Have never embedded a video from Rumble before...

 All the cool kids are telling me that Rumble is where it's at for videos which might otherwise not fit on some other hosting services.  Gotta wonder why that is.

So this was a very important game for me to watch today. Not just because I was rooting for Navy (the branch that my dad served in) but today was the very first time that I watched an American football game... and actually understood its rules!! This game has always mystified me, until lately when I took it upon myself to read the rules of the game enough times that I can finally understand it. Hey, I had to do something to occupy my time during the plague.

Well anyhoo, here's the beautifully performed national anthem before today's Army-Navy football game:

 

 

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I don't even keep up with football...

...and even I can't believe what happened during last night's Seattle/Green Bay game.

I was wondering late last night why my Facebook and Twitter pages were going crazy. Now I know.

Can't say it any better than how one friend put it: "The NFL has become the WWE."

If you're still trying to figure out this mess, Mash here for ESPN's report.

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It's Super Bowl weekend!

Oops... I forgot. Am I even allowed to write "Super Bowl"? Might get hit by the NFL for copyright infringement by not calling it the "big game" instead.

Well anyway, no matter who who're rooting for tomorrow or even if you're not a sports fan at all, here's something we can all enjoy: Andy Griffith's classic comedy monologue "What It Was, Was Football", accompanied by George Woodbridge's illustrations from MAD Magazine!

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Southeastern Conference bans social media at sports events

"No Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or TwitPic!" That's the dictate being sent to sports fans and students of Southeastern Conference member schools if they want to attend athletic events. Under its newly adopted media policy, the SEC has informed its schools that "Ticketed fans can't produce or disseminate (or aid in producing or disseminating) any material or information about the Event, including, but not limited to, any account, description, picture, video, audio, reproduction or other information concerning the Event."

It's effectively a ban on all so-called "social media". Per the new regs, a fan could get ejected from the premises simply for using his iPhone to take a picture of himself at a Gators football game and sending it to his friends on Facebook.

So what's behind this boneheaded move? The $3 billion contact with CBS for the next 15 years, giving that network exclusive media rights to cover SEC games. In other words: if you go to an SEC event, you and your cellphone are potential competition to a multi-billion dollar broadcast television corporation equipped with the latest cutting-edge high definition technology.

This isn't entirely unheard of, but for a collegiate athletic conference to crack down on the fans themselves is certainly new (and treacherous) ground to tread. Not to mention darn near unenforceable.

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Congrats Pittsburgh Steelers!

One of the best Super Bowls ever. And wasn't that an amazing 100-yard touchdown by James Harrison? Don't know if I've ever seen anything like that.

Congrats also to the Arizona Cardinals on a hard-fought game and season!

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The University of Georgia Mr. Potato Head

While on the road in Georgia yesterday during a bit of a business trip, I found this little guy...

Lisa spotted it in the University of Georgia catalog the other day and fell in love with it immediately. So I was able to surprise her with it when I got back last night :-)

It's actually from the "Sports Spuds" lineup, meaning it's about half the size of a standard Mr. Potato Head. But in that classic red and big "G" logo, this is sure to please any fan of Bulldogs football! Should be able to find it in a lot of places around Athens and Atlanta but if you're a Georgia alum (or just crazy about UGA) living elsewhere, you can order it from the current school catalog and if you don't have that, here's where you can buy it from Amazon!

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Best Super Bowl finish that I can remember watching

Congrats to the Giants on an amazing win!

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Steve Jablonsky's TRANSFORMERS score is being used for the Super Bowl!

If you're watching Super Bowl XLII on Fox right now, you might have noticed that they're making lots of use of Steve Jablonsky's awesome Transformers score. I just caught them playing "Autobots" in the minutes leading up to the kickoff, in a spot featuring Troy Aikman. And earlier they were using some of the music from the final fight in a video spot with the Patriots and Giants introducing themselves. Very, very cool. Way to go Steve!! :-)

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NCAA clamps down on live blogging at college games

This may be the dumbest thing that I've ever heard from the world of sports journalism: a few weeks ago the National Collegiate Athletic Association implemented new rules for live blogging at NCAA-sponsored sporting events. The whole thing got started when a sports writer was thrown out of a college baseball game for providing an online chronicle of the action as it happened. The NCAA screamed about "infringing" on the rights of the broadcast partners.

In the wake of the uproar, last month the NCAA established some... strange... regulations for live blogging by professional sports reporters at college athletic events:

Football
- Three posts per quarter and one post at halftime

Baseball
- One post per inning, including extra innings

Basketball
- Five posts per half, two posts in halftime, two posts per each overtime

Not only that, but each blog must display the NCAA logo (what the... %@#&?!?!?) and all blog posts by credentialed journalists must be submitted to "the NCAA Blog Central" (?!?!?).

Naturally, sports writers are having a field day with this lunacy.

Check out Kara Ratliff's story at WebProNews (a website that I heartily recommend) for the skinny on the NCAA's bizarre blogging policy...

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University of Georgia wins the 2008 Sugar Bowl

Final score: Georgia 41, Hawaii 10.

Way to go Bulldogs!

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Biggest sporting event in Elon history?

I just got back from Burlington a little while ago. On the return trip I decided to stop by Sandy's Subs, located near the campus of my alma mater Elon University, to get a sandwich to take home.

I had totally forgotten about how Elon is playing Appalachian State today in football. Bear in mind that a few weeks ago Appalachian State pulled off an amazing victory against Michigan, one of the top-ranked teams in the nation. And then factor in that this is Family Weekend at Elon.

When Lisa and I were dating, she was a student at University of Georgia. Whenever I visited her on Saturdays in the fall, if Georgia had a home game going on the whole place was pandemonium. I'd never seen people go so positively bonkers for football as I did whenever it was a game day at Sanford Stadium.

What I saw today, driving through Elon, was in some ways crazier than anything that I saw at Georgia! The number of Appalachian State fans that I saw tailgating alone is something that still has my senses reeling.

I have never seen that many people around Elon before. And Elon is certainly not as big a campus as Georgia.

I wish that I'd had my camera with me, 'cuz mere words can do it no justice. But take my word for it: if you're familiar at all with Elon University, today might be the biggest sporting event in the school's history. It's already well known that this is the first-ever sellout game for Elon's footballl program (at least since the school had a stadium to call its own).

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Alaska football game to make sports history tonight

Tonight at 7 p.m. Alaska Time (that's 11 p.m. for us folks here on the East Coast) the Barrow Whalers will open their 2007 football season against the Seward Seahawks.

It will be the first-ever live broadcast over the Internet of a sporting event from north of the Arctic Circle! The game will be played 300 miles above the circle in Barrow, Alaska: the northernmost point on the North American continent.

Click here to enjoy the game on the Black Diamond Sports Network when it starts streaming live. The pre-game show starts 20 minutes before kickoff.

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