Via Kottke, and Craftzine.

Interesting to see how they’re made.  Makes the laces make a lot more sense, though it does seem to dismiss the idea of pigskins.  Apparently, according to Wikipedia, footballs were never actually made of pigskin, but early on where covered with pig’s bladders, and even further back, were actually just inflated pig bladders, though never actually pig skin.

It is worth noting that he says they make all the NFL game balls there, but not that they make all Wilson footballs there, or even all NFL branded Wilson footballs.  I actually just recently bought a Wilson football, which says “NFL” in gold embossing on the side, which also says “Made in China” in much smaller print on the bottom.

On one hand, it’s easy to get all nationalistic about work being shipped overseas (there’s more than a couple youtube comments rejoicing in the fact that something is still made in the USA).  On the other hand, I know that at least I personally can’t even imagine working the same job, repeating the same 5 second action cycle over and over and over and over… for 40+ years.

And, for that matter, watching it, I can’t help but think, “I bet I could come up with an algorithm to fit more cuts on the same piece of leather, and get more sections out of a single hide”, or, “I bet a machine could make that part way more consistent”.  Which, I’m guessing is why my Wilson football was made in China.

Also, 30 days until Hawkeye Football.

Well, sans the Confederate flag in the background anyway.

Video via Black Heart Gold Pants

They do.

On campus.

That their students get to use.

Ummmm, perhaps we should avoid pouring salt in old wounds for a while….

Nah.

After all, we’ve got freaking laser beams (though no sharks that I know of).

Two years ago:

Last year:

This year, depending on the which poll you believe, it will be #18 vs #20, or #17 vs #22 this Saturday, 7pm Central. If history is any indicator, it should be a good one.

What's that sound?

I’ll be the first to admit that when we started doing the whole “all the fans wear the same color” thing, I loved it. I thought black outs at Iowa were the greatest thing ever. Until I saw one from field level… and noticed that you can’t really see shirts so much as everyone’s faces from that angle… and realized just how white our fan base is, and that is was more of a grey out than anything.

The gold out at night against Ohio State looked awesome, though it was pretty well tainted by the game.

In fact, it seems like on the whole, we tend to lose themed games more than not. So, I’ve pretty well soured on them.

But this one, even assuming it works, how long do you think it will be before someone photoshops it up to look like, well, hell, it’s going to happen anyway, so it might as well be done by one of our own…

Buuuuzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!

At least we thought of it before Georgia Tech. Unfortunately no one told us we’re not the Yellow Jackets / Ramblin Really Nice Old Car.  Though, it wouldn’t be so bad to have the pretty sweet Nice New Camaro Bumblebee from the dog shit terrible Transformers movie as a mascot (I’m not sure exactly how that’s related, but in my mind it is).

This was also accompanied by the Tim Tebow drinking game – while watch college football at any point in the last season, drink any time the announcers mention Tim Tebow.  Two if he’s not on the field at the time.  Three if neither of the teams playing in the game you’re watching is Florida.  You get trashed, fast.

I didn’t make much of it, because I thought of the game near the end of the season, and I figured it wouldn’t work after Tebow disappeared into being a backup on some NFL team for a few years.

I was wrong.

Last weekend, I had a preseason NFL game on in the background, and it happened to be the Steelers vs the Broncos.  Did I mention Tebow apparently ended up with the Broncos?  So, I figured I’d try out the old Tim Tebow Drinking Game again.  It still works.  Really well.  I finished a beer in less than one offensive drive.  In maybe 5 minutes of football, the announces said Tebow’s name 14 times.  Which doesn’t count the number of times that they referred to him simply as “He” (and yes, I’m pretty sure they capitalized it while they spoke), because it was obvious who they were talking about, because he was all they were talking about.  For the entire drive.  Which he didn’t even score on.  For reference, if I had held to the “3 if Florida isn’t on the field” clause, that would have been 42 drinks in five minutes, or roughly three and a half cans of beers.

If you care to give it a try, the Vikings and the Broncos will be kicking off their last preseason game shortly (Thursday at 7:30 pm central).

