Hooooooosiers!!!!

I will first say that, in the arena of watching sports on television, there isn't a better feeling than when one of your teams scores a winning basket, a winning run, or a go ahead touchdown.  When genuine excitement holds your body hostage and you leap around the room like you played an intrical part in the teams victory.  Its 2 hours of very focused, bottled up nervousness reaching a boiling point that manifests into a childlike stomp, shout, jog around your dining room table as the buzzer sounds. 

Tom Crean--the weirdest look a coach has ever had after a game winner

Indiana basketball has been dead for years.  Dead since 2000.  There has been success since then, but everyone who knows Indiana basketball knows it has been dead since Coach Knight was forced out after the 2000 season.  Davis was bad.  He had success with Knight's players.  Sampson was crooked.  Crean was maybe just what we needed.  Three god awful seasons (27-66) would make us think otherwise, until a 9-0 start and the best win the school has had since beating Duke in 2002.  We wanted someone great again and talked ourselves into believing that he was the right guy.  I wasn't convinced until Saturday.

Honestly, for the last 3 years I could hardly call myself a true fan.  I tried to watch a couple games a year and each time I found myself flipping to almost anything more interesting, like an SVU episode I could recite line for line.  I try not to call people fair weather fans after those three seasons because they were unwatchable and its almost impossible to stay on the bandwagon unless you have a son or a nephew on the team.

Life seems to be a little better with the Hoosiers in the top 20.  Waiting for ND football to join the National Champion discussion again, but I'm not holding my breath.
Thanks to Greg for this clip.  I can watch it over and over again.

Christmastime is Here

December 1 starts a month long celebration of the greatest time of the year.  Second place is a distant second.  You can talk about the end of March with March Madness and the beginning of the MLB season, or the beginning of Fall when it starts to get cool outside and the leaves are turning colors and college football is right in the meat of its season, but neither of these times come close to what we are beginning now. 
Find some way to slow it down a little because it will be over before you know it.
To ensure you are enjoying the season
1-Christmas playlist should include Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby, Judy Garland, Dean Martin, Andy Williams, and of course The Boss.
2-Make sure you are watching the staples.  Charlie Brown, The Grinch, Christmas Vacation, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Its A Wonderful Life, Scrooged
3-Christmas Tree-Preferably live, but fake is better than nothing.
4-Pull out some old nostalgia that will bring a tear to your eye on a bad day.
5-Christmas Cookies-eat them, bake them, or both
6-Buy and Drink Hot Chocolate-with or without Bailey's.  Always with marshmellow cream


Christmas Present Hall of Fame (in no particular order)
Starting Lineup Talking Baseball- 

My grandparents gave this to me (probably in 1988 or 1989) on Christmas Eve.  If I'm not mistaken the voice was Vin Scully.  Or maybe I just wanted it to be Vin Scully.  By hitting a couple buttons in a timely fashion, in response to little red lights liting up, you could hit a homerun with Babe Ruth or Ted Williams or strike out Don Mattingly with Walter Johnson.  I was 10 and I couldn't be pryed away from this toy.  I didn't touch any of my gifts received on Christmas Day.

Nintendo

Gary was the first one to have one of these and I just played it a little.  We had a cheap atari that they didn't even make games for anymore, but that was more than satisfying at the time.  When we got that Nintendo everything else in life was blacked out.  There was no "outside", there was no "basketball", there was no leaving the basement.  My thumbs blistered out in the early morning hours of December 26 and I was unfortunately on the DL for a day or two, which was sheer torture.  Someone recently sent me an article where this question was asked "do over 50% of your childhood memories involve Nintendo?"  The answer is a resounding "YES".  (Mario Brothers 1, 2 and 3, RBI Baseball, Legend of Zelda, Metroid)

Doug Flutie Franklin Football

My Grandma June got this for me; back when I couldn't decide if I wanted to be an NFL quarterback, NFL kicker, MLB SS or MLB Pitcher.  As corny as it sounds I still remember the smell of the leather and I embarassingly slept with that ball for months. 
*I believe the ball was lost in 1995 while Mattingly and I drove around throwing footballs at some kids in my neighborhood. Funny and kind of depressing.

Have a good Christmas.