Watching Star Wars IV: A New Hope.

Luke: “You know, I did feel something. I could almost see the remote.”
Obi-Wan: “That’s good. You have taken your first step into a larger world.”
Miles: “I wonder what the second step is.”

—–

After Biggs is shot down strafing the Death Star and the sad music starts…
Ben: “They’re playing it in minor.”

Miles put together his first Lego set on Christmas. He did the helicopter all by himself, but asked me to help with the 4×4.

The 4×4 has a suspension with quite a bit a travel (not that Miles appreciates it or anything).

I don’t know what happened between little Adam James and his coach at Texas Tech, but I do know that the network that employs Adam’s father is not telling both sides. During halftime of the Holiday Bowl, one of their correspondents who had spoken with Coach Mike Leach immediately after his firing said…

He (the coach) had hoped that former and current players and coaches would come to his defense.

And left it at that, insinuating that not one had. Newsflash ESPN: They have, but you need to go to your competitor’s website to find them.

ESPN also gave the Texas Tech administration airtime, but refused to even mention that Leach had issued a statement himself. The AD’s claim that he had offered Leach a chance to “work together” led to commentators laying to blame on Leach’s ego. “He had a chance to stay the coach of Texas Tech, and he turned it down… The only person to blame for him losing his job is himself.”

We don’t know what “opportunities” the AD extended. Sports Illustrated reports that they asked him to sign a letter of apology. Did that letter contain identical language to the college’s contractual escape clause (e.g. “negligent and irresponsible actions”)? Had he signed such a document, they could have fired him with no legal recourse. Leach has a JD, so he would know that his only chance of recouping the $1.4 million the school owes him was to not sign that letter.

I could only find one person at ESPN who is asking questions of the school. Wrote Ivan Maisel:

The university that overlooked Bob Knight’s methods of handling players in order to have him revive its basketball program suddenly has become the Amnesty International of the NCAA.

My advice: Read SI’s take on the issue.

While Leach engendered minor controversies here and there throughout his tenure, there had been not a peep about any misconduct. But then came the allegations from prominent ex-football star and ESPN analyst Craig James claiming Leach had subjected his son to humiliating isolation on two occasions because of his injury. Disputes then ensued over the details and the motivation behind said allegations — ex-players rushed to the coach’s defense; James and his father were apparently bitter over his lack of playing time; the purported “electrical closet” turned out to be the size of a garage; a doctor swore Leach inflicted no harm — but it was apparent from the beginning that Tech either wasn’t buying it or wanted Leach gone regardless.

This was Brooke’s idea, but my work. I made two free-standing shelves out of 1/2″ plywood reinforced with pine 1×2′s and. Then I slapped a remnant of 3/4″ ply on top and glued casing around it. Add a big hole in the middle, $1.50 bowl from Walmart and a few bins from Target, and you get this:

The lip around the table helps a lot – even Ben commented on it – and so does the fact that the bowl can be removed. When they’re done, they just dump the leftover pieces back into the bins. I actually bought some base-plate-green paint, but it’s too cold here to paint in the garage, and I don’t have anywhere else that’s ventilated enough.

I noticed that Miles had to kneel on a chair to put himself at the right height, so I stayed up last night and made him this saddle stool. I plan on making another, but, as you can see in the picture, I ran out of 1×2, so this one is still missing a piece.

We went shopping for Brooke’s birthday the day after Christmas. Ben decided he really wants a Wii, so we worked out how long it would take him to earn enough money doing all his optional chores everyday. He decided he would do more. Here he is feeding the twins while Brooke makes dinner. Asher was seriously confused.

—–

After trudging through a snow-packed driveway while caroling, Ben asked, “Why isn’t there ever snow on our driveway?” Apparently he never notices me shoveling.

—–

And then there is this Lego piece.

Ben was working on a project when he said, “I know what I need: lots of hookers! And I know just where to find them.” Um, OK.

Someone gave Brooke a new camera for Christmas (the old one broke), so we can bring you a regular installment of adorable twins.

For Bailey and Ashtyn.

Whatever the reason behind Urban Meyer’s “stepping” down, we should wish him luck in his future endeavors. What we should not do is what ESPN’s Chris Fowler recommended,

We should all hope, for our own sakes, that he gets his health in order so he can return to coaching at the highest level.

