A Banner Year

Remember way back in March when I shared my little secret that sometimes I post a blog entry for very selfish reasons and that that the topic probably won't appeal to anyone. This is one of those posts.

But I had to reflect on what kind of year my favorite sports teams have had during the 2009-2010 seasons.

My old high school alma mater got things kicked off in a big way in the end of 2009. In Kentucky, basketball is king, but in my hometown, we love football (the American kind), and our high school is always among the best in the Commonwealth. This probably has something to do with being so close to Ohio and Cincinnati which has several high school football powerhouses. In 2009, the mighty Bluebirds, one of the weakest mascots in the history of football, knocked off a Cincinnati school for the first time in history, went 15-0, won the state championship, and finished the year ranked in the top 10 nationally in several polls.

During that same stretch, my other alma mater, Ohio University, made its way to the fifth bowl game in school history while also winning more games than any other season. However, the Bobcats came up a little short in winning their first bowl game. It is worth adding that while I was at Ohio, during three of the four years there, they won a total of five games.

You know you are having a great year whenever the Bengals make the playoffs. This was one of the historically bad franchises in all of professional sports in the 1990s. In 1988, the Bengals lost in the Super Bowl. A few years later in 1991, they broke Bo Jackson's leg in the playoffs, and then didn't put together a winning campaign until 2005. We called them the Bungles. In 2009-10, they beat the Browns and Steelers twice and got to the playoffs before losing the first game. Baby steps.

I've already discussed the successes of my college basketball teams, so I won't go into too much detail here. Ohio University made an improbable run to make it to the NCAA tournament and knock out the much higher seeded Georgetown, which was extra nice being surrounded by Georgetown fans. Also, this was the first time the OU football team and basketball team made a bowl game and the NCAA tournament during the same school year in OU's history. And the University of Kentucky had a strong bounce back year making it to the Elite Eight for the first time in several years, had the school's first number one overall pick in the NBA draft, and became the first school to have five players picked in the first round of the draft.

Finally, we have baseball. While not one of my hometown teams yet, the Hermosillo Naranjeros won their championship. Plus they have a very cool mascot that will be easy to cheer for. And as of this writing, the Cincinnati Reds are in first place of the National League Central and are making a strong push for their first playoff appearance since 2000 when they had a one-game playoff with the Mets to make the actual playoffs. At the very least, the Reds are in good shape to have their first winning record since 2000.

And if you want, you could throw in the U.S. and Mexican World Cup teams, which both did very well.

It has been a great year in deed for my sports teams.

EFM: Exhausted From Mini Marathon

CINCINNATI-I know I rail against some of the absurdity of government jargon and lingo, but here is a quickie against my own trade. See the start of this posting, with Cincinnati in caps? That is called a dateline. It means I'm writing this while in Cincinnati, but it doesn't include a date. Wouldn't location line make more sense?

Enough journalism insider jokes. For the first time since its inception, EF'M has hit the road. Obviously, this is the start of a roving blog.

I'm in the 'Nati for the weekend to run the 33rd annual Cincinnati Mini Marathon & Heart Walk. (All proceeds, $1.2 million, went to the American Heart Association.)

This also is home for me. I grew up across the river where I also attended high school, so this trip also was probably my final homecoming before we leave for Hermosillo, though we will stop here en route.

It was good to see my friends, even though we watched the University of Kentucky Wildcats lose in the Elite Eight of the Tourney (which concludes my NCAA basketball coverage until next March) and visit my family.

And then, of course, there was the run...15 kilometers up and down hills along the river (the Ohio, for the geographically-challenged) on Columbia Parkway. I hadn't been training the way I should've been, but was happy to finish in about 1:22 (haven't checked official results, yet).

Some day, I'd like to run a marathon, you know, just to say I ran a marathon. (Historical side bar: Lots of people run marathons, but I wonder how many know how the very first marathon ended? Let's just say the runner [there was only one runner] didn't fare particularly well. He ran the distance, yelled "Nike" [translation, "Victory," well played shoe company], and died. Why do so many people feel the need to do run this distance?)

I don't know how much running I'm going to get to do in Hermosillo. When the summer rolls around (let's call it June-August), I'll have 80 reasons not to run. Those reasons are the average low in Fahrenheit during that time of the year. Also, the thought of running through a country I don't know, where they speak a language I'm struggling to learn and where my gringo-ness will stick out potentially making me a target, I might need to find some alternative way of exercising.

There is a country club, and I don't mind running on the treadmill, but I've never tried running further than a 10k on a machine. It gets too boring to run much longer than that, in my opinion.

No doubt, I'll figure something out, but this is one of those lesser known challenges/sacrifices we make in this lifestyle.

And now I'll be signing out from Cincinnati.

