Rose Bowl

With the Rose Bowl Game coming up Iowa is going to have their hands full. Stanford is a team that Iowa hasn’t played in a while or has never played before. Iowa being a very balanced team between their running and passing game. This game will be a very offensive game. Everything being said about Christian McCaffrey, the Iowa defense will have to dig deep to stop him.

C.J. Beathard coming off the hard loss to Michigan St. I think he is even more determined to bring back that Rose Bowl Trophy to the great people of Iowa. I think the key to this game is the passing game. With Stanford being heavy on the run game, it will be very predictable if all Iowa does is run. Matt VandeBerg will have to play a huge role in this game to really stretch this game out and keep the Stanford defensive on their toes.

Christian McCaffrey is a great running back no argument there. But can he with stand the Iowa Defense? McCaffrey has 1850 total yards for the season and an average of about 6 yard per carry. Which isn’t bad for the sophomore back. I think and smaller factor of the team is Kevin Hogan the Quarterback. You don’t hear too much about Hogan. The Senior Quarterback has just over 2600 yards in the air and about 9.3 yards per play. And for a Quarterback I can’t complain about those stats. I Think to only bad part of his stats is the 28 interceptions in 4 year which is about 7 per game. But if you break that down even more its less than one interception per game.

From all the information being presented here the Hawks are going to have a tough game on their hands. Kevin Hogan is playing at his best and that’s making him unstoppable. Then you have Christian McCaffrey who was a Heisman Nomination, also with about 1850 yards rushing on the season. But, you could say that about Stanford as well, C.J. Beathard is playing quite frankly the best season of his life. Then, you have Desmond King who is in second place for interceptions with 8. They’re going to have a tough time in the air. On the ground is going to be another challenge for both teams.  After everything being said Iowa and Stanford will one great game to watch. 

The Golden State Warriors

               With the Golden State Warriors being unbeaten a lot of speculation is floating around weather they will remain unbeaten through Christmas. The key there is that they’re all healthy. They went from winning the championship, right into training for the regular season. I’ve never seen a team work this hard and become so successful. Going into Christmas Day, the Warriors will face the ultimate test of LeBron James and the Cavaliers.

                Looking at the team as a whole, they’ve really proven themselves as a tem who can win back to back titles. The one guy that I think everyone overlooks is Andrew Bogut. You probably think to yourself “Who the Hell is he?!” Well Bogut is a 7 foot tall and 260 pound for the Warriors. Last year Bogut was struggling to make some easy layups and even from free throws. But looking at everything now, he is looking better than ever. I think he is currently on pace to outscore his numbers from last year. I really do think he is the factor to this team.

                Now thinking about Stephen Curry, you think what more could he possibly do? Curry is currently averaging 32 ppg (Points per Game), which is pretty good because you also have Klay Thompson and Harrison Barnes with both average mid-teens for points. Plus you add in Draymond Green and Andrew Bogut with a combined 15 rpg (Rebounds per Game.) With all of that taken into consideration I don’t think a team will be able to beat the Warriors this year. But a team that might come close is the Cavaliers.

                The Cavaliers have an interesting team. They are basically a band of misfits that have all come together to be a championship team. Now LeBron James is an all-around good player, but lacks maybe one guy to put the whole team together. With him averaging 26 ppg and 8 rpg. I don’t think that will amount to anything compared to the Warriors. I think the Cavaliers don’t have the experience the Warriors do, and that’s what was hurting them in the beginning of the season. Also lacking depth is a key issue with the Cavaliers. They have a healthy LeBron and a healthy Kevin Love. Other than that they don’t have anyone else. Kyrie Irving hasn’t played a game this entire year, which is making me think that he won’t be back for a while.

                After everything is said and done the Golden State Warriors will most likely beat the Cavaliers, because they have more depth on their bench and they aren’t centered on one person like the Cavaliers are. To win this game LeBron James and Kevin Love both have to step up in order to take down the mighty Golden State Warriors. 

3 of the Highest Payed MLB Players

With Athletes always being in the news I thought I’d share how much they all make, because why not. People are nosy and they want to know how much people make and I plan on telling you. These players could be shocking or it could just be predictable.

