two teams to join the Pac-12 (making it "Pac-12" instead of "Pac-10" like it was for decades). So they needed rivals in the Pac-12 and chose each other.

Rivalries add fun to college football. Which is already a ton of fun.

Huskies are #9

The AP Top 25 Poll came out today. And the University of Washington Huskies drop to #9 (as I sort of predicted) from #6. The team that beat them, Auburn, is #7.

Other Pac-12 teams are:

Stanford #10 (up from #13)
USC #17 (dropping from #15 after their tough win Saturday)
Oregon #23 (up from #14)

For the rest of the season the AP poll will come out at about 11 AM Pacific Time on Sundays.

Huskies are 0-1

It's tough having your first game be one of your biggest games.

Yesterday the University of Washington Huskies played the Auburn Tigers in the "Chick-Fil-A Kickoff" game in Atlanta. Before this game, the Huskies were rated by the AP at #6 and Auburn at #9.

In the first quarter, the Huskies looked as if they had forgotten how to play football. After a three and out by the Huskies, the Tigers marched down the field and made a touchdown.

In the second quarter, the Huskies played better. In the third quarter they played like they used to. In the fourth quarter, they played as if they were tired. They still tried, but made too many mistakes. If they had played the whole game like they did in the third quarter, they would have won. As it was, they lost the close contest by 21 to 16. It was a very defensive game and missed fieldgoals hurt both teams. But the Huskies more so.

The Auburn offense shut down the Huskies' vaunted run game. Quarterback Jake Browning could pass but he missed too often. And Auburn played dirty, earning a lot of penalties. At one point I thought the referees gave the Huskies an offensive pass interference just to make up for all the Auburn defensive pass interference calls. At one point Jake Browning was obviously targeted with a helmet-to-helmet tackle and it wasn't called.

The AP poll doesn't come out until Tuesday due to the Labor Day holiday. So we won't know until then how badly this hurts us in the polls. It should drop us to at least #9.

Also, this likely means the Huskies won't make the College Football Playoffs (CFP). And in order to win the Pac-12 North they'll have to win every game for the rest of the year. To win the Pac-12 championship, they'll have to win the Pac-12 North then beat the winner of the Pac-12 South who is projected to be USC. Right now the Huskies are tied for last place in the Pac-12 North with Oregon State, who lost to #5 Ohio State by a score of 77 to 31. Oregon State is the worst team in the Pac-12.

Other teams that lost in the Pac-12 on opening weekend were UCLA and Arizona.

Of course, I still love my Huskies. It was 10 years ago that they went 0-12. And I loved them then, too.

Next week we play North Dakota at home. North Dakota is a FCS team. They are the "Fighting Hawks." They were the "Fighting Sioux" until the Pesky Promoters of Political Correctness at the NCAA made them change it. I wonder if any Sioux were asked about it.

Huskies Start Football Tomorrow

The University of Washington Huskies start their 2018 football season tomorrow facing Auburn in Atlanta for the Chick-Fil-A Kickoff game. It'll be on ABC at 12:30 P.M. PDT.

Last year the Huskies had problems with on-the-road games. They lost to Arizona State (and shouldn't have) and Stanford both while on the road. They lost their bowl game to Penn State on the road. But they were undefeated at home.

The pre-season AP top 25 poll has the Huskies at #6 and Auburn at #9. All the other pre-season polls I have seen have the Huskies ranked higher than Auburn. So at least the voters of the polls have faith in the Huskies. But Atlanta is about 100 miles from the Auburn campus so this is basically a home game for them. Atlanta is around 2,200 miles from Seattle. So the odds makers have Auburn slightly ahead or even.

Playing a team such as Auburn in non-conference play is an attempt to avoid the problems Huskies had in 2017 when their non-conference play was deemed too easy ("cupcakes" as ESPN put it). They played Rutgers, Montana, and Fresno State.

This year they play Auburn, North Dakota, and Brigham Young in non-conference play. North Dakota is an FCS team but Auburn is a very good team. I'm not sure how good BYU is. So it's going to be tougher to be unbeaten in non-conference play this year. And if the Huskies hope to make it to the CFP (College Football Playoffs) again this year as they did in 2016, they'll probably have to win all non-conference games.

