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.