At the top of the list you would expect to find a starting pitcher a big name fielder. And you’re right, we have Clayton Kershaw. Now even though he is terrible in the postseason, he is still one of the most desirable pitchers in the world. Yes the world. He will end up making about 30.7 million dollars this year. But now you’re thinking wait, he isn’t worth that much money. Well sorry to burst your bubble but he is. Kershaw has an average WHIP of 1.03 which isn’t bad, but you generally want it to be under 1. But after everything is said and done Clayton Kershaw is almost worth all 30.7 million dollars.

Now the next guy on our list is a guy you probably haven’t heard of in a couple of years. He name is Justin Verlander.  Justin Verlander has been in the news for some very different reasons. The leaked nude photos of him and now ex-girlfriend Kate Upton. This year alone Verlander will make a little over 28 million dollars. After looking at his stats for the past ten years we see he has an average ERA of just over 3.50. That’s not good at all, in fact that’s terrible. But what isn’t better is the fact that his WHIP is 1.20. In my opinion I do not think Justin Verlander is worth the 28 million dollars that the Detroit ball club is paying him.

Ryan Howard. I wouldn’t expect anyone to know his name anymore. Howard isn’t the same ball player he was just 5 year ago. With Howard being 36 years old his career is winding down. From 2006-11 Ryan Howard was at his peak, playing almost every game, batting over or at least close to .300. Now he is just struggling to play half the games. Ryan has a 5 year, 125 million dollar contract. The sad part about all of this is he is nowhere near worth that much and the Phillies still owe him about 60 million dollars. This is just a nightmare for him and everyone else in the Phillies organization. David Montgomery is just an idiot for agreeing to this contract.

Notable Mentions are Cliff Lee, Albert Pujols, and Felix Hernandez

Gaines, Cork. "The 25 Highest-paid Players in Major League Baseball." Business Insider. Business Insider, Inc., 15 May 2015. Web. 01 Dec. 2015.

Wapsie Valley Football

                Now let’s face it here, you have probably never heard of Wapsie Valley High School. Also you probably don’t know where they’re located. If you’ve heard of Fairbank you’ve most likely heard of Wapsie Valley High school, because its located perfecting in between Fairbank and Readlyn, Iowa. But it’s all okay that you don’t know that but, we’re now going to take a look their football season breakdown.

From just a basic look at their record you see they have an overall record of 3-6 and a conference record of 2-4. It’s not a good record, but who knows it could be a coaching thing or it could be the players. Wapsie Valley made a statement on Aug. 29 with a win over Starmont 17-0. It might have been that the win might have gone to their heads, because they lost their next game to South Winneshiek 36-14 who isn’t a very good team to begin with. Speaking of huge wins, the wins over North Tama (42-0) and BCLUW (43-0) (Beaman Conrad Liscomb Union Whitten.) As all football goes, Wapsie Valley beat the teams that weren’t very good, and lost to the teams that they knew they couldn’t beat. This year with having family on the team, I was hoping that they would pull an upset over Denver or Sumner-Fredericksburg. But as we can see that didn’t happen.

Coach Tony Foster has done a great job with the Wapsie Valley Warriors over these past 11 years. A few of his personal achievements are two state Championships and two undefeated seasons   (’07 and ’12.) But as a school they’ve won five. Which is impressive for a small school. But with Tony Foster getting up in age, I hope to see them win a couple most state titles. Because who else loves state titles more that small towns? In small towns your high school sports are everything, not winning a game and know that you should have won is the worst thing. You then add on that you disappointed your whole town is hard. And this year I wished it would have gone better. But there’s always next year, for the juniors and lower classman.

"Sports." Max Prep Sports Class-A. N.p., n.d. Web. Nov.-Dec. 2015. 

Top 5 Quarterbacks in NFL

Top 5 Quarterbacks in the NFL

Here I’m going to take a step back from baseball and talk a little bit about Football. Now many people will have different opinions on this one. But here are my top 5 Quarterbacks.

Number 1 Quarterbacks Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady

            Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers are two very similar players, but also very different players. To start, Tom Brady is a 38 year old, 6’4” 225 pounds quarterback. Brady also has 16 seasons under his belt and 4 Superbowl rings. He’s now one of the few Quarterbacks with more than 400 touchdown passes (only people including Brady.) Now after we look at total yards, which he has 54,957 yards, which is more than 24,000 yards than Aaron Rodgers. But on the downside Tom has 71 total fumbles to Aaron Rodgers only 39 fumbles. As we look at the average yards per play its 7.46. In the end Tom Brady will only play for 2 more years max, because let’s face it he can’t take many hits anymore.