If they win tomorrow, they will be on their way to possibly another CFP appearance. If they lose, all the naysayers will come out saying 2016 was a flash in the pan and the Huskies can't play in the big leagues.

Tomorrow's going to be a tough game for the Huskies. I'm hoping they win, of course.

Community

Time once again for the 52-week blogging challenge. This week's prompt is "Community."

I'm not a real community kind of guy. I'm a strong introvert and I tend to be alone more. Or just with close family and friends.

However, I have been in Toastmasters for seven years. I've held several offices in the organization and I have achieved the highest educational award: Distinguished Toastmaster (DTM). I'm sort of trying to drift away from Toastmasters. I've pretty much lost interest in it after so long. Plus it would be nice to have my Monday evenings free again.

I also was on the board of the local economic development council for six years. And for four of those years I was the secretary of the organization. I enjoyed that a lot as I knew what was happening in the local economy before most other people did. Often the companies coming would be secretive about it and not want their name out in the public. Code words would be used such as "Project Springboard." One time the Executive Director said, "AstaReal is coming to our area and that's no longer a secret" and we all said "Yay!" Then at the next meeting he said "Don't tell anyone that AstaReal is coming to our area, it's still a secret." And we all said, "Oops." Of course, it's not a secret now as they are here in town.

But I haven't been on that board for a few years now. I did some freelance writing for the organization but they stopped having me do that.

So I guess I've been more involved in the community than I originally thought.

Tomorrow I'll probably start writing about University of Washington football since their first game is Saturday. Go Dawgs!

One Week!

Only one week until Husky Football returns. Getting excited and I can't wait! #PurpleReign #BowDown #GoDawgs

College Football Rankings and the Coming Season

It's eight days until college football starts on September 1st. If you can't tell, I'm excited for what my University of Washington Huskies might do this year. I'm hoping they win all twelve regular season games. Or at least eleven. With the players they have this year, I think it's very possible they could be undefeated in the regular season.

The football polls seem to agree they will do well this year. The AP Top 25 sports writers' poll has them at #6. The USA Today coaches' poll also has them at #6. Both of those are national polls that include all 129 FBS college teams. That puts the Huskies in the top 4% of college FBS teams.

The Huskies play in the Pac-12 conference. Of other teams in the conference, the Huskies are the
highest-ranked. Of the other Pac-12 teams, Stanford is at 13, USC is at 15, and Oregon (who we hate) is at 24 in the AP poll (the one that counts).

I'm hoping the Huskies will win the Pac-12 North and play USC in the Pac-12 championship game...and beat them. We haven't played USC in the regular season for a while (since 2016 and they won) and I'd like to put the beat down on those arrogant bastards.

But no battle plan survives contact with the enemy. Last year the Huskies lost a road game to Arizona State (and shouldn't have). Something like that might happen this year (the other regular season loss was to Stanford at Stanford). We didn't win the Pac-12 North last year (Stanford did) and we didn't go to CFP (no Pac-12 team did).

Eight days until we face Auburn in Atlanta. The odds are even at this point. So it could be anyone's game. Go Dawgs!

Healing

Mystery BruiseBack to the 52-week blogging challenge. This week's prompt is simply "Healing." No idea what they mean by that.

There are two types of healing, emotional and physical. I have noticed since I became type-2 diabetic about two years ago, I don't heal as fast. My son's cat will scratch me and it'll take forever to heal. Or I'll have a mystery bruise (I don't know how I got it) that will take ages to go away. This is, I understand, typical of people with diabetes.

Then there's emotional healing. I have been told some emotional hurts never heal. I've only had a few of those (such as my grandmother dying). The constant ache eventually goes away. And you stop thinking about it every day. But when you do think about it, it still hurts. And probably always will. The hurt does get less over time. The cliche "Time heals all wounds" is pretty accurate, actually. Maybe not heals, but "lessens" would be more accurate.

How do your wounds heal? Let me know in the comments.

Two Weeks.

Two weeks until Husky Football returns!