Sports Hunt

Definition Misunderstanding

2011-01-09T22:07:00.000-06:00

Now that I've become a coach, I find myself thinking of different ways to motivate people and make them think. And not just about a game or an opponent, but more about themselves as individual people. A trip back from Cleveland of 2+ hours on January 3 gave me a ton of time to think up some good "material" (following what may have been my most miserable Browns game as a live spectator in a big loss to the rival Steelers).

I started thinking about various quotes and phrases - dissecting them, instead of just using it and moving on. The first one that crossed my mind - "Life is not fair." Before you do anything else, you have to decide what your definition of "fair" is. Rules are put in place in sports to make sure each team gets a fair chance. The dictionary definition includes the words "honest" and "impartial."

The one I decided fit the best is, "Fair is every person getting what he or she deserves, whether it be immediate or eventual." Or, to make it more cliche, "You get back what you put in." The problem with this idea is that one's payback might come years after the original event.

An example...
You play sports, work your butt off every single day, but never end up being a star. No college scholarships, no major awards, just the satisfaction of knowing you gave everything you had, every single day.

There is no immediate payback directly related to that hard work you put in as an athlete. But maybe it comes later in the form of something like a post-graduation job position at the business of a school athletic booster because he or she knew how hard you worked as an athlete and wanted to take a chance with you in that workplace. Or the payback could include many small "victories" that add up to being "worth it" in the end. I'd say that's fair.

So I decided that my current belief is, "Life is fair; it's not equal." Fairness proves that you get what you deserve. Equality is the idea that all things are the same for everyone. And no matter what we want to believe, life is not equal.

We don't start out at birth with 100 "life points" that we use up as we go, spending 50 on incredible athlete genes or 60 on a genius IQ. Some people get more, some get less, that's just the way it is - and there's no changing that initial inventory. But what you do with that and how you make it work better for you is where fairness comes in.

"Life is fair; it is not equal." It was the way I led off the first of what I'm calling "Coach Hunt's Mentality Meetings" with the freshman basketball team. I vowed to be a coach that taught more than just the game, so this is my start.

My Smile for Fight

2010-12-11T09:22:00.004-06:00

It was both the most awkward and the most hopeful I had felt in weeks. Standing in a hospital room at the foot of a bed occupied by someone who had gone from "just fine" to "discuss the options" within two months. And there I was - smiling.

I didn't receive a funny text message. I wasn't looking in the hallway at a little kid making a funny face, either. In fact, I wasn't smiling because something was funny.

The woman in the bed was my maternal grandma, with my mom, one of two daughters, standing bedside, ear pressed right near her face because strength didn't allow the vocal cords to work well enough or loudly enough for regular conversation. A variety of medical issues led doctors to discover that Grandma has stomach cancer and it's not going away on its own anytime soon. It's the "leading" ailment in what is destroying her body and the options for her are few.

But that's what had me smiling: she was ready to choose and her choice was to put the gloves back on and contest cancer.

The things I could make out from what she was telling Mom included asking if my aunt was around (she's a nurse at that hospital) or if anyone else would be there. She wanted opinions from all her kids about the next steps that she should take. She wanted to start radiation on her stomach.

From what little I understand about serious situations like this, there comes a point in time when the ill person can decide to keep going or let it end. By saying she wants to try radiation, Grandma essentially was saying, "Let's keep going. I'm not ready to go." Those were the words I had been waiting to hear from her for awhile now, considering our family's mainly German background that probably wouldn't stand for "letting some disease tell ME how long I'm going to live!!" There's nothing fun about losing someone you love, but it's moments like this that can make a somewhat dire situation just a little easier to endure.

Previously as a player, and now as a coach, I've always disliked teams and players that don't have to try hard to win, they just always do. I feel like there needs to be a battle, or many battles, on the road to being great. This contrasted to hearing how hard a team or player worked every single day to become a champion. No time off, no excuses, just 100% of what you got. And even if that team or player loses the game, it's more acceptable if they gave all they had.

Grandma's leaving it all on the field... now it's up to life whether it's a "winning" or a "losing" battle. But regardless of immediate outcome, we can be proud of the fight.

Looking Back to Now

2010-11-28T20:36:00.003-06:00

Thanksgiving allowed me to return home for an extended stretch of days -- a nice luxury considering the busy schedule I've kept since leaving home in the beginning of August. While at home, I not only stuffed my face, but also stuffed my personal recollection cabinet. I found an old CD wallet that held, among many other mixes, my football pre-game CD from my senior year in high school.

It was, however, another CD caught my eye because of its simple label of, "Personal Statement." I'm not sure to which school this particular document was sent, but I find it interesting because I'm still saying some of the same things now as I said back then. Only now I'm on the other side, re-iterating these ideas to the student-athletes that I coach.

Here's the statement, unedited in its entirety (so please excuse my grammatical and spelling errors):

A great person and coach Vince Lombardi once said, “Leaders aren’t born, they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work.” Leaders also carry different names, such as “captain” and “top of the class.” Going in to my senior year, I had these titles placed beside my name. Leadership is doing everything needed behind the scenes to prepare for what is to come.
My teammates, whether it was in football or wrestling, have helped me to know my role as leader. They did not pick me because I was their best friend or because I forced them to do so. They picked me because they thought I would be a good representative of our team and be of help if they needed it.
I have always been told that sports will help you in all aspects of life. Physically you are called to push yourself beyond limits. Mentally, you have to be tough, or you can crumble underneath. But no matter how many wins and losses, receptions, takedowns, fumbles, interceptions, pins, or dropped passes you have in a high school career, you have to get up and go to school the next day. You have to be able to look at what you’ve done in the past and know those experiences will help you prepare for the future.
My athletic mentality has also helped me in the classroom. In sports, you need to prepare everyday for upcoming opponents. In academics, you need to review everyday for upcoming tests. I have shown my proficiency in the academic aspect through class rank and ACT scores, evidence of hard work out of the classroom showing up in the classroom.
I feel that my athletic, academic, spiritual, and social involvements thus far in my life have prepared me to take the next step. I have what it takes to be a leader at your school, and I ask for the opportunity to start with my acceptance.
Not every person is made to continue their education at an institution of higher learning. By the same token, not every person is made to be a factory worker, waitress, or telemarketer. Each person has his or her place in society; to fulfill his or her occupational destiny. I know that I can contribute to society by completing the steps necessary to become a professional in my field. The first step in this process is to fulfill my coursework in college, a step I want to complete at your school.
Leadership skills apply to academics as well as athletics. Those who play sports during school are called student-athletes, students first. I have proven that I can be a leader in the classroom, and I ask you for the opportunity to lead in your classrooms.

The UPS Go Down

2010-11-15T14:15:00.002-06:00

I must say it's nice to be in the final stretch of days left working for United Parcel Service. For most, news of my quitting at UPS isn't new, but if you didn't know before, you know now.

In other words, don't blame me for holiday packages that show up late or never show up at all. That would have only been valid if you lived in Marysville anyway, since my main task since the beginning of September was to load three trucks that went there every day.

Anyone considering a job at UPS (not just a seasonal job, like a driver helper) should just know what he or she is getting into -- it's dirty, it's loud and, if you're like me, it requires you getting up at a grossly early time in the morning. The pay is pretty good and they offer tuition assistance, but I never got that because, apparently, I missed their deadline by starting about four days late. So yeah, there went about $1,000 I planned on getting.

Then there's the actual job part of it -- lots of lifting and lots of different positions. If you like to have one thing to do all the time, it's probably not going to be a job for you. Take, for instance, this morning, when the following took place:

...Was told on Friday to be in at 3 a.m. Monday. At 3:05 a.m. Monday, was told the schedule said I needed to be in at 4:40 a.m. Not about to just go home without getting any pay at all after waking up so early, I said I would stick around to do some things for an hour or so.
...Loaded and stacked boxes for six different trucks before being sent to a completely new box line with new supervisors and all people I've never seen before.
...Helped a loader there until being sent to work by myself because someone else took an Option Day, which essentially is a vacation day -- why they didn't know he would be off before the day even started, I'm not sure.
...Asked the new supervisor if he planned to have me there the entire shift, considering I got in at 3 a.m. -- this was news to him, so he told me to just leave and go home.
...Talked with my regular supervisor about whether he needed anything else -- he gave me another assignment to take care of two other trucks until another guy got back from somewhere else... then the supervisor came back 10 minutes later and told me to just leave.

Long story short, this was the most ridiculous day I had out of all of them at UPS. And now I just hope none of the last three days is as odd as today was. At any rate, there aren't many more chances for craziness to happen.

I plan on working as a substitute teacher for the time being. It all goes back to what I told myself before leaving Wisconsin, giving up on my undergraduate degree to earn a new one in Education...

Don't worry about money -- it'll take care of itself.
Don't do something unless it is moving you toward the end goal.
Don't let other people discourage you from making a tough decision.

Time to turn another new page... and to get some regular nights of sleep again.

2010 Notre Dame Football Previews

2010-07-09T14:49:00.003-05:00

Just posted my first in a series of preview stories ahead of the 2010 Notre Dame football season.

Check it out by clicking here.

You can read some of my past Fighting Irish articles and keep track of all the posts by clicking on TheSportsBank.net's Notre Dame page.

As always, thanks for reading and please leave comments!! Go Irish!!

The Latest

2010-06-02T20:39:00.002-05:00

It's been awhile since a sports post on here. That's because I've moved on over to The Sports Bank to post my content, specifically (at least for right now) on the Cleveland Indians and the Notre Dame Fighting Irish.

My latest article is about the chances of ND going into the Big Ten Conference. Click in the comments section of that story (or any of my others on the site) to leave feedback.

From now on, my athletic opinions will be saved there. Check back here if there's anything random/personal that you want to read. And, as always, THANKS!!

Become Irreplaceable

2010-04-02T10:09:00.004-05:00

A lot of my personal anger and disappointment comes from one feeling -- not being wanted. And I mean this in the most selfishly unselfish way possible.

If you were ever a middle-to-late round pick for backyard sports teams growing up, you know this feeling. If you were ever asked to play a completely different instrument because "it fits your style better" -- even though you know that has nothing to do with the decision -- you know this feeling. If you were ever laid off from a job and deep down inside you knew that the company was probably never going to be able to fill your shoes to your level, you know this feeling.

Now, on my own professional level, I know this feeling.

To make this clear from the start, I'm not passing blame about anything. I chose to quit my job at NBC15 to allow myself to go back to school for a degree in Education so I can teach and coach. It was definitely my decision. But a recent conversation with my bosses really tuned me into what some of this world is about.

My boss tried to convince me that people here will care that I'm leaving because I'm a likable person, which makes me feel pretty good about what I could establish with people I got to know in just under two years. He told me things like "it won't be the same" as far as the newsroom goes.

He also said when stations lose people, they miss that person's style and personality. But it's what he added specifically about the work that struck me -- "Everyone is replaceable."

This was evidence enough that I'm making the right decision to move on from where I am now. Try asking yourself the question, "Am I completely replaceable where I am right now??"

This can go for anything from job status to personal relationships and goes far beyond personality. Was Kurt Warner replaceable in St. Louis for the Rams?? Marc Bulger took over the spot and while he has two Pro Bowl selections to his name -- and no All-Pro selections -- he likely won't be leading a team to the Super Bowl at age 37 like Warner did for the Arizona Cardinals.

Warner isn't the only example of the display of being virtually irreplaceable. In no way am I saying I did such a good job in this position that they could never replace me at NBC15. In fact, I'm saying the exact opposite. I'm so replaceable that someone else should get the chance to shine in the position. It's your typical head coach statement to a player going through the motions during practice, "If you don't want to play, get out, and I'll find someone who really wants to be here."

I've often half-wondered what I would do if I ever found a new "favorite movie" or a new "favorite song" because my online bank account will ask me a random question from a list when I log on. One of those is "Who was your favorite teacher growing up?" I know mine and I'm pretty sure you probably know yours. Someday, if I'm up for it, maybe I'll be lucky enough to be the answer to somebody's "favorite teacher" question.

So now my mission continues towards finding my career for which I am irreplaceable, finding my someone to whom I am irreplaceable and showing others that my service to them, lessons for them and help to assist them are irreplaceable. Take a minute and think to yourself today about what you're doing now -- are you becoming the best person you can be?? Or are you simply existing??

Become irreplaceable.

My Own QB & A Session

2010-03-09T19:10:00.006-06:00

Football players read and react all the time, so now I'm giving my own shot in reply to the news about Cleveland Browns quarterbacks, current and former. Get ready for a "ruthless" review.

Let's start with rumors -- it was David Carr to Cleveland if San Francisco didn't sign him. I hoped this wasn't a starting quarterback move, but actually wasn't too terribly unhappy about it simply for the comedy factor. In their heydays of starting, the Tim Couch - David Carr tandem took 425 sacks, which filters down to 3.17 sacks per start between them. To put that in perspective with one of the best, Peyton Manning's career goes two years longer than Couch-Carr combined and he has averaged 1.12 sacks per start (not that the Browns had any chance to draft him anyway).

Once Carr was off the table, the focus shifted to Seattle backup quarterback Seneca Wallace. The Browns landed him in a trade on Thursday, sending a late-round pick in the 2011 draft to the Seahawks (assuming Wallace passes a physical Wednesday). I was very unsure about the trade at first, mainly because I didn't want Seneca Freaking Wallace starting over my Notre Dame boy Brady Quinn. So I talked myself into it by theorizing the following:

...In theory, Mike Holmgren could have cut ties with Eric Mangini after last season and become the coach. Instead, he kept Mangini to run the team while Holmgren gave him the pieces. And while it's pretty certain Holmgren will have quite a bit of say in what goes on, I doubt he's on the field pointing fingers and directing traffic. (If he does, then I'm confused about the decision to keep Mangini.)

...In theory, Holmgren taught a lot of what he knows to Seneca Wallace. Holmgren coached Steve Young at BYU and San Francisco, along with Joe Montana. When Holmgren got to Green Bay, he had Brett Favre. He mentored Matt Hasselbeck in Seattle along with Wallace. Not that he taught these guys everything they know, but there's something to his quarterback teaching methods.

...In theory, Seneca Wallace can be a sort of player-coach with the Browns. Who did Brady Quinn talk with on the sidelines after he won the starting job in Cleveland?? Derek Anderson. He beat Anderson out for the position, but still looked to him for advice and another set of eyes. It goes back to the old adage that many times your starters are only as good as their scout team creates them to be.

Seneca Wallace's addition all but ended Derek Anderson's tenure in Cleveland, as he was cut the day after the Wallace trade was announced. I've been a huge critic of Anderson in his time with the Browns, making me one of the ruthless fans who doesn't deserve a winner (oh wait, maybe I regret saying that). D.A. critics and lovers alike often say that he needed more weapons to have more success, which could be true. But there's one few thing I'd like to make clear.

Stop calling him a Pro Bowl quarterback -- set the bar with the All-Pro list. Anderson was added to the Pro Bowl roster in 2007 because Tom Brady was put on the injured list. In other words, if a plane carrying 2011 Pro Bowl players out to Hawaii takes a nose dive and lands on a remote island where no one can make contact, JaMarcus Russell could be on the Pro Bowl roster for the AFC. And I said, "could." Just making the Pro Bowl these days is a watered-down achievement.

For all I know, Brady Quinn could be gone by the end of the week, by the draft or he could start the season and be out of the top spot on the depth chart by the third game. But I like what I've seen so far, especially if Seneca Wallace can be the player version of Mike Holmgren. The next few months should be very interesting for the Browns.

By the way, Derek Anderson, I know you apologized for your post-release comments, but I think you had it right when you wished for your future team, not necessarily you individually, to roll the Browns when you meet again. Just remember, the chances of you completing two passes and winning again aren't very high.

NFL Combine Needs to Take a Deep Breath

2010-03-06T17:47:00.005-06:00

"It's a much longer season."
"Playing at least four more games is really tough."
"My old team could have beaten the Rams."

They're all noted as being the differences between college football and the NFL (OK, I may have made the last one up). And almost every week early in the season, at both the college and professional levels, we hear about the necessity to remember one thing: it's a marathon, not a sprint.

For such a long season, the NFL sure likes to put the emphasis on anything that's quick. How quickly can you run for a short distance?? How quickly can you reach the lineman across from you on the snap of the ball?? How quickly can you run side-to-side, backwards and every other which way??

What I'd like to know is not only how fast, but for how long.

I think the NFL Combine for college players is great, but I'd really like to see two things added to the list, both involving the long run.

First of all, along with measuring wingspan, measure lung capacity. For one thing, it would cut down on any off-season (or in-season for that matter) cigarette breaks, but it's also one of those physical characteristics that can be overlooked. How do you work on running for longer?? Often you start by increasing lung capacity.

Another addition: instead of setting the distance, set the time -- run as many yards as you can for 30 minutes. These soon-to-be NFL players can run a 40-yard dash before ESPN reporter Rachel Nichols would even consider blinking twice. But the mental strain comes in running down and back, down and back, down and back... but doing it faster than anyone else can do it.

I've often considered this as an Olympic event as well because the finish line is in your own mind. Plus, think of the television opportunities -- it'd be very similar to Olympic cross-country skiing. Watch for a few minutes from the start, take a commercial break, go to another part of the combine for a bit, check out the 15-17 minute time period, go back to the desk with Rich Eisen and company, then see the end. And who wouldn't want to watch a defensive tackle lumber for a half hour?? (OK, first revision: times would have to fit the positions)

Imagine a world in which coaches actually had a better idea as to how long a player could go before needing a breather. I mean, these ideas are better than adding questions to the Wonderlic, right??

For the Love Birds

2010-02-15T21:34:00.003-06:00

I've never been a big person for reading. It's not that I can't do it, it's just that I had trouble keeping myself focused on that one thing at a time. Maybe I have some minor form of ADD -- or maybe I was just disinterested. Many of us grew up reading what was on the syllabus. Johnny Tremain comes to mind for me.

"Here, read this book, then we'll talk about it."
"Well what's it about??"
"That's why you read it."
End of discussion.

I say all of this because I'm reading a book for the second time, something I never before understood and swore I'd never do. It's The Rhythm of Life by Matthew Kelly, a book I can't even remember receiving. I believe I was in grade school, taking an afternoon "field trip" to the high school for Kelly's speech. Everyone got a copy of this book at the end. What I do know is that it sat on my bookshelves in many residences (Tiffin, Athens, Madison) before I finally made it a point to read it. And now I'm reading it again.

For those of you who absolutely despise religious undertones, you probably won't like it because you won't get past them. For those of you who are open to that idea, it's a great "look yourself in the mirror and tell me what you see because I bet you don't actually like it" type of book.

In this second read-through, I came across one passage that is (or was, now that I'm a day late) appropriate for those love birds taking in all that Valentine's Day has to offer. Kelly is a public speaker who, in this passage, is asking a group of high school students, "What do you want from life?" and responds to the answer of one young woman in particular.

...

A young woman said, "A gorgeous man who is kind and loving." I asked her, as I had asked the young man earlier, had she succeeded in locating one yet. She wasn't shy and she volleyed by saying, "How will I know when I find him? How will I know he is the one?"

"Not because he tells you he loves you. Not because of the gifts he gives you. Not because of the way that he looks at you. And, it certainly is not 'in his kiss.'" They laughed, and I continued, "At least these things alone are not enough upon which to decide. You see love is not what love says. Love is not what love says it will do, or even promises it will do. Love is what love does. And gifts - chocolates and flowers, jewelry and fancy clothes, these are not gifts. Often, these are only excuses and apologies for not giving the only true gift - a portion of one's self. When you are wondering, pondering, and praying to discover if he really is the one for you, consider this one idea, You deserve to be cherished. Cherished!" We held eye contact for a moment or two, her eyes began to well with tears, and I knew she understood.

...

No doubt I will be sharing more from this book in the future. Between this and Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin, I've had my share of very inspiring reads in the last couple of months, which is why I'm am starting to doubt less and less my decision to move on.

Hopefully everyone (even those of us celebrating "Singles Awareness Day") had a happy, and loving, Valentine's Day -- and that you can give of yourself sometime soon.
=====
Book reference:
Matthew Kelly, The Rhythm of Life: An Antidote for Our Busy Age. Steubenville: Beacon Publishing, 1999.

Take This Leap

2010-02-10T11:01:00.003-06:00

It's not often we burst through a door blindfolded when we're unsure where it leads. Most of life has been calculated risks. Even our most spontaneous moments aren't really that spontaneous -- they're events that we decide to do all of a sudden, and they may involve doing something crazy, but in reality they're events that we at least knew something about before taking it on.

I, on the other hand, have committed myself to putting on the blindfold and feeling my way around the unknown room on the other side of the door.

I told my bosses last Friday (coincidentally, on 2/5, which unexpectedly goes along with my theory of 2010 being "my year") that I was quitting. It's not immediate and is anything but simple.

In the TV biz, there are ratings periods when stations battle to get the most viewers -- a higher number of viewers means a higher price the station can charge advertisers. In other words, ratings are big, which is why I didn't want to leave during a ratings period (the current one, February) or give my two weeks' notice with barely enough time to train a new producer before the next ratings period in May. So my explanation is this: if I find another job, I won't leave before the beginning of March; if I don't find another job, I'll be leaving for home in the end of April.

I got into the TV business hoping I could break in as a sports guy. When my resume tape lacked what I needed, I took a job as a news producer, hoping a year or two of general TV experience would somehow vault me ahead. The reality is that it may have held me back. That has nothing to do with the people I work with or the way I developed as a person with this job and everything to do with the work itself. Even before leaving Ohio University in June 2008, I knew I wasn't really that interested in the "news" side of television, yet I ventured into this realm with the thought that I might be able to figure something out.

I never did figure it out. In other words, I never found my passion for it. This realization has really made me think recently about what the heck could ever work out for me. Will I be going from job to job looking for an elusive "passion" sense?? Or will my ability to move on now help me to put this in the rear view and find what quenches my life's passion?? I don't know, you don't know, no one really knows -- but we'll be finding out soon.

Thanks to anyone who's had to listen to me complain about my job (again, the actual news-ness of it, NOT the people!!) over the last year or so. And anyone with a known job opening in Ohio, please let me know. I'm open to just about anything right now.

I'd rather forget and not slow down, which is how I'm approaching the next few months of my life. And if nothing else works out, I'll invest in bags of potato chips and NASCAR. Only in America.

Winner of Best E-Mail

2010-01-11T20:12:00.002-06:00

This was my submission for Week 13 in the NFL Against the Spread picks league. I'm honored to have won "Best E-mail" among such great competition. I'm also the only idiot dumb enough to think up a ton of poems...
===============================
St. Louis @ Chicago (-9.5) -- CHI
When it's Bulger or Boller to choose at QB,
that's really no winning platoon.
And along with Jay Cutler we're likely to see
At least 17 picks this afternoon.

Tampa Bay @ Carolina (-6.5) -- TB
When I heard "Of The Man" would be on the bench,
I just had to change my choice.
Compared to the Ukrainian car that's Matt Moore
Ol' Jake's a brand new Rolls Royce.

Houston @ Jacksonville (-0.5) -- JAX
Ballbuster Pick of the Week: Taking home team in the 4th game listed.
Naturally, it is also the Gus Johnson game of the week, so a pick here only seems right.

Denver (-4.5) @ Kansas City -- KC
Arrowhead's not a good place to be
When you're heading there in December.
It's like being Barnes at a New York club
And white guy dance moves are all you can remember.

Tennessee @ Indianapolis (-6.5) -- TENN
I think I would listen if Chris Johnson told me
That he had a cure for cancer.
But he says the Titans will win out with Vince
And this Sunday we'll get a better answer.

Philadelphia (-5.5) @ Atlanta -- PHILLY
The sight of Mike Vick back in ATL
Could be a bit uneasy.
But it's the thought of Andy Reid eating Southern food
That's making me feel queasy.
And if ever a coach could do that to me
It'd be Reid or Eric Mangini.

New Orleans (-9.5) @ Washington -- WAS
Whose backfield has cooler names
Than Clinton, Ladell and Rock.
But then again we haven't seen much out of them
Except head injuries and inability to block.

Oakland @ Pittsburgh (-13.5) -- PITT
The Steelers weren't Stellars last week
With Dixon under center.
Hines Ward shouldn't talk, instead he should be
Serving as Big Ben's rape case mentor.

Detroit @ Cincinnati (-13.5) -- CIN
Both of these teams considered to be cats
When Lions and Bengals play.
Which basically means they can't eat 20 wings
At Hooters on any day.

New England (-4.5) @ Miami -- NE
Billy B.'s been lookin puzzled
Quite a bit this year.
No Brady knee, no camera cheats
To blame for all the jeers.
And so the pressers will drone on
With monotony... not tears.