Part of me wants Tebow to be the starter in the regular season so the drinking game can stay alive.  However, another part of me doesn’t want him to start because that part would like to be with me past 40, and it’s name is my liver.

I know this doesn't really make sense, since he'll be at the game, and playing, and could avenge himself, but roll with it.

Well, it turns out LOLStanzi (the version of Stanzi that exists in the LOL world) hatched a plot not long after that particular incident…

It's on.

You don’t want to disappoint the man, after all he’s done for you.  I mean, this is a man who not only loves his Hawkeyes, but who loves AMERICA.

So let’s fill Ryan Field with some Gold clad Iowa fans.  You can buy tickets here.

Love it or leave it bitches.

Via Black Heart Gold Pants.

Also, this video points out something that I hadn’t thought of before – the first thing the players see when they walk out of the tunnel is the water tower.  We really need to paint that thing.

So far, we know for sure that Colorado is leaving the Big 12 for the Pac-10.  If things were to stop with this, the Pac-10 would then have 11 teams, as would the Big 12 (11). However, it would seem a lock that Nebraska will be leaving the Big-12 (now 11) as well. They would be headed to the Big 10, which currently has 11 teams, which with Nebraska would be 12.  So, we would have 12 Big 10 teams, 10 Big 12 teams, and 11 Pac 10 teams.  One would have to assume this would beget renaming the conferences to align with their new number of institutions, to make the Big 10 the Big 12, the Big 12 the Big 10, and the Pac 10 the Pac 11 unless we throw out USC for their recent violations making the Pac 10′s 11 10 again.

However, it doesn’t stop there. There’s more talk that the Big 12 with 10 teams (not to be confused with the Big 10 with 12 teams that had 11 before) could further loose more teams to any mix of the Pac 10 (11), the Big 10 (12), or the SEC (number withheld to protect the innocent). If, from the remaining Big 12′s 10 teams, Texas and Texas A&M were to leave for the Pac 10 (11 carry the two for 13) that would leave the Big 12 with 8 teams, not to be confused with the former Big 8, which became the Big 12 when they added 4 teams (how reasonable), and would make the Pac 10 13, the Big 10 12, and the Big 12 8 (but not, mind you, the Big 8).

With all of this, there is of course speculation that both the Pac 10 now 13 and the Big 10 now 12 (but not the Big 12, or 8) would then want to continue to expand to 16 teams each, further dissolving the Big 12 to the Little One. This would thus make the Pac 10 16 and the Big 10 16 and the Big 12 one, and we could then just rename them all to the Pac 16, the Big 16, and the Big Nothing Plus One (presumably Iowa State on both accounts), removing a lot of confusion.

And, never failing to look long term, one could see a day where the Pac 16 and the Big 16 would want to merge into one super-conference which would of course be known by one of two names.

In the first case, the conference would be known as Every Relevant Football Team – West, which would then compete with Every Relevant Football Team – East, aka the merged SEC/ACC, aka SAC, and thus replacing the BCS with the ERFT playoffs, which the ERFT-West would dominate.  The yearly playoff would thus be nicknamed The Annual SAC Kicking Contest.  The beer commercials at half time would be epic.

In the second case, the merged Pac 16 and Big 16 would choose to combine their names to form the Pig 32, which the still excluded and horribly confused Iowa State would attempt to mate with, producing a new, wildly deformed chimera offspring conference. The new Monster Conference would by genetics consist half of relevant football teams, and half of Iowa State, thus mirroring the current Iowa / Iowa State rivalry, but on a much larger and more horrifying scale. I’m also pretty sure it would be a signal of the end times.

Notre Dame (still independent) would then attempt to engage in a battle (football) with Monster Conference in a final contest of good vs evil (I’ll let you be the judge as to which side is which in a half-pig/half-ISU vs Fainting Irish contest) in order to bring about the Apocalypse as foretold in the book of Revelations.  However, Monster Conference would be confused as to whom “Notre Dame” is, as it would have long since been relegated to little more than a folk tale among devoted Catholics and viewers of NBC, with little recognition in the outside world.  Monster Conference would then assume the challenge from “Notre Dame” was just a prank phone call and hang up, thus avoiding the Apocalypse and making the world immortal.  Logically this would cause my Iowa Hawkeyes to be crowned The World Champions Of All College Football Forever Amen.  This would of course take place at the Rose Bowl.

