Category Archives: Sports

“Bowl Worthy?”

Posted on November 14, 2011 by | 19 Comments

annarbor.com is wondering aloud about all this: “Bowl-worthy? Eastern Michigan football team hammers Buffalo, 30-17.”  Here’s a quote:

The Eagles are 6-4 (4-2 Mid-American Conference). They went 2-10 last season and 0-12 the previous season. It’s the most victories in the regular season they’ve had since they went 6-5 in 1995.

By no means, however, does reaching seven wins guarantee Eastern Michigan a bid to play in a bowl game. Just three MAC teams are contracted to receive bids, while as many as seven could be eligible. Eastern needs seven wins because it has two FBS victories and only one counts for bowl eligibility.

It’s good to see the team has improved quite a bit– though we can’t forget that this improved team has cost EMU a lot of money it doesn’t have.  A LOT of money.  But a bowl game?

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Posted in College Fun, In the media..., Sports

Sports, sports, and more sports

Posted on November 12, 2011 by | 5 Comments

I feel like it’s ESPN around here, what with basketball and football in full swing, not to mention all the other sports going on around now.  Just a few highlights heading into the weekend:

  • Yahoo sports has the Emus only a slight favorite over the Buffalo Bulls for today’s football game at 1, which kind of surprises me because Buffalo kinda sucks, having not won a road game all year and with only one conference win over Ohio.  Speaking of road games:  this is apparently the Emu’s last home game, but they still have three games on the road yet this fall, which is all to say that this is still a season that could go either way.
  • Men’s and women’s basketball both won last night, though I assume that in both cases, that was to be expected (I think?)  I don’t know how either team is predicted to finish the season, though I assume the men’s team will be so-so at best while Murphy figures out what to do and starts bringing in recruits.
  • A colleague of mine and basketball enthusiast was telling me that for tickets to the EMU vs. MSU game (that’s right, we’re playing Michigan State at home this year) was telling me that to get tickets for that game, you had to buy a bundle of five tickets for other games, too.  A pretty smart idea for EMU sports to sell some tickets, obviously.  I was all set to buy until I saw that the game is at noon on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, which is when I am likely to be driving back to Ypsilanti from undisclosed extended family locations.  Doh!

Anyway, go Emus.  Oh, and go Hawks too, a slight underdog today against MSU in Iowa City.  But I suppose a lot of eyes will be on the Penn State-Nebraska game, which this article on Yahoo sports describes as possibly the strangest game ever.  I don’t know if the game will be that strange, but yeah, a lot on everyone’s mind that doesn’t have to do with football.

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Posted in In the media..., Sports

“Penn State Said to Be Planning Paterno’s Exit Amid Scandal”

Posted on November 8, 2011 by | 19 Comments

This is a little off-topic, but the sex scandal in the football program at Penn State is such a big story, and now comes this from the New York Times,“Penn State Said to Be Planning Paterno’s Exit Amid Scandal.”  Here are the opening paragraphs:

Joe Paterno’s tenure as coach of the Penn State football team will soon be over, perhaps within days or weeks, in the wake of a sex-abuse scandal that has implicated university officials, according to two people briefed on conversations among the university’s top officials.

The board of trustees has yet to determine the precise timing of Paterno’s exit, but it is clear that the man who has more victories than any other coach at college football’s top level and who made Penn State a prestigious national brand will not survive to coach another season. Discussions about how to manage his departure have begun, according to the two people.

I guess we’ll find out more as this thing unravels.  On the one hand, it seems to me that if he reported this when he found out about it, he did his part.  On the other hand, maybe just reporting and washing his hands of it was not enough, and the allegations of abuse are bad enough that just reporting it and hoping it works out really is not enough.

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Posted in In the media..., Sports

Ball State at EMU for football today at noon

Posted on November 5, 2011 by | 14 Comments

Once again, it looks like a beautiful day to watch a football game, and once again, I am thwarted from going.  Lots of “life” going on today (all in a good way), and besides, Michigan is playing at Iowa today, which means I’ll be watching that game instead.  Sorry, Emus.  But apparently both games will be on TV at the same time, so maybe I’ll flip back and forth.

It ought to be an interesting one though.  Football enthusiast Eagle Totem has a couple good posts about the match-up, and he points out that this is a chance for the Emus to actually have a “winning streak” against another team.  So we’ll see what happens.

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Posted in College Fun, Sports

Emus beat horses 14-10

Posted on October 23, 2011 by | 43 Comments

That’s right– the Emus have won two games in a row against real opponents, beating Western Michigan 14-10.  According to emueagles.com, this means they are now the Michigan Mac Champs, for which there is apparently a trophy and everything.  Read all about it here; here’s a quote:

The win not only helped the Eagles get closer to being bowl eligible at 5-3 overall and 3-1 in MAC action, but it also gave EMU possession of the Michigan MAC Trophy, which is given to the Michigan MAC university that defeats the other two schools in the same sport in the same regular season. This season in the rivalry games, EMU was 2-0, WMU 1-1 and CMU was 0-2.