            Aaron Rodgers is a special guy, after being the back-up QB to legend Brett Favre. Rodgers had some huge shoes to fill. With only 11 years of experience he’s only thrown for just over 30,000 yards and 241 touchdowns. But, what’s very impressive is that he averages 8.22 yards per play and a completion rate of 66%, which is awesome. As I look through his statistics we can see his touch down to interception ratio started very high in his career with throwing 31 int. in his first seasons. But now throwing 27 in 5 seasons, his numbers are now dropping which is nice to see. But with having only winning one Superbowl is a little depressing, hopefully he can win a couple more. 

Number 3 Quarterback Philip Rivers

            I know what you’re thinking, really Philip Rivers. Yes, even though he plays for the Chargers he’s still been very consistent. I have to go with Philip Rivers as #3 not just because of how under-rated he is, but of how good he is at moving outside the pocket and staying in and finding his target early. Despite having an average QBR (Quarterback Rating) of 63.1. The only thing that’s depressing about
Rivers is the fact he’s thrown 127 interceptions, which is roughly 11 per year. Still is 11 per year, but interceptions are never good. But overall Philip averages 7.9 yards per play. Comparing that to Tom Brady who only averages about 7.50 yards per play. It’s okay that he’s thrown 127 interceptions because he plays for the San Diego Chargers. And the chargers are a terrible team.

Number 4 Quarterback Andrew Luck

            As you’re wondering why Luck is so far down on the list, it’s all because he isn’t playing too well. But after all he is Andrew Luck and in his past three years have been pretty good. Andrew Luck is a young lad, he’s only 26. Which is explains a lot of things. Coming in from Stanford I can understand why any coach would love to have him on their team.  He’s so far down on the list because of the crappy season that he’s having so far. In four years Luck has thrown just under 100 passes for an average of 25 a year. Not too bad at all. Luck’s average is 7.1 yards per play and when we look at the 3 quarterbacks above, he isn’t doing too bad. Looking now at his completion percentage of 58.3% which of a young guy like him isn’t too bad also with 14,355 total yards in his career. To add he has 52 total interceptions. All together Andrew Luck is a good quarterback, he just needs to eliminate the interceptions and trust his wide receivers more.

Number 5 Derek Carr

            Now Derek Carr is fairly new to the whole NFL game. Being from Fresno State, he wasn’t in a very good conference. But, he made to the big show and playing for a team that needs more help than their baseball team the Oakland A’s. Carr is showing some positive numbers. Just like his completion percentage is just over 60% and has a little over 5,000 yards in the air. Despite only having three wins last year, the Raiders now have four wins and 3 loses. If you would have told me that the Raiders would maybe have a winning season then I would have called BS. Derek Carr is probably one of the best young quarterbacks in the league. In a couple more years they could maybe make the playoffs. Carr is on the upswing and hopefully the team is buying what he’s selling.

Notable Mentions: Eli Manning, Peyton Manning, Colin Kaepernick, and Andy Dalton

The Postseason: Cubs and Mets

                As we look at the New York Mets verses Los Angeles Dodgers games I saw a couple of recurring things. For starter I saw Clayton Kershaw choke yet again, Zach Greinke have another good outing. One the other hand the New York Mets have played fairly well, which was surprising.

                As we look at Game 2 the Mets got out to a rough start with a 3 up 3 down type of first inning. But so did the Dodgers. Things didn’t start to heat up until the top of the second inning when both Céspedes and Conforto hit homeruns against Zach Greinke. Which is impressive because there has been only 14 homeruns hit against him. As the game progressed, it was 2-0 for a while which made the game a little boring. Things didn’t start to heat up again until the bottom of the seventh inning. The real big turning point for the game was when Noah Syndergaard walked Enrique Hernandez and let Chase Utley single to right. But the best decision made by New York Mets was certainly taking out Syndergaard and putting in Bartolo Colon. See Colon is 42, he’s the oldest player in the MLB right now. And he’s dealing just nicely.