Dallas (-1.5) @ New York Giants -- DAL
No poem for this.
The douche deserves his custom.
Romo is homo.

San Francisco @ Seattle (-0.5) -- SF
In battles between TV cities
With the "Full House," and "Frasier" shows,
I take Uncle Jesse to have no pity
On the Cranes' suits and richy-rich glow.

San Diego (-12.5) @ Cleveland -- SD
And what do I say about this gross affair
'tween lightning bolts and chunks of poop??
There's little to say that hasn't been said
On continuous and negative loop.
So I'll just save my mind and just save my time
And assume that the Browns won't regroup.

Minnesota (-3.5) @ Arizona -- MINN
Although he may not play in this game
Kurt Warner knows much more tonight.
Tim Tebow's not God and Brett Favre's lost one too
So the prayers can continue each night.

Baltimore @ Green Bay (-3.5) -- GB
I'll be in the stadium this Monday night,
Wearing a bullet-proof vest.
But Ray Lewis used a knife to kill a man right,
So having a body guard might be the best.

The State of Wow

2010-01-08T08:37:00.006-06:00

There haven't been any outrageous changes since the last post. But what happened to me Thursday night before I went to sleep was a moment when I had to smile and say, out loud, "Wow." And if you haven't had a chance to read my last post, "The State of Whoops," then now may be a good time to visit it because not much in this post will make sense without it. It's funny how things can at least make a little more sense if you give them a chance to do so.

I guess you could say it all started with cleaning my desk yesterday morning. Or with a random book purchase a few years back. Or with high school football. Or, I suppose, with my birth. No matter how it's sliced, we end up here, so the beginning details don't matter a ton. The following thoughts will seem scattered, but they really do all tie together, so I'll number them to easier separate.

1) My favorite number has been 25 for awhile now. It was my number in high school football, mainly because my previously favorite number, 24, wasn't available when I entered as a freshman. So I took the number one spot higher (the same number I held in junior high football) and it has been mine ever since. A lot of what I do -- screen names, passwords, lottery picks -- uses the number 25 in some way.

2) I'm not sure when I started liking poetry. I think it was at the point where I really didn't want to read literature, especially anything that was really old, mainly because it didn't speak with me (and still doesn't today, as many of my favorite books are biographies, self-help and non-fiction. aka "real stuff"). But poetry could be completely abstract and wouldn't come across as a big block of words on the page.

Instead, it was small blocks of words -- stanzas, often times open for interpretation. This is what drives many people away from poetry or prose pieces because they need a "right" answer. They need to know what exactly the author or narrator is trying to say. But I feel it's harder to write good poetry (especially when rhyming and keeping strict rhyme patterns) because everything is measured. You can't waste words.

I'm not sure when I bought, "The Best Loved Poetry of the American People," but I know I didn't spend more than $3 on it and I know that the copyright date is 1936. I also know that I've read very few of the 648 pages. I liked the book because it was split into sections of poems concerning things like: inspiration, poems that tell a story, love and friendship, childhood and youth, humor and whimsey, etc. And there are a ton of poems that make up this hardcover book. In fact, I only had one bookmarked.

3) In cleaning off my desk, I found an old small sheet of note paper with a poem on it. My Intro to Poetry class group used this poem, "Thinking About the Past," by Donald Justice, in our final project. I've been thinking about my past a lot lately, so it was weird that I finally decided to clean up, for whatever reason, and found this paper.

2.5) I replaced an old receipt marking my bookmarked poem with that note paper from my desk.

4) My favorite poem in the book doesn't matter so much in content (at least not right now) as in something I noticed for the first time Thursday night before going to sleep. It's located on page 25 of that book printed in 1936. My favorite poem in the book on the page of my favorite number. And I closed the book and got into bed for the night.

But it was too odd to leave at that. I got out of bed, turned on the light, and went to another 25 -- page 125. And in the section marked "Inspiration" I found "To the Men Who Lose" by George L. Scarborough. I'll spare you the space of typing out the entire poem, but considering myself kind of a "hard luck loser" at times, the whole thing made sense to me, especially the lines:

"The king is he who, after fierce defeat,
Can up and fight again."

I've always felt that desire, patience and persistence can combine to become a great weapon in life and these lines really re-iterated that to me.

Page 225 was a continuation, so I skipped it. But on page 325 is "Pray Without Ceasing" by Ophelia Guyton Browning. I'm going to go a little Colt McCoy on you here -- but with the belief in God part, not the blowing out my arm part. I've been praying for some guidance/answers for a long time and right when I feel like it's been a waste, I randomly find this:

"Unanswered yet? tho' when you first presented
This one petition at the Father's throne,
It seemed you could not wait the time of asking,
So anxious was your heart to have it done;
If years have passed since then, do not despair,
For God will answer you sometime, somewhere."

It was, at this point, that I said, out loud, to myself... "Wow." Call it complete coincidence, call it a sign, call it what you want -- this was something really, really weird to happen when it did. And it reminded me of a great dialogue from my favorite movie, "Rudy." The scene in the church goes:

Father Cavanaugh: Well, you did a helluva job, kid. Chasing down your dreams.
Rudy: I don't care what kind of job I did. If it doesn't produce results, it doesn't mean anything.
Fr. Cavanaugh: I think you'll discover that it will.
Rudy: Maybe I haven't prayed enough.
Fr. Cavanaugh: I'm sure that's not the problem. Praying is something we do in our time. The answers come in God's time.

Obviously the movie speeds up the process and Rudy gets accepted to Notre Dame in the next scene. But the message, at least for me, is still there. We can try all we want to control everything, and yet, there are things that just seem (or truly are) out of our control.
=====
So the overall concept here is that sometimes waiting isn't so bad. Sometimes if you turn "waiting" into "anticipating" you can keep your mind at ease, at least for a little while.

And sometimes, it pays to clean your desk if you're willing to be "wowed."

So I'll end this more upbeat post in much the same way I ended my somewhat depressing post of just a few days ago:

"If it's meant to be, it'll happen." Here's a toast to the hope that the best lies ahead in 2010 -- the year in which I turn 25 years old.

-----
Cited in this post:
"The Best Loved Poems of the American People." Selected by Hazel Felleman. New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1936.

"Rudy." David Anspaugh, dir. Robert N. Fried, prod. Cary Woods, prod. DVD. Tri-Star, 1993.

The State of Whoops

2010-01-05T18:53:00.006-06:00

You either think it or you don't -- the sentiment that "if it's meant to be, it'll happen." I'm a believer, but not because it's easy to be one. In fact, 2009 was a year that tested my belief in that theory probably more than any year before it.

"A man's doubts and fears are his worst enemies." Or, you could say, a man must continue on with his life and what he's doing. I find it interesting that this quote comes from William Wrigley Jr., a name made famous by chewing gum. When you chew gum, it's usually the one constant in what you're doing. And it doesn't really matter what emotions you're feeling -- you can chew gum when you're happy, sad, angry, or whatever. But no matter what's going on around you, you know how to chew it.

Almost exactly one year ago, I sat in the freezing cold bedroom of my apartment wondering what the year had in store. I was starting my path towards something new. Job applications were going left and right. My research into education programs was just beginning and I was prepared to start everything up again.

Instead, I spent a 365 days building up and tearing down as another job application was denied, either for inexperience or for lack of degree or for lack of employment available. Sometimes it was worse, building up for a job for which I applied, then never hearing any response, as if being thrown out of a plane with no parachute, knowing it was a lost cause at the end, but not knowing when the end would be. In the end, as I looked back at 2009, it was a lot failure, plain and simple. Or as I've recently been prone to describe my life, "It's in a state of 'whoops.'"

"If it's meant to be, it'll happen." And if it's not meant to be, it won't. So in theory I should be happy to have found so many opportunities that were not meant to happen. In theory I should be glad to know that there are other options, other people, other things that are perfect for Kevin Hunt.

But then there's the resounding theme heard shortly after my wrestling career ended: "If he just had one more year." I won just one match at the District Tournament, but that one win secured me a winning season record at 18-17. I met the goal set out by my coaches and me at the beginning of the year, but there was a certain flavor of disappointment lingering. It was described in the season-ending banquet as, "If he had just one more year."

Head Coach Matt Coleman said those words with the best of intentions. They spoke to my leadership and my desire to work hard every single day. What he probably didn't intend them to do was to be a constant reminder that I spent a year playing basketball that really had no point. They weren't intended to be a reminder of how I missed the first year because I didn't know any better.

They are, however, one of the things I remember most about high school. I want to be clear -- this isn't a regret. For all we know, if I come back for another year of wrestling, I get thrown onto my neck and hurt my back to the point of no repair. Even so, I know that the probability was better that I would have only gotten better with the additional year.

So what am I missing?? Is the fact that I'm in a position that is only made tolerable by the people I work with and live with keeping me from getting that first year in something that holds much more promise?? Is there someone I'm not getting to know because, quite simply, I don't know her yet??

"If it's meant to be, it'll happen." Here's a toast to the hope that it happens early in 2010 -- before the only realization is that it's too late.

Live Blog Preview

2009-11-16T10:36:00.006-06:00

I'm using some help from the good people at coveritlive.com for tonight's Browns-Ravens Live Blog. Get your reminder in the window below. But let's be honest here, you've had it on your schedule since finding out it was happening.

Browns-Ravens MNF Live Blog

The F'd Up Finale

2009-03-07T19:17:00.008-06:00

"Better late than never" might as well be the motto of my life.

It's also the motto taken with the 2006 F'd Up Tourney, which finalized the last weekend in February when Luke and Devin made a trip to Madison. We wouldn't have even been able to finish it had I not stumbled across the old tournament brackets in my book bag just days earlier.

I was looking for a notebook in which to write my list of Mainstays for the 2009 F'd Up Tourney. I sifted through and found those. And this is how we come full circle.

The only thing missing from our night of flipping a quarter was "The O.C." on TV. It was still alive in the brackets, though, so I guess that sufficed.

Here's a bracket of where we left off with the Elite Eight:

As you can see, there were quite a few intriguing match-ups left. The top seed Trainwreck vs. the #2 Beer. Luke Florence taking on Keith Cawley. And the giant killer Lesbians looming in the darkness, just waiting to take out Awful. The stage was set.

To make a long story short, the Final Four consisted of: Beer vs. The O.C. and Luke vs. Lesbians.

A long, triumphant journey ended with Luke Florence battling Beer for the title of 2006 F'd Up Tournament Champion.

After running out to a 3-0 lead, Luke had trouble calling his own number (or, perhaps, flipping his own tail).

But there was little doubt what was to come. Luke Florence went on a run to close out the match, taking down Beer for the '06 title. He was obviously overjoyed.

It was even tough to explain in the post-game interview.

So there you have it -- the end of the beginning, so to speak. Our first stab at the F'd Up Tourney finally comes to a close... nearly three years later than expected. With the new improvements coming to the 2009 F'd Up Tourney, there's no telling what greatness will follow.

And now for some housekeeping... Follow the 2009 F'd Up Tourney here, but also on Luke's blog on my sidebar (The King of Arguments). For even quicker updates on new posts or podcasts for his blog, become a fan of the King of Arguments on facebook by searching "King of Arguments" and by following on twitter.

We will be talking early next week about the 128-spot mainstays bracket and the new system for deciding winners. Hint: It has nothing to do with quarters. Which is probably a good thing considering I can't record video and flip a quarter at the same time.

And just for pure entertainment, I'll leave you with how we ACTUALLY started the post-game interview. "My best advice to you... shut up."

Random Ridiculousness

2009-02-15T20:02:00.001-06:00

It's been awhile since taking one of these on, so I'll do my best to get out what's been brewing inside my brain.

The NASCAR season began today and I've decided I'm going to be a more avid fan this year. Mainly I need something to fill the void left by the absence of football. I grew up an auto racing fan, so it doesn't take much to get me back into gear (pun intended).

I'm also extremely interested in seeing crew chief Drew Blickensderfer's name gracing the coveted position in the 2009 F'd Up Tourney mainstays list. What is this, you say? Let me delve into one of the greatest ideas of all time.

Three years ago, I received a magic marker board that had a design of a blank 64-team tournament bracket. After long deliberation, it was decided that we needed to fill this bracket with completely random people, organizations and events.

What ensued was a weekly tradition of flipping a coin to decide which seed moved on. Higher seeds had to win fewer flips to advance. Check out the bracket:

Sadly, we have yet to finish flipping to see who ends up as the champion. Whether that happens is moot though because the 2009 version of the F'd Up Tourney will put all other imagined tournaments to shame. (Eat your heart out ESPN and your “Who's Now?” bracket that you blatantly ripped off from us)

The 2009 version will be a 128-spot bracket, which will include a certain number of “mainstays,” certain ones that make the list every single year. Consider this the equivalent of automatic bids in the NCAA men's basketball tournament. To figure out which mainstays get into the tournament, Luke and I actually plan on having a Mainstays Tournament (similar to a pre-season NIT). It's a tournament inside a tournament, which I'm convinced could only be thought up by fans of the TV show LOST.

We plan on compiling a list of mainstays on February 24, the 4th anniversary of “Kevin Hunting” becoming a verb. (Quick explanation: Former Temple Men's Basketball Head Coach John Chaney sent a bench player to commit an intentional foul. The foul ended in an opposing player breaking his arm. Chaney gave himself a one-game suspension. After announcing this, Andrew Braverman and Joe Barrett decided that Chaney had just “Kevin Hunted” his career. Luke started laughing so hard that he ran outside and threw up in Braverman's shrubs. The verb has stuck ever since.)

I will do my best to keep up with the hilarity of the entire 2009 F'd Up Tourney on this blog site. And this idea is now copyrighted, so don't steal it or I'll find you and destroy you.

As I type this, I'm still sitting on dinner break. I've decided that working Sundays at a TV station is possibly the worst way to spend a day. Since we have a 5 p.m. newscast (who the eff has a 5 p.m. and no 6?!?!) and I have to sit in this newsroom listening to the awful police scanners telling me things that I don't really care about, but can't miss in case we need to show-and-tell it to some of our viewers who also really don't care. I'm forced to take a longer-than-normal break as well, making up for the time gap.

I just sit here, for two hours on Sundays, watching TV (but not with the sound turned up in case of scanner traffic), surfing facebook (this is where I get my stalker reputation – looking through random photo albums becomes a hobby) and trying to read up on sports (but I can't concentrate because I'm so far out of the sports loop being on the news side). Thankfully I don't work a lot of Sundays, so I'm happy for that.

Plus I still have seven days off that need to be used within my first year of employment (June 23 is that anniversary), so things should be slowing down substantially very soon.

I plan on doing a live blog from work at some point, just to give people an inside look at what goes on during the day/night at NBC 15. You'll have to check out my work blog for that. Stay tuned.

Baseball season is almost here and I'm interested to see how the Cleveland Indians' starting rotation shapes up.

If it sticks, Laffey and Reyes will likely switch positions, but overall it seems like the team is depending on players to be different than they always have been, namely with Pavano and Reyes.

But who cares about pitching when you have Grady Sizemore in center. Love watching him play.

Well this has been good enough for who it's for. Hope you enjoyed it. Go Tribe.

Since When Did I Become a Bears Fan?

2008-12-24T10:47:00.009-06:00

Hearing all the playoff discussion for the NFC North Division race really made my head hurt, mainly because I've had this discussion once already, with a strange pattern of details matching up.

Think back to Week 17 of last year's NFL season. The Cleveland Browns were 9-6, playing a "meaningless" game at home against the San Francisco 49ers. While the Browns didn't really need their win, the 20-7 victory (my first chance to see rookie QB Brady Quinn play football) meant Cleveland finished with a 10-6 overall record.

But it wasn't their game that really mattered. It came down to the final game of the NFL regular season when Tennessee played on the road against the defending Super Bowl Champion Indianapolis Colts.

The Colts were 13-2, but couldn't lose their #2 seed for the playoffs (remember, undefeated Patriots), so they played Peyton Manning and the boys about as much as they needed to so they would stay sharp, then put Jim Sorgi under center.

Tennessee went on to win the game. Cleveland missed the playoffs, even with its first season with double-digit wins since 1994 (and only the second since 1988). And I was forced to hate Jim Sorgi for the remainder of his life. (A recent joke to a friend went something like, "He may be a Badger, but if Sorgi ever makes it to a Madison bar in the offseason, he's getting a haymaker from yours truly. And I can only hope to be wearing my Brady Quinn t-shirt.")

Re-enter Week 17 of this NFL season. The scenario plays out a little differently, but the song remains the same. If Chicago wins, it moves to 10-6. The big problem comes down to the Minnesota Vikings playing against the defending Super Bowl Champion New York Giants (though it is a home game for the Vikes).

The Giants can't lose their #1 overall seed for the playoffs (and are even more banged up than the Colts were a season ago), so be prepared to see Eli Manning and the boys about as much as necessary to stay sharp before David Carr gets under center. (His career full of being sacked is even worse than receiving a haymaker.)

Minnesota will do what it must -- against many Giants backups -- to win the game. Chicago would have an identical 10-6 record, but would lose out on the playoffs based on tiebreakers. There's still the possibility that the Vikings will lay an egg, at home, against the N.Y. Backups. But if recent history has anything to do with it, Bears fans shouldn't get their hopes up.

Plus they still need to win on the road against a Texans team looking to get to 8-8. That's besides the fact that Houston would finish with a 6-2 record at home in building that was badly damaged during hurricane season and caused the team to have a bye in Week Two. Can you say "inspiration?"

Chicago fans: prepare to make a New Year's resolution not to let next season come down to tiebreakers in the final week of the year. Or, at the very least, you should hope that the team doesn't mirror last year's Browns team in all aspects this offseason. Trust me, you don't want that.

Be thankful you'll know your postseason fate by the end of the early games.

Random Ridiculousness

2008-11-15T12:53:00.006-06:00

It's that time again. Letting out what my mind keeps in.

+Gas prices are finally dropping back down again. It comes right in time for the holiday travel season -- I just hope they stay down at least until after the first of the year, since I'll be on the road again for the days right after Christmas.

+Thanksgiving takes on a new meaning this year as well. My brother, Brian, hits the trail for the Air Force in December, so Mom Hunt is making sure everyone can get together for the last time for probably at least a couple years.

Luckily, my boss allowed me to have the day before Thanksgiving off work so I can make it back to T-town and see my brother off. It will be the quickest trip I've taken in awhile, but definitely will be worth it. In addition, it looks like I should be able to make it back to Tiffin for the night before Thanksgiving bar celebration, which is always awesome, seeing high school friends you haven't seen in a long time.

+After nearly six months producing the 10 p.m. newscast, I've decided that the 2nd shift is probably the worst of the three you can work.

1st shift is obviously ideal, waking up at a fairly normal time, going to sleep at a fairly normal time, having time in the afternoon and evening to relax -- or, mostly importantly for someone who's new to an area, to meet people for a drink or dinner.

3rd shift might not be the best for sleeping, but if you can block out enough sun in your room it's fine. Some of my fellow producers who work that 3rd shift find it easier to sleep twice a day, which I would agree with doing. The thing about the 3rd shift is that you can tailor your schedule to allow yourself time to hang out or have dinner with people in the afternoons and evenings.

The 2nd shift, though, allows none of that. Waking up isn't the hard part - in fact, you wake up just about any time you really want to wake up. You spend the free time of your day making lunch, watching daytime television or running errands. If you try to get up early, you spend your workday just trying to make it to the end.

You finish working anywhere between 11 and midnight, giving you maybe two hours to meet friends out somewhere, but likely sending you home to finish off your day with a movie or late-night television show. 2nd shifts do not assist with meeting new people, getting together with the people you already know or dating anyone. OK, that's my rant.

+I'm thinking about trying to grow a playoff beard. It might have to be amended to be called a "postseason" beard, mainly because it looks like Notre Dame will have at least one extra game this year and the Browns will not. That means I MIGHT have some facial hair by the time ND plays in a bowl game. How I love being baby-faced.

+How crazy has it been to be a Cleveland Indians fan the last two years? In 2007, the team tied for the best record in baseball, led by pitcher CC Sabathia - their first Cy Young Award winner in years - and was a win away from the World Series.

This season, the Tribe finished at an even .500 (which, by the way, was just seven games out of first in the Central Division) and had two big winners on the field - Cliff Lee grabbed the AL Cy Young Award and Grady Sizemore won both a Golden Glove and the Silver Slugger Awards. And Cleveland traded away a guy who finished 5th in the NL Cy Young Award voting.

Despite what many believe, there was no way the Indians were going to re-sign CC Sabathia. If he didn't sign before the season, he was not staying in Cleveland after the season. For the Indians to get what they got out of Sabathia, it was a HUGE victory for the Tribe. It might have cost them a playoff run this year, but at least the Indians got something for Sabathia, unlike the same situations with guys like Manny Ramirez and Jim Thome, who left town with nothing coming in return.

+That's all I got. Go Browns. Need a Monday Night Football encore from the win over the Giants.

Christmas Comes Early

2008-11-06T13:04:00.001-06:00

I remember one of the best Christmas presents I got when I was a kid - Football Pro ‘95 for our family computer. It was basically the undersold, under-appreciated little brother to the “Madden” series put out by EA Sports. But it was mine and now I could play football games on the computer.

The trick was installing the game. Apparently Santa Claus hadn’t paid the very close attention needed to find out that the family computer didn’t have enough RAM to support the game. And since Santa Claus had already made his trip (and because, back then, RAM was expensive, Santa couldn’t really afford to make another trip to our house that year), I had to put Football Pro ‘95 on the shelf.

The next year I got a small present that said something to the effect of, “I know you’ve been waiting a long time for this. It’s for your computer and I think you know what it can do.” Santa delivered what I needed and the game was played for hours.

That was over half my life ago. Saturday, April 28, 2007, Santa Claus gave Browns fans a gift. But like my computer game from years past, the gift couldn’t be used until a year later.

Tonight, Brady Quinn starts for the Browns against the Denver Broncos in a “nationally-televised” game (it’s on the NFL Network, which isn’t national enough for me). Unlike his fellow first-rounder, former Wisconsin offensive lineman Joe Thomas, who started from Day One, Quinn had to take a back seat, originally set as the team’s third-string quarterback.

Of course this will all come across as biased as any recent column written by a political analyst who already knew whether Barack Obama or John McCain was getting his or her vote. I’m from Ohio, grew up a huge Notre Dame and Cleveland Browns fan and played high school football for four years, very similar to Quinn. (But make no mistake, the comparisons stop there. What I’m trying to say is that he is a more handsome, more athletic, more talented, smarter, more accomplished person who is also 10 months older.)

But consider for a moment what Brady Quinn has already done in his life. Few people realize he is ninth in NCAA history in TD passes thrown. He took nearly 2,000 snaps in his college career (1,856) and finished in the top four in Heisman Trophy balloting his junior (4th) and senior (3rd) seasons. When he graduated, Quinn was 7th in career pass attempts and 10th in career passing yards in NCAA history. And those numbers don’t mention the 36 Notre Dame school records he broke.

In essence, Quinn’s no chump.

2007 was one of the most ridiculous for me as a Browns fan. It began with Charlie Frye as the starter… for one game. I watched that 34-7 blowout loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers via webcam at 2:30 a.m. while on my study abroad trip in Adelaide, Australia. I thought there was no hope for the Browns season. In other words, I thought it was just going to be another year.

But Cleveland traded Frye after that one game. Enter Derek Anderson. He finished the season with nearly 3,800 yards, 29 touchdowns and 19 interceptions. In the other games of his career, all of Anderson’s averages and ratios are lower than 2007.

It seemed like this incredible, out-of-nowhere, not-seen-in-a-million-years season was just an oddity. (For perspective, 2007 was just the second year since 1988 that the Browns made double-digits in the win column. 14 seasons at or below 9 wins.) On the Leap Day this year - a day set up to get everything back to normal in the calendar year - the Cleveland Browns re-signed Derek Anderson to a three-year deal.

And Browns fans waited. But there comes a time when you’re sick of waiting. You just want to play that computer game. You just want to see your team win. You just want to see if Brady Quinn is a waste of time or a good use of trading up on Draft Day 2007. Tonight is the first glimpse of that answer.

Brady Quinn just turned 24 years old ten days ago.

Happy Birthday, Brady. Merry Christmas, Browns fans.

Random Ridiculousness

2008-09-20T13:11:00.003-05:00

Straight from the files of venting/needing something to do while watching college football before going to work on a Saturday.

The Random Ridiculousness for today:

+During halftime of the NC State-ECU game, I got to hear Lou Holtz make comments about Ryder Cup golf. I absolutely love it. I don't even really remember what all he said, but his analysis included something about the Jim Furyk-Kenny Perry team achieving a win.

