I'm glad it's over with though. I will get to spend some time in Louisiana this week before I have to worry about finals. Justin, Brent, Jeff and I are leaving Monday night for the Texas A&M vs. LSU basketball game in Baton Rouge. It should be a good game, and I have a feeling that we'll pull out a win. It's gonna be a tough one though.
Tomorrow we play Pacific at 2pm at Reed Arena, then after the LSU game we'll play #1 UCLA in California. It looks to be the toughest week in A&M Basketball history. Pacific was our first loss last year, but we played them at their place, and they've lost a few players since last year. They are still a good team though. They've made the NCAA tournament the last three years in a row. Maybe I'll get some good pictures with the new camera. I'll post them if they turn out alright.
We're staying in Houston in Sam's nice new apartment tonight before heading out of state early Tuesday morning. It'll be my first time to go to Louisiana in at least four or five years....maybe longer. I've been through there a lot, but I can't remember the last time.
Anyway, it should be a fun trip, and it won't really cost a whole lot. Tickets were about $16, and 4 guys splitting a Motel 6 won't exactly empty your wallet. Our biggest expense (hopefully) will be gas in Brent's explorer, and that is still being split four ways.
Hopefully I'll get some good pics to show when I get back. You can watch the game on FSN here in College Station and in some other parts of the state, Tuesday at 8pm. Look for us on tv....we'll be in the second deck. See ya later in the week.
It’s that time of the year again…time to complain about the BCS. Every year it happens, and every year someone has a legitimate argument that they got screwed out of a national title shot. It’s about time that the system gets fixed.
Everyone knows that something needs to be changed in the BCS. There’s just too much controversy every year. We need a system that will determine a true national champion every year, no matter what conference they’re from or how many teams are tied at the end of the regular season.
The Bad Systems
“Experts” have come up with a number of systems that just don’t make sense…
- Voters decide the top two American Idol style
- Computers decide, Unbiased, yes, but what do computers know about football?
- Voters and Computers decide, best (or worst) of both worlds
- Have a ‘+1’ game (but what about years where one isn’t needed?)
- Go back to how it used to be (this is how we got here in the first place)
Arguments Against a Playoff
“Experts” have also come up with 100 variations of the simplest plan out there, the playoff. Each argument for the playoff has a counter-argument to shoot it down….
- It would take too long (a 64 team tournament like basketball would last six weeks and add 6 games to the schedule)
- The bowl games wouldn’t agree with it because they’d lose money (not in my plan)
- The president of each university wouldn’t agree on it because teams would miss too much school (also, not in my plan)
- Instead of the #3 team crying that it got left out the first team left out would be crying (well maybe, but they don’t deserve a shot at the title if they’re that far down the list)
The Plan
So what is this perfect plan that has yet to hit the media? It’s easy; it’s a combination of all of the above. And best of all…it just makes sense. Here’s how it would work.
The season would play out as normal up until this week, the week after the conference championships. Next week would begin our 8 team playoff to determine the national champion. So who still has an argument that they may be the national champions and deserve a shot in the playoff?
Ohio State certainly does, they’re undefeated and winners of the Big 10. In fact, most conference champions have an argument at a national championship. Florida says that their conference is the toughest, and to survive a tough conference like the SEC means that they deserve a shot. USC says they deserve a shot for the same reasons…so does Oklahoma, so does Louisville, so does Wake Forest.
Sounds like legitimate arguments to me. Let’s make a rule.
1) If you win a BCS conference, you are automatically entered into our playoff system.
There go six spots:
ACC winner
Big 10 winner
Big 12 winner
Big East winner
SEC winner
Pac 10 winner
So who do the other two spots go to?
I think it’s only fair that if you’re an undefeated division 1 school, you deserve a shot. Let’s make another rule.
2) The remaining two spots will be filled by undefeated teams in order of their BCS ranking.
That sounds fair to me. This year’s only undefeated team besides Ohio State is Boise State. Who’s to say they couldn’t be national champions?
One more spot to go. We need another rule.
3) All remaining spots will be filled by teams left out, in order of BCS ranking.
