Mike Leach fired?

I would like to start off by saying I am not a Texas Tech fan, much less a fan of college football. I only know about this story because it has been popping up on my Igoogle page quite a bit and I caught something on ESPN about him locking a kid up in a small dark closet.

So I started watching and reading and this is what I get from it - the kid, Adam James, is a spoiled rich kid who is lazy and a blamer. Of course I don't know him personally, but what I have read that other people are saying about him, including his other coaches, past coaches and people that have played football with him, he is a lazy athlete and everything is always someone else's fault.

From what I have read he is even lucky he is playing Division I football in the first place. No other team offered him anything during or after his senior year in high school. His celebrity dad approached Leach with a highlight reel and against his fellow coach’s opinions; he gave the crybaby a scholarship.

Even being so lucky, he still whined about his playing time and was lazy in practices. Players even mention how "negative" he was and that he would bring other players down, often telling other players they don't have to listen to the coaches or do what they say because they have to play them any way.

Oh and that small shed he claims he was put in, it is the white building in the picture. Being put in a dark cooler area is actually to speed up recovery if he really did have a concussion.

Why is this crybaby doing this? Apparently because the coaches made him and some other receivers run bleachers for slacking off in practice a week earlier. The trainer in charge of their "punishment" says the crybaby was rude the entire time while the others accepted it and did it.

Texas Tech has fired the coach, without any proof he did anything wrong. This is before their bowl game. What an easy way to not have to pay the coach his $800,000 bonus that is due at the end of the season. I think this is going cost Texas Tech a lot more then that considering Leach has a pretty good lawsuit under development.

All of this is happening because of a spoiled rich kid not getting his way.

Well the Boys did what I expected

I knew the Cowboys would win this game, and it wasn't only wishful thinking. The Saints near loses proved they weren't immortal and I figured if they were going to lose any game this almost perfect season it was going to be against the Cowboys.

As I mentioned in a previous post, the Cowboys are better then what people think. And with their life basically on the line, it was just a matter of making one or two plays they have been missing in their loses to be able to topple the perfect season of the Saints.

I knew the Saints would not blow them out, I expected a low scoring close game or a blowout by the Cowboys. Although it was neither of those expectations, Dallas clearly out played the Saints.

And Romo played extremely well again, December has been good to his stats this year. The defense stepped up, and for once the play calling went deep. They finally let Romo throw the deep ball and it worked in more ways then just the touchdown. It made the defense realize they could get burned, and basically softened the D up overall.

I am gonna say Brees dropped out of that MVP hunt leaving it to Peyton and Favre. I like Drew Brees and I like the Saints alot. I was actually hoping they would win because I would like to see 2 teams go 16-0, but I knew Dallas was gonna break that up.

I know the Cowboy bashing will continue, now people are gonna hate them because they ruined the Saints hope to perfection. Oh well, maybe they can ruin some more dreams along the way in the playoffs :-)

tweirdos roam twitter - the spazzy side of twitter

A quick catch up - when I started twitter I thought the amount of people that follow you was the benchmark on how successful your account was. So I built a script that I could type in a keyword and it would auto follow anyone who mentioned that word in a tweet. There was about a 10% - 20% return on who followed you back. I thought I found a great way to get followers.

Fast forward 10 months or so - I now see that followers do not really mean much since most are just spam accounts anyways. My friends timeline was pretty much unreadable. So I wrote another script to unfollow everyone and start over fresh. I realized that people would unfollow me too, but I was fine with that. I wanted quality followers who actually read my content.

So I unfollow everyone, follow a few back I remember and tweeted that I unfollowed everyone and to @ reply me and I will follow you back. I figure this would be a great way to weed out the bots and spam accounts and I knew the people I already know would reply back.

As expected I lost close to 1500 followers the first full day. What I didn’t expect was to get a disgruntled tweet swung in my direction because of it.

@iamdamnsam U DONT FOLLOW ME SCREW YOUR BLOG - from EastDallasAlice (reminded me of Debbie does Dallas for some reason). That took me by surprise.

I replied to that with - @EastDallasAlice Guess you missed my tweet about me unfollowing everyone and to @ reply me if you want me to follow you :-P

I didn’t think people were like that on twitter, so far I haven’t seen one testy tweet. At first I thought it was kinda funny, thinking how anal she must be so I decided to look at her tweets.

