It's Not Plagiarism If You Link To It Is Demanding A Collector's Cup In Its Next Contract Negotiation

Including the “blue tit”

I think they made that up.

But if the gulls are lifting the the tarp to dump on the raft, then shoot the bastard-birds.

When he had an aging team that finally imploded on him – he would let his team generally play its way out of slumps rather than ‘overcoach’. OTOH, the dude had talent in Chicago and LA over his career that few coaches in the modern era have had at their disposal.

I think you are right that you can overcoach the desire out of people (see Todd Lickliter) in trying to impose too much of a system formula to winning.

Kids in general need to play a LOT more without adult supervision IMHO. I was talking with a co-worker about this today; my daughter and son are here for their summer visit and she’s taking a soccer class this summer, he’s taking basketball. In his case, I’m making him take it because, well, he’s a lazy kid that would sit on his butt and do nothing all summer but play videogames and play on the computer (and he reads a lot too, which I don’t want to discourage) if I didn’t make him do something physical.

He likes to shoot baskets, so I really don’t care if he leans a lot of team basketball at this point as long as a) he’s off of his ass during the class and b) his shot improves. He’s not an athletic kid – neither was I at the same age (or now, I just run half marathons to stay in reasonable shape – I’m not a fast runner) – but he’s getting a little chubby at his mother’s house during the school year and she is in agreement that he needs to be outside more (of course, it would help if she would actually ENFORCE that herself, but that’s a different issue :-p).

My daughter has some athletic skills and, in fact, finished 2nd in Females 12 and under in a small 5K we ran together in this spring (we are running in another 5K together on Saturday). She loves to run, and wanted to try soccer, and is having a blast in this class, scoring two goals yesterday in her first day as a midfielder (she was the goalie the day before).

I’m on a tangent here, but hang with me if you’re reading this – LOL. My point is, when I was a kid in the early 70s, my friends and I would walk up to Perkins Elementary in Des Moines – which is a half block from the house I grew up in – and we’d play pickup basketball, or softball, or t-ball with whatever people we had on hand (soccer hadn’t really arrived as a thing for American kids to do… we did play some kill-em football padless when teens but not that much as no one really wanted to get hurt).

Did we have adults telling us to go play? Not really, except most of us had stay at home Moms that threw us out when we got too obnoxious in the summer. They knew we were at the field – my dad would do a pinkie whistle to let me know when it was time to come home for dinner – you could hear it from a half mile away – but the point the co-worker and I were discussing is we really don’t encourage kids to go off and play team games with loose rules anymore.

Kids have to be in leagues. They have to have practice. They have to have uniforms. Baby boomers such as myself are so paranoid from too much TV drama anymore that their kids will get snatched off the street if they go play with their friends unsupervised by adults. I don’t think the world is all that much meaner, personally, I think we’ve gotten way too paranoid, because there were child snatchers everywhere in the 60s and 70s as well. My GF remembers being a young girl in Sacramento and seeing a VW Bug – similar to the one Ted Bundy drove – stalking her one day as she walked home from school, and yeah, TB stalked people here in Sacramento. Freaks are everywhere.

I just think our kids would be better off if we threw them outside and made ‘em play. Lock up the videogames, turn off the TV, shut off the computers. There’s appropriate times for those things, but they shouldn’t dominate your life.

…and he dribbles into a corner and can’t get out.

There is actually a great discussion going on in US Soccer about this very issue.
We are trying to establish pro academies to counteract this very issue. Many MLS teams are establishing academies like they have in europe (England’s great teams have some really good academy setups). The idea is to develop soccer skills in an organized way that doesn’t leave kids playing YMCA plus local club teams plus regional teams plus their school teams (etc.- – practices AND games), the sum of which leaves no time for kids to just kick the ball around, and often burns out players to the point where they are never really “fit.”
Plus is allows players to really get to know their team and work toward a single coach’s style. Hopefully this will lead to teams that are more cohesive, allowing kids to really figure out their game, and possibly even help to establish a national soccer identity. [There’s the Spanish way, and the Italian form, and the English style, but USA doesn’t really have an identity other than “gritty.”]

A lot of high school and college teams are pushing against it because they’d lose their best players, but it’s something that’s important to the sport’s development and advancement in this country. The distance to MLS based cities is prohibitive, but Clint Dempsey used to be driven by his parents three hours (each way) across Texas, three times a week in the very early MLS days, so distance isn’t exactly an excuse.

I’m already in curmudgeon status, let me tell you. Young people SUCK! :)

My sister is on the east coast and would like to see him wrestle. I like the Berkeley area quite a bit, but my own bias is for the east coast. Also, he won’t have to worry about Ivy League schools canceling wrestling like he might if he went to Cal Poly (I think they might be the only program left in California)

He was actually around when fashions started. And when they came back around. And will be when they come back again.

How?

High Porch Picnic?

The demo had a bunch of little hype videos with it and one of them was for Road to Glory, which looked great. I’ve never really bothered much with that mode, but it looked pretty intriguing this year.

It is all about what would be the most intimidating name for a wrestler

Unless there are stories I’m not aware of, your Pitt hatred is just too far on one of the NFL greats.

Also, Kerry Collins retired. He told me at the tavern after buying about the 8th round for the entire bar “except for the colored staff”

for a G.L.O.W. wrestler.

I don’t give a damn about your feelings on Pitt, but you will NOT besmirch the name of Dan Marino!

Or I will find you and cut you!

Isotoner gloves? Really? In Miami?

so I think it’s time they moved on.

I’ll also need 20,000 Joshua Chamberlain action figures.