Congrats, Michigan. You have just earned a spot in the national championship playoff.
Here are your playoff teams. They will be seated in order of BCS ranking and play a three week playoff ending in the national championship game.
1. Ohio State (Big 10 Winner)
2. Florida (SEC Winner)
3. Michigan (At Large)
5. USC (Pac 10 Winner)
6. Louisville (Big East Winner)
8. Boise State (At Large)
10. Oklahoma (Big 12 Winner)
13. Wake Forest (ACC Winner)
The Bowls
All bowls, minus the BCS bowls, will proceed like normal. The Cotton Bowl will still be the Cotton Bowl, the Gator Bowl will still be the Gator Bowl, and the Holliday Bowl will still be the Holliday bowl.
The BCS bowls will still be around too. They will still rotate the national championship like normal. This year, the Fiesta Bowl would play host to the championship game of the playoffs. Another BCS bowl will host the 3rd place game. So this year could possibly have the two semi-final losers in the Sugar Bowl. The Rose and Orange Bowls would host the teams that lost in the first round of the playoffs. Everyone still gets to end in a bowl.
I believe that this system would create the most exciting month in sports. You think the NCAA Basketball tournament is exciting. Imagine 8 of the best teams playing each other in a three week tournament between now and the bowl games. No money would be lost. In fact, revenue would be increased due to this exciting new system. The yearly debate would be over, and all that would be left would be a month of exciting football.
First I'd like to announce that today I, and all other Aggies, should take a day off from work and studies in celebration and remembrance of that day not so many weeks ago. We should honor the day we Beat The Hell Outta t.u.! Why today? Well today is December 7th...you know 12/7...still not ringing a bell? It was the final score to the game (12-7). Just thought that all Aggies would enjoy a day off to remember, and today seemed like the perfect occasion.
Like I said earlier, the LSU trip was fun. I think the four of us really had a good time on the trip. We left on Monday night and stopped at Sam's apartment in Houston just to cut some time off of our Tuesday drive and to rub it in to Sam that he wasn't making the trip with us (he was invited but we didn't have much more room in Brent's car).
On Tuesday we left Houston towards Louisiana. If you've never been to Louisiana before, you're not missing much. Sure they have a few casinos, but that was about the only positive thing they have over Texas. The roads are bumpy, the people aren't the friendliest, and even the Dairy Queen we stopped at didn't carry my favorite sandwich....the "DQ Dude". Justin, Jeff, and Brent did walk out of their first casino without losing a dime (better than what I did in Vegas last October) but that was because we didn't spend any money on gambling. Surprising right? We only walked into the casino boat in Lake Charles to take a look around.
We made it to Baton Rouge early enough to check into our Motel 6 and get to the game an hour ahead of time.
The game itself was pretty bad. The refs set the tone early by calling two fouls on our star Joseph Jones in the first minute. They continued to give the Tigers an extra home court advantage throughout the game. It didn't help that their players couldn't miss a shot while none of the Aggie shots could be made. We played pretty bad. It's alright though...even after all of that, we were within 6 points with only a few minutes to go. We still have a good shot at being a great team if we learn from our mistakes.
The picture up on top is about as good as my pics from the game got. They wouldn't let me use a flash, and arena pics without a flash from the third deck typically don't turn out very well. Sorry that I can't show you more.
After the game we asked a local LSU student for a good place to grab some food and a couple drinks. They pointed us in the direction of "Walk ons"....I was thinking it'd be equivalent to the Chicken here in College Station, but I was wrong. It was just an overpriced grill (I'm not paying $7 for a burger). In fact, Baton Rouge didn't seem to have any place for College Students to have a good time unless you had Greek letters sprawled across your purple and gold t-shirt. The guys and I settled for McDonald's and a few Dos XX in the hotel room.
The trip home was uneventful other than finding the slowest way to drive through Conroe, TX (small jab at Brent)....just playin man. Overall, it was a good trip. I'm glad I went, but I'm going to have to have a pretty good excuse to travel back to Louisiana. Has everyone else had the same experience with this state?