@AmberAusten cAUGHT YA, i DONT FOLLOW YOU ANYMORE EITHER
@anz_rocks19 OK i DUMPED U 2 AND i BET U DONT LOOK ANYTHING LIKE THE BODY U USE
@clancymanuel cAUGHT U AND COMPOSER, MUSCIAN, FILMAKER MY ASS
@philhawley sO WHAT DID i DO 2 YOU 2 MAKE YOU QUIT FOLLOWING ME. oH DONT BOTHER i DUMPPED YOU 2.
@OK i QUIT FOLLOWING YOU 2 A HOLE
@thierryleyva OPPS iM NOT FOLLOWING YOU ANYMORE.
@AmberAusten What are you Refering 2. Did I catch you not following m e anymore? Sorry, I don't show mercy 2 peeps who drop me
@texasbeaut yea and u dumped me so goodbye texas beauty who cant show her face, ho ho

Wow, that is just from one day. She had way too may RTs of other people's Follow Friday tweets (tons) I didn’t dare scroll through her spam to get to any other day. Seeing all of those spaz out tweets showed me a psycho side of twitter.

I followed up with a retweet - RT @EastDallasAlice: @iamdamnsam U DONT FOLLOW ME SCREW YOUR BLOG - that will get you followers 0.o

Her reply to that (apparently she ignored my first one about @ reply me back)- @iamdamnsam Well whatever u can zip your pants up or whatever, Im gone

Zip my pants up? What the hell is that? I just had to reply to that - @EastDallasAlice LOL! Way to be a biaaaaatch, that will get you followers :-P I looked at your tweets, you got anger issues, see a shrink

Hey, I know, arguing on the internet is dumb, but it was fun and judging by the intelligence of her posts it was going to be a one sided battle :) I didn't really want to argue as much as rib her.

Her wittiness followed up with - RT @iamdamnsam: @EastDallasAlice LOL! Way to be a biaaaaatch, that will get you followers :-P You are a stupid idoit u are blocked dumbass

And then - RT @iamdamnsam: Oh and bbbtw i am a shrink, you poor pathetic idiot

LOL! A shrink huh. Right. Then you should already know about your psycho-ness :) Just curious, but has anyone else encountered people having a cow on twitter because you unfollowed them? I would love to hear the story :)

What does everyone have against the Cowboys?

I don't know what it is, maybe it is Jerry Jones? Maybe it is the deep pockets the team and its owner has? Who knows, but I get tired of hearing about how horrible they are, they are fake, Romo sucks, blah blah blah blah blah. The media bashing is ridiculous as well.

The Cowboys are 8-5. They have lost to the Giants twice, Broncos, Packers, and the Chargers. Not one of those teams is under .500. They have not been blown out this year and were in every game until the end. The average score they lose by is a measly 5.8 points. In my opinion every loss minus Green Bay was just down to 1 play, made FG or call. That is how close they are to being 12-1.

Now I don't think they are the best team, they could be a great team, but they aren't. I do think they are better then what the bashers think they are.

Take the Cardinals for instance. They have been highly praised and their recent loss to the 49ers is just being blown over. No big deal to the analysts, columnists and sports writers. The Cardinals are still a powerhouse in their eyes.

The Cardinals are 8-5 just like the Cowboys. They have lost to 49ers twice, Colts, Panthers and Titans. The only team over .500 that has beaten them is the Colts. They have lost 4 times to sub .500 teams. The average score they lose by is 11.2 points.

Yet the Cardinals still are not criticized like the Cowboys are. The Cardinals are ranked higher in every power ranking list these writers come up with.

Dallas is ranked 3rd in the NFL in total offensive yards. Cardinals are 14th. Dallas is 14th on defense yards allowed, Arizona 25th.

Arizona was just blown out by the 49ers (6-7); Dallas barely lost to the Chargers (10-3) and really should have won that game by 10. The Chargers are labeled as one of the hottest teams in the NFL yet they barely scraped by the "horrible" Cowboys.

Even the Defending Champion Steelers get less criticism then the 'Boys, and they have a losing record and are guaranteed not to make the Super Bowl.