Hope that clears everything up.

Now, that number has trimmed down slightly, and there’s always potential for injury and suspensions/legal issues, but if you actually count all the players listed in that first article that could play running back, we’re still at something like 13 or 14 guys who could play the position.  Which got me thinking, why could we possibly want that many running backs?

And then it struck me, this could be nothing other than the absolute offensive genius of Ken O’Keefe finally coming to fruition.  (In case you were wondering, yes, it was actually physically painful to even ironically type the phrase “the absolute offensive genius of Ken O’ ahhhhhhhh.)

Obviously, while Ken was watching tapes of the Georgia Tech’s unstoppable Triple Option offense to prepare for the Orange Bowl, he saw something he liked, but saw room for improvement.  (Yeah, I don’t know why an offensive coordinator would be watching tape of the other team’s offense to prepare for a bowl game, but it’s Ken O’Keefe we’re talking about here, so let your mind float a bit, it’ll help.)

During the Orange Bowl, we saw the much praised Triple Option of Georgia Tech absolutely stuffed, held to a mere 155 yards of total offense.  And with this, O’Keefe’s suspicions were confirmed.  He had seen the fatal flaw in Georgia Tech’s otherwise perfect offensive scheme.  It wasn’t that, as many have claimed, the Triple Option is a gimmicky offense which relies on poor defensive tackling mixed with ill-prepared opponents being caught off guard by it’s novelty.  No, as Ken realized, the its one fatal flaw is that it’s not gimmicky or novel enough.  It’s not that focusing almost exclusively on lateraling the ball makes a team one dimensional.  Well, actually, it is, and that’s where the genius comes in.  Don’t be one dimensional.  No, no, not what you would think- actually having a balanced running and passing game.  That’s crazy talk.  We need to be not only two, but three dimensional.  We need to be not just twice as good as Georgia Tech, we need to be exponentially better.  And that’s when our new offense crystallized in Ken O’Keefe’s mind.

The Triple Option… Squared.

Here’s how it will work.  The ball will be snapped directly to a running back, who will in turn have a running back on either side of him.  He’ll have the option to hand it off to either of them, keep it himself, or start running with it, and then lateral it to one of them, who will then have all the same options.  Sounds just like the Triple Option so far, but you’ve forgotten that we’ve raised this offense to the second power.  This is where those 9 running back start to make sense.  They’re all going to be on the field at the same time.

After the first three running back do their magic, if somehow the defense hasn’t completely fallen apart by this point, there will be another row of three more running back behind the first three that we can lateral the ball back to.  Oh, and it doesn’t stop there.  Oh no!  Yes, there will be ANOTHER row of 3 running backs behind the second row to whom the second row can lateral back to.  Or maybe one of them will pass it forward to one of the first waves of running backs.  You just don’t know do you?  It will be like D-Day on a football field.  Wave after wave of running backs crashing over the defense.  Chaos and bodies flying everywhere!!

Now you may be saying, “Don’t you have to have at least a few guys on the line of scrimmage?  I mean, it’s in rules.”  Why yes, it is, and we will.  Some of the running backs will actually line up on the line of scrimmage, and then run backward to get behind the first wave to form the second and third waves.  Or will they?  See how confused the defense will be?  Nine potential guys to carry the ball, some running forwards, some running backwards, some doing jumping jacks in place just to fuck with you.  And wave after wave after wave of bodies crashing and lateraling and faking and running and passing and reversing!!!  There’s just no way to defend against this!!!!

You may also be saying, “Triple Option Squared…  Nine Running Backs… but… who will the other guys on the field be?  We need 11, right?”   Well, isn’t it obvious?  First we need someone to snap the ball.  And there’s only one guy who can make this offense any more terrifying than it already is – Adrian Clayborn.  You just wet yourself a little, didn’t you?  Just imagine what defenses will do.