Oh, and while we were gone President Gates got confirmed as the new Secretary of Defense by the Senate. Congrats sir, but we're gonna miss you. I hope to see you again someday as President....whether it's of Texas A&M or the United States of America. You'd make a great leader of this country.
Students, check your neo e-mail and meet up between Rudder and Koldus and Friday night to show your appreciation to Dr. Gates. It should be a good experience and show what being an Aggie is all about.
If you don't know much about texags, it's probably the most popular Aggie related internet message board. It regularly has over 3000 people visiting the site at one time. The site was the birthplace of the Red, White and Blue out just after 9/11 and has been the meeting place for many Aggies for many years.
Today, Dr. Gates made a post admitting that he was "Ranger65", a rookie poster, meaning that he has made less than 31 posts. The assertion was confirmed by site owner "Watchole" (Brandon Jones).
It's crazy that our University President and now Secretary of Defense was observing what was going on over there.
You can find the page where he makes his post by clicking here.
I have a few reasons to do this, none of them being that I am a great photographer.
1) I have a new camera that I love taking pictures with. I'll now have a reason and excuse to go out and take as many pictures as possible.
2) One of these days I want to run my own company. This will give me some experience in the steps necessary to start a business.
3) I won't look like a perv if I go out and take pictures of little kids at spring soccer and little league baseball games. I'll at least have a shirt on my back claiming that I am in the photography business.
4) I want to gain some photography experience.
So my question to you is....what should I call my company? I need some name ideas before I get started. (one of the first steps is declaring a name)
note: I am not doing this because I think I will get rich doing it. It is purely for experience, so please don't criticize my money making ability on this project.
I found out some good and bad news this week...
The good news is that I'm probably going to graduate in August, which is one semester sooner than I had planned. I was able to get a few extra hours approved for substitutions and now I only have something like 24 hours left to take. This means that I'm one semester closer to making a full salary and/or it gives me one extra semester to look for a job....which takes me to the bad news....
The bad news is that now I have to start thinking about working for a living. My job search will start this spring and I don't even know where to start. Maybe I'll be in business for myself. Maybe I'll be working out of state. Hell, maybe I'll even be out of the country. I don't have a clue even about what field I'll be in.
If anyone comes up with any good job ideas for me, go ahead and toss them out there. I'm open to almost anything....at least until May of 2008 when Jessica is going to make me get married. I might have to have a more accommodating job by then. Maybe someone out there owns a business or has a relative who owns a business who would be happy to have an awesome guy like me working for them. I'll keep you updated on the job search.
I'm going to look into a few business and job ideas that I've been dwelling on for a few months now. I'm gonna go visit my family for the Holidays. And speaking of Holidays....I'm gonna watch the Ags Beat the Hell Outta cal during the Holiday Bowl on December 30th from some sports bar in Corpus. I'll probably watch a few Texas A&M Basketball games. I may even have to go through surgery (ouch).
Here's to a fun winter break...It's going to be a busy one, but it sure is better than school.
I'm going to start working on my new website to at least show off and if I get good enough maybe even sell some of my pictures that I take. I have a few alright pics from the last basketball game I went to. They'd look halfway decent to a non photographer, but from a photographer's stand point, I still have a lot to learn about things like lighting and my photoshop skills.
I just picked up www.HollisMiles.net for the year in case I decide to move the photography stuff over here. HollisMiles.com may be for the pics and HollisMiles.net may be for my blog and stuff. We'll see, I haven't decided yet. Time to get started.
I'm about to start building the business site and I think that site is going to take over this one. All of this stuff will switch to another site. So if you don't mind, go ahead and change all of your bookmarks and links from HollisMiles.com to HollisMiles.net. HollisMiles.com will be my photography site. The switch won't be for a few weeks but ".net" will take you to my blog from now on.
I don't know what I think about my logo. It's ok for a watermark, but I don't think it's my style. I'll be working on it a little. Give me your ideas.
All I have left to do is to get my Tax ID from the government and I'll be off and running. I'll keep you updated about what happens next.
P.S. It still needs a ton of work...I'm not close to being finished.
