Round One....

It was about time. No doubt my legions of fans and readers have hungered, thirsted, and otherwise craved my nourishing words, and while I enjoyed co-writing my other blog, my partner in rhyme has climbed his way to the top of Corporate America, and left this sad wordsmith behind to go it alone. No real promises as to what will go on here, I'll write as often as I can motivate myself, and there will be plenty of content here from other people that I bug into putting stuff together for me. It's probably healthier that I not have the lone voice here anyways, you deserve better. With that glowing intro, let's get this on fire like a Florida Race track! Cue Michael Buffer voice in five, four, three, two, one.......



Suckers, I could never afford Michael Buffer. Wait! Please don't leave already, I'll get to the point, starting......now.


-If we're talking all-time favorite comedies, then we're more than likely talking Wedding Crashers somewhere on that list. Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn took dynamic duo to a different level (people in Utah know a little something about duos, Donny and Marie? Meg and Dia? Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid? Not to mention two dudes that have statues outside a certain large arena downtown...) and perhaps my favorite scene is where Wilson walks in to Vaughn's office, where Vaughn pretends to have something serious to talk about, only to surprise him by proclaiming "It's Wedding Season!" I'll link the scene here just in case my awesome description isn't enough. So why take all this time, effort and words for my first blast? It's Jazz Season!!! I know we're already past the All-Star game, and before I probably get my next post done the Jazz will have jumped about eight spots in the conference standings, but there's just something good about having basketball going on, and thank the basketball gods above, the Jazz have been playing WAY beyond what most anyone expected. Seeing as how the Utes basketball program is just a jumble of disasters and messes piled into am El Camino and driven off a cliff, (I have faith Larry K will get things turned around, nonetheless) and local hero, near apostle and Donny Osmond's biggest threat for title of "Most Famous Mormon", Jimmer Fredette has left his mates at the Y on the bubble for the NCAA tournament, a shortened season of .500 basketball feels like a gift from Mr Naismith himself. Yes, the Jazz were extremely hot to start the season, and yes they brought our hopes of an improbable playoff run to a crashing halt by losing 11 of 15 games in February, but this team has been full of story lines and memorable moments. They lack a lot of things, but in a season where basketball was once lost, it's nice that the Jazz are still able to be found where they always have been, center court at the Delta Cent...errr, Energy Solutions.

-Nothing says spring quite like snow in March, and although the recent storms had me questioning why I choose to live in a state that annually has the strangest weather patterns and off-season snow patterns, the fact that we're back to Daylight Savings this Sunday can mean only one thing.....SPRING FOOTBALL!!! Okay, so there's baseball too, but come on! We're first and foremost a Jazz state, followed by being one of the hubs of great college football, aka the Pac-12. I'd add BYU to that teaser, but the bottom line is their home schedule is a hair short of scheduling local high school juggernauts Timpview and Bingham, and their road schedule looks like the hardest thing to hit Provo since the knowledge that Cafe Rio puts caffeine in their Sweet Pork. (Look, hate all you want BYU fans, but the jokes currently write themselves. Besides, this is payback for all the hate texts I got from so-called friends after Utah got hammered by Oregon.) Utah starts spring practice March 21st, waiting to get Spring Break well out of the way, while BYU has started due to the fact that their semester ends earlier, and they don't have Spring Break. For the Utes, replacing John Wayne Cullen and Tony Bergstrom will be second only to the arrival of QB heir-apparents Travis Wilson and Chase Hansen on campus, and in that same vein, the health of Junior Quarterback Jordan Wynn. Perhaps the most interesting storyline OFF the field will be the first spring session of Offensive Coordinator Brian Johnson's infant career, and what changes he'll make to an offense that was vanilla at best, and inept outside of Juan Blanco Quattro. BYU rolls into camp having sent Jake Heaps packing in a move that while not surprising, definitely was not the expected outcome so many of the faithful were looking for. Bronco Mendenhall goes into his second camp carrying the torch of Independence, and will have a serious task ahead of him if he wants to put together a championship contender. BYU will have questions at running back, tight end, offensive line, and parts of the defensive secondary, but don't put it past the Cougs to come out firing about their plans to win every game and crack the BCS barrier for the first time. I can smell the grass already....

-And yes, I love a good double entendre, but weed jokes aside (Sorry, Josh Howard), spring more or less means time for Baseball nationally. While I'm not a fanatic of spring training, nor do I get all hot and bothered knowing that pitchers and catchers have reported, I am looking forward to this season. I've more or less been a fan of baseball from afar, unless you count the Salt Lake Bees, but even then half the time I'm more there to see which of my friends will be the biggest drunken idiot at the park, and after having a Puerto Rican pitcher threaten to knife one friend, and a 50 year old man punch another, who can blame me? I've knocked Baseball more than a few times in my previous blog, and for some odd reason, I've just never been able to devote myself to the game above watching a few pitches on TV, and perhaps part of that problem stems from being a Padres fan, but NOT THIS YEAR!!! Not only did the Padres make some sweeping changes in the front office by promoting Josh Byrnes after losing Jed Hoyer to the Cubs, but they pretty much shipped off all of Hoyer's pet projects, namely Mat Latos, and Anthony Rizzo, and allowed veteran Closer Heath Bell to sign with the Miami Marlins. I'm interested to see how Huston Street, Carlos Quentin, and Yonder Alonso do, but how about Will Venable starting the season with a little bit of drama??? Yu Darvish, whom the Rangers have paid an absolute dumpster load of money for, made his debut against the Pads and young Will damn near took him yard, had it not been for a green monster-like fence in center field. (Pads are conditioned to getting Petco'd, even in spring training.) When asked about it, Yu the Great, as he will heretofore be known, claimed a combination of wind and dry air allowed the ball to travel, and that Venable didn't get the ball square. Huh? I mean, if I was Nolan Ryan, I would probably have had the cardiologist on line 1 because this is Will Venable that we're talking bout! We're not talking bout Pujols, not Ichiro, or anyone else in the AL west's power alley, but we talkin bout Venable! Listen, I know there's an adjustment when you come from one league to another, but Yu is about to get shelled if he keeps up this kind of attitude, mark my words, and bottom line, I could not be more excited! Baseball is such a gentleman's game that attitudes and trash talk and all the competitive stuff that goes on in sports sometimes gets put away in favor of keeping up the unwritten rules, but I feel there are some super personalities out there outside of just Brian Wilson and Mr T Plush Nyjer Morgan, and they've earned the right to let those personalities loose. Of course, Venable took the high road after hearing Yu the Great's comments, but not before shooting back a jab or two of his own. I just wish the Rangers were within the division, seeing as how Baseball still supports the bench clearing brawl, I have a hunch this little rivalry would have been a heater.

-I'm trying out something new this year. I'm considering buying Real Salt Lake season tickets. I know, I know. Soccer goes against everything this country stands for, but after watching this video done by Branden Steineckert of The Used/Rancid fame, something dawned on me. Soccer, the game is just so-so, but Soccer fans are pretty cool, and a lot of the weird, unusual stuff that they do in MLS has some pretty appealing reasoning behind it. The fact that every team has a song is awesome, that the fans have different "supporter groups" ala Green Street Hooligans, and the various chants and activities that go on in the stands during games (they let you throw streamers on the field DURING PLAY. That's not awesome?) all lured me in to a degree, and as I've studied some of the peculiarities, I've possibly crossed that line of being a Soccer investigator. Not sure I'll do a full season, and I hate to imagine the amount of crow I'll have to eat if I continue down this path, but Real has me curious, and that in and of itself is worth some sort of credit. Besides, I can always claim it never happened, no one reads this stuff anyways ;)