Assessing The Eagles Quarterback Situation

I wanted to wait a while after that playoff loss before doing a post on this, but with the dawn of free agency just around the corner and with a cool head on my shoulders, now is as good a time as any to break down the Eagles situation, what is likely with each situation, and who is likely to suit up in midnight green next season.

First we will take a look at the starter, Donovan McNabb. I am officially meh on McNabb. If he comes back, great. If the Eagles trade him, great if the haul is semi-decent. As for will he come back, if there is one thing the Eagles organization has showed is that they are completely loyal to Donovan McNabb. They may not be that way with other players, but they are with McNabb. Reid said that McNabb would be back next season and at this stage, I have no reason to not believe it. If they were keeping mum on McNabb, then I think you could legitimately talk trade speculation, but given Reid's statement over a month ago and the Eagles' past history in dealing with #5, it would be shocking if there was trade. The way I see it, if the Eagles trade McNabb this off-season, chances are I'll be giddy because I think that Lurie, Roseman, Reid, and co. would need to be floored with a team's offer in order to pull the trigger. There seems to be a new team everyday added to the list of teams that want him, so the market is there, the question is, what is Reid's price and are teams willing to pay it?

Kevin Kolb: The great unknown. When the Eagles drafted Kevin Kolb, a QB out of Houston, I thought it was a dumber move than trying to divide by 0. Now I can legitimately see him as the starting QB of this franchise. For what it's worth, he has already gained the respect of the locker room and he has proven himself competent in first 2 NFL starts where he had something called a full week of practice taking all the snaps. Whenever Reid had used him before in regular season situations, it was always because either McNabb was hurt or McNabb was benched and Kolb was forced into action. Granted whenever you breakdown Kolb's stats, you are looking at an unreasonably small sample not adequate to make a judgment about his potential as an every week starter, but the kid has the tutelage, the potential, and the respect of his team to make it all happen. Kolb is also the Eagle the least likely to be traded. Andy Reid has seen something in this kid since day 1 and who knows, maybe he is right. Heck, the schmuck that said Tyler Thigpen was the best QB in the 2007 NFL Draft is looking pretty darn good right about now. While my feelings for a McNabb trade would solely depend on the haul in return, I will be disappointed if the Eagles gave up Kolb, someone they have long-touted as the future of their franchise. The kid has potential and when given the opportunity to start after a full week of practice, has gotten the job done. When he has not been starting, he only done everything ever asked of him.

Michael Vick: Oh boy. Here we go. Certainly the QB that is most likely to be traded by the Eagles. The good news for the team that trades him is that the Eagles took the big PR bullet, even if it was not as big a bullet as many feared it would be when the Eagles announced the signing last pre-season. The bad news is that we are talking about a QB who has not started a football game in 3 years. Toward the end of last year, he showed flashes of what he is able to do and what he might be, but the ultimate question is what will the Eagles get for him? If the Eagles can trade him to a team and get a 2nd or a 3rd round draft pick, it will be a huge success for them. They would have taken a QB out of jail, played him a few times with very little effect either way, and then traded him for a darn good draft pick. That would be flat-out awesome maneuvering and would make the whole Vick fiasco look like a big win for the team. And if the draft pick they get for him turns into somebody, it will be a big win for the team. Let's face facts here, Michael Vick was not the reason the Eagles ended up a #6 seed and he was not the reason they lost in the wildcard playoff. The Eagles would essentially trade nothing for a great big something. If they keep Vick, then surely we will see the same shenanigans as last year, most of which were ineffective, although as Vick spent sometime with the Eagles and as he slowly got back into football shape, he could see the improvement in his game.

My prediction: Vick gets traded for a 3rd round draft pick. McNabb starts the year and plays his last snap ever as an Eagle when he suffers a season-ending injury. Kevin Kolb then steps in and does his Kevin Kolb thing to end the year and take the Super Bowl in Big D. Okay, maybe the Super Bowl depends on a lot other factors, but I am being serious when I say I think this year will be McNabb's last in Philly.

Update: You can use this as your Eagles and NFL Free Agency Commencement open thread

Deadline Day Has Come And Gone And The Flyers Hold Steady

Compared to other sports, the NHL has one of the more active trade deadline days, but you would not know it from following the Flyers today. Somehow, someway, Flyers GM Paul Holmgren (from here on out referred to as Homer, his BSH nickname) managed to do absolutely nothing. While doing so avoids the bone-headed trade, a team not making any deadline deals is rare, especially when you are "burning the phone lines".

But Homer succeeded. It was tossed around in the beginning of the day that the Panthers wanted Jeff Carter for Tomas Vokoun. But Carter is untouchable in the eyes of Homer, therefore no deal.