+Even the mere mention of Kenny Perry will forever make me laugh. Mainly because of the hatred of him by my friend, Jeff Schaffer, but also because he had so little faith in himself to perform well enough during major tournaments that he dropped out and played small tournaments to ensure his spot playing in his native Kentucky for the Ryder Cup (and for his country!).

+The only reason I was watching NC State-ECU was because I can't even listen to Pam Ward anymore. I'm sure she's a great person, but I just can't listen to the broadcasts anymore. The Ohio-Ohio State game did it for me. Pam Ward in the booth, Chris Spielman doing his best "give me a headset and use camera angles that make me look like a coach" impression on the sidelines. I was kinda sorta hoping the Big Ten Network would make a location mistake and put the Ohio-Northwestern game on. Instead we got Minnesota-Florida Atlantic. I guess the result will probably be the same, though.

+I hate guys who have admittedly awesome girlfriends. And it has nothing to do with "they have a girl and I don't." I say this because a reporter-not-to-be-named that I know has been telling me all week (and really, for about a month now) about how his girlfriend sat down to figure out what food she can make when his college friends are in town this Sunday to watch the Packers-Cowboys game. Mind you, about 99 percent of football-watching, Sunday-sitting men in this country would be perfectly fine getting pizza. But she insists on making appetizers, too.

She also has a fantasy football team and at least "gets" football. And Sunday is the only day of the week that they both have the entire day off together. In fact, he told me a conversation of theirs once that went something like this:

Her: So you're telling me that the only day of the week we both have the entire day off work at the same time, we're going to spend on the couch drinking beer and watching football the whole day?
Him: Yeah, that's right.
Her: That sounds great.

I didn't know these people existed. I mean, I've been hopeful all along, but it never seemed plausible. But it should happen more often. The football season is five months long, which means a majority of the year is spent without it. Every time I hear a new story, though, I can only applaud his efforts.

+If you haven't yet, you should make it a habit to read Bill Simmons's columns on ESPN.com's Page Two. In his latest post, Simmons talks about his first fantasy football league, which is eerily similar in some respects to the league that my best friend, Luke, and I started up this year. We have our own scoring rules and even made up spreadsheets in which we plug the statistics in and it calculates everything for us.

Speaking of Luke, he'll be the next Bill Simmons, mark my word. And that's exciting because I hope to one day be the crazy/stupid/ridiculous friend that gets a mention every now and then in the blog. Luke's well on his way -- and if you want to know a little more about how weird we are, read the weekly installments of our NFL picks on his blog. He also has a weekly debate with Matt Barnes, one of my best college friends and current sports anchor in Georgia. These are full of sports knowledge and are, well, entertaining, if nothing else.

+Lastly a note on a conversation I recently had with my coworker and friend Abby Riese about man crushes. I told her in general I don't have man crushes based on attractiveness, though I'm really not sure what would push me towards one.

After much deliberation, I've decided if I DO have one, it has to be my more or less unfounded man crush for Brady Quinn. The guy's from Ohio (albeit the Columbus area), went to my favorite college team to be the quarterback (Notre Dame), then was drafted by my favorite professional team (Cleveland Browns) as they gave up a lot to get him.

After the Browns drafted Brady (and while I was in Australia, unavailable to make a purchase like this) Luke bought me an orange Browns t-shirt that only says, "Brady Quinn" and just has a picture of his flowing locks of hair and big smile. When Cleveland decided to hang onto Derek Anderson in the offseason, I was a little angry. I want the team to do well and if they thought Anderson was the man who could do that, then I guess they did what they thought they needed to do.

But at the same time, I really wanted my man Brady Quinn to get his shot. In what was determined to be a meaningless game last year against San Francisco in Week 17, I got to watch Brady Quinn's first action in the NFL. I'm hoping he gets MANY more chances from here on out. It's not like Quinn is an Aaron Rodgers sitting behind Brett Favre for years. Quinn is sitting behind a guy who won the starting job in the second week in 2007 because the former starting quarterback, Charlie Frye, got traded after all of one game.

So after all of that, I love Brady Quinn.
____________________________

Whew, that was quite a bit. And that's why it's called, "Random Ridiculousness." In the meantime, you can check out my work blog and check back here for a post about the Browns. I'm pretty sure I'll have SOMETHING to say after this week's game against the Ravens, win or lose.

Go Browns and Go Irish

What's My Score?? Schedule

2008-08-23T15:49:00.010-05:00

Here is the schedule for "What's My Score??" fantasy football.

Yes, it's like looking at a Little League baseball schedule all over again... but oh well.

Thanks again to Luke for finding this system of scheduling instead of having us come up with on our own (extremely difficult). I still have the original copy on hand in case there was a typo, but I tried to recheck everything for accuracy. If you notice something's wrong, please let me know.

Good luck to all.

Favre Traded

2008-08-07T00:10:00.006-05:00

Everyone and their brother now has the report of Brett Favre's trade to the New York Jets. Since my move to Madison, Wis., in June, it has been "Favre Mode" in the newsroom at NBC 15. For example, when one of my fellow producers, Wani, answered the phone on Tuesday, she put the person on hold for Sam (noted below) to take the call. When he asked who it was, Wani said, "Brett Fa..." before realizing that it was, in fact, not Brett Favre on the phone, but Jason Rice, one of our photojournalists. Basically, I've gotten to know this situation pretty well.

Now it's time to unwind this ball of trade yarn a little bit. Almost everyone in the sports world has an opinion on this. It was leading newscasts in Wisconsin -- and even SportsCenter -- nearly every night. That happened on days when the newest information was something to the effect of, "Talks still going on in the Brett Favre saga."

So now, who wins?? Opinions and comments welcome...

Winners:
+Brett Favre -- getting out of a bad situation and having the opportunity to get back on the field. Still no word on whether Favre will actually report, but if ANYTHING he has said holds weight, expect to see #4 in his new shade of green (though 99.9% impossible before Thursday's preseason game against the Cleveland Browns).

+Green Bay Packers -- Ted Thompson gets his wish with Brett Favre out of his life, Aaron Rodgers in it and some kind of draft pick added to the mix.

+The University of California -- the Golden Bears have waited for their man, Rodgers, to get his chance on the field. But when Rodgers got drafted by the Pack in 2005, fans knew it wasn't likely that he would play until Favre 1) called it quits or 2) was injured badly enough that a back-up was needed on more than a mop-up duty basis.

+Sam Sorenson -- he's NBC 15's assistant news director and the biggest Favre fan I've ever known. His cubicle is right beside mine at work and recently we've all been a little worried that he wasn't going to make it to see the end of this drama. Hopefully he can make it to work on Thursday. If he doesn't have a Favre Jets jersey by the time of the office Christmas party, I think a little pass-the-hat is in order to get him one.

Losers:
+The AFC East -- all those in favor of playing a Brett Favre-led team twice this year raise your hands... OK, just checking. As a Cleveland Browns fan, I'm thankful there isn't a matchup this season. Last season, a Jets team with Favre as QB in the final minutes almost undoubtedly beats Cleveland in their tight game.

+The University of Oregon -- the waiting game for Kellen Clemens to grab ahold of the reigns continues in New York. He's going to be one of the best damn clipboard holders in the league, right behind Matt Cassel in New England and Wisconsin's own Jim Sorgi in Indianapolis.

+The state of Wisconsin & general Packers fans -- Brett Favre made the franchise a contender every year. Green Bay is the winningest team since Favre joined the team in a trade from Atlanta back in February of 1992. Just being in and around the Packers in this state so far, I've learned how crazy it is. But something tells me the team popularity will live on... like my conversation with one of our interns, Madeline, the other day...

Her: So are you a Packers fan??
Me: No, I'm a Cleveland Browns fan.
Her: Oh. Well, you'll be a Packers fan soon.

If I didn't switch to a new team anytime in the last eight years (wait, this is Cleveland's ninth year after getting a team back in the league?! Goodness gracious -- I mean, I remember the OLD Browns...), it's probably not going to happen just because I live here.

But even when I get to the sports bar on Sunday's to watch my beloved Orange and Brown, I'll have another eye on the Green and Gold of the Packers.

As for Favre, I'll be taking some time off, but will highly enjoy watching him back on the field. I mean, technically, he hasn't missed a game in forever (275 straight including playoffs). And it feels like he never left.

Who We Are

2008-07-28T23:54:00.003-05:00

"You can be whoever you want to be."

When talking about what was ahead before my big move to Wisconsin last month, my best friend said these words to me. He added, "There isn't a single person there who ever knew you."

Hearing it put this way catches one off guard. It can even be said to alienate. I'm just one little drop in the great big lake that is the world. It used to be easy -- I was always with someone or some group that I knew well anytime I had traveled.

But when I left small-town Ohio six days after graduating from college, I came with what could fit in my car. If you're searching for a comparison, think first-year college student leaving home in the pre-cell phone era.

"You can be whoever you want to be."

Moving from one Midwest town to another also helps. Small-town Ohio to New York City would have been an extreme adjustment. But my move here helps in more ways than just "feeling at home."

This is because, in all actuality, no matter how hard we try to do otherwise, we remain the same person at the core. When I came here, I didn't suddenly stop laughing at jokes that were funny to me in Ohio. I didn't forget how to produce a newscast (though I've learned how to produce a BETTER newscast since coming here). My friends here don't have opposite interests from those who now can only reach me by phone or facebook messages. Deep down, I'm just Kevin Hunt.

Newscasts are the same. The idea of our news stories is to let viewers see and hear a conversation about what is happening. There's a lot more that goes into it, but the basic idea is that we give you news you want to know.

Our anchors and reporters are one part of the dialogue and you are the other side -- which is why our phone number is posted in public, we have a place on nbc15.com for posting comments and feedback and we try to talk with real people in surrounding communities.

So remember, we consider the viewing public in what is important for our daily "conversations" -- be it The Morning Show, 11 a.m., 4, 5, 6 or 10 p.m. newscasts. Our station motto is, "Coverage You Can Count On" -- and we're doing what we can to include everyone in our conversations.

It's the same reason why I'm loving it here in Southern Wisconsin. I came with nothing, yet I feel like I've been a part of the dialogue since I arrived. I look forward to continuing the conversation at ten o'clock every night on NBC 15.

Where are You

2008-07-05T21:29:00.004-05:00

Pack your bags and head out.

It's one of the toughest things to do, especially when doing it on the fly. What's tougher is not knowing where you're going, what you'll find there or who you'll meet.

But it's what a lot of college graduates face every single year. Job seekers can't be picky because it seems that this economy rewards ANYONE who simply HAS a job. What job and where it is doesn't even play in the minds of a lot of those entering the job market.

This is extremely true for those going into journalism, a degrading form of person plugged into society for the sole reason of lying to everyone else for whom they write (often tagged as "the audience" or "key demographic"). They start out their freshman year with ambitions aimed high. If they're lucky, the hope lasts the entire first year.

Then professors give up trying to sell. There's the "you won't make money until you're 35, if you're lucky" line. Or recently there's the "you need to know how to do everything because you're going to have to produce 18 different types of media on the one story" phrase that's taking the schools by storm.

But the one most prevalent in the radio-television business is the "figure out where you want to live and go about 1,000 miles in another direction to find where you'll ACTUALLY end up" nugget. They're told not to worry too much, though, because they can work their way to their final destination by the end of a career by working extremely hard, meeting as many people in the business as possible and sucking up to those people with hope that some day they'll be in a position of power looking at a resume with a recognizable name.

Some take a different approach. They don't really figure out what's coming right away. They might even do something different from the end result they seek just to do something new. It puts them at odds with a definition of "achievement" while, at least for the time being, sending them in a "wrong" direction. But the worry doesn't come in the form of finding a job or even circulate around the occupation whatsoever.

The worry in these seekers comes with going somewhere completely new. They don't know anyone. They don't even know where the closest grocery store is. And, most importantly, they don't know where they fit in because the world is altogether new. Some pieces of a puzzle are easier to place than others and people are the same way.

Some people can jump right into their place in the puzzle of society. Others have a few sides that are too intricate to just slip right into a spot. And anyone who has put a puzzle together knows that shoving pieces into a spot in the puzzle where they don't belong only makes for hardship later when it's revealed that the piece really, truly didn't belong there.

The real point is that putting together the same puzzle over and over is OK with some people. But for most, the completion of a brand new challenge is what makes the activity interesting. Those in broadcasting are all but forced to do this or take a job in something that just involves writing. Not settling is one of the toughest things to do in this life. But trying to be the puzzle piece that fits is one of the hardest things to avoid. If you're not in the right spot, don't worry -- to finish the puzzle, you'll find your spot.

So pack your bags and head out. There's a puzzle in this big world waiting for you so it can be solved.

Tribe-ulations

2008-07-02T01:29:00.003-05:00

Cleveland Indians manager Eric Wedge says he doesn't want to give up on the season yet. Most Tribe fans have trouble understanding this theory. The Indians are going to need a 2007 Colorado Rockies-type run over the next four weeks to get back to being a legitimate contender.

I know Wedge has toyed with the lineup a BUNCH this season, but I haven't seen Grady Sizemore out of the lead-off spot enough. Why not give him some more RBI chances with the likes of Shin Soo Choo or Jamey Carroll leading off (both have marginally better on-base percentages)??

In addition, if Sizemore reaches the base paths in front of the #4 or #5 hitters (whomever they may be on a given night), wouldn't the threat of a stolen base make the opposing pitcher at least consider throwing more fastballs than off-speed pitches in case Sizemore is planning on taking second base??

It's easy to understand why Sizemore is still in the lead-off spot -- he doesn't seem to be the problem. And it's hard to argue with the numbers: .261 average, .366 OBP, team-leading 19 HR, team-leading 19 stolen bases. So Sizemore is having himself a decent year. But the team isn't.

In a June issue of the Akron Beacon-Journal, Wedge said, ''Grady likes it up there, and he's one of the best in the game...I don't see why you would want to take one of your greatest areas of strength away?" The reason why is because there's the possibility that Sizemore will be BETTER as a #3 hitter than as a lead-off man. Even more, there's the possibility that Cleveland will be a BETTER hitting team with Sizemore in the three hole.

In the American League, a .500 winning percentage probably won't get you close to winning a wild card spot. In other words, an exact reversal of the first half of the year won't be enough to keep the Indians in it. And if Eric Wedge truly believes there's hope left for this season, he might want to consider a MAJOR change because small lineup changes obviously aren't helping Cleveland score runs.

Swing and a Drive...

First Week as a Cheesehead

2008-06-29T14:20:00.004-05:00

Now that I've been in the Badger State for an entire week, I figured I'd take a look back at how it all went.

We had breaking news on Thursday, the last day of training for me. NBC 15 has newscasts at 4, 5 and 6 p.m. Around 3:50, our Web Producer, Abby, was reading over a news release that said police in Minnesota made an arrest of a suspect in connection with a high-profile murder that happened in Madison a few months ago.

The newsroom went into crazy mode. Abby printed the news release and our news director ran it to the 4 p.m. anchor to read immediately off the top of the newscast (she had about a minute to gather what the heck was going on). We pulled a reporter from a live shot at another story to come back to Madison and work on an angle of the murder arrest story. A different reporter stuck around and reported ANOTHER story instead of leaving after the 6 p.m. newscast like he usually does (putting in a day of around 11 hours).

Meanwhile, I had no clue who Joel Marino (the murder victim) was or who we could call to get more information or interviews for stories. But I learned a ton within the short time that I was there that night. It was a good thing to see how breaking news works within the station BEFORE having to deal with it on my own.

My first solo-produced newscasts were Friday, when I tackled the 6 and the 10 (which I'll do on every Friday from here on out). Luckily for my "first day," there wasn't anything that tried my skills immediately.

Otherwise, my first week was pretty uneventful. I spent over an hour the first day doing paperwork and reading company policies. The IT guy was on vacation, so I still don't have a station e-mail or computer user name or user name for posting stories to the web. That difficulty should be gone on Monday, thankfully.

There's a possibility I might have a blog on nbc15.com in the coming weeks, but that's not for sure at this point. I want to have a few posts in the can before I have the opportunity to start one up. If you have any ideas, let me know!!
-------------------------------------------------------
Where has the Indians' lineup gone this season?? Unless I make a daily trip to a sports bar, I can no longer watch the Tribe games live. But that's OK with me at this point considering this was their batting order against the Cincinnati Reds in the third game of their series in Cleveland...

Grady Sizemore
Casey Blake
Ben Francisco
Jhonny Peralta
Shin Soo Choo
Kelly Shoppach
David Dellucci
Andy Marte
Jorge Velandia

Are you kidding me?? Marte needs to play everyday or get designated for assignment. Choo is hitting well, but should NEVER have to be a designated hitter in any Cleveland lineup. When Jorge Velandia started at shortstop on Wednesday night, it was the 65th DIFFERENT lineup used by Eric Wedge in 78 games.

It's a tough season for everyone on this team for various reasons, many of which are injuries. But even before the injuries there were underperformances. Cleveland couldn't score runs if its life depended on it for a stretch of about two months. But I'm done with this season. If C.C. Sabathia isn't traded soon (well before the trade deadline, when teams are willing to give a little more to have him sooner.

Bring on the Browns and, maybe even a little bit, the Irish.

Swing and a Drive...

Ridiculous Ramblings

2008-06-07T10:29:00.004-05:00

I guess I'll try to make this a regular (weekly) segment where I talk about whatever comes to mind. In other words, it will be the most un-read of my posts.

My career at Ohio University is winding down and I want to elaborate on some of my final week disturbances. First of all, it's been an adventure living without air conditioning when the high temperatures hit 90 degrees over the span of a week. Three showers a day doesn't even seem to cut it at this point. I guess it was my own bad decision in not finding a place with air conditioning built in, but I've really enjoyed my time at 6 1/2 Coss, so I guess I can tough it out for another week.

My last undergraduate class ever was on Wednesday. It was actually supposed to be Thursday morning at 9, but being the celebratory person that I am, I did not wake up in time for that class. In no way am I complaining about being able to go out any night of the week -- it's actually a very nice gig.

I have a six-page research paper for English (due Tuesday) and a Blue Book final exam in History (Thursday morning) as my final obstacles to a B.S. of Journalism with English and History minors. Well, technically I have all the necessary pieces of my overall degree, but if I don't get credit for those minors, there will be about 10 classes that were essentially worthless -- unless you count personal development as an award for having taken them.

The apartment hunting has been slow to say the least, but at least I have another thing to throw at the facebook naysayers. The facebook marketplace is an online classifieds section that allows anyone to look to different schools and see what's for sale or rent. It ranges from event tickets to books to electronics to... available houses and apartments.

I like it better than craigslist because pictures are easier to upload/view and the website itself looks better -- but that's just me. Don't get me wrong... there's a good chance I'll find my new abode on craigslist. But my preference goes to "the book." But my one-year contract as a news producer at WMTV NBC 15 is in the mail, so I should probably start finding somewhere to live soon...

I find it interesting to delve into statistics, especially in baseball, trying to find trends and patterns among the teams. A recent stat that I noted was a direct relationship between playoff teams in Major League Baseball and those teams' home records. The top five in each league (overall MLB rank in parentheses)...

AL
1. Boston -- .800 (1)
2. Tampa Bay -- .706 (4)
3. Chicago -- .654 (7)
4. Baltimore -- .607 (t-12)
5. Oakland -- .588 (14)

NL
1. Chicago -- .765 (2)
2. Atlanta -- .735 (3)
3. Houston -- .640 (8)
4. Arizona -- .636 (9)
5. St. Louis/Philadelphia -- .618 (t-10)

If the playoffs started today in Major League Baseball, here's how it would shake out...

AL
1. L.A. Angels -- .613
2. Boston -- .594
3. Chicago -- .567
4. Tampa Bay -- .590

NL
1. Chicago -- .629
2. Philadelphia -- .587
3. Arizona -- .541
4. St. Louis -- .571

The National League is especially telling in this stat, considering all four playoff teams made the list of the top five home records. (OK, there were six teams, but Atlanta basically doesn't count because its record on the road is an abysmal 7-21) In the American League, three of the four made it and L.A. missed the list to West Division rival Oakland by .007.

All of these teams are also (at least) above .500 in games played within their respective divisions. So if a team wants to make a playoff push, it needs to win home games, especially home games within the division. The same can be said for last year's playoff teams -- all eight were above .500 at home and all but the Arizona Diamondbacks had division winning percentages above .500 (Arizona was right on the mark).

It's too bad I won't be able to make it to Progressive Field in hopes that the Indians can turn this ship (or "shit" perhaps) around in time to salvage their season. Instead I'll be spending my only week off trying to figure out what I need and what I don't, packing my car until it's nearly bursting at the seams before heading to Wisconsin.

It's less than two weeks away from the (first) big move and it still hasn't really set in. I guess right after I get that diploma on the stage in the Convocation Center a week from today it might hit.
--------------
Not every person can be perfect in every
way, shape, form; we tend to be
experts by some manner.

Getting My Fill

2008-06-01T20:24:00.002-05:00

A recent news story I saw on my Yahoo! News feed really brings to light how much of an economic force is found in the rising costs for fuel.

A synopsis of the story is that people are putting less gas into their cars and are, therefore, running out more frequently. The main reason behind this decision is that they don't have enough money to fill up the tank all at once, so they just try to get by with what they can, hoping it gets them to their destination. But many times this venture is unsuccessful.

I find this very similar to the reason why some people don't have much invested into a retirement fund. They know it would be a huge benefit in the long run, but in the short run they need that extra money to get by. Filling the tank is easily the "safest" choice, but that $25 not spent on the extra half tank of fuel might be enough for three or four meals for that week.

It's a game of investment. Drivers know that the cost of gas isn't going to go down immediately -- and even if it would, the cost would likely be just pennies less than it was. Buying the gas at $4 a gallon, for example, would fill a 12-gallon tank for $48. Paying just 10 cents more would push that total cost up to $49.20. Investing in the gas right away allows for the driver to save $1.20.

This amount actually seems pretty paltry when compared to the time and effort spent on trying to get your empty vehicle off the side of the road. Then consider having it happen in rush hour traffic, when it could take even longer for a service vehicle to get to you. Then consider the fact that companies like AAA aren't going to bring 12 gallons of gas for your car -- they'll probably bring just a few.

If one's car runs out of gas, the next likely step after getting off the side of the road would probably be to put more gas into the tank. But the options could be slim, depending on where one breaks down. It's incredibly unfortunate that this society is one that has people trying to save even $1.50 when that money really should be invested into something of great use, like an extra portion of fuel that can save later problems on the road.

It's unlikely there will be a major slowdown in the rise of gasoline prices. If there is any relief in sight, don't expect it until around August or September when the Presidential campaigning really fires up. It will be a matter of who pushes first. If the Democratic Party puts extreme stress on decision-makers to fix the problem it will be seen as being the one most helpful to citizens, considering fuel costs are part of the biggest issues for Americans.

If the Republican Party wants to strut it's stuff, President Bush will find a way to incorporate Presidential hopeful John McCain into the group that makes the decision to lower fuel costs (in whatever way they can). This would likely spark more people to vote for a McCain seen as trying to fix problems in this country.

Either way, it puts travelers at odds for the majority of the summer. Good thing I have that excellent three-hour trip back home after graduation, followed a week later with an eight-hour journey to Madison, Wisc., where I'll be putting up shop for at least a year. Here's hoping those are the only two major trips I need to take this year because, let's face it, I have to start PAYING the college loan companies, instead of them paying me. But there's no telling how many tanks of gas I'm filling for other people by doing it...

Recent Goings-on

2008-05-27T23:07:00.002-05:00

The latest randomisms...

+I accepted a job at WMTV NBC 15 in Madison, Wisc. I'll be the producer for the 10 p.m. news Monday through Friday, as well as taking on the producer role for Friday's 6 p.m. newscast. It's a lot to take on right out of school, but I'm excited to get out and try my hand in the real world. I don't get a bio on the station web channel or anything, but I can't wait to try my hand at taking the 10 p.m. news from 2nd to 1st in the Madison market.

As far as made-up rankings go, I move from what used to be the #2 party school up to what used to be #1 in the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Maybe I'll see Bo Ryan or by chance even Barry Alvarez around somewhere. Jim Sorgi is probably an even better possibility, considering he does nothing during the season anyway.

I start there on June 23rd, a solid nine days after graduation. I'm probably going to try and room with some other college students -- easier to meet people as well as split bills. All I continue to hear about Madison is that it's a great town and I can't wait to get out of classes and get started there.

