Hawkeye update

So this weekend was a great weekend for the Hawks. They picked up four more recruits, all two stars. Included are two tight ends, a quarterback, and an offensive lineman. There isn't much information about them, but this brings the total of Iowa commits up to 16 which is a good start. We should hopefully add about three or four more to get a real good class. We have two four stars: RB Brandon Wengher, and WR Keenan Davis. Both are great athletes and should fit into the team very nicely.

Basketball isn't going that good though. We're 12-8 and 10th in Big Ten play. That's out of 11. It's not like they're getting blown out every game though. They've come close to beating a few really good teams, but then blown it in the end to lose. They lost to 24th ranked Ohio State by three. They lost to 22nd ranked Minnesota by three. I'm starting to see a pattern. They have good players, and a good team, but they are just way too inconsistent. But it's still a turn around from last year when they had a losing record.

Wrestling on the other hand has continued it's dominance from last year. From what I know they have won every meet and are undefeated. They are ranked number one in the country and they have two wrestlers that are nunber one in the country for their weight class-Brent Metcalf and Ales Tsirtsis. Their are also five others in the top five. That's good.

So all of my teams are good and are where i want them to be. Todd Lickliter is in the process of rebuilding the basketball program, so I'm not to worried about that. The football team should be great next year, and Stanzi is even projected as a sleeper Heisman candidate. I don't know what that means but it sounds good. Also the wrestling team is dominating.

Vikings are going to be okay I think. Once they figure out the quarterback situation I think they are going to be a big Superbowl candidate. The defense is set, the RB is awesome, and the line is descent if not better than that.

Kennedy teams are doing pretty good. At least the ones i follow which is Basketball and Football. The basketball team is ranked 2nd in the state and is undefeated. The football team has the sophomores coming up, which their team has dominated everyone in the league for the past two years.

And finally Show Choir. If you read the last post you know how our season is going. Great, and rankings come out February second so i'll post about that and give the results

Show Choir

Now that the football season is over, there's going to be a huge shortage of material to write about. So I'm going to transfer over for a few posts and talk about something else that's a big part of my life: Show Choir. Sure some people think it's a little "gay" with all of the dancing and singing that's occurring. But it's not for everybody. Some guys that call it gay also like touching sweaty guys in skin tight clothes and trying to pin them to the ground to get on top of them. And that's cool. I'm not calling them gay. But anyways back to Show Choir. I'm in the varsity Show Choir, Happiness Inc. We have a great show and so far have had a great season with a surprising lack of fighting amongst others in the group. But the season is already well under the way so let me try to catch up real quick.

Our show is consists of five songs: Starting here/ Can you feel it, Transylvania Mania, Fix You, Abracadabra/ Magic Man, and Hung Up/ Please Don't stop the music. Now our show is very aerobic and we've had a hard time keeping a high energy throughout the whole show. But obviously not as hard as some other groups have.

Our first competition was held at Linn Mar High School and was the hardest competition of the year. Maybe even the hardest of the last several years. So we went in not sure if we would even be able to make finals. But we did get in and we were all ecstatic. That's when we got to our room. Our Director, Mr. Storm Zeigler, informed us that we not only made finals, we were in first place. First. Ahead of Urbandale and Ankeny, which were the number one and two show choirs in the country last year. You can probably guess our reaction. So we eagerly waited 4 hours to perform, since we were last in finals. When it was time to get back to business, everyone was focused, concentrating on what they needed to do to bring home the trophy. We performed and killed it. It was the best show we have ever done and it felt great. When time for awards, they gave away 7th through 4th place and we weren't in there. Then the MC informed us that the top three choirs were separated by three points. Three. That meant anything could happen and nothing was secure at all. Third place was Ankeny, second was us, and first was Urbandale. I was a little disappointed, just because i knew what could have been, but i was still extremely excited with our placement.

The next competition was good, but not nearly as exciting. Besides the fact that we came out Grand Champions. It was amazing and we beat LaCrosse Central which is a very good school by 17 points. It felt great.

Now we have a little break. We perform Saturday but it's not a competition, it's just a performance in Fab Five. Then we have nothing the following Saturday, but the Saturday after that we travel to Urbandale to face Ankeny, Linn-Mar, Johnston, and Jefferson. This will be tough.

Super Bowl XLIII

So Super Bowl forty three is going to be hosted in Tampa Bay and will be played between the Cardinals and Steelers in a very unlikely matchup. The Cardinals took their Cinderella season all the way led by veteran quarterback, and Cedar Rapids native Kurt Warner. He has had several off years since he won the Super Bowl with the Rams and got MVP in the game. Now he earned the starting position for the Cadinals over former Heisman winner Matt Leinart and led them to a 9-7 season. He was also a possible candidate for the league's MVP award.

Because of Kurt, I'm pulling for the Cardinals this year. I've never been a huge Pittsburg fan and my team, the Vikings, beat the Cardinals earlier this year so it would look better for them. Also they have a lot of players I like: Kurt Warner, Kenny Iwebema (a former Iowa defensive end), Anquan Boldin, Edgerrin James, and Larry Fitzgerald. On the Steelers I like Mike Humpal and Mewelde Moore and I pretty much despise everyone else. Especially Ben Roethlisberger. But even on top of all that, I've always been an NFC fan and always will be.