Okay, that takes us to 10 players.  We need one more.  And this is where we get practical.  At some point, in all likelihood, with all the confusion, and defensive players’ tears getting on the ball, it’s going to get slippery and pop out.  And as we saw this season, there is no player better at magically appearing under, or magnetically attracting, a loose ball than Tyler “Jimmer-Jamming” Sash, so, we’ll line him up at wide receiver.

With that offense, and most of our 2009 defense returning, I predict the 2010 college football season will actually end not with Iowa in a BCS Championship Game, or the introduction of playoffs, but in week three when all 118 other college football teams decide to universally forfeit the season to Iowa.  Further play will be suspended until enough running backs can be recruited by all opposing teams so that they can implement the new scheme as well to have any chance at competing.  This will lead to Iowa being declared National Champion by collective forfeit in 2011 as well.

Thus it has been said, thus it shall be done.

South Beach and it’s residents seem to see themselves as (and may well be, I don’t keep track of these things) the center of fashion and stylishness for America and possibly the world.  They’re all very, very well dressed in whatever the latest style is.  At the same time that this would probably make them noticeable anywhere else, in South Beach, everyone is so in tune with the latest fashions, that they all end up looking basically the same (at least to my uncultured eyes).  It’s almost like there’s a dress code / uniform for the whole area, which probably changes about every two weeks.  They also seem to tend to be very fit (and dress to show it (or maybe cover it up where lacking)) and very tan.  I also don’t usually tend to notice plastic surgery, but wow, plastic people everywhere in South Beach.  There was also the highest concentration of Ethiopian refugee grade skinny girls that I’ve ever seen in one place.  Like walking skeletons in mini-skirts.  Super gross, but still trying to show it off.

In addition, it was also *by Miami standards* really cold while we were there.  Highs around 60-65, and lows around 40.  Yeah, I know, it was about 5 (above) when I got on the plane to go down, there was frozen puke (New Year’s morning) at the bus stop on the way to the airport.  But 40′s are apparently near record lows for them.  The natives were bundled up, in layers and layers and layers.  Sweaters, stocking caps, gloves, the whole bit.

They also all seemed to be rather serious and self-conscious.  Not in an unconfident way, just a being very aware of how they look and how others are looking at them.  And, perhaps because we were in an area pretty heavy in shops and restaurants, so lots of service industry people, they tended to all be in their 20′s and 30′s.  Though that could be the plastic surgery talking.

In contrast to that were the Iowa fans, who I love.  Totally on vacation, and caring about fashion and style even less than Mid-westerners normally do, which is already basically not at all.  Tigerhawks and “IOWA” on every shirt, fuck Dolce and Gabbana – our defense would kill them both, whoever they play for.  T-shirt stretched over a beer gut and stained jeans?  Sounds like an outfit to me.  XXL t-shirt on a XL frame and athletic short?  Let’s head to the beach!  It’s not that Iowa fans look bad by any means, it’s just that by and large, they couldn’t care less about designers or the latest trend.  Especially when on a vacation that centers around a sporting event.  And they’re not necessarily unfit (though, I would say on average we’ve probably got 25-50 pounds on South Beachers), but fitness for us is centered around being able to do the job at hand (usually farming) even if there is some padding over the muscle, rather than centered around looking toned at the beach.

To sum up the fitness part, I noted a few times from looking at the size and build of the Iowa fans and at the locals, that if a fight were to break out between the Iowa fans and the locals, every dollar I have or could borrow would be on the Iowa fans, and I’d gladly take 2 to 1 odds on that.

The Iowa fans also skewed more towards the 40-ish and 50-ish age range.  I would assume because that’s more of who has the resources to be able to fly down to Miami for a quick vacation.

So, needless to say, seeing the two groups mixing and passing on the street while you sat and ate was one of the more entertaining things on the trip (aside from the game of course).

The really weird part is that both groups have this same air of pride about them, but at the same time, a totally different form of it.  South Beachers have a sort of pride in appearance and their own perception of their social place at the forefront of culture and fashion.  Iowans I have a harder time analyzing, since I am one, but sort of a pride in being strong, independent, resilient, tough, caring, good people.  A sort of hereditary German pride in some sorts.