That also may be partially due to the people I met that I'll be working with at NBC 15. They seem like they really care about putting out the news for the day and are willing to work as a team to get the job done right. I'm sure I'll have something to say on here about the Wisconsin accent, but I haven't ventured into it for long enough yet to get a real sense of what it sounds like. Stay tuned.

+It's been awhile since I've had a funny "Kevin Hunt" moment, which is somewhat disappointing considering the fact that just the other day I talked with someone about bringing back the idea Luke and I developed -- a 365-day desk calendar full of funny "Kevin Hunt" moments. Order yours today...

+Setting milestones in life is just a way to keep track of how old you're getting. I can't tell you straight out how many years it's been since my family moved from Wentz Street in Tiffin, Ohio, to Township Road 54 outside of town. What I can tell you is that our first night there was Halloween when I was in third grade. I guess that means it'll be 14 years this October. And yup, now I feel old.

+I almost died on my drive up to Madison on Thursday. The event happened in the ridiculous city of Columbus, where everything that I despise usually turns up -- OSU, getting lost, traffic accidents, etc. I was in decent-but-not-packed morning traffic on I-70 Westbound south of the OSU campus when I thought to myself, "I'm really dependent on this semi in front of me. I pretty much have to react to whatever he does."

About a minute later, my wildest nightmares came true and the semi slammed on his brakes. I could see smoke coming off the tires -- something I had never seen before outside of a race track. I whipped my car onto the left shoulder (I was in the far left lane) where I saw the reason for the slow down. Two cars were stopped on the shoulder and apparently the semi-truck driver didn't see everyone checking up as they passed this accident. When I put my Acura onto the shoulder, I slammed on my brakes as well and stopped about 200 feet short of the two cars.

No one else behind me got rear-ended and I just hopped back into my place in the line of traffic. It wasn't until that night when I told someone else the story that it really hit me that I was almost a goner -- and had the incident happened just seconds later, I probably would have taken those other two drivers with me when I bailed from the fast lane of traffic.

The truck, ironically, had the picture of a McDonald's Big Mac plastered on the back. I always joke that someday I'll have to end my fast food habits or they'll end me. Little did I know McDonald's almost killed me in a completely different way that day.

+Memorial Day weekend was likely the last time I'll be traveling anywhere away from Athens until after my graduation on June 14th. It's going to be an interesting homestretch to what is my entire college career. I thought about doing a countdown or ranked list of different categories referring to my time at OU, but there's no point in figuring it out. I just like to know that I was lucky enough to get to have some great memories -- and there's still time left...
----------
"Give me some signs that even
I can see.
For a sign not seen is
As good as
No sign at all."
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Being a Human Being

2008-05-13T19:55:00.002-05:00

All seriousness aside, there was "excitement" in the air when finding out Cleveland Cavaliers' forward Ben Wallace left Game Two of the Eastern Conference semi-finals after suffering an allergic reaction. You read correctly - the words "seriousness," "suffering" and "excitement" all coming in the same sentence.

Wallace started the game, but with just under four minutes to go in the first quarter, a rebound went to the Celtics and he committed a foul almost immediately. Wallace then stumbled off under the hoop before getting attention from the Cavs medical staff. He continued to sit out, lying down on the floor in front of the bench at times before retiring to the locker room.

What's so great about this?? All of a sudden a 6-foot-9-inch, 240-pound veteran professional athlete was taken out by something that might be bad enough to keep any one of us from going in to work. The guys who steal the show on television -- especially someone like Wallace, who occasionally lets his hair bust out of cornrow bondage -- are as vulnerable to what seem like the most minuscule injuries.

No matter how much we joke or say it in a joking (hopefully) way towards our most hated opponents or players, we don't ever want to see a player lose time to a serious injury. This feeling takes greater presence when we experience a serious injury first-hand.

This isn't a post against Ben Wallace as a person. In fact, it's praising Ben Wallace as a person. Sure he didn't want to get an allergy attack/ear infection during the game. But it goes to show the viewing audience that these huge, iconic athletes are people, too.

Maybe the next post will deal with the number of people citing allergy attacks as valid reasons to take a day off work.

MLB April is a Riot

2008-04-30T22:33:00.003-05:00

I just want to get this out of the way right now: Chicago Cubs infielder Ryan Theriot is known as "Ryan the Riot" because of the spelling of his name. Use it as you see fit, but as far as the published world is concerned, I coined it.

Now that I'm off my high horse, I wanted to make a few comments about the major league baseball season thus far. First of all, most of my knowledge comes from sifting through various fantasy news. If I miss your favorite player, well, get over it -- or better yet, leave your qualms in the form of a comment at the end of this blog.

How about the start to the season for Chase Utley and Hanley Ramirez?? Utley hit home run #11 on the year tonight, three more than next on the list. A list that includes Ramirez, who also has 9 stolen bases, four behind NL leader Michael Bourn. (Wait, Michael Bourn?? Where did he come from?? By the way, his on-base percentage is .280. If he's on base, he's going to try to steal. But try as you might, he hasn't been caught yet. The big question now: how quickly after this post will he get thrown out. My guess is that it will come on his second attempt to swipe a bag. Stay tuned.)

On the pitching side, Cliff Lee for the Indians has been crazy good. If not for his "low" strikeout total (32, 9 behind leaders Aaron Harang and Felix Hernandez) Lee would be incredibly close to claiming the pitching Triple Crown through one month. Pretty good for a guy whose head was called for by fans, including myself. Hard to argue against it when there are good arms like Aaron Laffey and Jeremy Sowers.

And finally I want to express some love for a guy I hate -- another Philly, Pat Burrell. I hate him because year after year I draft him in fantasy, then he sucks for a month or so until I drop him, then he turns it on until I pick him up, at which point he drops to all-new levels of pathetic-ness. This year I drafted him once again, but only with the motivation that he is in a contract season and looks to make himself a nice paycheck after this season. Here's hoping it's not just another great start for Pat the Bat.

Swing and a Drive...

OU Baseball vs. Kent St. Gm. 3

2008-04-28T23:36:00.002-05:00

What an incredible series for Greg Rohan.

He made his way through game one basically unknown. But his impact was most certainly felt from the middle of game two until the end of the series.

Rohan ended the second game 2-4 with two home runs, one of which was a two-run blast in the bottom of the 8th inning that gave the Golden Flashes a 6-5 lead with just one Ohio at-bat left to keep the game alive. Rohan started out game three with another two-run jack, followed by a solo home run.

The Bobcats, however, refused to give up on the idea of winning the game and the series. Ohio grabbed a 4-3 lead after 4 1/2 before Kent tied the game after 5. Each team would add a run before heading to extra innings, where an error fell into the worst possible situation for the Bobcats in the bottom of the 11th inning with the lead-off hitter Chris Tremblay at the plate. He slapped a single to right and scored Brett Weibley from third to win the ballgame.

The Mid-American Conference awards for this week spelled out the series well. The East Division Player of the Week went to Rohan, whose totals for the series were 5-9, 4 HR, 5 R, 6 RBI, one (essentially) game-winning hit. The East Division Pitcher of the Week was Ohio Junior Chris Rigo, who threw a complete game win on Friday night in the Bobcats' only victory of the series. He allowed two earned runs on nine hits and lowered his season ERA to 4.77. He's also 2nd in the league in strikeouts behind only Chris Carpenter of KSU (who had multiple scouts watching him throw as a starter in Saturday's game).

Bottom line: when Ohio gets good pitching, it wins games. When the bats have to pick up the pitchers, the Bobcats seem to struggle. Not something you would expect from a team that is 3rd in the MAC in batting average (and just one hit from being tied for 2nd).

This is an Ohio team that played really tough on the road with MAC Defending Champs Kent State -- in a series that was back and forth constantly. If the Bobcats can find a way to win the next two home series in the conference -- Bowling Green from May 2-4 and Miami from May 9-11 -- then watch for them to make a move through the Mid-American Conference Tournament in late May.

I'm hoping to have audio files of the weekend's highlights up as soon as tomorrow. Check back often and please leave comments and criticism or drop me an e-mail at kevin.t.hunt@gmail.com.

Swing and a Drive...

OU/Kent State Game Two

2008-04-26T22:31:00.002-05:00

The second game of the Bobcats-Golden Flashes series in Kent, Ohio, went the way of KSU, but not until the game was nearly over.

Ohio pushed across 4 runs in the top of the 3rd inning to take a 4-0 lead. The scoring was highlighted by Jeramy Rehak's RBI double down the left-field line. Rehak has been having himself a great series -- he went 3-3 on Friday with a walk and had a similar day going on Saturday when he drilled the two-run double.

Kent State finally woke up the bats and started to figure out Ohio starter Zach Elmer. Bobcats Head Coach Joe Carbone said in the post-game interview that Ohio pitching was falling behind in counts all day long and Elmer was only part of the "problem."

With a 5-4 lead through 7 1/2 innings, Carbone sent pitcher Matt Schlarb into the game for Kevin Mementowski (we relieved Elmer). Schlarb gave up a lead-off walk to start the bottom of the 8th, then fell behind 3-1 in the count to Golden Flashes clean-up hitter Greg Rohan. Rohan proceeded to smack his second home run of the day -- a two-run bomb to left that was the game-winner in a final score 6-5 ball game.

All in all, Kent State had 4 homers on the day -- 2 by Rohan, 1 by lead-off hitter Chris Tremblay, then another by center-fielder Jared Humphreys. It had to be a bittersweet moment for Humphreys, a Jackson High School graduate who didn't get looks to play for Carbone in Athens, about a 45 minutes drive from Jackson, Ohio. Humphreys is in his third year with Kent, something I know only because I worked for WOUB-TV's Gridiron Glory show for 3 years, including the season in which Humphreys was named a GG Player of the Year finalist. In fact, Humphreys even has gone back to Athens in the past and played summer ball with the Southern Ohio Copperheads at Bob Wren Stadium.

It was an interesting day for Ohio, to say the least. Tomorrow's rubber match proves to be huge as the winner grabs the top record in the East Division and an all-important conference victory as the season gets near the end.

Sunday's action is at 1 p.m. and you can listen (in Athens) to WATH on 970 AM. I think there's a link online to listen to the game as well on ohiobobcats.com, though I haven't been able to get the link working in awhile. I'm hoping to post some of the highlights from the games up on this site next week sometime.

Until then, Go Bobcats!! and you can listen to me on 970 WATH and the Citizens Bank Ohio Bobcats Sports Network.

Swing and a Drive

2008-04-25T22:44:00.002-05:00

I'm sitting here on a late Friday night in Kent, Ohio, just wondering exactly how I got here. Then I remembered that whole "I need to have resume material to show future employers" thing, sucked it up and got on board.

The Bobcats took a 7-2 win today over Kent State in the first game of a three-game set. This is a crucial series for Ohio in my mind because 1) it decides who takes first place in the MAC East Division, 2) it gives the winner of the series some great momentum heading into the home stretch and 3) Kent is the defending MAC Champion team and, let's be honest, who doesn't want to knock off #1??

Kent started out the scoring with a run in the bottom of the 1st, but the bats went silent for much of the rest of the game. KSU had the bases loaded with one out in the bottom of the 2nd, but Ohio pitcher Chris Rigo did a great job pitching out of the jam. Rigo went on to pitch a complete game win, throwing over 140 pitches. Seems like a lot by today's don't-throw-your-arm-out standards, but even 140 pales in comparison to numbers compiled by some staff aces of bygone days. (The MLB playoff record is 163, held by Boston's Luis Tiant from Game Four of the 1975 World Series.)

I'm hoping to get some audio of these games up here when I get back to Athens because, unfortunately, I can't record it on my own here in Kent. I'm also hoping to post to the blog a little more often -- short things like this instead of longer column-like posts. And let's face it, I'm just better at being shorter.

Swing and a Drive...

My Thoughts Exactly

2007-10-10T17:49:00.000-05:00

First of all, I have to start this one off with a Happy Birthday wish to Luke Florence, who turns 22 today (Oct. 11). Barring any application problems, Luke will be joining all of us at Ohio University once again and the ensuing fun is immeasurable at this point. Also, a birthday wish to Steve Young, one of my favorite players to watch growing up because he was a southpaw who could scramble as well as he could throw the ball.

Secondly, thanks to the Cincinnati Bengals for having a bye week so I could watch the Cleveland Browns-New England Patriots game via webcam. Also, thanks to Travis Henry for at least starting the game against San Diego – it’s the least he could do for his fantasy owners (like myself) who didn’t think a prior marijuana charge and a number of kids for which he has to pay child support were reason enough not to take him in the early rounds. Who says players’ personal problems don’t show up in fantasy sports??

A few things about the Cleveland Browns’ game against the New England Patriots. It started off much better than the last time Cleveland played New England. I was in the stands for the Bethel Johnson return for touchdown on the opening kickoff, taking only 14 seconds for the Pats to take the 7-0 lead. I remember this mainly because of the comment by Alex Lucius, who immediately said, “They’re gonna score a million points. Someone do the math!!” Trips to Cleveland for bad games are only saved by good stories and/or quotes, so we had that going for us early on. To further prove how much this organization has changed in 3 years -- it was 21-0 before Cleveland quarterback Luke McCown hit Antonio Bryant for a 16-yard score. The only thing that didn’t change was the end result – Browns lost that game 42-15.

The Browns defense held up its end of the bargain by holding New England to a field goal on the Pats’ first possession Sunday. A Josh Cribbs kickoff return set Cleveland up with pretty good field position and the Browns drove right down the field and had 1st and Goal on the 1. At this point I said, “Four downs to get one yard. Give it to Jamal Lewis.” When Jason Wright took the first handoff for no gain, my only thought was, “Jamal Lewis better be hurt if he’s not in this game.” It’s really not a good sign when you think this at any point in a game.

Turns out Lewis WAS hurt and Cleveland didn’t score on that drive after a pass intended for Steve Heiden was tipped and intercepted by Junior Seau. The linebacker is ancient by NFL standards – he turns 39 in January. To drive home this point further, it was Seau’s first pick since 2002. He would add another INT that ended the next Browns drive. Anderson killed three Cleveland drives by throwing picks.

Dan Dierdorf made a great comment at the 10:40 mark in the 4th quarter when he said, “Wes Welker is 5-9 on a REALLY good day.” Sounded like something I’ve said about myself more than once, except for me it goes “5-6.”

In the late stages of this game it was one where people might randomly tune in and think, “Wow, Cleveland actually has a chance to pull this one off.” Taking over with 6:44 to play, it took just two Derek Anderson passes to find the endzone, hitting Kellen Winslow for a 14-yard score, moving the Browns to within 10 points. But in typical Browns (and Patriots) fashion, New England picked up key first downs on a 5-minute drive that left Cleveland with just 52 seconds to drive 96 yards after the Pats turned it over on downs.

Instead of hope, Browns fans were left hopeless after just one play. Kellen Winslow turned upfield after grabbing a pass and fumbled the ball away at the 15. Randall Gay scooped and scored to put New England up by 17. Gay either had money on the game or simply hates me and others who picked Cleveland to cover the spread because this score kept the Browns from doing so. A few meaningless passes moved Cleveland down the field on the ensuing possession, but Winslow couldn’t haul in a ball in the back of the endzone on the game’s final play. Browns lose 34-17.

After reading this post you might wonder why I didn’t start with the Cleveland Indians – my team in the post-season and the one actually winning. To be honest, it’s because Game 3 of the ALDS came right after the Browns game.

I was extremely happy to see the Indians take both games in Cleveland – and what Indians fan wasn’t. A 1-1 tie (or even 0-2 hole) going to New York would have set up possible disaster. Instead the bats picked up C.C. Sabathia and Fausto Carmona was 2007 Fausto Carmona (as opposed to 2006 Fausto Carmona who went 1-10).

Game 1 didn’t hold too many thoughts from me, mostly smiles. Something I can’t figure out is the craze on this Indians team for the beard. I’m sure it goes along with the idea of team-building as well as not shaving ‘til you’re done. What concerns me is a possible return for Eric Wedge’s mustache.

Remember how it loomed in 2005, ever-so-obvious every time he was iso’ed on camera, twitching his nose?? Luke Florence, Matt Barnes and I begged for it to go (as most people did, I assume). After he shaved it that year, the team snapped out of a funk and played well until the last week of the season. Hopefully the loophole is that it cannot be a mustache alone. We’ll see.

Meanwhile beard brigade member and mountain man look-alike Casey Blake has just been sited carving a new set of bats out of some trees in rural northeast Ohio. Blake went just 2-for-17 in the ALDS with 2 RBIs in Game One, but chances are good that he’ll snap out of this funk. One must remember he had a 26-game hitting streak this season. (I was at the game with Matt Coleman, so typical result on my end.) Rounding out the beard brigade is Travis Hafner, who defied logic by finding a way to look like more of a huge ogre. An ogre that Tribe fans love – especially those in Pronkville.

Game 3 of the ALDS also brought to light exactly how money plays a part in what kind of jobs baseball general managers have. There were a few players that each team picked up at different points this year in hopes that they would help the team in a playoff situation. For the Yankees: Roger Clemens. For Cleveland: Trot Nixon and Kenny Lofton. A tip of the cap to Indians GM Mark Shapiro for the well-spent money in those two (to this point) because, if nothing else, they provide a “been there, done that” voice in the clubhouse for the younger players on the team. New York GM Brian Cashman’s choice to reach into the deepest pocket imaginable to grab The Rocket just looks ridiculous now. Those blaming injury in the Clemens situation have to remember an increased chance of getting hurt comes with age.

I fully agree with Luke Florence’s sentiment from a recent column when he said of Eric Wedge, “I’m still not a big fan of his, but I must admit, he’s a players manager. These guys enjoy playing for Wedge and it’s hard to argue with his results so far this season.” The fact that Indians players are on the Wedge Wagon has been no mystery throughout the year and it can even be seen in the dugout during these playoff games.

Maybe Ryan Garko is just a really happy dude, but even when discussing the current opposing pitcher with teammates in the dugout, he cracks a smile. Even with Jake Westbrook in trouble in Game 3, Carl Willis said something that made both men smile during a mound meeting. Westbrook didn’t exactly get out of trouble, but the point is that the atmosphere isn’t one of pressure, but one of “just another day at the office.” That, among other things, is why the measly Indians could beat down the Yankees, who were stoic in their dugout from beginning to end. Critics say Cleveland’s lax approach presents a lack of focus, but it’s more of the “Manny being Manny” theory in my mind.

Of course, you can’t get through a conversation with me on the ALDS without some mention of the broadcast itself, so here goes my rant. How bad did TBS want the Yankees to win Games 3 and 4?? Even when the Indians had one out in their at-bat, the comments from the broadcast team (namely Chip Caray, whom I really liked up until this series began) were about how New York had the 3-4-5 hitters coming up in the bottom half of the inning. I assume this was done to keep hope for the Bronx fan base watching TBS for as long as possible. Remember, the ALCS traveled to the FOX broadcast team, so the next Indians win took away that large viewing crowd from TBS.

My next complaint concerns the choice of the broadcast team. Chip Caray is the usual Atlanta Braves play-by-play man for TBS. Tony Gwynn played 20 seasons with the San Diego Padres. Ohio University alum Bob Brenly is part of the WGN broadcast team for Chicago Cubs games, spent four years managing the Arizona Diamondbacks and played about 8 ½ years playing for the San Francisco Giants. If you didn’t catch the common link, they’ve all spent their most recent careers in the National League, yet all join together to call an American League postseason match up. And it showed.

If I had a dollar for every time they mentioned how the viewers probably won’t see a bunt because the Indians-Yankees series was in the American League, I’d be able to beat out Mark Cuban for a share of the Cubs ownership. Then you have to add in the comments on how it’s harder to manage in the NL because of figuring out how long to throw your starting pitcher, how to pinch hit, etc. It’s one thing to mention it and another thing to beat it to death. Why wouldn’t you want a predominantly National League crew calling a National League series for reasons such as knowing the players better?? This crew has been pretty good overall, but these things bothered me. Next up: the ALCS with my beloved Tim McCarver, i.e. expect similar comments in the next blog.

I’ll finish by saying all people complaining about bugs affecting the New York Yankees in Game 2 need to stop. If this series had gone all five games, I would have begged for someone in attendance to have a sign that read, “Welcome to Cleveland – where smog doesn’t make our team lose like they did in New York.” Seriously, it’s along the same line. On a side note, thanks to TBS for getting as close as possible to the bugs on Joba’s neck, further driving home the idea that the bugs lost New York the game.

Congrats to Jeff Gordon on a win at Talladega, catapulting himself into the lead in the Chase for the Nextel Cup. Additional congrats to Notre Dame, who surprised a lot of people by beating UCLA on the road. Two more big tests in consecutive weeks against Boston College and USC will really show if that win over the Bruins was a true upset or just a bad performance by UCLA. Should be a great weekend of sports (yes, weekend, considering the Tribe starts it off at 8:30 Friday morning).

That’s all for now. Love you all in the states. Stay tuned for what should be a GREAT story when I try to cancel my application for permission to work (I’ll be starting that process tomorrow) as well as some thoughts on that weekend of sports.

From the other side of the globe, I’m Kevin Hunt.

If you want to see me soon, ask for more patience because the return is about three weeks away.

Big Trip, Part Two

2007-10-07T01:28:00.000-05:00

I really haven’t covered all that much of the trip, really. I’ll try to keep this quick and simple.

New Zealand was pretty sweet, especially our first stop, Auckland. Contrary to popular belief, New Zealand is an affordable place to be, in our minds. We found most of the things that we normally buy in Australia were much cheaper here. Plus Auckland had Burger King (not Hungry Jack’s) and I saw a Wendy’s restaurant for the first time in a long time. But still no Taco Bell.

Auckland is the only city in the world built on an active volcanic field. Why they chose to do this, I will never know. When we visited the museum in Auckland, there was an exhibit on volcanoes that included a display proving that basically no one who lives in the city is aware that there could be an eruption at any point. The last eruption in the area was in 1996. These people are crazy.

We got lucky enough that a volcano did NOT erupt while we were there because one of the bigger tourist attractions is to visit all the volcanoes. The first day we climbed Mt. Eden, on which the government allows people to graze their animals. Mt. Eden had cattle.

After Mt. Eden we hit up the Auckland War Memorial Museum. It was a pretty neat place, but probably would have been even more interesting if I had known ANYTHING about New Zealand history before we got there. We got to see some neat things built by the Maori people, New Zealand’s original inhabitants.

Then there was the aforementioned volcano exhibit. They had a little house where you were supposed to feel what it was like to be in your house during an eruption. The house didn’t shake around or anything, but it still makes you feel kinda weird seeing ash and dust fly in from miles away just to blanket everything around you and your home. Not something I would want to go through. Again, not sure why ANYONE lives on a volcanic field, but they probably wonder why I live in an area that has tornadoes all the time. We pick our poison I guess.

After the museum, we tried to keep working through our daily plans and went across town to One Tree Hill. This place inspired the song by the same title (which inspired the TV show). Keeping up with the apparent theme of the volcanoes, One Tree Hill was the home to grazing sheep.

On top of One Tree Hill is a monument erected to honor the Maori people who were pushed out of the area by original settlers. There’s also a grave of Sir John Logan Campbell, who actually owned the hill and the land immediately surrounding it. He wanted to protect the area as a memorial to the Maori people. So, I guess he deserves to be buried on the place that meant a lot to him. Though I wonder if he wanted a bunch of random people like us walking around on his grave site.

We were tired from a long day of walking up and down mountains as well as across town (since we hadn’t exactly grasped the public transport system yet), but we pressed on and finished the day at the Skytower. The tower is really neat at night when it gets all lit up and gives some great views of the city and surrounding area.

If a large city with decent landscape doesn’t have a huge tower, it’s missing out on some easy tourist dollars. When we go to a city with a huge tower, you can bet we’ll be getting there somehow. I mean, if you don’t want pictures, maybe you won’t – but we want those pics!!

The next day we walked up Rangitoto Island, the most recent volcano to erupt in the area and supposedly the most active of the volcanoes in the city. As opposed to the other ones we visited that had a lot of greenery that had grown up over the years, Rangitoto Island had a lot of volcanic rocks still left behind from the last eruption.

Another long walk up a mountain gave us more great views of the city, as well as some more historical parts of Auckland. Rangitoto Island is situated on its own in the Auckland harbor and used to be home to a military outlook post where enemy ships could be seen from miles away. We got some pictures in these posts, including a sweet one (the first one shown).

The following day was the best one we had on this trip. We decided awhile back to try something adventurous, so we signed up for canyoning. To be honest, we didn’t have an idea what the heck it entailed, but we wanted to give it a shot anyway. We actually hadn’t confirmed our booking yet (yeah, the night before, we are very smooth), so I called the company only to find out we were going to have to pay for a full-day trip because there were no other sign-ups for the half-day (our original selection). But we didn’t want to miss another tour, so we paid the extra $30 and went on our way.