Combine the fact that Homer considers half the team untouchable (and with pretty decent reason too), the lack of cap space on the Flyers, the dearth of 1st and 2nd round draft picks (exactly how many 2nd rounders were swapped today?), and the overabundance of no-trade clauses (NTC) prevented a deal from being done oday. Hold on, wait a minute, that is not true. I have just received word that Homer has signed a bag of pucks to a 2-year deal complete with an NTC! Forget all I wrote above, Homer is the best GM in all of hockey! A bag of pucks with an NTC! This is like my hockey dream come true times 100,000!

Oh, and about that whole Jeff Carter-Tomas Vokoun speculation, yeah, they were on the same sheet of ice as opponents tonight in Miami. Carger got a goal but Vokoun won the night as the Flyers defense crapped out on them, Scott Hartnell and Braydon Coburn took their classic dumb penalties, Michael Leighton had an off day, and when Brian Boucher was called in to replace Leighton and thus play his first hockey in months, completely sucked monkey dick, goat balls, and cheetah ass before rebounding slightly for a scoreless 3rd period. In other words, the Flyers lost 6-4 to an offensively inept team that just lost it's best defensive players to the trade deadline! Lord Stanley, HERE WE COME!

And the second that Bettman hands Mike Richards the Cup, Homer will steal it away from him and proceed to give it a no-trade clause.

The High School Years: Part 9 - The Trebuchet And The Super Bowl

Forget or missed a part? Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8

I know that a lot of this thus far has been about my relationship with Alura and that has essentially been the spinal cord in the body that was my last 2 years of high school, but for the next few parts, I am going to branch out from that a little bit more. During this time period of the next month or so, while things with Anna steadily improved overtime in the aftermath of Part 8, Alura pretty much chose to ignore everything and anything that I sent to her. For the first time, my chats with her and Anna were not at the forefront of my personal life of interest, therefore, they will not be on the forefront of this story. Just know that they are still where they are as I talk a little more about Kait and Kelly.

My relationship with Kait and Kelly took an interesting turn. We pretty much ignored each other for a while afterwards. No communication, no nothing. We were three separate people living 3 separate lives (well Kait and Kelly were always friends, but you get my point that there was not contact between me and them). Then all of a sudden I received an email from Kait claiming that I was “spreading false rumors again”. This was a preposterous accusation that had no merit and was completely untrue. And really, it was. Last time I was a bumbling idiot trying to lie my way out of any trouble, this time, though, I was completely innocent. Truly, I was.

I wondered where Kait was getting this information from. I thought about finding out. Where would Kait come up with such a thing? Was she making it up or did she legitimately hear this bullshit from someone? I thought sending Anna an email about this. Alura was completely ignoring me, but even though it seemed like things were going better for me and Anna, maybe I was just blind. I thought about emailing her and asking her about it……but then I thought better of it. Whether it was a result of a lie on her part, false information from someone else, or a straight-out delusion, it was not worth sending Anna another email about Kait. I was not going to potentially further put my friendship with her in jeopardy. I had been there once and it made me completely miserable. Kait just was not worth that.

However, I was still curious about it, so instead of emailing Anna and finding out what she knew, I emailed Kait and told her that wherever she got it from, it was bullshit. While there was some hesitation on their part, they did believe me and we got to talk about other things, such as our mile-run time and physics class. It wasn’t an argument either. It was a civilized conversation. A first for myself and Kait.

From there, our relationship grew and grew.

Sometimes in physics class, I would talk with Kait and Kelly sometimes before class about general things and other times we wouldn’t even acknowledge each other’s existence. There was kind of a hesitancy on both of our parts but there wasn’t any malice between us. I think they had over time forgiven me for what I did even though they’ve never explicitly said anything about it to me since the whole thing went down. Then one day, my physics lab group and their lab group (Kait and Kelly are their own group) worked together on a lab because their lab station was not yet set up and in order to get done they needed to join a group and they happened to choose my group. While working on this

This completely took me by surprise. After causing them so much headache at the beginning of the year, they actually asked me to join their group because they had been struggling on some of the labs and needed my help. Seeing as I did not feel like I fit in well with my group, I said yes to them and thus joined their group.

Our first big assignment together came in January of 2008. What was it, you ask? To build a trebuchet! No, seriously. Somehow we needed to use physics we had not learned yet to build a medieval weapon that we would later launch golf balls from for a grade. Yes, I have contemplated the totally legitimate thought that Mr. Johnson may be crazy. Biting sarcasm aside, Mr. Johnson is actually an excellent type of person to hang out at a bar with, have a few drinks, and watch a football game. Which as you can imagine, does not translate to being a brilliant physics teacher. But I digress….