Anyway, an interesting compare and contrast while you’re sitting at a sidewalk cafe eating pizza and watching people walk by.

Now, on to some pictures.  First, this was still up in the Minneapolis airport when I flew out on the first:

It's what you do next that counts

Though Accenture was the first sponsor to drop Tiger Woods when he started hitting the news (and stationary objects such as trees and fire hydrants), apparently airport ads are on a bit of a slow rotation.  Also, all of their Tiger Woods posters went from sort of “eh?” to being downright insightful.  Someone also pointed out the new Accenture ads to me after I mentioned this.  Perhaps it’s just me, but when I first saw this one, I saw a rather small, blurry version like below, from a bit of a distance, and I thought to myself, “Why would they want their image to be a terrified elephant crouched on a melting iceberg off the coast of Antarctica?”  That makes no sense, and I’m pretty sure there is no part of that which is the image they want to get across.

"We know what it takes to be a... scared elephant?"

Then I realized that it’s not a terrified elephant crouched on a melting iceberg off the coast of Antarctica.  Rather, it’s a bi-pedal, hunchbacked elephant on a surf board riding a crappy wave.  Because that makes waaayyyy more sense.

Anyway, back to Miami.  We were walking on the beach, and my sister pointed out this great shot:

Beautiful, isn't it?

What’s that?  It’s just a bunch of hotels on the beach you say?  Ah, look closer…

Yep, that's a tigerhawk flag on the balcony on South Beach.

Now, I also generally think it’s sort of weird and creepy to take random picture of people you don’t know, but sometimes you just see things that are too awesome to resist sharing.

What appeared to be a hand knitted, Hawkeye sweater with an old school Herky on the back. Concentrated awesome.

And, hell, while we’re being creepy and posting some of my favorite fan apparel (which I’m now also noticing is probably a fair example of my above statements about Iowa fans and fashion and the cultural difference with the locals, especially, especially the second one below), here’s two more.

Six Seconds of Hell. With flames. There were a few of these around.

Valet Park This

What more can I say?

The team buses were also styling:

They had a couple of them like this.

Now a couple of pictures which illustrate as clearly as one can the distribution of fans for the game.

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

Admittedly Exhibit B was taken a little while before kick off, but Exhibit A was during the game.  And here’s the seating chart for the game:

Exhibit C

As you can see, each team’s athletic department is responsible for selling out about a quarter of the stadium.  This ensures some revenue for ticket sales for the bowl, and makes sure it feels like each team has a side.  These seats are indicated in grey in Exhibit C to illustrate that they’re not available through the Orange Bowl website, just through that team’s athletic department.  Now you may be saying, “Wait, Iowa left that many seats empty in their section?  No way!!  Well…, I guess it is a long trip, and it’s a recession and all, and they might have had their hopes up for the Fiesta…”.  No. No. No.

We were sitting in section 414.  Let’s orient those pictures for you:

Exhibit D

The Iowa sections was full.  Maybe not quite 100%, but at least 85%, and probably closer to 90%.  Plus there were lots of Iowa fans like myself who bought tickets in the neutral areas between the two (the colored seats in the above pictures).  In fact, basically all the fans in the neutral areas were Iowa fans.  Not exaggerating, probably 85% of the fans in both of the neutral corners were Iowa as well.  Granted, those sections weren’t completely sold out, but they were pretty well populated.  This means that Iowa, the traveling/visiting team, with no particular tie to the Orange Bowl (the ACC does have a tie in with the Orange Bowl), sold out at least half of the stadium, and probably more like 60-65% of the seats.  Now you’re saying, “So, Georgia Tech must have sold out the other 35-40% seats?”  No.  Not at all.  See Exhibit A.  In fact, let me clarify Exhibit A a bit with…

Exhibit E

So, Georgia Tech was tasked with selling, at minimum, 25% of the seats IN A BCS BOWL GAME.  In the picture above, I’ve circled a couple not so small holes in that 25% of the stadium.  And mind you, this was DURING THE GAME.  It’s not like these holes filled in when people came in from tailgating.  They stayed like that the whole time.   And then, there’s the elephant in the room, and it’s not even on a surf board this time.  What are those black bits?

