Patriots
/
Al gave me a nice little write-up over on his site today. I don't really know him personally, but I found his site via "John" and I've come to enjoy reading it daily. Let me return the compliment by saying that I really appreciate the difficulties of the job he does, I worked in a hospital for a summer, right after I graduated from high school, as a trained backup monkey in the MIS department. I know what a difficult job nurses have, especially on the graveyard shift where I worked, hours of boredom, punctuated by moments of sheer horror, when a patient codes. I worked on the same floor as the ICU and the CCU, and that remains the only time I've seem someone die...
The dream was alive, for three long quarters, at Jack Trice Stadium today. The Cyclones hung with the Nebraska Cornhuskers as long as they could, certainly long enough to prove they were contenders, but came up short in the end. The Cyclones need to win two more games to be eligible for a bowl game, which "Jeremy" and I have vowed to attend, regardless of location. Do they have a chance? Let's take a look at who's left to play:
How many of these can ISU win? All of them, if they play like they did for the first three quarters today. Realistically, I expect them to definitely beat Kansas. Colorado could fall very easily, and Missouri and Oklahoma State are certainly within the realm of possibility. Kansas State looks to be unbeatable, especially at Manhattan, and Texas A&M always seem to beat the Cyclones. If ISU can beat Kansas and Colorado, they've got a shot at a bowl berth. If they beat Kansas, Colorado, and Missouri or Oklahoma, they're bowl-bound, and so are "Jeremy" and I. Iowa State hasn't been to a bowl game since 1978 (we were two years old), so if they go this year, so are we.
I might be getting ahead of myself, but as I look over the list of bowl games, I find myself hoping that if ISU gets a bid, it's somewhere close and/or cheap to go to. The Aloha Bowl is probably outside our budget. It looks like there's a good chance we'd be going South, as three Big 12 berths are in Texas, one is in Louisiana, and another in Phoenix. For at-large berths, it'd be nice if they played in the Motor City bowl, or even the Las Vegas Bowl, it's cheap to fly to Vegas. Only time will tell...
It's snowing! It's a balmy 37 degrees outside, and the snow is starting to come down. I turned on the furnace for the first time last night, when I got home from work, it was 60 degrees in my apartment. It's a good day to stay inside, watch football, and do laundry.
I woke up early this morning, and decided to finish off Patriots, by David Drake. Drake writes excellent military sci-fi, but this book is more of a parallel of the American Revolution, set in outer space. This book certainly wasn't boring, but it wasn't exactly a page-turner, and the material was a little juvenile. Still, it was entertaining, and a good way to spend a Saturday morning when you're feeling lousy with a cold.