Before hanging up the phone, I asked the guide on the other end of the line if any experience was necessary for canyoning. When he could only laugh and say, “Well, if you’re decently athletic, you’ll be OK,” I figured we were in for it. Instead it was a great experience.

If anyone is thinking about doing something crazy like this, don’t think about it, just do it. That is, as long as you have the physical capabilities – and some mental aspect. Though, if you’re trying to overcome the fear of heights, skydiving might just be the way to do it, depending on your mental status in that regard.

We left Auckland on a very high note, ready to tackle anything and everything in Christchurch, the next stop on our trip. The city is located on New Zealand’s South Island and is described as the country’s most English city. An Anglican cathedral is the center of the city (Cathedral Square) and a lot of the buildings look like old English ones as well. It was a bit different from the modern Auckland.

There wasn’t a whole lot to do in Christchurch, which wasn’t so bad at this point in our trip because this was our fourth city in nine days and we were a little burned out on the tourist stuff. Christchurch did have some neat little things though, namely the historic Tram and Gondola. The tram runs all day through the city and is nice to ride just to be in the old tram cars.

The gondola was an easy reminder of the Sky Ride at Cedar Point, but traveled uphill more than over a distance. Unfortunately we didn’t get a great view of the city once we reached the top because it was really foggy that day.

Our final day in Christchurch we were scheduled to take a tandem paragliding trip. After spending basically the entire day trying to reach the company in charge of our paragliding, I reached him just in time to find out it was too windy to do it that day. We got our money back, but it was tour #3 to be canceled on this trip. We still tackled just about everything Christchurch had to offer tourists and got a bit of rest in as well. Which was good because we were headed to the busy city of Melbourne next.

Melbourne is described as the most cosmopolitan city in Australia, which basically means there is a lot of shopping. We were greeted at the airport by the Customs officers, the same ones we encountered when we first entered Melbourne way back in the end of June (our flight was from Los Angeles to Melbourne, then connected immediately to Sydney, but we had to go through customs in Melbourne first). Last time went much smoother because, well, when you tell the truth on those immigration cards, it just puts you in position to be hassled.

The quarantine signs tell you to “Declare or Beware” when thinking about taking food and natural items into Australia. This made me think, “Well, as long as I write down what I’m brining in and show the officers those items, we can be on our way.” Why I even think things anymore, I have no idea. Apparently “Declare or Beware” should really be read as “Declare and wolf down all of your food once you get inside.”

In Christchurch, I thought about spending our remaining money in the casino, but I never got to it and wanted to be sure we had enough money for the cab we had to take the morning of our flight to Melbourne. When we arrived at the airport in Christchurch, we had about $12 in New Zealand currency left to use, which we weren’t going to exchange because the flat exchange fee would’ve taken about half of that amount. Instead we purchased a Powerade and a chicken baguette sandwich in the airport to have for lunch in Melbourne and saved $6 to buy muffins on board the plane.

I marked on my immigration card that we had food items and didn’t lie about one thing, thinking it was a better-safe-than-sorry situation. It was, to an extent, because I could have been charged $200 per food item that I DIDN’T claim. Instead, we had to mow down the baguette sandwich while standing at the Customs desk while our bags were being inspected. We weren’t even hungry, but when you have already committed money to something, you can’t just let it go out the window. On a side note, the baguette was pretty good for coming from a small stand at the airport.

The other stuff that was claimed included all of our dead coral we collected from the beach in Rockhampton. This was discouraging because the coral was going to serve as an easy (and cheap) reminder of the Great Barrier Reef, as well as being a gift for family and friends when we got back. The kicker is that Australian Customs had to confiscate their own freaking coral. When we entered into New Zealand, their Customs office didn’t seem to care and hardly searched anything (again, I answered the immigration card completely honestly). It was only when we got back into Australia that the coral (from their OWN COUNTRY) was taken away. What a joke. I received a paper stating that I could file for a permit to receive all of our things back, but chances are I won’t be able to get it. I’m still going to try because, if nothing else, it’ll surely make for another good story.

Once we got out of the airport, you’d think our day could only look up from there. We made it safely to the city on the airport shuttle with no problems, but after that point it gets crazy. We stopped at a Traveler’s Help station to ask about which trams or buses we needed to take to get to our hostel (which was located a little ways out of the city). After taking our first tram, we had to transfer to another one – our final one – to get to our place. What we didn’t anticipate was the giant protest by some union workers against Australian Prime Minister John Howard that was going down the street – the same street down which our tram was supposed to run.

Instead, we had to walk about 8 blocks with all of our bags and pick up the tram at a different point farther down the line. It wasn’t exactly the way we drew it up, but neither is any game-winning play in a sports contest – or life in general. When we finally arrived at our hostel, we found out the lady at the desk (and owner, I think) almost gave away our room because we hadn’t shown up yet – strange considering we were never informed about a time by which we had to check in. At any rate, we got our room at “The Beach” and were not disappointed with the view from our window.

The first thing we decided to do was to just dive right into the city and see what we could find to do. AFL World was along the way, so we grabbed a coupon and took our tour through what was really more of a kids’ center. It was a lot of fun trying to kick the ball and pass it (not throw it overhand, but “punch” it like an underhand volleyball serve) similar to how the AFL players do it. I also know that I could probably never play this sport.

The next day we decided to get up early and take a trip out of the city to ride Puffing Billy, the oldest steam-powered train in Australia. It was a nice little trip going through the wooded areas around Melbourne.

Following Puffing Billy was the Grand Final Parade down the streets of Melbourne. It was pretty interesting to see the weird things the Australians put in their parades because, as you can see from some of the pics below, it’s a little unclear as to what some of this stuff is.

(If you don't recognize these guys, visit http://youtube.com/watch?v=Mv5U0W8FDDk)

We finished off the week by visiting the Melbourne Cricket Ground, the annual site of the AFL Grand Final. This place has been around for years and serves as a multi-sport facility and a home field for a host of teams. It was also a home for U.S. soldiers during WWII. The place is huge as well, holding over 100,000 people at times. It doesn’t seem that big, but the only way I can justify it is by assuming it holds more people because it is shaped like an oval as opposed to being straight-edged on the boundaries like most stadiums in the U.S.

We ended our day at the Melbourne Observation Deck. Again, if you’re ever in charge of a big city, build a huge tower because, if your construction company is anything reliable, the tourist money will pay for the structure soon enough. And again, we got some great pictures.

Saturday we didn’t schedule a thing because it was the day of the Grand Final – the Port Adelaide Power against the Geelong Cats. We didn’t get tickets, but sat in Federation Square with a bunch of other random people to watch the game on a big screen. Sara had her Port scarf on, which drew a lot of comments from Geelong fans – the most common of which was, “Go the Catters!!” That is a direct quote. Off on a tangent now...

Sporting fans here have weird little sayings for their teams. The worst thing to hear someone say is the word “the” in front of the team name. For example, if this was the case in the U.S., I would be saying, “Go the Browns!!” instead of just “Go Browns!!” It doesn’t make any sense, but hey, they’re on the other side of the world, so I guess they can do what they want.

The Grand Final was awful to watch. To put it in perspective, I would have rather watched a replay of the Browns-Steelers game from Week One this season, and not because I like the Browns. Port Adelaide held a 2-1 lead over the Cats, but that was about as good as it got for the Power in a 163-44 loss. It was the biggest margin of victory in Grand Final history. In a related story, I’m very sad I didn’t bet on Geelong to cover (they were an 18 ½ point favorite). What made it worse was that we were fans from Adelaide among a sea of Geelong fans (Geelong is a city of its own that is very close to Melbourne). Fortunately we didn’t get heckled too much and made it back to our place in one piece with time to pack our bags and get ready for our final flight before the ones we’ll take in November to go back to the U.S.

Our flight from a regional airport (about an hour’s drive away from Melbourne, just a hassle and a lot of waiting around and traveling) was delayed a little bit, but we arrived safely at the Adelaide Airport around 10:45 p.m. A pick-up by our landlady and housemate, a quick drive back to 17C St. Bernard’s Road and we could breathe again.

Our 17-day trip came to an end at the same place where it started. Sara took a quick nap before the Browns game came on (2:30 a.m. our time) and we were greeted with a treat as the Brownies won a big game over the hated Ravens. A fitting end to a great vacation. Not to mention the Indians were going to be starting their first postseason since 2001 later in the week. Now they have a 2-0 lead in the series and Romeo Crennel thinks he could win in a game if he literally took on Bill Belichick. Even today, Notre Dame got its first win of the year by forcing 7 turnovers to beat UCLA on the road. Yup things are going well.

As I type, it is just 4 weeks from the day I’ll be back in the U.S. It’s been crazy how fast this time has gone. But don’t worry, I won’t quit blogging. I’m just hoping I can do it more often than the once-every-three-weeks pace found recently.

That’s all for now. Love you all in the states. Stay tuned for what should be a GREAT story when I try to cancel my application for permission to work and my thoughts on the Browns, Indians, Jeff Gordon and, yes, the Irish.

From the other side of the globe, I’m Kevin Hunt.

If you want to see me soon, ask for more patience because the return is about four weeks away.

“It’s been awhile, since I could...”

2007-09-30T10:16:00.000-05:00

...post a blog update. There isn’t a whole lot of constant, free internet access available on our big trip, so internet time has been limited to checking e-mail and fantasy sports stuff. I’ll do my best to get everyone up to speed on what’s happened on our trip so far.

It began in Brisbane, where our accommodation was so-so – it supplied a bed, a roof over the head and, as a throw-in, a TV. The city was probably the most interesting place we’d been to that point, but for all the wrong reasons. The first trip we were supposed to take was to a lookout point on Mount Coot-tha. We knew a bus service ran to the top, so we figured once our plane landed and we got checked in at the hostel, we could head to see a great view of the city.

We found the right bus just as it was pulling up, but we probably would have been better off just buying a postcard with a bird’s eye view of the city. The buses apparently stopped running to the very top of the mountain, opting instead to drop us a little ways up the hill. The bus driver – or as Sara later described her, “our transvestite bus driver” – pointed us in the right direction, letting us know that she “hoped we had our walking shoes on!!” She said it with one of those tones that you just KNOW you’re getting into something bad.

We hadn’t really eaten, hadn’t had a whole lot to drink. We had to climb this large hill through the grass – the fact that there aren’t even sidewalks just another thing laughing in our faces. Sara was about ready to die. I had cotton mouth, something which probably didn’t help my hitch-hiking attempts – a fatigued pair of mountain climbers, one passed out on the side of the road, the other foaming at the mouth, hopeful thumb sticking out.

When we got to the top, the view was just great, though maybe not worth the climb on foot. Regardless, there was a café (where we grabbed some water), a bathroom (or, pardon me, “toilets” in Aussie speak) and some benches for rest. Oh yeah, can’t forget about the wild turkey that got up on a table and started eating someone’s attended plate of cake. Refreshed and more willing to go down a hill than up, we made our way back to the hostel in hopes that the next day would be a bit easier.

It was at this point that I remembered my words once spoken, “Once you start betting on your hopes, that’s when you’re in trouble.” Thankfully I didn’t put any money down because the house would have taken all I own. Our next trip held a plan that would drop us at the Noosa Beach, a popular spot for swimmers and various other activities – like ours, horseback riding on the beach. It was something completely different from all the other stuff we’ve been doing, so we just had to figure out how to get to the beach.

We re-read our booking form and it told us we were supposed to call ahead and be sure everything was still on. I ran to a payphone to take care of that business, but found an undesirable answer on the other end. But first, a digression on payphones in Australia.

They’re basically awful. You pay a flat rate to start the call and then you have to keep pumping coins in until you’re finished with the call. If you don’t, the call doesn’t end, either. The call just disconnects and gives you a certain amount of time to put in more money. If you put some more in, the call is reconnected and the person on the other end can then talk to you again. It’s one of the dumbest things ever.

So once I was finally connected for good, the woman on the other end of the line lets me know that the horseback riding expeditions are all on hold for the time being because an equine influenza has quarantined all the horses until it passes. Our trip is canceled, but at least we can receive a refund and we didn’t travel all the way out there to find out.

Instead of doing that, we spent the day at the Gold Coast – specifically, at Surfer’s Paradise. This was a side of Australia we hadn’t really seen before – lots of big buildings and resorts, a long beach with lots of people, tons of stores and shops. In other words, our change of plans turned out to be a pretty good deal. Of course, there’s always a catch. This time, it was the sunshine – pretty much non-existent, settled behind a cloud for all but the first half hour we were on the beach. But walking on the beach and through all the shops was still a good way to spend a day that would have otherwise been spent sitting around in the hostel room.

The next day brought another order of mayhem, with a bit of negativity on the side. We were booked to go on a sailing expedition that included a trip to Moreton Island, where we would sandboard, feed dolphins and all sorts of other crazy stuff. We had our plan of attack, ready to arrive a half hour early for the day-long adventure. We got up early enough, caught the right train, hit our marks from the start.

Then the unplanned track work. When we checked the journey planner the night before for our scheduled departure time and route, it said nothing about track work. We had to disembark the train at an earlier stop, hop on a bus for a 20-minute trip to another train station farther down the line and then finish off the route. Since the station was a little ways from the harbor, we had to run from the station to the pier (which we didn’t even know exactly where it was). Since Sara had flip-flops on, that meant I had to run to the pier.

Asking random town residents as I passed, I found the pier, ran to the end and talked to the security guard who let me know, “That’s the boat you need, right there,” pointing to a sailboat about 10 minutes out of the harbor. The best laid plans of mice and men go awry. We’re still not sure if we can get any money back from the sailing company. We were mad that we didn’t get to do all of that fun stuff, sure, but there comes a time when you realize that you just want SOMETHING out of it. That part of the story is “To Be Continued.”

We decided instead to go to the Sunshine Coast, with popular beaches located on the opposite side of the city. We stopped at the beach closest to the city (to save on train fares), which dropped us at Bribie Island – albeit after a length of time waiting around for a bus to take us from the train station to the island. We arrived at Bribie around noon and the Sunshine Coast beach lived up to the name – lots of sunshine and, again, a beautiful beach area. For the second time in as many days, tragedy was averted by a decision to finish the day at a beach.

After our time in Brisbane, we got on the Tilt Train towards Rockhampton. This was a high-speed train that traveled up the coast and stopped at a few different places along the way. The ride lasted seven-and-a-half hours, so if it wasn’t for the nice sunset and some other great scenery, the ride would have seemed like a year.

Probably the funniest part about riding the train was the fact that it was Sara, me and about 9,000 old people. Not middle-aged – old. And every time the train stopped somewhere, almost every one of them stood up to stretch out their old legs. They also have the loudest conversations about ridiculous topics. One guy directly behind us talked for almost the entire trip to a woman (also elderly) whom he had just met when he walked onto the train.

Another funny part came when one of the old women posed a question to no one in particular, “How much mileage is left?” Sara immediately turned to me and asked, “Shouldn’t they be asking how much ‘kilometerage’ is left?” This is just another example of how the U.S. rocks, even in unintentional ways. People around the world make fun of the Standard System of Measurement, yet the terms are easier to use and, as we would find out later on this big trip, that system is used for “Heritage Listed” landmarks around the world, not the otherwise widely-used Metric System.

Once our train stopped in Rockhampton, we were welcomed by a small train station that wasn’t close enough to our hostel to walk. With no shuttle services and buses that weren’t headed to the city center, we were left with the option of calling a taxi (usually more expensive than the other two options). When we finally arrived at our place, it was located above a bar that was really hopping for a Sunday night. The room wasn’t great, but hey, we weren’t going to be there for long, so whatev.

The only thing in Rockhampton (pretty literal here) is the portion of the Great Barrier Reef. We didn’t schedule too many days to be here, but one was just enough to soak in some rays and snorkel to see the coral. Off we went to Great Keppel Island for what turned out to be a great day. The temperatures were the warmest we’d seen in Australia and the sky went from overcast in the morning to basically cloudless the rest of the day.

The water, however, was still pretty chilly at first, so we decided to lie out on the beach until sometime after lunch. To find a spot that had coral, we had to climb over a wooded hill infested with mosquitoes (or “mozzies” as the Aussies call them), getting bitten all the way. We got into the water (still cold, but manageable) and snorkeled out to find big patches of coral. I was really excited to see it, yet a little disappointed because the living coral we got to see was mostly dark colored, not the vibrant reds, blues and yellows you might find on a nature show. But it was a part of the Great Barrier Reef, so how could we complain??

When we had had enough of swimming and sunbathing (or “sun baking” in Aussie-speak), we headed back to the main beach to turn in our snorkeling gear and wait for the ferry back to Rockhampton. En route to the snorkel rental stand, we saw a Dad playing catch with his son on the beach. Jokingly I said to Sara that “they must be Americans if they’re playing baseball.” When we passed by them, the father yelled in our direction, saying, “Ohio Bobcats?!?!” We’ve been spotted as Americans before, but we didn’t think the green “OHIO” on my t-shirt was distinctly “Ohio University.”

The man and his family are originally from Westerville, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus. He and his wife attended Marietta College and roamed Court Street in Athens on more than one occasion during their college days. We visit one of the most remote places in world, yet find someone from right in our own backyard – still pretty ridiculous when I think about it well after it happened.

We finally made it back to the city and decided to go out for a steak dinner. Both Sara and I don’t have a lot of money to throw around, but Rockhampton is known as “The Beef Capital of Australia” and I wouldn’t have forgiven myself if I didn’t get a taste. To ease the pain of the bill, we split a steak dinner and it WAS pretty darn good – though there can be something said for a Randy Hunt steak on the grill (which I’ll be expecting as one of my first meals when I get back home in November).

We wanted to have a good finish to the dinner, too, so we went with the apple pie a la mode. It turned out to be pretty crummy for eight bucks – and no, I don’t mean it had a lot of crust. The Australians need to leave the apple pie to the U.S.

An early start to the next morning (5 a.m. to the airport, again by taxi) was necessary to get on our way to Auckland, New Zealand, almost a week into our big trip. This post is already long enough and I’m already backed-up enough that I’ll end it here. Coming soon (hopefully) will be the remainder of the trip, including why I’m never watching the Browns again, our first attempt at canyoning and a life-size version of chess.

That’s all for now. Love you all in the states. Stay tuned for adventures in New Zealand, before we head back to Australia, hitting up Melbourne for Grand Final weekend (just before heading back to class, yuck).

From the other side of the globe, I’m Kevin Hunt.

If you want to see me soon, ask for more patience because the return is about six weeks away.

Do it to me one more time

2007-09-08T01:30:00.000-05:00

Sunday marked the beginning of the second half of our trip. It’s hard to think that it’s already halfway over. Plus, I know the end will go faster because we have a 17-day trip during school holiday starting on Sept. 13 that will eat up a huge amount of time. Before we get there, however, I wanted to share some of the recent goings-on here in Adelaide.

Two weekends ago we undertook Learn-to-Surf Day with the Exchange Society. As I’ve bragged before, this group is really nice because there are a lot of foreign students in our same boat (not knowing a ton of people) and the prices to participate in the activities are pretty cheap compared to what it could be.

It’s just starting to get warmer in South Australia. When we took the surfing trip, it was about 17 degrees Celsius for a high (about 63 degrees Fahrenheit) – not normally considered swimming weather. Wet suits were a necessity on this occasion and really helped out – and they were a good look, too.

Surfing itself wasn’t too bad at all. It was hard to get used to getting on the board, but as long as you have decent upper body strength and sense of balance, newcomers to hanging ten will probably do well. The first thing most people said when we arrived at the beach was that the waves at the beach didn’t seem very big, but it’s a different story when you get into the water. Above anything else, surfing is pretty fun – though not something I think I could do everyday for hours on end. Maybe that’s because I’m not very good, but I think it rides more on the fact that it’s not all that great.

Our most recent Adelaide adventure came with the attendance at our first Australian Rules Football game. It was the Port Adelaide Power (not my designated team, the Crows) against Fremantle. Port Adelaide needed to win the game by a certain margin in order to maintain their second position in the standings (called “the ladder”). This experience was a lot of fun for a few reasons.

First of all, the price of the ticket was only $15, since we purchased through the Exchange Society. That made me think we wouldn’t have very good seats, considering we bought part of a group package. Much to my surprise, we struck lower level seats behind one of the goals – we couldn’t really see the other end of the field, but that was alright with us.

Secondly, the atmosphere was pretty good. The stadium didn’t seem like it was very big at all, but the official attendance was over 39,000. The only problem is that footy is a lot like soccer – lots of continuous action, but with footy there’s more scoring. So unlike an NFL game, where there are definitive times to yell or rest one’s voice, the noise level wasn’t extremely loud at any particular point.

That also made it tough on starting the wave. There are a few other Americans in the Exchange Society who teamed up with some of their friends in the group and made it their personal duty to start the wave (called “the Mexican wave” here). It literally flopped for about the first 100 times they tried to get it going, with very few people outside our section actually continuing it. With the game well in hand in the final few minutes, the Power fans decided to jump on the wave-wagon and followed the lead of those in our group. Personally, I think it happened because they decided to take off their shirts – something that I have yet to see any non-American do as a sign of cheering on a team. Check out the video below:

Our Exchange Society leader Andrew, an Australian who cheers on (“barracks”) the Power and has been to a lot of games, said that that was the best wave he had ever seen at a Power game. Everyone in the stadium seemed to be participating, which was pretty cool. Even on the team website the poll read:

What was the best part about Saturday night’s game?
+The last quarter comeback
+Shaun Burgoyne’s four goals
+The huge crowd and Mexican wave
+Getting that home final

As of the writing of this post, the last two choices were tied for the lead with 42% each. The wave was a lot of the talk on the team’s fan message boards. Hard to imagine that popularity for something that seems to make its way into each and every one of the 162 Major League Baseball games on the regular season schedule. Glad we could leave a little bit of our culture with them.

The second half of our entire time in Australia began when the calendar flipped to September. That’s almost unbelievable. What’s even crazier is that when we return from our big trip, it will be October, meaning we’ll have about 5 weeks remaining. I figured now would be a good time (riding on Sara’s idea) to review what I’ve been missing the most so far on this trip. These are not ranked, just numbered so it’s easier to read.

1. My family and friends. This is the only one that is ranked. It’s not that we have no friends here, but some things just aren’t the same. It gets difficult trying to stay in touch, mostly happening through instant message or facebook. But hey, it’s a lot easier now than it would have been before the internet age.

2. Driving in my car. This is a two-part submission. First, I want to be on the right-hand side of the road. I think it would take me a lot of practice time to get used to driving in this country or any other one that involves the left side of the street. Secondly, I miss listening to the radio. Again, the internet does wonders in helping me listen online (unless it’s a damned Clear Channel station), but nothing compares to a nice drive with some tunes.

3. Wal-Mart. I guess I should make this clearer by naming it “Wal-Mart-esque stores” – you know, the ones that have every single thing you need in one trip. It would be IMMENSELY helpful here, considering we don’t have a vehicle to transport a lot of groceries, so one trip would be FAN-tastic. The prices aren’t steep either, which would help in the pocketbook. Speaking of which...

4. American money. I will bring some Australian money back (if I have some left in the end) so everyone can see how much time and work this country wasted on making nice bills. They’re actually made with a flexible plastic, so you can crumble a bill in your hand and when you let it go, it will (more or less) uncrumble on its own. But the bills don’t go under the five, since there are one- and two-dollar coins. Plus, it’s not uncommon to walk around with a couple 50s in your money clip. And yes, I AM just waiting to get mugged.

5. American football. Especially the Cleveland Browns, but we’re going to be able to watch sporadically through webcam, so at least there is a chance at viewing live. That chance will still come at 2:30 a.m. Mondays, with the most opportune games actually being any of those held on Sunday or Monday night. While I KNOW the Monday Night games will be on, Sundays are suspect because NBC holds the rights, not FOX or ESPN – the only two sports networks we get here. By this time every year I’m antsy to watch football and this schedule just makes it tough. Though, it’s almost a God-send that we can’t see Notre Dame games live.

6. Watching sports constantly. It CAN be done here, but it’s much harder to do and honestly I don’t feel like watching replays of AFL games all the time. I want the morning block of SportsCenter and the evening block of general sports events. But it will have to wait until November 3.

7. My cell phone. I’m not huge on calling or texting, but I miss the random ones. The ones when I’m watching an Indians game and I hear some guy in the background yell something hilarious, then grab my phone and call Luke just to relay that pretty useless information. Now that my parents changed our plan to include mostly text messages, it will be same stuff, new format. I don’t miss having to deal with calls, though. It’s kind of nice not to have to be answering a lot of the time.

8. Laying on the family room floor. For those of you who don’t know, my permanent house in Tiffin has a nice, open area in the family room where I like to grab a floor pillow and just lay to watch TV. You can ask my parents, it’s one of the first things I do when I go home. I think I mostly just like it because there is TV and a lot of space around it – two things I don’t normally get at school.

9. Food and drink. This is the last one because there are so many subcategories. When I wrote up my list and showed it to Sara, her first response was, “So you miss being a fat ass??” I guess so. But eating is something I do 1-2 times a day and enjoy doing almost all the time. It’s a daily part of every person’s life and it’s a huge part of my list here. A number of things were left off the list (like the Pizza Hut Lunch Buffet) because they’re technically available here, but the prices are outrageous. I won’t enjoy them while I’m here simply because they are too expensive. Again, the following isn’t really ranked.

a. Taco Bell. For those of you who didn’t read any of my previous posts, there are none here. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Nil. There are Mexican restaurants, but I’m not sure I’ll be craving anything more than a Nacho Cheese Chalupa when I return to the U.S. If you’re shaking your head already, then just stop reading because I’ll probably make you nauseous.

b. Burger King. Here it’s called “Hungry Jack’s” and it has almost all the same foods – except the fries. Burger King’s fries are at the top of my list and there is a difference between theirs and Hungry Jack’s fries. Though I must say, the ability to get a Whopper is still a good thing.

c. Dollar menus. I’m not really talking about the “I’ll take 9 junior bacon cheeseburgers” effect of these. I’m more missing the simple, cheap meal. For example, I was in the city the other day completing my work permission forms (that’s a story for the next blog, goodness gracious) and it was going on 1 o’clock. I went straight from class and didn’t have anything to eat up to that point in my day. I was thinking about swinging into McDonald’s for a quick bite, but that bite would have cost me at least $6 for a sandwich and drink. Not life-changing, earth-shattering stuff, but just little things I’d rather have.

d. Tortilla chips. Australians can slap stuff on them (i.e. Doritos) but there isn’t a plain one to be found. There’s salsa, too, which just taunts my taste buds. I might just fulfill Sara’s quote by dipping my Doritos in hot cheese sauce. We’ll see.

e. Large pizzas (of a large size). It just doesn’t make sense here – the sizes are something like “large,” “extra large,” “jumbo,” and “mega.” What’s the point?? The worst part is that pizza is still sort of expensive here, so I might pay the same large-pizza price in the U.S. for a pizza that would be considered a jumbo here.

f. Free refills. Since the time when I first wrote this down, we’ve found some places that let you refill your own cup. But that number is at something like 3. My very nature is to wash down every bite and I ALWAYS fill my cup for the road. It’s not really a get-your-money’s-worth thing, I just enjoy it.

f2. The huge cup. This one piggy-backs on the last one. KFC took this to a whole new level by introducing the cup that actually looked like a small bucket and held a half gallon of pop. What a great idea. Totally sucked in people like me who just want a ton o’ drink. Much like the pizza industry here, the large cups just aren’t very big – almost not worth it to supersize. Taco Bell provides a double-whammy here. One of the first meals when I get back – Nacho Cheese Chalupa value meal with one of those XL cups standard. Delicious.

g. Mountain Dew Live Wire. It’s the pop that’s only sold for a limited time, but one or two bottles can almost always be found in a convenience store refrigerator. It’s yummy.

h. Cheap cereal. I love Kroger-brand anything and cereal ranks pretty high towards the top. It’s such an easy meal and we eat a lot of cereal here, but it still eats a lot out of our wallet.

i. Cheap candy bars. There’s a reason they put them at the front of the store in the cashiers’ lanes – a lot of people (myself included) just want a little bite of sweet. The lowest price for candy bars here is something like $1.75. I just can’t bring myself to pay that. By now, you’re probably smacking yourself at my awfulness. Thanks, I owe you one.

j. Ranch dressing. I probably should have put “cheap” in front of this one too, but I’m convinced it also won’t taste as good here. Am I wrong?? Probably, but I’m not going to pay $4 for a small bottle just to find out. I’m a dipper and ranch dressing is one of my favorites.

k. Domestic beer. The prices for beer here can be summed up as “outrageous” and if people think they get drunk on a weekend here, I would love to see what they could do with a night out in the Athens bars. I think I just like beer that other people generally hate to drink. Maybe it’s because I’ve just gotten used to being on a student’s income still trying to have a good night out every now and then. I think it’s genetic – my Dad once told me he “remembers when he used to drink Keystone Light.” So I’ve got THAT goin’ for me

And that’s the list of things I could remember that I am missing. Yeah, I know I’m pathetic, but that’s OK. I enjoy all the things listed above, especially number one. I could have elaborated on it a lot more, but if I mention names it turns into, “So – you’re not missing ME very much are you?!?!” But that would infer a lot of people read my blog, which I don’t think is the case.

For those of you who are reading, that’s it for now. Love you all in the states. Check back for what will probably be a post somewhere during the time of our 2 1/2 week vacation. And good luck to the Cleveland Browns, who begin the campaign of Romeo's Last Stand (I know what General Manager Phil Savage said, I'm not buying it). My prediction is that Brady Quinn will be playing by Week Six against Miami or Week Eight at the latest. Go Browns.

From the other side of the globe, I’m Kevin Hunt.

If you want to see me soon, start digging.

I'll Take a Scotch and Water, Hold the Scotch...

2007-08-24T10:08:00.000-05:00

Let me start by saying that my previews of this post were pure let-downs. Sorry, folks, but I really didn’t go out to celebrate my birthday. And Learn-to-Surf Day didn’t beat me up quite as much as I thought it would. Pictures from that event will come next week, so I’ll save that story for another post. The reason I didn’t celebrate my birthday, however, can be discussed.

I think women need to be on equal ground with men, no doubt. I didn’t do any studies, polls or surveys, but I’m pretty sure more women are getting “in tune” with sports and being “one of the guys.” But women need to pull their weight with drinking, and no, I’m not trying to encourage alcoholism. I just want “Men’s Night” at a bar. You know, discounted drinks for all guys before 10 p.m. No cover charge for men on a certain night of the week. That’d be great.

It’d hold even more value in Australia, where last Thursday, on Ladies’ Night at local pub P.J. O’Brien’s, I spent $7.80 on a beer. The U.S. dollar traded at about 80 cents per Australian dollar, putting that beer at about $6.25 USD… for a beer. It didn’t come in a gold-plated mug or even with a coupon for a dollar off a basket of potato wedges. It was just a pint of beer, 16 ounces.

Even though the pint was pretty good (Toohey’s Extra Dry), I wanted to try and get bang for the buck as well as try something different. I asked about rum and coke because I heard liquor was cheaper than beer in Australia (an odd thought in the States), which it was, at least at this pub - $7. It wasn’t bad either, but at this point, I had spent $14.80 on two drinks. That is the equivalent to a week’s pay at my job – I’ll get to that story soon.

That was the last drink I had that night, one part due to the prices and another part due to the fact that buses only run after midnight on Saturday nights. I don’t mind, though, it’s just nice to have a drink with friends and see what everyone’s up to – overall it was a good (yet expensive) night.

Being with friends is a little harder here, too, mostly due to the fact that the University of South Australia has no residence halls. I don’t have a cell phone here (well, they’re called “mobiles,” but you get the point), making facebook messaging the biggest way of contacting someone. Most of the Australian students in my classes are really great, but it would take a huge planning crew just for everyone to be able to meet up on the weekends at the same place.

For one thing, a lot of the students work and they work all over the place. Secondly, they live all over the place, too. Put those things together and it gets really tough to squeeze in a night of hanging out with a lot of people at the same time. Being at a campus like Ohio University’s is great because everyone is on basically the same class schedule and almost everyone lives within walking distance of everyone else. Even those who have to close down on the night shift are close enough to walk and finish off the night with friends. They’re little things I take for granted.

Since everyone else here has a job and I’m running out of money, I’ve been trying to find a job here basically since I stepped out of the plane and into Adelaide. I’ve been extremely unsuccessful. Recently I found the only call-back to my inquiries – a position delivering a once-weekly newspaper. The terms: $15 per week to deliver 300 papers to residents around where I live. Oh, and I get $6 per insert that goes into the paper. I start next week.

The best part is that I can’t even officially work yet. I’ve been trying to apply for my “Permission to Work” for weeks now and it’s finally coming to a close (hopefully). Just like my student visa debacle, I tried to apply online, but had to settle for the paper application when some number or type of input was incorrect. In fact, I might not even be able to work next week because I won’t technically be allowed to work yet, even though I’ve been trying to get this sorted out for weeks.

Once I finally DO receive the permission, it costs $60, which means I’ll have to work 3-4 weeks just to make up the amount of money that I’m spending simply to have the right to work here. Since we’re taking a two-and-a-half week vacation in September, I’ll be missing two weeks there as well, meaning I will deliver for, at most, 8 total weeks. Here’s hoping the advertisers come out in droves ($6 per insert is terrific, haha).

Even though the buses only run late on Saturday nights, the shops and grocery stores only stay open late on Friday evenings. I still haven’t seen a 24-hour store, except for small convenience stores. I just don’t get why no one would be open for an extended time. I guess Australians don’t really stay up late and just walk around their version of Kroger’s when they’re bored. OK, so most Americans probably don’t do that either – my friends and I are just the special cases.

Restaurants are the same way with an even crazier stance. Most places that aren’t fast food or delis close to the public between lunch and dinner hours. Even if it’s just an hour or two, they’ll close, windows dark until the next meal time comes along. As far as convenience for customers, this move ranks pretty low. When considering overall costs, however, it’s probably a smart move. Two hours of saved wages, utilities and hassles during a time when the customer per hour rate is pretty low.

What really gets me at restaurants is a terrible habit that seems unfathomable to me. Most fast food restaurant patrons take all their trash, put it on their tray and dump it in the wastebasket before leaving the place. Here in Australia, none of the above takes place. We thought it was an isolated instance; just one group of kids who wanted to be jerks to the workers. But over and over we find people finishing their meals and leaving their trash for someone else to pick up – and that usually means the next people who want to sit down.

If not for the consideration of other people who want to sit down and enjoy their meal, why not clean up your spot to help the restaurant workers?? They already work in a fast food place and helped fill your stomach. I don’t think I’ve ever seen something like that in the U.S., but maybe I’m just not in the right place at the right time or haven’t noticed. I just like to hope that Americans are better than that. Or maybe the “Obese States of America” are just getting more practice cleaning up after themselves than everyone else.

It’s been a fairly quiet last few weeks, which was welcomed after all the traveling we did in the first month that we were here. There are only a few weeks before the biggest and longest excursion in our time here, so the rest will be needed. And in just one week we hit the midway point of our time here in Australia. When that comes around I’ll bring you a list of “Things I’m Missing” so far. I’m compiling it as I go and I’ll let you know it’s pretty interesting and mostly deals with food.

+Notes: Australians seem to love automatic sliding entry doors. I’ve never been in a place that’s had this many of them. Walking around Rundle Mall is just a long line of automatic doors that are constantly sliding open, then sliding closed. At first I thought it to be completely unnecessary, but I’ve warmed up to it since. That might be because I’ve never had to sit at the front desk in a store and hear the doors slide constantly all day long.

I went from “Men’s Nights” in bars to automatic sliding doors in the matter of just one blog post. If that’s not reason enough to come back for more, then you’ll want to read all about the biggest things I’m missing on this trip, as well as all of the random thoughts from me that I KNOW you’re missing. Plus, I should have the Learn-to-Surf stuff ready to post.

That’s it for now. Love you all in the states, check back for all the goods.

From the other side of the globe, I’m Kevin Hunt.

If you want to see me soon, start digging.

Beware the Many Stories Contained Within this Post

2007-08-13T04:14:00.000-05:00

Last week in my Sport Literature class we had to give a short speech on something we’ve encountered in our sporting lives. It didn’t have to be anything significant, but after the speech everyone in the class had to give suggestions as to how that speech could be turned into a newspaper story. It was meant to highlight the fact that everybody has a story to tell; that it doesn’t matter if the person of interest is a celebrity.

My story had to do with perseverance, something I’ve come across on more than one occasion while sight-seeing across Australia. My sports story dealt with my wrestling career, mainly those matches against Dan Gerritsen from Hopewell-Loudon. He was my opponent in my first official match and he tossed me around like a rag doll. I didn’t do better than being technical falled by Gerritsen anytime I faced him sophomore year, my first in wrestling. Junior year I fared a bit better being major decisioned (winning by between 8 and 15 points) early in the year and finally only being beat by a decision (fewer than 8 points) in our final bout of the season.

Senior year held my best matches against Gerritsen. After being beaten all of those times, probably about 10 altogether, we met in the consolation finals at the league championships. I won with a 12-6 decision to take 3rd place in the MAL. My career had just about come full circle. The next week I wrestled Dan Gerritsen for the final time. It was the consolation semifinals at the Sectional Tournament. Both of us were seniors, so we wanted nothing more than to reach that previously unattainable level of the postseason state tournament, Districts. I had a comfortable lead (5 points) fairly late in the match, until Gerritsen knocked out my post (my right arm, which was holding me up) – perfectly legally, I might add – and I hit my head, blacking me out temporarily. When I came to, I found myself on my back, nearly being pinned in my last match as a Calvert wrestler.

I got myself to turn over and looked to my coaches, Matt Coleman and Mike Steyer. I knew the match was getting close to the end and that Gerritsen’s (and the entire Chieftain team’s) weakness was riding on top. Matt and Mike were yelling, “You need one!!” meaning I had to earn an escape from Gerritsen. I was, to my amazement, fairly calm and found my way out of Gerritsen’s grip within the last few seconds of the match. I got my one.

When my head hit the mat, I basically forgot the score, which is why I got to my stomach and looked to my coaches. I thought my escape at the end of regulation earned my shot at overtime. At this point, I remember being hunched over, uncharacteristically pretty fatigued (I prided myself on being the most fit wrestler in every one of my matches), looking over my shoulder at the scoreboard on the wall. It read 9-8 in my favor. The escape point not only kept me IN the match, it actually WON the match, punching my ticket to the District Wrestling Tournament.

My coaches were ecstatic. I was very happy, though it was tough to show at that minute. I remember looking at Gerritsen, knowing that just over two years ago he had been more than able to flip and flop me to easy wins. I went something like 8-25 in my first year wrestling, but, with plenty of support, I never gave up. I just wanted to get better. I ended up taking fourth at Sectionals and winning one match at Districts – achieving the goal set out by the coaches and me and the beginning of the year.

Not everyone has great stories like that. But the difficulty of achieving that feat for me was what really made it great. I learned how to effectively and intelligently lose weight. I learned new moves, went to summer camps, increased my level of conditioning. I had to sit out some weeks due to injury to my knees which doctors told me probably came from being thrown around all the time. My junior year ended prematurely after I hyper-extended my elbow at the league tournament near the end of the season.

I contemplated quitting, but couldn’t take that threat seriously because I had been voted a captain junior year and knew that, if nothing else, other people really wanted me to be there. For the team to say that I should be their captain really humbled me and let me know that I might not be there for the wins, but maybe for something else. This is “sports” for the 99% of people on this earth who aren’t stud athletes. It’s working hard for some goal that, in itself, might only be really important for a year or two.

With age comes wisdom (supposedly) and I’ve found that I use a lot of those lessons I’ve learned from sports at other times in my life. For example, when vacationing at Rottnest Island off the west coast of Australia, Sara and I rented bikes for the day to ride around the island. We later found out that the island was pretty hilly and not so easy for bike riding. When I got to the bottom of a hill, I felt a NEED to get to the top while pedaling. There was something inside me that told me I couldn’t stop until I got to the top of each hill.

Whether it’s “perseverance” or “stubbornness” is just a technicality. There are certain times during this trip where I almost feel too stubborn to let someone else do something for me. I felt that way during the first big meal with our Asian housemates when we all went out to eat authentic Chinese food. I used chopsticks the whole time mainly because I wouldn’t let that be a barrier for me – if someone else could do it, I should be able to do the same. Sports taught me that if I couldn’t do something well enough, my spot was taken and my basic worth for the team was gone. That’s probably the harshest way to put it.

Wrestling has put its two cents into my life a few times, especially when it comes to food. It was the most grueling sport I’ve ever participated in and it took the most years out of my body. It also taught my body how to go a long time having barely anything on which to run. While my stamina now isn’t at the point it was during wrestling season, it’s still pretty common for me to wait until dinner time to have anything substantial to eat or drink.

Watch me walk around campus at Ohio University on any given day of the week – I probably don’t stop a whole lot. I like to block classes and work together so I can stay on the go and not have to worry about food – though I have been better in recent years at drinking a full bottle of water over the course of a one-hour class (for better general health).

The best part about sports is that any participant can take these lessons away, regardless of which sport it is or age at the time of participation. All it takes is having an athlete who is willing to give her or her right arm to get something done – a willingness to start, dedication towards a final goal and perseverance to connect those two points (amongst many other great things that come out of sports, including the teamwork aspect, etc.).

Participating in sports has also taught me to be pretty resilient, keeping a strong mind no matter what the environment produces to make me consider otherwise. Imagine the concentration necessary of a college basketball player trying to make a free throw during a game while visiting Cameron Indoor. Now imagine that same person trying to concentrate on some task in an office where the boss simply walks in and says, “Hey, this needs to be done today.”

Also during the first meal with the housemates (yes, I learned a lot during that one little trip) I asked the landlady, Susie, what she thought about my chances at getting a job. The conversation progressed to my asking, “How many students get jobs usually??” Susie responded by saying, “It’ll be easier with people like [your housemates] not taking the jobs.”

Daniel is one of the housemates studying psychology at UniSA. When Susie said this, his only response was, “I can’t help it that I’m rich.” That really rubbed me the wrong way and made me feel like I was just some chump. But just a week ago I sat at the brunch table talking with Daniel and Susie (both from Malaysia) about things that are different in various countries. After I had tried my best at explaining baseball to Daniel (he followed really well until I had to try and explain stolen bases), he and Susie went on to give the Cliff Notes version on how the government in Malaysia worked.

I heard stories on how the Muslim regime basically runs the show, “once a Muslim, always a Muslim” and about how torture is used in some instances. Once this part was out there, it made me think back to the “I’m rich” comment with a little less anger. In the U.S. there is the idea of the “American Dream” where anyone can work really hard to build up cash supplies and find true happiness and success. Hearing about how Malaysia worked made me very happy to be an American, living in a country that generally won’t take you off and torture you; a place that holds the unofficial separation of church and state.

Comparing the U.S. to some other places, I find that it would be my choice to live. I’ve lived there the longest and that might be a lot of the reason I choose the U.S., but I feel that there are a lot of things going for good ol’ America despite all the negatives people bring up about political actions (or inactions) in place.

Sara and I just got finished with a trip to Hobart, Tasmania, which, to my surprise, is just another state of Australia. For some reason I thought it might be its own country, but I guess that’s just New Zealand. The Hobart trip was one of the best yet as far as activities go. I really like to hear about and see things that go in two categories – history and natural phenomena. We got a good dose of both in the same day during our trip to Port Arthur, a 19th century convict colony about an hour-and-a-half away from Hobart.

Along the way, we got to see “The Tesselated Pavement.” Because the east coast of Tasmania is located along a fault line, this piece of nature created itself without the assistance of civilization’s hands (whether intentional or unintentional). Water mixed its way into cracks in the stone and then made larger crevices when mixed with the shaking ground. I found it pretty cool anyway.

After that stop, we continued on to Port Arthur, officially Tasmania’s top tourist attraction. Hearing the history of Australia’s largest penal colony was pretty interesting as that topic is considered one of Aussie history’s most prominent. One such story involved the buildings that housed the convicts when the site first opened in 1833. We were told that if the structures were used to house army soldiers today, they would provide living space for between 40 and 60 men. Back at the time of establishment, however, these structures had earthen floors, no plumbing (so waste buckets were a must) and housed over 1,000 convicts!! Talk about horrible conditions. Eventually an old flour mill and kitchen on the settlement was converted to a new penitentiary (seen below), which gave the convicts better living arrangements.

When the convicts misbehaved, they could receive between 25 and 100 lashes to their backs. At first some of them were so damaged by these lashings that they found pass out and had to be revived in a bath filled with freezing cold saltwater. Eventually the prisoners became almost immune to the punishment and the physical injuries didn’t stop them from continuing to misbehave.

This was when the prison officials decided to implement mental punishment, building a completely separate place to house those offenders deemed “worthy” of a new wave of injury. The cells were extremely small and were assigned to individual convicts. All that was in the cells was a small stool and table on which to eat, one shelf on the wall to hold the Bible and possibly one personal belonging and the convict’s bedding. There was nothing but natural lighting, either. The convicts weren’t allowed to see anyone other than an occasional officer who took them out to dump their waste bucket or take them out to the exercise yard, where the convicts spent AT MOST one hour (on the luckiest of days).

If the convicts acted up while already in this separate prison, they were sentenced to do time in the building’s solitary confinement chamber. It was separated from the rest of the building by four doors that were each a meter thick, with no two doors open at the same time. The convict then had to stay in absolute darkness and silence for up to weeks. They had to receive a certain amount of rations (consisting of simple bread and water) for each 36 hour period they were in there, but sometimes the guards would mess with the confined prisoner’s mind by giving them two rations fairly close together in time.

As long as the prisoner received the allotted amount during each 36-hour period, it was still legal. So, for example, a prisoner might go 35 hours without food before receiving that period’s rations. The guards might then bring the next ration within an hour – messing with the convict’s biological clock and forcing the convict to sit with the ration in the cell for a long period of time OR eating them both fairly quickly, then not getting anything else for possibly 3 days’ time. Also, since the prisoner’s in that cell were in complete darkness, often when they retreated back to the normal cells, the natural sunlight was too bright and immediately blinded them. Now THAT is what I consider doing the time. I found these various stories fascinating.

Saturday in Hobart held adventures of outdoor activities. We began the morning by kayaking in the bays and river surrounding Hobart, hearing some history of the harbor and wildlife. We didn’t tip the boat, which was good, but somehow I ended up with the whole back side of my jeans being soaked in water. Sara was completely dry. Go figure.

After a quick change into sweatpants (my only pair of pants remaining), we got on a bus to ride a little ways up Mount Wellington. With our guide and another pair of hikers, we then set off to trek our way up the mountain. Our guide, Jeff, was pretty funny and knew a lot about the natural plants and animals that inhabit the mountain, so we got more little tidbits of information about the area. The views overlooking Hobart from the mountainside are spectacular and I recommend you taking a look through my facebook album “Hobart #2” if you haven’t already. The picture below is shot from a small landing where we stopped to eat lunch (which was delicious, I might add).

At the top it was really freezing and snowy. People in Hobart really never get to see snow unless they get to the top of Mount Wellington, so they were all going crazy. Apparently it’s a tradition to build a snowman on the hood of your car (here they’re called, “bonnets” haha) and try to drive all the way back to your house without losing it, which sounds like a hilarious and challenging thing to try and do, considering the road going from the top of the mountain to the bottom is ridiculously curvy.

Our flight made it back to Adelaide safe and sound on Sunday, the day of my birthday. I had forgot it was August 12 until Sara randomly said, “Hey, happy birthday,” to me that morning at the bus stop. The only birthday I’ve really celebrated in the past how many years was last year’s 21st in Cincinnati (for obvious reasons). Luke Florence put it best when he recently told me, “It's official, we are getting old. 21 was cool and fun, but now, it's just overkill.” I didn’t really celebrate much, though the housemates surprised me by getting a thick chocolate cake and singing for me. Sara and I figured out that we told them our birthdays in casual conversation during one of the first days we were here and they remembered it. That fact will probably be included in one of my future blog posts having to deal with “things that are universal no matter who you are or where you’re from.”

I spent the latter part of my birthday doing laundry, cleaning the room and going to church. It may have been relatively uneventful, but maybe I’ll just belatedly celebrate this weekend. But Saturday can’t be too rough considering I’ll be spending Sunday on the beach at Glenelg for “Learn to Surf” day with the Student Exchange Society.

That’s it for now. Love you all in the states, check back soon to hear stories from the above two events, as they will likely be enough to fill an entire blog post.

From the other side of the globe, I’m Kevin Hunt.

If you want to see me soon, start digging.

My "Get to Camp!!" Rant

2007-08-05T05:32:00.000-05:00

It’s amazing what things can change when expectations go awry.

“When [Brady Quinn] talks about the draft, he focuses not on draft position but on his excitement to simply know where he's headed,” said SI.com's Adam Hofstetter in an article I pulled from a Brady Quinn “support” website listed below. [It should be noted that due to insufficient information on the site, I cannot determine who actually runs the website and, therefore, its credibility.]