Those are huge black tarps that were covering the upper half of basically all of the upper Georgia Tech sections.  I have no confirmation on this, but I would assume that their purpose is to make it less apparent to a TV audience that the stadium was not sold out.  This would make sense given the fan concentration just below these tarps, and the fact that they’re almost all in the Georgia Tech dedicated seating area.  Which means aside from the gaping holes circled in red that are sparse to empty, that not one single ticket was sold in the black tarp sections for the ACC CHAMPIONS to see their team compete in a BCS game BEING PLAYED THE NEXT STATE OVER.

In case you failed high school geography

As best I can tell, the tarps cover about 15 rows, and they’re over 14 sections, and each row is about 25 seats wide.  That means that by a back of the envelope calculation, that there were 5,250 seats under tarps in the Georgia Tech section.  Aside from that, there’s the holes in the lower section, the club level seating (the blue seats) are about 50-50, and the upper section outside the tarps is about 60% full.  So, let’s say that when we balance that out that Georgia Tech sold about half of the tickets in their quarter of the stadium, and we add in any stragglers they had in the rest of the place.  So, that puts us at around 15% of the tickets.  To Iowa’s 60-65%.

This is why I love my Iowa fans.  And why we always get invited to a bowl game one better than what our football team’s record would otherwise merit.

Anyway, the band was looking good, with the usual HAWKS formation:

HAWKS

As well as a new one that I hadn’t seen before.

HMB Tigerhawk

We always talked about wanting to make a Tigerhawk while I was in band, but it never happened because we weren’t very good at big, field wide curves while I was in, and that’s basically all a Tigerhawk is.  Have you ever tried drawing one free hand?  It’s impossible to get it right.  Drawing a perfect circle free hand would be easier.  But the band seemed to pull it off pretty well.  Hopefully it will become a mainstay of the pre-game show.

And a few pictures of the post-game festivities:

The players coming over to celebrate with the fans

The players on the stage for the trophy presentation

Ferentz getting the trophy

Adrian Clayborn. I'm so happy he's coming back for another season.

Clayborn gets the MVP trophy.

About as pretty as a jumbotron gets.

And I quite like that last one, so I played with it in GIMP (free PhotoShop) a little bit, and squared it up to look more straight on, and cropped out the rest.

Orange Bowl Champions

You can click on the image to get a bigger version of it.  It would make a great desktop background.  On every computer you touch.  Just saying.

I also tried taking some video while I was at the Hawkeye Huddle and at the game.  Random fact – the Orange Bowl has only ever had two occasions on which teams did their own pep rallies before the game, in 2003 and 2010.  Both times it was Iowa.  Apparently we’re the only team that does Hawkeye Huddles or equivalents.  So, on that note, here’s the Hawkeye Marching Band playing the short version of On Iowa at the Hawkeye Huddle from about half way back in the crowd:

A clip from Thriller:

I have no idea why that has become a sort of band tradition now. They play it all the time. The only reason I can think is because the dance is kind of fun to do. And it pisses me off to no end that they play it after the third quarter of games instead of Hey Jude. But don’t get me started on that, or any of the many other HMB traditions that Kevin Kastens and Myron Welch have combined to destroy.

Deep Breath.

And here is a full version of Hey Jude:

Ah, that makes me feel better.

And a small chunk of the series as the band marches out. Admittedly probably the most boring clip of the bunch. I was expecting them to march out through the crowd, but they went out through the back of the stage. Probably makes a lot more sense, but not quite as entertaining to watch.

And I did a quick 360 panorama of the crowd at the end of the Hawkeye Huddle to show about how big it is. This was right at the end, so people were starting to filter out:

And, the last few plays of the Orange Bowl, starting with a Georgia Tech 4th down, then an orange Gatorade shower (a little early) for Ferentz, a few kneel downs, and the starting of the post game celebration, with a bit of In Heaven There Is No Beer in the background: