Saturday, March 29, 2008

Go Davidson WILDCATS

Davidson is a small college right here in in Mecklenburg County. And at this moment their men's basketball team is the cinderalla story of the nation after pulling off three consecutive "upsets" to make it to the Elite Eight. Seeded #10 in their region (which means the tournament committee considered them to be somewhere between the 37th and 40th best team in the tournament), they beat #7 Gonzaga, #2 Georgetown, and #3 Wisconsin. Calling all band wagon jumpers!

So am I the only person (who doesn't live in Davidson) who is not surprised by Wildcats' performance in the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament? They entered the tournament on a 22-game winning streak (now up to 25 straight) - best in the nation. And their average margin of victory is by 20 points per game - best in the nation. And their losses this season were mostly to elite teams like UNC, Duke, and UCLA. The question shouldn't be how are they playing so well in the tournant, but how did everybody, including the tournament committee, so vastly under estimate Davidson's ability? You'd at least think that Davidson would be well known here in Charlotte's back yard but the truth is most Charlotteans had no idea either. Even though there are no ACC teams here in Charlotte, ACC basketball is still the only thing that matters here in college sports. They don't get no respect.

Did I pick Davidson to go to the Elite Eight in my brackets? Well no, but that doesn't mean I'm surprised either. I knew they'd steamroll Gonzaga. And I was confident they'd beat the over-rated Wisconsin Badgers, once they got to that stage. But I admit that I chose Georgetown in the second round. I thought that it would be a good game but I still tought Georgetown would have enough to get by. So who do I pick in tomorrow night's matchup against the #1 seed Kansas Jayhawks? If I had money riding on it I'd honestly have to put it on Kansas. Kansas is a great team so I can't say I expect Davidson to win, but it still wouldn't shock me either if they became the first ever #10 seed to reach the Final Four. I'll be rooting for them, and I can honestly say that I didn't just jump on the band wagon this week.
But here's the kicker on Davidson getting no respect, and the main reason I decided to post on this topic today. This morning I was watching The Early Show on CBS. This is the national morning show on the very same network that carries all of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament. Yet four differnt times their co-anchor (I think it was Chris Wragge) called them the Davidson FLYERS. The Davidson WILDCATS have been all over the news, they played on their network, and CBS even did live national cut-ins during The Early Show from the Davidson campus a few days ago. CBS should know Davidson's team name is the Wildcats. Wow, how embarrising! And I kept watching for a while to see if they would correct themselves and they never did. How could they possibly look more dumb? Well try this... the wrong team name by which CBS called the Davidson team just happened to be the "Flyers". Why is that so funny? Because the Flyers is the team name of Dayton, which just happens to be the very next school name when you look at a list of all Division I schools in alphabetical order. Ha!

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Saturday, November 11, 2006

A Costly Vote

The 1918 Inverted Jenny stamp is the most famous rare-stamp in the world. Just one of these stamps can fetch up to $200,000 at auction. Even non-stamp collectors are familiar with the stamp which contains the image of a World War I bi-plane mistakenly printed upside-down - but an unknown voter in Florida isn't one of them.

A Broward County election official noticed that an absentee vote ballot was mailed using the extremely valuable Inverted Jenny stamp. This news immediately made me recall the movie "Brewster's Millions" in which Richard Pryor's character bought an Inverted Jenny only to use the stamp to mail a postcard to intentionally waste his money.

The funniest part of this story isn't the amazing fact that somebody actually used an Inverted Jenny to mail their absentee ballot, but because they forgot to put their name on their ballot and their vote wasn't even counted anyway! Of course this just further supports the notion that Broward County, Florida residents can't seem to grasp the voting process. It was this same county in 2000 in which tens of thousands of voters mistakenly voted for Pat Buchanan due to the infamous Butterfly Ballots.

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Sunday, July 16, 2006

Most Stupidest Billboard Ever

This is one of several billboards put up as part of a promotional campaign by WCNC-TV, the NBC affiliate in Charlotte, NC. They are promoting the accuracy of their newscast's weather with the following text:
"It's not that they are wronger... We're just righter."

P.S. Incase you're wondering... No, they don't have any weather talent named Righter.

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Wednesday, June 28, 2006

The Unusable Coupon

A few months after dropping my business card in a contest bowl, I was sent an email coupon from Jersey Mike's. I like Jersey Mike's subs so I printed out the coupon and tried to use it. They told me that they do accept that coupon but not if it's a print out. What!? They sent me the coupon in an email. How in the world am I supposed to use it if I can't print it out? Am I supposed to bring my entire computer down to the restaurant, plug it in, and show them the coupon on the monitor? I know it was just a little coupon but that's ridiculous.

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