Despite this, one thing is clear: the Brady Quinn fans in Cleveland came to love on draft day is not the same man seen donning the #10 orange and brown during team activities in late May and early June. The fans aren’t the only ones who have to reassess Quinn’s status with the team because even his Browns teammates (well, not yet, technically) are counting him out for an extended period of time, no matter how they try to skip around it.

“You have to be on top of your game and know your plays and not have any doubt so when you get up there you're prepared,” offensive lineman Lennie Friedman said in a story from clevelandbrowns.com staff writer Jeff Walcoff titled, “Tempo new priority in practice” (posted 08-03-07).

Remember back when Braylon Edwards held out beginning his time in Cleveland. “It could very well take him a full year because he has missed this much camp,” head coach Romeo Crennel said in a 2005 ESPN.com article stating Edwards had just signed with Cleveland. While the wide receiver did miss TWO weeks, Quinn is headed there, with his holdout already at nine days. What needs to be remembered, however, is that Brady Quinn is a quarterback, the mental and vocal leader of the offensive unit on the football field.

I’ll bet Lennie Friedman doesn’t know what Quinn’s voice sounds like in the huddle. I can almost guarantee Friedman knows what Ken Dorsey sounds like more than Quinn and Dorsey has had his bags packed and ready to roll to a new team’s number three quarterback position ever since the draft took place.

Braylon Edwards finished his rookie campaign with just 32 receptions. How much Brady Quinn needs to catch up with is dependent on his holdout length, though he has assured reporters that he is studying his playbook.

Walcoff’s story from the team website describes the Browns’ use of a play clock on the sidelines at the practice field in Berea, Ohio, as well as using headsets to relay plays from offensive coordinator Rob Chudzinski to quarterback coach Rip Scherer. Scherer then uses his headset to send the play into the quarterback’s helmet in the huddle. Apparently it’s being done to make practice more like a game situation and though I’m not sure how many teams do this kind of thing, ALL of them should.

Coaches set the play clock to 14 seconds during practice, hoping that will allow the quarterbacks to almost over-adjust during regular season games. It’s also set up that way so the quarterbacks and linemen have to make their defensive reads quicker because, as the article states, there is a “large amount of pre-snap reads and movement made in Chudzinski's offense.” I know Photoshop does wonders, but I’m pretty sure Brady Quinn’s playbook doesn’t have X’s literally moving around on the other side of the O’s.

NFL players do not just play a game anymore. There’s no doubt that they operate as pieces of a multi billion dollar machine and should get as much money as they want and think they deserve. After all, it wasn’t the fans that had to constantly hit the weight room. Fans didn’t have to miss every big party of the year because alcohol violations would sit them for a game or two. Fans don’t get told how to do THEIR job.

When it all boils down, however, it’s those butts-in-the-seats that keep the players employed. This is especially true for the blue-collar fans who get paid 10 times less to do a job that can be widely considered as 10 times worse than any other. It’s easy to hate when you’re in that position because, well, no one really hates them for having the job that they do.

Think of the dedicated garbage man who bleeds orange and brown. He does a job that not many people would like to do and, to my knowledge, doesn't build a mansion on his annual income. Brady Quinn pays a few bucks a month to have his trash removed, while the garbage man pays upwards of $70 or $80 a game to support that same player.

One word blends these two separate worlds - respect. A lot of people see it as disrespect (to them) that Brady Quinn (and all other holdouts, for that matter) is off the field trying to make an extra million dollars or more because it comes on top of tens of millions already – it weakens the importance of their jobs. Many blue-collar workers do not get to negotiate their contract terms, if they sign a contract at all.

Maybe this is a huge mistake diagnosing a socio-economic problem. Perhaps I’m just blowing this whole thing up. I just like to think that in an ideal society it wouldn’t really matter what job you do, as long as you respect everyone else. I understand that people have every right to try and earn as much as they think they’re worth. But Brady Quinn’s holdout is hurting him doubly. The obvious way is that he’s not practicing with his teammates getting ready for the regular season. The longer lasting effect is that he’s doing that to try and earn more money for himself when it is pretty obvious that this Browns team is nowhere near complete for a Super Bowl run.

Think of Brady’s holdout in five years when he’s begging for more help on the offensive side of the ball. And after this holdout is said and done, I don’t see him as being the kind of guy to restructure his contract. Fans can only hope that becoming a veteran in the league will change his mind in that sense.

Back to School, Back to School...

2007-07-31T06:16:00.000-05:00

The first week of class gave me a strange feeling as to how things are done in Australia. On the slate this semester: TV Broadcasting (similar to a class I’ve already taken), Sport Literature and the Media, Sport and Leisure Law and Aborigines, History and Colonialism. Oddly enough, the class dealing with my major is the one that will count the least towards my degrees (minors anyway).

This semester brings a great opportunity to produce a package in TV Broadcasting class. It’s nothing I haven’t already done, but at the same time it will be one of my harder classes simply because I have to figure out how to do my entire information gathering process. Trying to find story ideas is my biggest challenge at the moment because their major newspaper, The Advertiser, is, from what I’ve been told by basically everyone (including journalism instructors), a very unreliable, somewhat biased and overall “lazy” newspaper – apparently many of their writers are very good at reading press releases.

The overall class goals don’t really worry me, considering I’ve already done a few packages in my day for sports and news. We even have an assistant, Evan, who runs the editing lab. He will shoot our video as well as edit it – we just provide the script. It makes me glad that I’ve been through the Ohio University journalism department, hauling around my own camera to get interviews and shoot my own stories. Hopefully this class is cake because of it. Also makes me wonder what an Australian broadcast student studying in the U.S. might think upon taking OUR class…

Sport Literature and the Media will involve minimal work since our major assignments are just to read sports stories and be able to comment on both the subject and the way they are written. This should be a great way for me to learn a little about their sporting culture. Two presentations during the class and a few other small assignments, including keeping a journal throughout the course of the semester.

Sport and Leisure Law was the most interesting of my first classes. To start, my professor showed up late. Then half the class wasn’t present because the didn’t get the memo about a last-minute classroom switch to accompany more students in the class. The professor, Rick Sarre, is a really nice guy who talks fast from apparently being very excited to teach what he does – a good thing from a student’s perspective. He sent two students over to get the other half of the class who was in the wrong building and offered to buy them coffee after class just for volunteering.

After going through a list of study programs and having people raise their hands, he figured out that Sara and I didn’t ever raise ours. This led to that immediate pointing-out of the American kids in the class – not that it’s embarrassing, it just happens ALL the time. Prof. Sarre welcomed us and asked us to stay after class so we could have coffee with the other two aforementioned students. He plopped down 15 bucks for us all to get to know each other and learn a little bit about each other. He said the decision came mainly on the fact that he received similar treatment upon showing up to study in Iowa during an earlier stage in his life. Prof. Sarre also knows where Athens, Ohio is – he has a friend that teaches at Ohio University – and said he visited awhile back. He jumped up my favorites list pretty quick after Day 1.

My Wednesdays are busiest because I have two classes – Sport Law in the morning and Aborigines, History and Colonialism in the afternoon. The instructor for the latter class is really weird, but the class should be pretty interesting overall. There are a few older people in the class who remember all the stuff that has happened between the government and the aboriginal tribes over the past five or six decades, so I’m sure as students they’ll offer a neat perspective.

That is one thing about classes here – no matter what time the class meets, there seems to be a few older people (called “non-traditional students” in America) that are also in the class, studying right alongside everyone else. It’s only a bad thing when they try to take over the class, which was the case on the first day of the history course. They lived through it so they feel like their perspective is the one that matters, instead of just letting the teacher teach.

I also feel like I’m “seeing the future” of America in my classes – but don’t take those words in their very literal sense. In Adelaide, there is a large amount of the population that is non-white – a lot of people (students especially) from Asian countries and quite a few students from India as well. They come to places like Australia because it’s relatively affordable and there might not be as many good universities in their home countries. It’s for reasons like these that I’m glad to be an American, born into a country where I really don’t have to be overly worried about those types of things. “Lucky” and “fortunate” are a couple good words to use here.

Soon in the U.S. the former majority – those with white skin – will become the minority, numbers-wise, to groups like those of Latin American descent. It’s not a bad thing, just a different thing. It’s something that will take a lot of adjustment for everyone. But for those who think Spanish will soon be the only language spoken in the United States, you won’t be correct if the Australia is a model. The country still gets along just fine using English as the spoken language – though it may be due to the languages being more distributed in Australia – having all different Asian languages, while most Latinos in America possess a native tongue that is a dialect close to Spanish.

So that was my first week and everything that came with it. Looking a little farther down the road, it looks like there is a pretty good chance that I will be able to finish my final exams – a package (TV class), presentation (Sport Lit.), written exam (Sport Law) or final essay (History) – before the actual dates of the exams (which aren’t made final until October). Sara and I are trying to move things around with instructors, so there’s a possibility I could be back to the U.S. in early November. It would be nice to actually get a break from classes and it’d be a better decision financially because I have to pay for housing food and everything else while I’m here. Therefore, keep your fingers crossed.

Sara and I traveled to Perth this past weekend, seeing all the tourist sights there, like King’s Park and Botanical Garden (though it started raining, so we didn’t see much of those), Rottnest Island (where we rented bikes and rode around all day) and the Wave Rock – a really cool natural landmark where a river carved a huge rock into a shape like a wave.

We swam in the Indian Ocean at Rottnest. The water was freezing, but we knew there probably wouldn’t be much of a chance that we’d get to swim in the Indian Ocean again, unless something brought us back to Perth or Southeast Asia, for whatever reason. I forgot my trunks, so I had to go in regular shorts, which was OK, but that basically showed how unprepared for this trip.

We forgot to bring plenty of towels. We didn’t bring much soap or shampoo either. Which didn’t matter a whole lot because we also forgot flip flops to wear in the shower and I wasn’t about to go walking around in this hostel without shoes on. Underground Backpackers in Perth was basically Perth’s version of Ohio University’s Washington Hall, except “Wasted Washington” actually got cleaned more than once every two weeks.

The whole thing got off to a bad start when we showed up at the front desk Thursday night and the private double room we booked was not available. Even though we had it booked for weeks, they gave away all the private rooms. So we had to stay in separate dormitory rooms with complete strangers and we could get our private room the next morning for the remaining three nights. FAN-tastic.

I had a room with three Irish guys. We were pretty beat at that point in the night, so we just did what we had to do and went to bed, hoping to wake up early in the morning to 1) get started with our day’s plans of sight-seeing and 2) get into a private room. The worst part was that we were charged the full price for a dorm room, even though that wasn’t what we booked.

The night before we left, however, I went down and got it all straightened out with the front desk. The guy was really nice about it and though he didn’t have the power to give us a full refund, he called someone who did – and he called that person at 11 o-clock p.m. I was really glad that guy was helpful because if he was as ridiculous as the guy who checked us in (and gave away our room), I probably would have flipped out.

We got the first night’s rent back - $50 apiece, in cash. Which was a great thing because of another great planning fiasco – we didn’t carry enough money. While credit cards are OK, each transaction carries with it a foreign currency exchange fee, so we try to stick to bank cards as much as possible. I have a banking account here, but I needed to put more money in my savings account so I could use it (at the ATM or wherever Visa is accepted). But when I went to connect to the internet banking website, the site was down for whatever repairs they had to do.

This was a big problem considering we were leaving Perth at 6:45 Monday morning and needed some cash to buy bus tickets. The refund from our first night made that possible. I have another bank card that I can use at the ATM, but it doesn’t have sufficient funds. I tried to reload it before leaving Adelaide – apparently you have to leave four business days for that to be sure to happen. I didn’t leave four business days and, therefore, didn’t have any available money.

In fact, upon returning to Adelaide, I checked out my balances. In my Bank SA student account, I had 83 cents. It’s no wonder the ATM wouldn’t let me take out $20. Perth was a pretty good trip overall

Notes:
+Australia is becoming one of my favorite countries for different reasons. One is the 3rd degree of separation from the Cleveland Browns. You see, when I hear AC/DC songs, I think of the Browns and the upcoming season. AC/DC is a 1970s rock group from Australia. Therefore, Australia=The Browns. Yet there is only one Browns Backers group in Australia, located in Perth.

+I learned a little “cocktail knowledge” from Jess Morgan before I left for Perth. The city is the spot on the earth that is directly opposite from Athens, Ohio. So if you really started digging towards Australia, you’d probably end up in the Indian Ocean, which wouldn’t be too bad I guess.

+I’ve been in Australia for just over a month now and I’m still not used to carrying around a lot of coins. Just as a refresher – the country has no paper money under $5, so the change below that amount is given in coins. I actually had to think twice about putting my legs up the other day because I had a ton of coins in my pocket. Luckily, my legs don’t need much stretching, considering I’m not a tall person.

+Check out my facebook profile to see the albums of pictures as they accumulate during our different trips around Australia and the surrounding places. Feel free to comment on this blog or on the pictures.

That’s it for now. Love you all in the states, check back soon to see how my job search has gone in the past few weeks and see whether I have a job yet.

From the other side of the globe, I’m Kevin Hunt.

If you want to see me soon, start digging.

What's Now?? "Touch Football"

2007-07-24T09:33:00.000-05:00

Hopefully you did your homework before reading this blog entry. I said you should watch the “Who’s Now” segment of ESPN’s SportsCenter because, well, they copied an idea that was originally started by Luke Florence, Sara Normand and me.

It all began with a blank 64-team bracket that was printed on a dry erase marker board. Sara gave it to me for some reason because she had no need for it and, quite honestly, I didn’t really either. But I took it because I hold things for much too long, adding this to the latest pile of unused junk that sat around Bromley Hall room 310. This board, however, sparked what would be one of the most ridiculous things I’ve even been a part of.

After March Madness 2006 passed, I pulled the bracket out and began thinking of some crazy match-ups that could be seen in real life. The movie “King Kong” had just come out and Papa John’s had the King Kong pizza. Luke and I ordered it for dinner one night and I came up with one of my trademark stupid lines – something to the effect of, “I’m pretty sure King Kong would be a #1 seed in any tournament.”

And so the “F’d Up Tourney” started. Luke, Sara and I filled the 64-space bracket with the most odd-balled and random match-ups of things in our lives...

**It might be easier to right-click the image and view it on its own**

The scoring system was based on simple coin flips, yet was very elaborate and depended on the round of the tournament. The higher seed in the match-up was awarded the tails side of the coin (a quarter that we deemed the “official” quarter of the F’d Up Tourney) and had to win a certain number of the coin flips. For example, in the first round the #1 seed had to win just one (I believe) coin flip out of 10 in order to advance. In the second round, the higher seeds had to win more (you get the point).

This scoring system didn’t lend its hand to an amazing amount of upsets in the first round, but subsequent rounds provided a lot of excitement. Unfortunately, I do not have the updated bracket with me here in Australia to share with the rest of the world. Suffice it to say that we created a bracket-style tournament that pitted random people (as well as things and ideas) against each other after having subjectively seeded them.

The most disappointing thing about the F’D Up Tourney is that, to this day, it isn’t finished. We didn’t complete it due to disagreements between people and places and things and nonsense, basically. As with any bracket, we put money on the whole thing, something like five dollars apiece between the three of us (though we never officially put anything in). The third member of Bromley 310 (besides Luke and me) was Matt Barnes and he hated the whole game that we eventually made into a Thursday night tradition (which is why Barnes is a 10-seed). Watch “The O.C.” then grab our brackets and start flipping.

The weeks listed on the bracket were supposed to be the weeks when we completed that round of the bracket, but it never ended up this way. We almost always flipped the coin way before we were supposed to. It was hilarious to sit there and talk about the made-up match-ups. Lesbians made a huge run in the tournament after having upset Gus Johnson in the first round. Keith Cawley was having a nice tournament as a 4-seed. If memory serves me right, The Browns won more in this tournament then they did the whole 2006 regular season.

I probably never laughed so hard that Spring Quarter as I did when we flipped for the F’d Up Tourney. It was a topic of discussion usually once a day. And the best part was that it was completely fictional – it had no bearing on anything. For this same reason, though, ESPN should NOT be making money off such a ridiculous segment. I know it’s a tough time of the year to be searching for good sports stories, but this is a nationally-based channel, so surely there must be a good story somewhere in the U.S.

It doesn’t really matter because we came up with it first – in the Spring of 2006. Completely fictional, yet an amazing way to spend time instead of the same old TV shows or staring at computers screens. My next life goal is to finally achieve a life goal – basically to actually go through on a good idea that makes its way to the top. Had Luke, Sara and I presented the idea to ESPN, we would have been laughed at (probably), but then they might have had a second look. So the moral of the blog is: no new idea is too stupid, it’s just different.

The moral of the next story is: try to find out what you’re getting into before taking it on.

Part of our foreign exchange student orientation at UniSA was an open house of different clubs and groups associated with the university, as well as area banks, meeting in one place to present what they have to offer to the students. One table held the spot for university recreational groups and I picked up a flier about “Touch Football.” As I described in a previous blog, Australia has three types of football: Aussie Rules Football (“footy”), rugby and soccer.

Take note that none of those is American Football. The guy manning the table, however, said that it was “football” and not “footy.” So I decided I’d check it out because I figured it would be a great way to eat up time while also keeping myself somewhat active and meeting new people. After figuring out a new bus route, I showed up for the Wednesday night league ready to play some football.

Of course, the guy was right. What I saw being played was not “footy” at all; it was “football.” Glorious “football.” In America, though, it’s called rugby. I stared blankly at one of the many matches going on at the park, trying to pull in everything I did not already know about rugby from having watched it on TV. I met up with the representative whom I had e-mailed earlier in the day and, lucky for me for my first game, they were going to be short in the numbers of guys that night, so I would get to play.

I wasn’t scared because I really had nothing to prove to anyone. I admittedly had no clue what was going on and just tried to understand everything I could from what my newly acquired teammates had to tell me. The worst was what one ‘mate, Megan, told me: “The rules are the easy part. It’s the strategy that’s really hard to pick up on.” When do I go in, Coach?? First, I needed a team shirt, which was provided to me as just being one of the extras in the team bag. I unfolded it to find the number 69 across the back. It might as well have said, “Please laugh at me more than you already are. Much Appreciated... Kevin.”

Thankfully, there were enough people there so I didn’t have to start the game. It was an upbeat and competitive atmosphere for a touch game, which I loved immediately. I got to soak up some more little tactics as told to me by some others who were on the sidelines beside me. When I got my chance to replace someone on the field, I was terrible. Dropped balls, bad passes, missed formations. The hardest part was keeping myself from moving forward because when I see a ball that I think I can intercept, I want to go get it. But the defense in rugby is mostly “zone,” so my running ahead made for a huge gap.

For those who aren’t familiar with rugby, the ball cannot be passed forward (it can be kicked forward, but that does not apply for this league). So being a receiver in my bygone days of high school football, though well in the past, must be sticking with me. I probably ran forward without the ball more than I ran backward to try and receive it.

After the teams ended in a 2-2 tie, everyone on the UniSA team got in a circle and talked about things that could have been done better/differently. I tried to take in as much as I could, attempting to sort out all the little things I learned throughout the course of the game. I was also told that, as usually happens with first-time players, I didn’t look completely lost for the whole time I was out there. Props to me, I guess. I really had no clue as to how well I performed, so it was nice to know that I didn’t completely stink. We have this Wednesday off, so I’ll bring you an update of my progression after the next match on August 1.

I keep a small notebook with me most of the time in case I come up with a random thought or encounter a situation that about which I want to remember to write. I want to get rid of some of these, so I’ll start putting the “non-stories” into my Notes section.

Notes:
+I’ve been asked why I’m quiet by fellow students and friends Sameer and Sohair. Their rationale?? Most Americans they’ve met were loud or, at least, talkative. I guess I’m not American by those standards. Maybe it’s because I’m shorter than the average American (by 3 inches). I usually like to think that I speak with my actions, in which case I would be overwhelmingly American: I eat too much fast food, I constantly have to get something done and I love apple pie and baseball.

+The pictures in my albums on facebook don’t lie – my hair hasn’t really grown at all since I came here. Either I’m in the early stages of balding (my downward spiral towards becoming George Costanza) or there’s just something in the water. But I’m not complaining because a haircut here probably costs 20 bucks. If that’s the case and my hair actually does get too long, I’ll probably just shave it off. Stay tuned.

+My cell phone doesn’t work here, so I usually keep my wristwatch on my book bag because I hate wearing watches – I like my arms to weigh the same (thanks Mitch Hedberg; rest in peace). But I noticed that based solely on my having a stopwatch, I started to time the most ridiculous things, like how long it takes for the crosswalk sign to go from one side to the other. The legitimate things I timed, such as how long it takes for the bus to go from our suburb to the city, really didn’t need the milliseconds attached. That, however, isn’t the point. The point is, I have the ability to get it exact and that’s precisely what I’m going to do. If you don’t follow into such a pattern, just consider me weird. It wouldn’t be the first time, so I don’t take offense or anything, I’m way past that stage.

That’s it for now. Love you all in the states, check back soon to find out how the first week of classes went for me.

From the other side of the globe, I’m Kevin Hunt.

If you want to see me soon, start digging.

The Who

2007-07-19T09:17:00.000-05:00

I’ve never been more excited about moving to a new place than I was to get into my current abode. That’s right, more so than getting out of Riverpark (but not by much). Living in the hostel in the city wasn’t bad, but it’s so much nicer to have the space that I have in this place. For starters, I don’t need to go outside to get internet access. And right now, I’m sitting at a desk, something I took for granted until I didn’t have that privilege. There’s a couch, in front of “Pay TV” (cable television) that includes ESPN. It’s great being here.

Contrary to expectations I listed at the end of my last post, learning the bus system hasn’t been as difficult as I thought. All the route maps and stop times are listed online. I even managed to find my way to a park outside the city through a bus transfer – arriving at the destination on time to play some touch football with a university team. I’ll get to that later...

The more I dissect it, the more I love the idea of bus systems. It’s nice here because students get a discount. Multi-trip tickets cost $9.10 and allow for 10 two-hour trips – so you can ride anywhere you want as long as your ticket is punched before that two-hour limit is up. So theoretically I could ride to a place two hours away and it would only cost me 91 cents ($9.10 divided by 10 trips for the non-math majors). And the buses advertise that they’re better for the environment because they operate using natural gas. Sounds like a huge win on my part.

There’s a bus stop basically right outside the house, the tickets are sold at a TON of locations, there are a few services that run late on Saturday nights and I haven’t had a ticket malfunction (yet). All in all, good experience there.

My next experience of which to speak is orientation. I didn’t skip any of the freshman orientation stuff at OU and I paid for it. Long, boring speeches and few other things that really mattered. If nothing else, that helped me realize that giving out a schedule of orientation events shouldn’t be seen as “necessary things to do,” but rather “here’s the menu... find what you want and show up.” So I haven’t exactly attended every session here. I mean, how many times do I need the “this is what college is” type of stuff. We got what we needed and got out of there.

Meeting people, however, was a different story. There is a nice program here called “The Exchange Society” that consists of a group of Australian UniSA students that help out the foreign exchange students by organizing events where they can all meet together and enjoy a good time. It helps that these students know the best drink specials around town ($6 champagne bottle night, for example) and the better places for students to see movies. And they do all the advertising and organizing for it, we just have to show up. A beautiful service.

The Exchange Society helped me meet a Canadian, a few Germans, a couple from England and even some guys from San Diego. Plus, I met the Frank twins’ twins. Not really, but Sameer and Sohair are from the United Arab Emirates and remind me in many ways of Kris and Nic. Some of us met up for a bowling night to celebrate the birthday of Breelyn, the girl from Canada – an opportunity only afforded by meeting people in the same boat as each other. These are most of the people you’ll find in my photo albums on facebook. It might sound corny, but coming here has already allowed us to learn about some aspects of a bunch of different countries – not just Australia – which is pretty cool.

And those are just the exchange group students that we met, still leaving an introduction for the housemates from Malaysia. This includes the landlady and the four psychologists and a business major living in the same housing complex as us. On our first night here, we kept dinner simple – a large from Pizza Hut. The second night we were invited to join the landlady (who lives in a bedroom right down the hall) and the other housemates for dinner at a Chinese restaurant. It was a great way to get to know everybody and introduce ourselves formally, as opposed to me randomly showing up in the kitchen to grab a glass of water and having to meet people that way.

As soon as we sat down at the restaurant, terror struck – only chopsticks were on the table, no forks. It was obviously going to be a challenge to eat and I wasn’t shy to let everyone know that the entertainment at the table for the night would be watching me try to feed myself. Even though forks WERE available, I was going to be stubborn and wanted to try to go the whole meal without using one.