I feel the biggest problem with the Cowboys is the coaching. Wade Phillips should not be the Head Coach, he is a great Defensive Coordinator, but he doesn't have what it takes to be a Head Coach. All the errors and penalties are fixed with coaching, and the Cowboys have a lot of those. He provides no motivation to the players. Look at Bill Cowher; he would chew someone's butt if they screwed up. All Wade does is roll his eyes or make a face.

I use to think Jason Garrett was a great Offensive Coordinator, but I don't think that anymore. He made bad play calls in situations where the right call could have helped win the game against the Broncos and Chargers. I have noticed throughout the season the play calling has been horrible.

I do not think Romo is a problem. He is a good quarterback, look at his stats this year and over his career. He is good and could be great with a good coach. Once he has enough passes to be able to get in the record books he will own some and be in the top 3 or 5 in a lot of categories. Not bad for this being only his 4th year. He is the main reason they have been in every game this year till the end.

I am hoping Wade gets canned after this year and they bring in a good head coach. Then they will have a chance to win the Superbowl. Who knows, if they get better play calling and clean up the mental errors they could contend this year.

WTF are newspapers thinking?

Requiring registration to see content that is available on thousands of sites that do not require registration is just plain stupid. Even worse are those that allow you to view a few articles before blasting the "You have to register" page.

For some reason, newspapers seem to think we owe them for giving us content that can be found elsewhere hassle free. We don't owe them anything, they owe us. Without us they are going to die.

I worked for a paper in Victoria, TX from 2000 - 2005 as a webmaster (I prefer web developer but whatever). I saw first hand how those stuck in their old ways and not willing to change with technology disliked the paper's website for "stealing their customers", blaming us for their dropping subscriptions.

What they didn't understand, and what most papers still don't get, is it isn't only the content you are providing, it is also the delivery. Make it hard for people to get your content and they will get it elsewhere.

They did start "getting it" around the time I was leaving, at least those in charge of what the web department was allowed to do. They moved from a navigation nightmare with talks of possible forced user registration to a more simplified (maybe it is just easier to look at) approach. They aren't forcing you to register, at least not at the time of this posting.

I personally think they went a little overboard trying to push the site into a social hub for Victoria. I mean it is a newspaper company, people go there for news, more importantly local news. Social networks is what facebook is for.

They have fixed one major issue, after I left they started to use yahoo! for their classifieds. What once was a nice collection of local ads turned into an overwhelming list of national ads with local ads hidden in the mix. They eventually axed that terrible idea and went back to local only. Good job.

Enough about my old job, the reason for this rant is about forced registration. The Dallas paper more specifically. I like to go there because of their stories on the Cowboys. I should be more specific, I don't just go to their website, I see their stories from a gadget on my Igoogle page. I have it setup with alot of sports sites so I can see the latest headlines from all of them.

So I see a headline that interests me, I click it and read it. In the stories sidebar they list related stories which I visit to read more on the subject (Cowboys), but after going to 3 stories they want you to register.

Blah. I immediately close that tab (I browse in tabs) when I get that registration page instead of the article I was seeking. I do this with any site that doesn't allow the content to show and wants you to register.

So today in the side bar I see at least 9 stories I would read, but I only get to read 3 (the one I initially go to plus 2 from the sidebar). That may only sound like I missed 7 pages, or rather they dropped 7 page views to show potential advertisers on their traffic stats, but it goes a bit deeper then that, it deters me from going to their site in the first place.

I will never type their URL in the browser because viewing their homepage will eat up 1 view. I will also not go to their article if the headline is similar to the many others I see. I actually now only go to that site if it is something I don't see on espn.com, si.com, foxsports.com or the many other "news" sites that allow free reign on their articles.

I am willing to bet many others do exactly what I do. So that means their loss of traffic becomes huge, and traffic is what will keep them up. I read all the time how these big papers are blaming Google for their loss in revenue. If anything Google is helping them, giving people an easy way to get to their content, but that is another rant for another day :)

The classic response will be "just sign up, it only takes 30 seconds, don't be lazy". Well I don't owe that to the paper, the paper owes me easy access for helping keep them alive.