But the one play that really is getting heated was the Chase Utley and Ruben Tejada got into a little collision. Chase Utley was sliding into second base when they were trying to turn a double play. At that moment Chase Utley completely missed the base to take out Tejada in result he now has a broken leg. But in baseball, we’re taught to break up the double play, but not that badly. But Ruben Tejada is okay, which is good. As they were introducing players at the next game, the Announcer called out Chase Utley’s name everyone booed at him.

All and all it was a great game to watch.  

The Player Edition: The 48 Year Old Rookie.

When I talk about Will Ferrell, most people will say what a funny guy he is or how many movies he’s made. But I one of his greatest accomplishments is when he played on 10 different teams and playing 10 different positions all in one day.

Now let’s think about this, what’s the real reason he’s doing this? At first I wondered if this was just a huge publicity stunt. And there’s no doubt in my mind that it was. But it was all for a good cause. As I started to watch the documentary and the reviews of this I learned all of this was for “Cancer for College.” College for Cancer is an organization who offers college scholarships to children, teens, and young adults. In a matter of one day Ferrell helped donate one million dollars.

In this 2015 film, Will Ferrell embarks on a journey to play on ten different baseball team, while playing all ten positions. Now you’re thinking to yourself there isn’t ten positions in Baseball!! Ferrell also played Designated Hitter for the Chicago White Sox. The ten teams Will played for were Arizona Diamondbacks, Los Angeles Angels, Los Angeles Dodgers, San Diego Padres, Cincinnati Reds, Oakland Athletics, Seattle Mariners, Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox, and the San Francisco Giants. Now besides him playing all ten positions, my favorite parts are when he got traded from team to team. He threw these fits and threw Gatorade tubs in the dugout. But after that he’d go and change and go to the next team.

College for Cancer and Will Ferrell have been working together for years. As it explained in the documentary Ferrell and Craig Pollard (Founder of College for Cancer) have been friends for years. They’ve been trying to come up with a way to raise a large sum of money for kids. There final idea was a baseball game, which rapidly turned into Ferrell Takes the Field.

As I watched this documentary, I truly felt a part of the game as well. Even though Ferrell said “Was I the best player out there today? Maybe. Maybe? Can you all chant that with me? Maybe maybe maybe!!” At this point in the day it doesn’t matter how cocky he was, the point is that he raised over one million dollars. Pollard and Ferrell gave hope to kids everywhere. And in my book that’s all okay with me. I suggest that you Watch “Ferrell takes the Field.”

For Tate

Week 1: Green Bay Packers at Chicago Bears

     The NFL has many rivalries such as Seattle and San Francisco, Minnesota and Green Bay, Baltimore and Pittsburgh. But, the most notable rivalry in history is the Chicago Bears and the Green Bay Packers, dating back to 1921. All of this hype was started by the legendary Coach Vince Lombardi.  

      This rivalry means much more to these fans than what meets the eye. Since 1921 the Chicago Bears have lead the series 93-90-6 which is extremely close for a rivalry that's been going on for more than 90 years. With two of the largest names in the NFL battling it out at least twice in the regular season, Aaron Rogers in slowly putting the Green Bay Packers back on top. On the other hand Jay Cutler is slowly running the organization into the ground. Back in the 1970s and the early 1980s the Bears just dominated the rivalry. Players like William "The Fridge" Perry and Walter Payton were such dominate players, the Packers just couldn't preform in the draft like the Bears did. Now that Aaron Rogers is Quarterback he's now 11-4 all-time against the Bears. The only Quarterback to have a better record against Chicago is Brett Favre.         

      As we saw in the season opener we didn't know what to expect, with Chicago being 5-11 and the Packers being 13-5 last season. Both teams kept the game very close, which was very surprising. Even with the Packers not having Star Wide Receiver Jordy Nelson they still ended up pulling out the win. Surprising as it is, the Bears were the first to score with a field goal. It wasn't until the end of the first quarter that Green Bay finally scored. After a lot of back and forth play in the Second quarter is when the game was all tied up again at 10-10. The game didn't get interesting until the 3rd and 4th quarter, when the Packers started to rack-up the points against the Bears. Once Green Bay got on a roll Chicago couldn't stop them. Every time the Packers scored the Bears came right back with either a touchdown or a field goal, but the Bears just couldn't keep up with them. 

      This was the first game of the season for both teams. As everyone knows, first games never go well and this game was no different. But who knows, maybe one of them could be Superbowl champions. But until next time...





For Wesley.