Being a primary member of The Content Webring, I take some ounce of pride in announcing a new content module for my site. Looking at the Non-Blog Content of the site, you will now see An American’s Guide to Soccer listed. If you are someone who wants to know more about soccer, as new or longtime fan or just someone who wants to know what the hubbub is all about, I hope you will find this a useful resource.
Right now the introduction is complete, but I plan on rolling out the rest of the sections over the course of the next week. I do not plan on posting here about when each section is complete, but I will post to my Twitter account, so you can follow that if you want to know when each section is posted.
A number of reports are coming in that José Mourinho is no longer the manager at Chelsea. I guess when you have a billionaire as an owner, 2 EPL titles, an FA Cup title and the League Cup isn’t enough if you also don’t win the Champions League. Out of all this Lloyd Carr and Charlie Weis still have jobs. Maybe the coaching carousel in the States isn’t as bad as it could be.
As you may have heard, there is some sporting event happening here in town tomorrow night.? After some luck, I was able to get tickets for the game and will be viewing it from the 11 row behind the north end zone at Kinnick.? I will also be wearing the shirt below to the game, hopefully in the middle of a bunch of OSU fans.
With the Game of the Week, Iowa City also plays host to College Gameday.? I have posted some setup pictures of Gameday on my Flickr account, but for those of you too lazy to go there, you can see that the setup is taking up most of Hubbard Park.
I am predicting a close game with both Tate and Smith making some big plays.? I don’t want to pick a winner in fear of offending the football gods, I just want a good game.? That being said, I am leaving everyone with this Moment of Zen.
Last night I knew that Everton was going to be playing Columbus of the MLS, but I did not think it was televised anywhere I could see, so I had reserved myself to that fact.? After dinner last night, I did some flipping of the channels and to my delight the match was being shown on ESPN2, so I got to watch the entire thing.? I was pleased with some of the play of Everton, however there was a lot of the match where they looked like a team that was getting back into sync.? I cannot say I am pleased about the result with a 1-1 tie, however since Columbus has been playing for half of a season and it is still preseason for the EPL, I can accept the result.? Needless to say, this did get me just a little more excited for the beginning of the league.
Taking Sports Guy’s lead, I have decided to find myself an EPL team to dedicate my time to. As if I didn’t have enough sports going on with Iowa, the Bucs, Cubs, occasional Formula 1, I decided that I also need to start watching English Premier League Soccer. So after reading through his reviews of each team and doing minor investigative work myself, I have chosen to support Everton for this season. Any team that can be described as being similar to the Oakland A’s, I am OK with. Making it easy to follow the team, I have the main Everton RSS feed and the BBC Everton news loaded up in Shrook and have the Everton schedule saved on my del.icio.us account. Combine that with the Fox Soccer Channel and I should have some fun following my new favorite team.
Northwestern State, you are welcome.? Watching the pregame for the national championship game, I saw that Northwestern State has won $100,000 for the Pontiac Gamechanging Performance of the tournament for their game winning shot over Iowa.? Here’s to remembering the shock of seeing the shot go in live and going to relive it for years and years to come.? All I have to say is if Jess Settles had a 10th year of eligibility, that shot wouldn’t have gone in.
The folks over at EverydayShouldBeSaturday.com have been reviewing college promos that run during the halftime of games, and they have now stumbled upon the Appalachian State promo (note, this is a video and has an ad at the beginning) that cannot not be properly described my me.? Luckily they have done their best job at trying to justify the promo’s existance with their post about it.? If you need a good laugh, take a few minutes to enjoy this all.
So while doing some random browsing on Google satellite photos today, I was surprised to find the picture for Pro Player stadium in Miami to have some Iowa football history. If you use Google Earth, you can get a bigger image of the same thing.
This is the blog for Mark Ahrens, a web kinda guy living in Iowa. You will find posts about my life, technology and music, in addition to a sprinkling of other things as well.