Cloud Nine

Ever wonder the origins of some of our common expressions?

Take, for example, the famous ninth cloud, a place we like to find ourselves. Why is cloud nine so desirable? According to the wiktionary, the 1896 edition of The International Cloud Atlas defined 10 types of clouds. The ninth cloud was the cumulonimbus, which rises to 10km making it the highest of the clouds.

I had a pretty good view from a cumulonimbus yesterday during the 12-hour orgy of college basketball yesterday, better known as the first day of the first round of the NCAA tournament. DeVaughn Washington, (in the picture below) also got a pretty good view from a cumulonimbus when he skied high on this alley-oop, fastbreak dunk in the second half last night.

There were great games with great finishes and four overtime periods, but the climax for me (pun intended) was watching the University of Kentucky pound their first round opponent, East Tennessee State by 30 points most of the game (100-71 final) at the same time that Ohio University kept Georgetown pinned to the ground for 40 minutes to win 97-83.

Let me re-iterate. Ohio University, the 14th seed in the Midwest/St. Louis bracket, who was 22-14, beat a third-seeded Georgetown team that beat Duke, Syracuse, Villanova and Pittsburgh, among other highly rated teams. Georgetown was ranked 14th and 15th out of 330-something teams in the AP and Coaches' polls, respectively, as recently as Monday. In the RPI, which is a computer-mathematics-based rankings, Georgetown was 7th; Ohio was 94th.

On second thought, maybe the cumulonimbus isn't high enough in the sky.

Watching this game, I ascended to the lesser known 13th cloud, the trifectus-nimbus. Ohio knocked down 13 three-point shots on only 23 shots hitting an absurd 56.5% of them.

Just a notch higher is the 14th cloud, the victorious stratus. Not only was Ohio the 14th seed, but they poured on 97 points for a 14 point victory. That set a new record for the largest margin of victory by a team with a seeding of 14 or higher. No other team in this category ever scored a double-digit win.

Still higher, and as of today the pinnacle cloud, is the 32nd cloud, the advancitous cumulonimbus. Ohio's star guard, Armon Bassett (that link takes you to Sunday's posting which has a picture of Bassett dunking in the MAC championship game), tallied 32 points, and as a result, Ohio advances to the second round, the round of 32, on Saturday against Tennessee. Then we'll see if I can get lost even higher in the clouds.

24 Hours of Extreme News Swings

Saturday evening through Sunday evening, let's call it from 6:30 p.m. Saturday to 6:30 p.m. Sunday, have been a lot of fun, yet sobering as well.

I haven't posted in a few days as I have been in college basketball-induced stupor, watching my teams win the SEC championship as they were supposed to, and making an improbable run to win the MAC championship.

Being a native Kentuckian, being a UK basketball fan is a birthright much the same way being a Packer fan is to Green Bay. And while I never attended the University of Kentucky, the UK Wildcats have always been my No. 1 rooting interest in all of sports.

As an Ohio University alum, however, I took the greatest amount of satisfaction watching my Bobcats run through the Mid-American Conference tournament by beating three of our biggest rivals, and doing so as the lowest seed ever to win the MAC tourney. (To the right, Armon Basset, our best player, ices the game in overtime with a slam dunk in the closing seconds.)

Consequently, on Selection Sunday, always one of my favorite days in the year, I watched as UK got a 1 seed, which puts them on the fast track to the Final Four and a shot at the school's eighth championship. And I also got to see Ohio get paired against heavily favored Georgetown as a 14 seed to play Thursday in Providence. (The wheels already turning in my mind on how I can get to Providence...I love March Madness, and I love cheering for the underdog, unless that means cheering against UK.)

I was planning on writing exclusively on college basketball, but then came the news this evening about the slayings in Juarez. (An unrelated side note, the AP reporter who wrote this article is someone I went to Ohio University with and worked with at The Post, the university's student-run newspaper. Nice work, Phil!)

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote that despite the travel advisories, I wasn't too nervous about driving to Hermosillo. Sunday's news was more upsetting.

In the past, I'd always tell people that while yes, the Mexican border is dangerous, it has been mostly drug cartels targeting each other. Americans largely were not getting harmed. Sunday changed that reality.

While there are many unknowns about what happened at this point, there are several levels of scariness about the news.

For example, what if this was some sort of retaliation for a Mexican getting denied a visa by the consulate office. That is by far the scariest scenario. Less threatening, but still upsetting is that the EFM who was slain was a corrections officer in El Paso, and maybe he was the target.

Lower on my personal threat level is the cases of wrong place, wrong time and that it could have been a case of mistaken identity.

Regardless, thoughts and prayers go out the families of the slain and to those who live along the border. Be careful, be safe, and good luck on making your decision about the temporary withdrawal to some where away from the border.