It wasn’t as hard as I thought it’d be, I completed my goal – though I’ve never had to work so hard to get full. My hand hurt the next day from having to use muscles that I’ve really never had to use in that way before that dinner. I immediately put myself on the 15-day Chinese cuisine disabled list.

The dinner itself was a success for more than that reason. The roommates are all great people and speak understandable English. With foreign students speaking a non-native tongue, it can sometimes be a little hard to pick everything up, just as it would be if I ever learned Chinese and tried to go speak it in Peking or something. This group, however, can communicate very well and are all really friendly and helpful, in general.

Apparently quite a few of them cook and each has their specialty. They asked me if I cook, to which I could only respond, “I’m not sure that what I do is really considered cooking.” Perhaps I can institute Mexican night each week and try to bring back a part of my taste buds vacated by the lack of Taco Bells on the world’s largest island. I’m sure there’s one somewhere in Australia, but not in Adelaide. Maybe I’ll try a stroke of Italian every once in awhile – stromboli or spaghetti with homemade pasta sauce, easy-yet-different dishes.

I’ve exhausted my will to write for now after taking a break from slaving away at the keyboard to stuff my face with a piece of double chocolate cake baked by Quin Chien, one of the female housemates. It was delicious and now I’m beyond full, but well worth it. My next blog will include my initial stab at playing flag football. Also, before reading my next entry, tune in to SportsCenter on ESPN and watch at least one show that includes the “Who’s Now” segment. Watching that will help you understand what I have to say about that (other than, “Why do I wait to enterprise things??”).

Love you all in the states, check back again soon.

From the other side of the globe, I’m Kevin Hunt.

If you want to see me soon, start digging.

Rugby isn't football, but Footy is kind of Football...

2007-07-11T02:32:00.000-05:00

I’d like to start this post off by explaining my dedication to the Cleveland Browns. IF we can find a bar in this city that will pull in a satellite feed of the Browns games, we’ll be there. With the time difference, a 1 p.m. start on Sunday afternoon means the game kicks off here at around 2:30 a.m. early Monday.

I may not be drinking, but you can bet I’ll have the Braylon Edwards jersey on and ready – probably the only one in the city (other than Sara) with the orange No. 17.

...On a side note, walking through the local mall on Monday afternoon, I saw a Saints jersey donning the number 17 and the name “Berger” across the nameplate. Definitely Mitch Berger, the recently released punter. A Mitch Berger jersey in Adelaide, Australia. “Wow” was my only thought…

Now to the previously advertised section on Aussie Rules Football, a sport that’s really not seen anywhere outside of the western portion of Australia. I must say first and foremost that I really like this sport. There are so many intriguing things about it – things that make me think some guys were in the pub on a warm afternoon watching rugby and just coming up with ridiculous things they saw “wrong” with that sport. They put them together and became the forefathers of the AFL. That’s my theory anyway.

While in Sydney, we watched rugby because that was the dominant sport that was going on. Here in Adelaide, there isn’t a television newscast (or even newscast promo) that goes without telling viewers about Aussie Rules Football players who were suspended, fined or injured due to occurrences during the past weekend’s games (or “fixtures” as they’re called). I find it great that people care so much about the sports in their area.

My first experience with watching “footy” came with “Friday Night Football” on channel 7 (recent TV ratings champion), before the doubleheader Saturday on channel 9 (long-time ratings champ, like since the ‘80s). The ball can be advanced forward by a few different means: kicking (most likely), punching (less likely) or running (least likely).

When a player kicks (punts) it to a teammate and that player catches the ball on the fly, it’s called a “mark” and he cannot be tackled at that spot unless he advances forward. So it’s advantageous to move down the field quickly by earning mark after mark. The catches can be contested, however, so it’s not just a “punt in the park.” I call the second option “punching” because the way of forward passing is basically just an underhand volleyball serve. If this option (along with running) is chosen, the opposition can tackle the ball carrier and recipient at any time.

Running is not a very likely option because 1) it takes a long time for one man to run the field, 2) the defense is usually a man-to-man type style and 3) the runner has to touch the ball to the ground every so many meters (I’m not quite sure exactly how the rule in enforced, but they all do it IF they’re running with the ball). Just know the main action of this sport involves one player in possession of the ball while all the others are running around in a mad pattern.

There is a method to the madness, however, because commentators are always talking about the teams’ set plays. I’ll just take their word for it. There are four 20-minute periods with a running clock (except for after scores and penalties). The tackles are vicious and there are no pads, which I love. It’s rugby with another dimension – reminds me of going from number lines to the x-y coordinate plane in algebra. Or imagine Emeril cooking up some rugby and going “BAM,” adding some zest to it and making Aussie Rules Football. Anyway…

To score in this game, the ball must be kicked. From where it does not matter, as long as it leaves a foot and travels in between the “flagpoles” located at the opposition’s end of the field. I have no better word for them than flagpoles. See exhibit A…

Kick the ball between the two middle poles and your team is awarded a goal – 6 points – and the ball is returned to midfield for a restart. This is the ultimate prize and players always seem pretty ashamed if they miss a goal and instead earn a “behind” – a 1-point score awarded when the ball goes between an end pole and the next pole in the line. If the ball hits a pole, it’s also just one point. If one point is awarded, the team which gave up the score gets the ball and takes possession looking to go the length of the field for their own score.

OK, so that’s a lot of the technical side to it. There’s a lot more, but if you have any kind of a mind for figuring sports out, it’d probably only take you a couple whole games to see more or less what is going on. The best parts of the games aren’t even really part of them.

First of all, the field is elliptical in shape – or for the non-Math majors, an oval. It acts as a boundary just like any other sport, yes, but how many other sports have a rounded field of play?? Golf doesn’t really count because there isn’t really a standard.

I’ve already noted a second great part, no pads worn. Only a funkily-designed tank top that acts as the jersey, a pair of shorts and a seeming chip on each player’s shoulder. All these guys are crazy if you’re asking me. When a player jumps to grab an airborne kick, there are usually 2 or 3 other players flying right beside him to knock him over and knock the ball away (making it up for grabs by anyone). Tackles are ridiculous, but never end up being the bell ringers often seen in the National Football League in America – these are clean hits right in the chest area. Penalties can be assessed for high or low tackles. Terrific viewing.

The best part of the game has to be the score callers, for lack of a better term. There are actual officials governing the rules of the game, but at both ends of the field, usually right down the middle of the flagpole goals, there is a man that reminds me of Colonel Sanders sans the bucket of famous recipe chicken. These guys are dressed in white shirts (and sometimes all-white suits), wear white hats and make the rulings of whether the kick went through for a behind (1 point) or a goal (6 points).

That’s plain and simple. It’s the WAY they show it that’s terrific. If there is a goal, the score caller pulls two “guns” out of their holsters and points them to the middle of the field. They’re not actually guns, just his fingers – but they’re whipped out so fast that it’s hard to explain the hilarity of it. If the ball crosses for a behind, only one “gun” is drawn, and the ball is handed to the team to advance it. Simply put, when points are scored, it looks as if these guys dressed completely in white are practicing their technique of dueling. And the TV camera shows it basically every time a point is scored.

And after each goal, the program goes almost immediately to commercial break…for one commercial. The game is pretty fast-paced, so there really isn’t time during play to just go to a break except for the bit of time after a goal is scored. The winner of the fixtures usually put up at least 100 points. It’s a performance-enhanced combination of rugby and the NFL. And it’s great to watch until Sara and I return to the U.S. for NFL week 13 (the Browns play at Arizona, 4:15).

This is a great sport, though I know the Adelaide Crows (my randomly-acquired “favorite” team) will never replace the Cleveland Browns. In fact, I’m pretty sure nothing will replace the Brownies as long as I live – unless Aussie Rules Football really takes hold in the U.S. and finds a home in Cleveland. If it does, you can bet I’ll be the voice you hear on-the-air, bringing you all the action. Until that day comes, I’ll be classifying this trip as vacation/tourism more than a learning experience.

So that was my stab at giving you an overview of Aussie Rules Football. You can leave a comment with any questions you might have and I’ll try to address those as best I can. You can pretty much guarantee that I’ll be betting on the AFL before too long. Adelaide is good in the rain (just beat a team by 70 points while playing at home in dismal conditions), while Geelong sits atop the standings (called “the ladder”), holding a 9-fixture win streak. I guess it all depends on the betting line.

My next blog will surely include some new experiences that come with our orientation...meeting and hanging out with new people, figuring out the campus and, what is likely to be the best of the stories, figuring out the bus system. If there’s a bad ticket to be handed out, you can bet it has my name on it. But as Sara says, if you can get a good story out of it, it’s all worth it.

Love you all in the states, check back again.

From the other side of the globe, I’m Kevin Hunt.

If you want to see me soon, start digging.

You Stay Classy, Australia

2007-07-07T20:09:00.000-05:00

If life’s decisions were based on just one variable, I would be staying in Australia forever – my selling point being the fact that sports are a part of every newscast here. In fact, the sports report comes BEFORE the weather on every newscast I’ve seen thus far, due in large part to there being no horrific weather to update.

The sports segment of newscasts is slowly fading away in many markets in the United States. That puts me in a predicament as far as finding a job. I’m not particularly upset about that because I’m pretty sure news producing is in my future. But just watching the nightly news to get my semi-local sports fix has always been a part of my dinnertime routine.

Here in Oz the rugby and Aussie Rules Football updates are ongoing throughout the day. Injury updates find their way higher in a newscast rundown than “sunny with a max 16 in Sydney.”

What I don’t particularly like about Australian newscasts is the lack of creativity. Quite honestly, Athens MidDay rivals these casts in terms of visually aesthetic terms. There are no big newscast opens, no produced anchor introductions, dull lower-third graphics and text-on-solid-background full screens. Tech-wise, MidDay is right there.

Unpredictability might be the reason weather comes so late in the newscast (usually the last thing to be seen before the cast ends). To get online here at the hostel, we have to go outside – usually pulling up a seat at a table next to the sidewalk.

This situation has proven something to me about weather in Adelaide, Australia… the most ridiculous I’ve seen anywhere. It could go from rain to sun and back to rain about five times within a couple hours. Not having an umbrella handy in this town just means you’re playing Russian roulette with the storm clouds.

I’d hate to be as unpredictable as the weather, so I’ll let you in on what I’ll be posting next. It has to deal with my latest adjustment to sports here in Australia. Everyone who’s somewhat fluent in sports knows rugby – and the sport is no different here in Oz, either. Hard-nosed and backward-passing. The sport you WON’T know unless you’re a dedicated viewer is Aussie Rules Football. It’s amazing and ridiculous at the same time.

I’m spending this weekend getting a hang on the game so I can talk about it a bit more knowledgably. I look to post about “Friday Night Football,” Colonel Sanders calling the goals and behinds, a 9-game win streak and a 70 point win – all after watching just two games. But still not many graphics… oh the things I would change…

Love you all in the states, check back next for AFL knowledge.

From the other side of the globe, I’m Kevin Hunt.

If you want to see me soon, start digging.

Big, Big, Big, Bleh

2007-07-05T20:59:00.000-05:00

My last blog talked about adjustment and I promised I would let everyone who constantly clicks for my latest blog update (that means you and only you, Luke) about the adjustment to the beer.

After dinner, Sara decided to ditch our plan to head to the sports bar down the street, opting instead to do Sudoku and watch an old “LOST” episode. Well, it’s new to those in Australia – an idea reminiscent of NBC’s theme for its summer TV lineup years ago, “If you haven’t seen it, it’s new to you!!” Family Guy made fun of this along with Ted Kaczynski later on. But I digress.

I decided to head downstairs to the Euro Bar (connected to our hostel) and try a glass of a different beer. Carlton Draught was on tap and I thought I’d give it a whirl. Sara and her sister, Katie, made it famous (and driven into my head last summer) by singing the version of this commercial…

To make this quick, I was disappointed in my first “new beer” experience. It was different, that was for sure – but I won’t be recommending Carlton Draught to anyone anytime soon. I’d say it’s pretty close to Natural Light, but I’m not even sure I would finish my night with this beer. Not that Carlton Draught has a worse than Natty, it just has a terrible aftertaste that didn’t sit well with me.

It probably didn’t help that the music video “Free Your Mind” by En Vogue was playing on the TVs around the place. Oh well, hope the next venture plays out a little better. What helped was getting that 15% off just for being an international patron. That was nice, but didn’t make the Carlton Draught go down any better.

I also figured out why Australians are so apt to give out discounts on various items. Anyone who has seen the movie “Office Space” knows the plot deals with some office minions who create a program that deposits “fractions of a penny” from their employer. Australia is very similar, and it cracked me up when I realized the comparison.

Australian currency consists of bills and coins, just like American money. Bills range from $5 and up, while there are $2, $1, $0.50, $0.20, $0.10 and $0.05 coins. Here’s where it get interesting… no coins lower than five cents. That’s because every total purchase is rounded to the nearest five cent level – fractions of a nickel, in this case. It’s an amazing concept and I’m kind of surprised the U.S. didn’t implement it first.

It’s unknown what the weekend holds for me, but on Monday begins the very logical point of my trip to the Land of Oz… international student orientation. While we’ve been sitting around being a bit bored with having a lot of time on our hands lately, that changes next week when our 9-to-5, Monday-through-Friday routine sets in.

As for me, it will be welcomed (at least at first) since we spend most of our time just lying around on the bunk bed in our room. I’m sure I’ll want to come back and lounge once the bored and I-can’t-believe-they’re-making-me-listen-to-this-crap feelings creep in next week. But hey, I’m here to learn, not to sit around in a hostel, and I guess the orientation is Step One.

Speaking of learning, I’m a sports journalism student and in my next blog, I want to let you know of a great pattern I’m noticing in the television news in Australia. And it would be a true delight if American TV news would take notes and follow these guidelines. That’s for the next blog.

Love you all in the states, check back for that update.

From the other side of the globe, I’m Kevin Hunt.

If you want to see me soon, start digging.

The Game of Inches (or Metres)

2007-07-03T18:58:00.000-05:00

So this week has been busy… I grabbed a six-inch sub for just $3.95 AUD, bought and drank a 1.5 litre Coke, went on a morning run of about two kilometers and all in rainy conditions at around 15 degrees Celsius.

As confused as you are right now, you know what I’ve had to deal with in adjusting the past week or so. In my notebook of “things to remember” for this trip (it’s basically a guideline of what to put in these blogs), I have a page designated for conversions. And nothing says “I’m Foreign” more than whipping out a U.S.-to-Aussie currency converter from your breast pocket. That and asking for American cheese (which I did AGAIN).

When we walked into our new place of residence here in Adelaide, we found it to be MUCH better than the dump we lived in while staying in Sydney. Community showers, yes, but it’s a nice place with decent beds and it doesn’t smell awful. Plus, free laundry and we get a discount for staying longer than a week.

That leaves out one of the better points – the fast food. Even though we’re trying not to eat out all the time, it is inevitably going to happen, with our first fast food encounter in Adelaide, Australia coming right across the street at the “Burp Burrito” restaurant. Those of you who know me know I was a bit worried that there would be no Mexican food here. Tragedy averted.

And there’s a 24-hour pancake shop out back. And we get a 15% discount at the bar that’s downstairs. Suffice it to say we’re in a much better boat here than in Sydney.

This post comes on the American eve of America’s birthday. And what better way to celebrate than we already have. No, we didn’t buy Chinese fireworks off the black market – because we are staying during the time of our home country’s Independence Day, we received a percentage off our total bill for our stay.

So I’d like to use this space to thank Thomas Jefferson for completing the Declaration of Independence when he did. I’ll use that saved money to drink to him later – another adjustment on our long list. There’s no Bud or Coors Light here. It’s Toohey’s New or Carlton Draught. Haven’t made a trip to the bar yet, but that is likely to be a topic in my next blog.

You should drink to big Tommy J as well. Imagine his having finished the historical document on January 4, 1776. Sitting in below freezing temperatures while watching the fireworks probably wouldn’t have sat well with most Americans. Unless you’re Alaskan, at which point this day probably ticks you off every year.

Love you all in the states, check back for more updates.

From the other side of the globe, this is Kevin Hunt.

If you want to see me soon, start digging.

Each One is Different, But it’s Always the Same

2007-06-29T06:33:00.000-05:00

So our hostel is a hole. That’s not a huge deal because – like I told Sara to calm her down when we first came into the dump – we’re not ever really in the building. Outside of sleeping and doing random e-mailing and such in the mornings and late nights, we only sleep at the hostel – though that’s not particularly easy either, considering the place doesn’t have heat.

In fact, when I asked the man at the front desk if they had heat in the rooms, he replied, “Well, didn’t you bring a blanket??” Looking back, I would have asked that question just as much as I should have called Taco John’s to ask if they delivered. It’s on that level.

When I talked with people about studying in Australia for 5 months, probably the two responses I received most (excluding “G’day mate!! Throw another shrimp on the barbie!!”) were, “You have to do it while you’re young, ‘cause you’ll never be able to some day,” and “It’ll be great to see a new culture and live in it for that period of time.”

Those probably couldn’t be truer as I’ve figured out in the past week. Two former Senecas and future Bobcats, my brother (Brian) and sister (Sarah) officially ended their high school years with a graduation party at our house a week ago today. I can’t even count the number of times I heard the phrases, “They grow up so fast” or “Gosh, the time really flies” in conversations between my mom and other adults who have kids. I’m going to be a senior in college, which is scary in itself – in about a year, I’m socially-expected to know what I’m going to do with my life. No pressure.

As for the latter statement – again, couldn’t be truer. When I signed up to study in Australia, it was mainly due to my inefficiency to learn another language. Little did I know that I could stand in the middle of different landmarks in Sydney and hear what seems like 5 different languages all around me. So much for that.

And it’s the little things about culture that really throw you off. Driving on the other side of the road seems simple enough, but what about crossing the street?? Luckily in Sydney there is “Look Left” or “Look Right” painted on the street right beside the crosswalks so pedestrians know where to check for the stray crazy taxi driver. But the other thing about walking is that I have to consciously think about walking on the left side of the sidewalk as people go the other way on the right side (similar to traffic patterns on roads). If you think it’s easy, try going opposite sometime, it’s ridiculously tough to remember – especially with a number of people walking through a large city like Sydney (about 4 million people).

A positive experience, however, comes from the general happiness/friendliness of Australians. While Sara and I dragged our suitcases through the streets of downtown Sydney, we had a few people ask us if we wanted help or actually stop to help with the luggage. I have complete confidence – and accompanying disappointment – that in the U.S. we wouldn’t have received even a glance or a thought.

Sara and I purchased a “See Sydney” card that allows us free or extremely-reduced admission into various tourist attractions. Today we took a tour of the famous Sydney Opera House and it was pretty amazing. And it’s on the other side of the world from the home country, so I’m fairly confident if I hadn’t taken this trip, I would have never seen it. Check out the pictures on my facebook profile album when they’re posted (I don’t have consistent internet access right now, so it may be a bit). If you have a chance to travel, my experience thus far, though limited, says take that chance. If nothing else, it proves that you can adapt.

Love you all back in the states, check back for more updates.

From the other side of the globe, this is Kevin Hunt.

If you want to see me soon, start digging.

I Don't Like Wednesdays

2007-06-28T03:34:00.001-05:00

This was supposed to be a blog that contained some video clips of my better stories and Newswatch sports segments. Well, things got busy at the end of the year, I stayed in Athens for an extra week and I had to pack for a 5-month trip to Australia. So those things won't be making it up here until I return in December (and even then, don't hold your breath).

So here we go, everything leading up to where I am now...

First, if you don't have a passport, but think you're going to get one, do so about 4 months in advance of your trip. It'll save you tons of time and tons of headaches. I did not have mine in hand when I left for Los Angeles on Sunday. Sure enough, I was in line for my appointment at the Los Angeles Passport Agency (where the passports can be issued basically on-the-spot) and I received a call from Mom saying my ORIGINALLY-applied for passport was coming in the mail. I went through the process in LA anyway because with my luck the overnight delivery from FedEx or UPS would end up being "over three nights" or something similar.

Sara, her aunt , Judy, and I got to the passport agency at about 7 a.m. -- after my 8 a.m. appointment, I left the building at about 9 with a slip of paper in my hand. "Come back between 1 and 3 to pick up your passport at the will call windows," my agent told me during the appointment. So we did... and found out I had to wait in a HUGE line for the WILL CALL windows. And contrary to popular belief, handing the attendants the slip of paper with one's ID is NOT the only thing people are in line for at the Will Call window.

I told Sara and Judy leave - a lucky thing, considering I spent the next 4 hours watching a guy chip golf balls while random children ran around - all on the LA Federal Building lawn. When I finally got to the front of the line, I was a little worried. "How long will this process take me," I asked, "considering it took everyone before me in line a long time to get through."

I was out in a minute-and-a-half... tops.

I think there were various points during that time when only one of the two Will Call windows was open -- the other person was on a break (which is funny, considering it doesn't take a whole lot for ANYONE to take a slip of paper, look at the ID and pick out the corresponding passport from a box). Whatev. I put the blame on the fact that some people in line actually had to have their passports made while they waited at the window, which would have slowed the whole process pretty well.

Getting to the plane was just fine. (The following was copied and pasted, so it may appear weird in your browser... don't worry, it's all there).

There was some dude in our seats, so we traded him and it was pretty much just the same.
The flight was pretty long (15 hours), but didn't seem quite like that amount of time,
probably because of the sleep and stuff. And we lost Wednesday, June 27, forever. Crossing
the International Date Line took care of that. But that's ok, I don't like Wednesdays anyway -
Hump Day just doesn't do it for me I guess. Luke thought this might help me see into the
future -- it technically didn't, but it might as well have. For the record, I told Luke to take the
Royals to beat the Angels in Anaheim.

Final score: KC 1, LAA 0.

There was a decently long string of turbulence which came at a terrible time.
There were less than 3 hours remaining in the trip and we just received
breakfast (cereal, fruit, muffin - nothing fancy). I already had to go to the
bathroom before this point, but Sara had the aisle seat and was sleeping, so I
didn't wanna make her move. After we ate, I decided I REALLY needed to go, so I
went back there... and the turbulence came. I hit my head 3 times while I was on
the toilet. So that made me feel sick as well. But I just went to sleep and the
ride smoothed out and I didn't feel as BLEH.

We had to go through Customs upon our arrival and it took so long that we missed
our connecting flight from Melbourne to Sydney. That turned out fine - we got
put on the next flight out and were only put back about 20 minutes.

Leaving the airport was ridiculous. We finally found a phone where we could call
our hostel (accommodations) and have them pick us up. I was told the "Sydney
City Shuttle" would get us. We stood outside and a guy comes up and asks if
we're waiting on a shuttle. I say "Yes... the Sydney City Shuttle??" and he
replies "Yes." Great, we're on our way. Sara and I weren't the only two in the
shuttle van, and at one point in the ride he turned around and asked us if we
were headed to the "City Central" hostel... we weren't, we wanted the "City
Resort" hostel. Apparently he mistook "Sydney City Shuttle" for his ACTUAL
employer, "Sydney Super Shuttle." The driver dropped us at the wrong hostel and
we didn't know what else to do but walk.

We knew the street names and recognized them from a map in the brochure from our
hostel. So off we went -- 2 Americans in a new country, walking through a huge
city with all of our bags toted behind us. We took multiple breaks and
eventually (with the help of random City Maps posted in town) made it to our
final destination.

As we walked into the room, Sara just kinda stopped and the room looked
basically how I expected it to look (considering we're only spending like $20 in
Australian money each night). In short, it sucks. Gross motel-like comforters
and no heat (it's chilly and raining now). When I asked, the dude at the desk
asked if we had blankets. So THAT is what we have to look forward to tonight
when we lay down to sleep.

Sara started crying and got homesick really quick. I guess a room like that
makes anyone second-guess living there. And we had to put in a deposit and paid
for it already, so we're stuck here for the remainder of our time in Sydney.
Luckily, we bought a tourist card and will be seeing the sights for most of the
time during the day and evening while we're here.

The only thing is that we have more bookings at hostels for our future
adventures, so we have to decide if we want to cancel those or hope that they're
better than the HOLE we're at now (I'm thinking they will be better). But to anyone
who is looking to study abroad in the future: the culture shock is real, no matter how
"American" your destination seems to be.

We're just sitting here trying to collect ourselves and just finished eating
Subway. By the way, don't go to another country and ask for "American" cheese...
"cheddar" works better, haha -- already made that mistake.

Won't be the last I'm sure... just like this blog post.

From the other side of the globe, this is Kevin Hunt.
If you want to see me soon, start digging.