How selfish. How about this instead: “We should all hope, for his and his family’s sake, that he can put his health, family, faith, and other aspects of his life in order so that he is satisfied with life.”

The San Jose Mercury News is reporting on yet another Pac-10 bowl letdown.

Cal was ranked 12th in the country to begin the season and was picked to finish second in the preseason Pac-10 media poll. But the Bears tied for fifth in the conference standings and probably won’t garner a single vote in the final national rankings. It will mark the third straight year Cal has failed to finish in The Associated Press Top 25.

Let’s have a look at those Pac-10 preseason poll numbers, shall we?

If we remove WSU, which undertrained algae could have picked last, that’s a whopping correlation of 0.15, for an R-squared of .023. Let’s just hope these reporters don’t moonlight as stock brokers.

And what would be a Pac-10 beat down without confusion over who is really the better team?

“There’s no way we should be 8-5,” said quarterback Kevin Riley, who was 20-of-36 for 214 yards and threw two interceptions [on back-to-back offensive plays] in the fourth quarter. “It’s hard to say what we should have been, but we definitely should have been better than we were.”

But, never fear all those Cal fans with whom I went to high school. We all know the Bears are still an elite program. Said sixth-year senior Mike Tepper:

“We all believe that we can win a national championship. We just have to do it. This team has enough talent to beat Florida or Alabama.

…despite the fact that you just lost handily to the third-place team from the Mountain West Conference? Well, I guess Journey put it best:

Don’t stop belieeeeeeeeeevin’
Hold on to that feeeeeeeeee-leeeeeeeee-eeeeeeeeen.

Foxsports has a collection of Vegas Bowl postmortems from various CFN intelligentia. You can read the whole thing, if you like, but here’s my synopsis:

1. BYU is not “44-20 good.”
He’s right: OSU scored 14 points in garbage time… BYU was “37-7 good.”

2. The real OSU didn’t show up.
Et alors??? I’ve said this before: So the real Mike Tyson didn’t show up against Buster Douglas. The real New England Patriots didn’t show up in Super Bowl XLII. This might be the ultimate sour grapes comment.

3. The Cougars were just happy to play in a meager, humble, pre-Christmas bowl.
Translation: Such a small-time event is beneath the mighty Pac-10 teams, so why bother preparing?

4. This OSU letdown was expected “after coming so close to a Rose Bowl berth…. Blame the wind… the Strip… the Civil War [letdown].”
Just don’t credit BYU? This jerk can’t even bring himself to use “BYU” as the subject of a sentence. And I’d call the disappointed-unmotivated argument weak (even when some Alabama and BYU fans used it last year), but it’s not even applicable here. To quote Corvallis’ local media:

The Beavers opened the game inspired, so there was no hangover from the Civil War loss that knocked them out of the Rose Bowl. They just couldn’t regain momentum once it was lost.

Or, better, let’s ask the players:

“It has nothing to do with the Oregon game,” linebacker Keith Pankey said. “For anyone to think it has anything to do with that, it’s foolhardy. We’ve always been able to look past what happened. We get better from it and move on. We moved on. We’ll do the same here.”

5. “This wasn’t a middle-of-the-road Pac-10 team that got spanked by BYU; this was Oregon State. This was the same team that was within 17 minutes of going to the Rose Bowl as conference champions and has nearly a quarter of the All-Pac-10 first team on the roster. The Beavers certainly didn’t look like it against BYU.”
Thank you!

But why didn’t the Beavers look like their usual selves? If anyone bothered to listen to post-game comments from BYU’s DE Jan Jorgensen, he said his coaches saw that les Frère Rogers accounted for two-thirds of OSU’s offense. Stop them, you stop the Beavers. He said something like, “We knew when they would run the fly-sweep before they did.” It was details like this that made OSU look so bad. They looked bad because BYU made them look bad.

—–

PS: Dennis Pitta

2009 Records
Most receptions by a tight end.
Most receiving yards by a tight end.
(Also third in TDs by a tight end.)

Career Records
Most receptions ever at any position at pass-happy BYU.
Most receiving yards by a tight end at BYU.
Most receiving yards by a tight end in the history of the NCAA.

2009 Awards
Consensus All-American
First team Walter Camp All-American
First team American Football Coaches Association All-American

Did not win the John Mackey Award as the nation’s top tight end?