So, what on earth would we do? 3 people, not planning on being physics majors anytime soon, were about to embark on an entertaining journey of building a medieval weapon. Mr. Johnson gave us time to work on the project in class, kind of necessary when you have clueless people building trebuchets. While not a physics major, Kait did not math like none other and she was a sophomore. I’m not even joking when I say that as a sophomore she was probably the second smartest math student in the school (she only does not get the consideration because Albert Einstein In Flip Flops went to Windy Hill at the same time). So naturally, she researched trebuchets online and discovered a really small one that required precise angle measurements. And by precise, I mean the thing would have been thrown off if we set 2 pieces of wood (yes we did use real pieces of wood, this was not a joke or anything) at an angle of 57.7 degrees as opposed to 57.6 degrees.

As you can imagine, our precision was not exactly precise and we that idea failed miserably. It took us a few days, but angles be damned, when your trebuchet is hardly 2 feet high and you are looking at others that are 5 and 6 feet, it does not matter how good your angles are, the damn thing is going to suck monkey ass in comparison. And before you say we should get an A for effort, part of the grading had to do with its performance in comparison to the other trebuchets. Part of me was petrified that not only could it not hurl a golf ball, but the weight of the golf ball in the pocket would be enough to knock it over. Disturbing on every front.

We did abandon that idea and after doing some more research found a more basic, taller, and not relying as much on angle precision trebuchet that would be buildable and if done right, at least competitive against the other trebs.

But class time was running low. There was no way we could complete this thing on time in class. People who knew a bit more about what they were doing barely got done and they did not scrap their idea midway through it. We had no choice but to meet on the weekend. Kait, Kelly, and I came to the conclusion that the best day for us would be Sunday. Super Bowl Sunday. In case you can’t compute what year we are in relation to football, I’m talking about Giants-Pats Super Bowl Sunday.

So while Fox was airing Super Bowl pregame shit, Kait and Kelly were coming to my house to work on a trebuchet. But seeing as it really is an impossible task to carry tons of wood out of Mr. Johnson’s room, we needed to go to The Home Depot to buy wood.

You know that whole stereotype about girls taking forever shopping? Well, guess what? It holds true for shopping for wood. Oh. My. Gosh. I swear we must have been there for at least a couple of hours just picking out the right wood to use. It was incredible.

So we finally get back to my house and it’s time to finish building this baby. Progress was slow, but we had a plan and we had the necessary materials. The one thing we did not have though, from the perspective of me, a football fan, was time. There was no way we were finishing before the start of the Super Bowl. And guess what? We didn’t.

Now I had mentioned in passing a few times that I wanted to watch the game (and invited them to stay as well) but, I was dedicated to the project. Only they were not dedicated to me.

“No, no, you need to be watching the game”, Kait would inform me.

“I am dedicated to this project, Kait, I don’t care about the game, I want to help”, I replied back.

We went back and forth on this for quite a bit. Until eventually she starts pushing me out the garage door and into the house. In other words, Kait was forcing me to watch the Super Bowl.

Naturally, my parents were wondering why I was watching the Super Bowl and not working on the trebuchet? I told them, and not even they could convince Kait to let me help. Disturbing, I know, especially seeing if nothing else, this was vintage Kait. The whole time Kait was forcing me in my house, Kelly was with the trebuchet laughing at the whole thing. She’s a quiet person so she would never do the forcing herself, but suffice to say, she found this amusing.

I check on Kait and Kelly every now and then just so that I prove to my parents that I actually care about the project, which I do, although they obviously thought that I was the most incompetent of our incompetent group. Come to think of it, if that was what they thought, they were absolutely right.

Eventually we, er, they, finish it! MIRAC LE!

Not football fans, I say goodbye to Kait and Kelly for the day and go back to watching the Super Bowl without worrying about two girls playing with wood in my garage. The 2nd half was about to start and with it, the end of a Patriots dynasty.

But this is not about sports, and even though we had finished building the trebuchet, this nightmare of a project was far from over.

Did Canada "Own The Podium"?

Apparently there has been a lot of revisionist history going on the past few days. After scoffs and laughs at the idea, people are now claiming that as a result of winning the most gold medals at the 2010 Winter Olympic games, Canada did it. They owned the podium after all.

No. No, they did not. Not even a "sort of". Canada did not "Own The Podium" in Vancouver. Not by their own definition. From the official OTP website.



"Place first in the total medal count at the 2010 Olympic Winter Games" - What it means to Own the Podium.

Total medal count at the 2010 Winter Olympic games:
USA - 37
Germany - 30
Canada - 26

Yeesh. Canada was no where even close to owning the Vancouver podiums. Sure they won the most gold medals, but when you have a program that specifically says it's goal is to place first in total medal count and then you go around touting the fact that you owned the podium because you won the most gold medals, despite being a full 11 medals short of your initial goal is partaking in revisionist history.

As Olympic history goes on, there is no doubt that the trend will say yes, Canada did Own The Podium in Vancouver because they won most golds. People will completely forget the original definition of Own The Podium at the 2010 Winter games. But let us not forget what the program was and how they were a full 11 medals away from achieving their goal.

2009-10 Philadelphia Flyers Schedule: March

Holy crap it's March! Just be sure to beware its ides and the fury of the NHL Playoff race. Thanks to the Olympics, they do not have a break in March 2 days or longer. It's going to be rapid fire hockey as the Flyers look to be one of 16 teams chasing for Lord Stanley's Cup. Here now is the Flyers schedule for March. (all times PM eastern)

March 2: @ Tampa Bay W 7-2
March 3: @ Florida L 4-7
March 5: @ Buffalo L 2-3 F/OT
March 7: vs. Toronto L 1-3
March 9: vs. New York Islanders W 2-3
March 11: vs. Boston L 5-1
March 13: vs. Chicago W 2-3
March 14: @ New York Rangers L 1-3
March 16: @ Nashville L 3-4 F/SO
March 18: @ Dallas W 3-2
March 20: @ Atlanta L 2-5
March 21: vs. Atlanta L 3-1
March 23: @ Ottawa L 0-2
March 25: vs. Minnesota L 4-3 F/OT
March 27: @ Pittsburgh L 1-4
March 28: vs. New Jersey W 1-5

2010 Philadelphia Phillies Schedule: Spring Training And The Grapefruit League

Spring training games are about to be played!!! Baseball season is back!!! Finally!!!

The Phillies are favored to win the NL East once again and to once again challenge for the NL pennant, but there are some questions that will be settled during the baseball games of March, with one of the most prominent being, who will be the Phillies first of many 5th starters this year? Odds are saying Kyle Kendrick right now, but who knows, maybe Jamie Moyer and his 65 MPH fastball can take the job.

So without further ado, here is the Phillies' Grapefruit League schedule. All games played at home teams' respective spring training facility unless otherwise noted. The Philadelphia Phillies train in Clearwater, FL.

March 3: vs. Florida State W 7-13
March 4: vs. New York Yankees W 2-3
March 5: @ Toronto L 9-14
March 6: @ Pittsburgh T 3-3
March 7: vs. Tampa Bay L 5-3
March 8: @ New York Yankees L 7-5
March 9: @ Atlanta W 7-4
March 10: @ Toronto W 4-2
March 11: vs. Detroit W 0-4
March 12: @ Detroit CANCELED
March 12: @ Tampa Bay CANCELED
March 13: vs. Minnesota W 4-5
March 14: @ Baltimore L 3-4
March 15: @ Pittsburgh W 5-1
March 16: vs. Detroit W 1-6
March 17: vs. New York Yankees W 2-6
March 19: vs. Baltimore L 2-0
March 20: @ Detroit L 0-3
March 21: vs. Baltimore L 5-4
March 22: vs. New York Yankees W 7-9
March 23: vs. Tampa Bay W 3-4
March 24: @ Atlanta L 0-8
March 25: vs. Houston W 7-8
March 26: @ New York Yankees W 3-0
March 27: @ Minnesota L 4-8
March 28: vs. Pittsburgh CANCELED
March 29: vs. Atlanta L 5-4
March 30: @ Houston L 2-5
March 31: vs. Toronto 1:05
April 1: vs. Pittsburgh 1:05
April 2: vs. Pittsburgh 7:05 (at Citizens Bank Park
April 3: vs. Pittsburgh 1:05 (at Citizens Bank Park)

It is interesting to note that the starting pitchers for the March 4 game between the Phillies and the Yankees are Roy Halladay for the Phillies and CC Sabathia for the Yankees.

Should be a fun year of baseball. Go Phillies!!!

2009-10 Villanova Wildcats: March

It's March! It's March! It's time for March Madness!

But first Villanova must scrap what they can out of this regular season that is spiraling downhill rather quickly after a less than stellar February. This is a team that still can do it, but it appears more and more that they are unable to comeback against good teams and once they lose a lead, it is very difficult for them to get it back.

First up here is Villanova's final 2 regular season games and once their post-season adversaries are announced, I will put add them to this schedule as well. (all times PM eastern)

March 2: @ Cincinnati W 77-73
March 6: vs. West Virginia 12:00