Monday Musings
*If there are any remaining Pete Carroll detractors back East, your opinion is getting shuttled over by the "Bledsoe over Brady" argument somewhere in history's little dustbin. Dave's World has long had a bone of contention with the way Carroll was practically tarred and feathered on the way out of Boston despite having, at the time, the best winning percentage for any coach in Patriots history and despite the fact that, to this day, he is still the only coach in Pats history who never had a team with a losing record. In the Boston media lynch mob's illustrious history, Carroll's treatment ranks a solid second behind the way Ted Williams was lambasted during his career.
Then Carroll went out and won back-to-back national championships at USC. And the detractors said it was all due to offensive coordinator Norm Chow.
Now Chow is gone, and USC has scored 133 points in its first two games, including four touchdowns on their first eight offensive plays on Saturday. They put up a 70-spot on a respectable SEC program, Arkansas. And all this with the big boys getting pulled in the third quarter in both games. Pete Carroll is a great football coach. No qualifiers attached to that statement. Period.
*Oof. Just an awful sports day in Boston on Sunday. The Patriots did not deserve to win. Way too many mental errors and didn't look sharp. As for the Red Sox, well, every time I checked in, it seemed Oakland had scored another batch of runs. On top of that, I was checking in with two other games on DirecTV -- Jaguars-Colts and Yankees-Blue Jays. The Colts game was particularly frustrating, since the Jags defense held the Softest Show on Turf to one touchdown, but Jacksonville couldn't punch home a score of their own. The only thing that saved the day from being a complete wash was the Yankees' 6-5 loss to Toronto, but even then, New York rallied from four runs down before stranding the potential tying run on second. Some days are just total losses and you take your lumps and move on. Oh, and, I'm glad I'm not in Boston today, because no doubt all the usual suspects are screaming that the sky is falling. Yawn.
*With the Patriots and their schedule, incidentally, do you think the NFL at least investigated the feasibility of having them travel back in time to face the 1972 Dolphins?
*Have you purchased your official NESN sod from Fenway Park yet? No? I'm guessing they're scraping gum off the bottom of the grandstand seats as we speak, for the next official NESN offering, complete with an "unplanned" skit in the booth in which the RemDawg and D.O. chew pieces of the year-old gum on the air and try to tell us how great it tastes.
Remember The New Kids on the Block? Of course you do. As you might recall, they were huge around 1990 or so. My sister was 13 at the time. She was right in the heart of NKOTB's target demo. I still hear Hangin' Tough in my nightmares sometimes.
The Wahlberg family bought a house in Braintree, our hometown. Word of this soon spread among teenage girls in Braintree, and it didn't take them long to figure out the address. So my sister eventually became part of a group of hairspray chicks that would gather en masse out in front of the Wahlberg house after school every day.
One day, she came back with a bag full of grass and twigs from the Wahlbergs' front lawn. Which is basically the equivalent of purchasing Fenway grass from NESN. Oh, and soon thereafter, the Wahlbergs got a police detail outside their house, and that was the end of the teenage vigils.
*I must have missed the point at which ESPN Classics became the official dumping ground for second-rate live college football games. ESPNC carried Baylor-Army and Indiana-Kentucky Saturday. Remember my post about 11 days ago on the Celtics-Knicks game on ESPNC? Now, I don't exactly sit around watching the channel all day, but that was the last time I actually saw an old-school sporting event on ESPN Classics.
*I was happy to see Xaverian (Westwood, MA) product Zack Asack already get his first crack at collegiate gridiron action over the weekend. In my stint at the Boston Globe, Asack was one of the most intelligent, level-headed kids I came across for a "star" high school athlete, and he took track and field (where he was a state champion sprinter) as seriously as football. Asack, who is a true freshman at Duke, came on late in a 40-14 win over VMI and went 4-for-4 with a touchdown pass. A modest start? Sure. But Blue Devils coach Ted Roof was quoted as calling Asack "the future of the team" afterwards.
*Flagrant plugs for my friends, part 1: Fellow former Globie and current Foxsports.commer Andy Nesbitt is the latest on the NFL prognostication bandwagon. As usual, Andy is a good read.
*Flagrant plugs for my friends, part 2: My buddy Jason Costa of the band Diecast is the subject of a five-page spread in this month's Modern Drummer magazine. I've mentioned on the site before, Jay and I had the same drum teacher growing up -- the absolutely amazing John Horrigan of Quincy, MA -- and MD is basically the Bible of the percussion world, so I more or less felt like a giddy little kid picking up the mag and seeing my friend as the subject of such a feature. No link, sorry.
*Went to a supermarket in my neck of the woods the other night. I won't say where, but let's just say they tout themselves as the safest way to shop for groceries. So, I gave them exact change. The cashier then informed me they do not accept Canadian currency. I had given them, among my change, precisely one Canadian penny. And he was actually willing to halt the entire transaction over this. I had to ask around and bum an authentic American penny off the person in line behind me.
Now, granted, they are technically in the right. I was, indeed, attempting to pay with foreign currency. I certainly wouldn't want to shortchange them their 13/100ths of one cent (based in Monday's exchange rate). Clearly such an allowance would send their entire corporate empire tumbling.
But, ya know, there are four supermarkets within short driving distance of where I live, and I'm just stubborn enough to withhold the $30-40 a pop I spend on a typical grocery shopping trip and take it out elsewhere, if they insist on treating people that way. Hope they invest that shiny American penny well.
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