As for the game it could go either way. It's going to be the league's best defense, Pittsburg, against one of the league's best offenses, The Cardinals. On the other side it's one of that it's one of the league's worst defenses, Cardinals, against one of the worst offenses, Steelers. So it should turn out to be a good interesting game.

Rankage!

So as any Iowa fan now knows, we are ranked. 19th to be exact. This happened after the blowout win against South Carolina. But more than that, its the players we go into the 2009 season with.

That includes one of the nations top defenses, a very experienced O-line, good recievers and backs, and Ricki Stanzi who has proved himself in the end of the season. This is the first time they've been ranked in two years, and are ranked above great teams such as Notre Dame and Oregon State.

They managed to get this preseason rank despite losing Shonn Greene to the NFL draft. Jewel Hampton is there to step in for him and he has done a great job stepping in for Shonn in past games. We also have four star recruit Brandon Wengher coming in who is supposed to be a stud.

We're also losing Andy Brodell but DJK has stepped up and there are also some great backup receivers. But more than that, we get Keenan Davis, the four star recruit from Washington High School, so we will be set there.

The O-line took some hits losing Rob Bruggeman and Seth Olsen. But they also have three returning starters and the players replacing them should do a nice job. The o-line is actually projected to be the second best line in the big ten next year.

The defense lost great players such as Bradley Fletcher, Harold Dalton, Mitch King, and Matt Kroul. But the entire linebacker crew is back and will be better than ever. Also the d-line has both ends returning, Adrian Clayborn and Christian Ballard. THe people replacing King and Kroul are pretty good too, but I can't think of their names right now. Amari Spievey is coming back and will lead the cornerbacks, and Brent Greenwood will lead the deep backs.

I feel like next year will a truly great season for the Hawks. All the cards are right for them. They didn't lose many players and though some they did lose can't be replaced (King, Greene) I think the replacements will still do a good job. Also the returning players have that much more experience now and are starting to really play good ball. Especially Stanzi. He has always had the talent, and now he has the experience to go along with it. They're starting out ranked which is also good and will let them advance in the league that much faster.

NFL

Well if you're reading this, you probably know that Shonn Greene decided to go pro minutes after the Outback Bowl. He said that he had done his damage in the NCAA and there wasn't much more to do. Although i wish he would have decided differently, he made the right decision. He's already 24 and if he stayed, he would be 25 going into the NFL which is really old for a rookie. Also there's the issue of injury. If he stayed, he could get injured and never play football again. Sure he could also get next year, but at least he would have made money and could say that he was in the NFL. He's doing what's best for his life, and is making sure he gets his shot at pro football.

Also there was recent talk of Ferentz going to the Browns as head coach but the speculation was shut down as they just picked a coach. It was really a no brainer to me and it was obvious he wasn't going to leave. I know that he started out on the Browns and that's his team, but he still wouldn't have left for a couple of reasons. The first reason is that his son will be a freshman next season on the team and he's going to want to coach his son. He also just signed a contract lasting to 2012 and I think he's going to honor that. Also more than anything, he gets played plenty (getting paid three million dollars this year alone) and he has a sure job. NFL jobs are not a sure thing and they're always switching up coaches. But there's pretty much no chance to him getting fired at Iowa.

Greene is a loss we can deal with since he would be leaving next year anyway and Running Backs are always being replaced by new players coming up. But Kirk Ferentz is one loss we can't deal with. He's one of the greatest coaches in Iowa history and is one of the greatest College Football coaches coaching right now.

Outback Bowl

So, the Hawks did it but it was a little dissapointing. It wasn't the game everybody was hoping for. Yes they did win/kill them. But it wasn't really a game. It was too bad that they couldn't have a decent opponent and not one that turned it over five times. This was said to be one of the least interesting Bowl games of the year, and it turned out to be true.

Also for as bad of an opponent as they were, Shonn Greene didn't do great. He had 121yards and three touchdowns. Those numbers are very good, and were good enough to give him the Outback Bowl MVP award. But compared to the rest of the season and his season highs, those numbers aren't all that amazing. Three touchdowns is good but 2 were one yard gains and the other was 11 yards. Oh and that 11 yards was his longest run of the day. He had an average of 4.2 yards a carry. That is not good for Shonn Greene against an opponent like this.

The defense on the other hand demolished the Gamecocks only allowing them 43 rushing yards and giving them five turnovers.

Maybe I'm just getting spoiled because of their past bowl games. In 2002 they played in the orange bowl and lost to USC. In 2003 they killed FLORIDA. In 2004 they beat LSU with the miracle catch and one of the greatest plays in Hawkeye history. In 2005 they lost to FLORIDA by one touchdown because of some of the worst officiating college football has ever seen. And I'm not just being biased. They were fired after the game. But then in 2006 we lost to TEXAS in a very close game. And then this year, we kill south carolina. The gamecocks. In the past few years, almost every game was close, and even the ones that weren't, we were either killing, or being killed by an extremely good team. I guess this year was just sort of a letdown.

The final score was 31-10 but bigger news followed the game. I'll get back to that later.