Bowl eligible?  Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here, folks.

Anyway, annarbor.com also has an interesting article, “Yes, Eastern Michigan is actually a good football team; and people care.” Here are a couple of quotes I found kind of interesting:

“I’m a dreamer, so I dreamed about this,” said third-year Eagles coach Ron English. “You know, I just think it’s going to get better and better here and so I’m just glad for all the people that can get involved.”

Sure, English was pleased that people turned out for the game. Is the reported attendance of 6,772 something to get that fired up about? Not really. But for Eastern, it is progress.

and, later in the piece:

Just outside of Rynearson before kickoff, a man in a multi-colored hooded sweatshirt stood with an arm raised, two fingers extended. Eastern Michigan alumnus Ronnie Martin couldn’t believe what he was seeing: A scalper … at an Eastern Michigan football game.

“You can usually get four tickets and T-shirt for 25 bucks,” Martin said.

And “Tailgate Town,” which is usually more like a ghost town on fall Saturdays, smelled of spilled beer and grilling brats. It was a college football atmosphere, off the field and on it.

Again, let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves here, folks.

Yesterday was a picture-perfect day to watch a football game, it was homecoming, and they promoted the hell out of that game, probably more than any game since I’ve been here at EMU.  It was still easy to get tickets, so I have a feeling that “scalper” was a little confused, and while I am as big of a fan of tailgating as anyone, I’m not sure spilled beer, brats, and around 7,000 fans is a complete turnaround.

But sure, it’s an improvement, and relatively speaking for the MAC, it’s an improvement worth noting.  For whatever reason, ABC had on the Northern Illinois-Buffalo game on while the EMU game was going on, and I noticed that that game was being played to a largely empty stadium.  So compared to other MAC schools, Saturday’s game was a good showing.

Still, I’m conflicted.  I don’t want to be a hater, I really really don’t, but I have to wonder if all of this is “worth it” for EMU.  Sure, it’s great that the Emus are a lot better this year (though don’t buy your bowl tickets quite yet), but I am pretty sure the folks who were laid off this summer weren’t exactly overjoyed.

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Posted in College Fun, In the media..., Sports

Living Social deal on EMU Football tickets

Posted on October 20, 2011 by | 6 Comments

There’s a Living Social coupon deal going on right now for the EMU Homecoming game against Western on Saturday.  For $25, you get four tickets to the game plus a TRUEMU t-shirt.

I think it’d be a good deal if you knew you (and three others) were going to go to the game, but I’m still on the fence for this one because of weather and life.  If it’s nice (and right now, the forecast is mid-50s and sunny, ideal football weather), this might be a good game to attend.  On the other hand, if it’s nice, that would also be a good day to get some yard work done, and if it’s not nice, well, that’d be a good day to stay indoors.

Anyway, if you know you’re going to the game, you’re looking for tickets, and you have a small group, check out the coupon deal.  By the way, WMU is favored by 12 points, so it will again be an interesting test for the Emus to see if they can defy the odds.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Sports

Emus over Chips 35-28

Posted on October 16, 2011 by | 1 Comment

I wasn’t paying much attention to any sports yesterday because I was involved in hosting the WIDE-EMU conference I mentioned last week (and it went off great, by the way!), but apparently EMU was the only major college football team in Washtenaw county to win a game yesterday.  Here’s a link to the story with some pictures in annarbor.com. That was a definite “must win” game for them, so way to go!

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Posted in In the media..., Sports

You’re supposed to get better as the season goes on, right?

Posted on October 9, 2011 by | 16 Comments

Here’s the opening of the story “Eastern Michigan football routed at Toledo, 54-16″ in annarbor.com:

Michigan Stadium? Beaver Stadium? Pfft.

Playing at college football’s two largest venues was a walk in the park compared to the gauntlet the Eastern Michigan football team faced at the Glass Bowl in Toledo.

I realize that Toledo was favored to win this game and I didn’t see any of it so I have no reference as to how it went for either team, other than the score and the article in annabor.com.  But it does kind of seem like some of those big payday/punching bag games ought to help against games like this one, right?

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Posted in In the media..., Sports

Emus vs. Zips (and band day!)

Posted on September 30, 2011 by | 5 Comments

Sadly, it’s another bad weekend for me to see a home football game because of life and because of catching up with that pesky day job.  But it looks like if the weather holds, it might be a lovely day to see the Emus take on the Akron Zips.  People who know better will correct me on this, but this is essentially the first “real” game of the year.  EMU should win– I think I saw them as an 8 or 9 point favorite– and if they don’t win, it’ll be a major bummer/setback for English et al.

One of the oddities of this game (and I guess a lot of other college games tomorrow) is they’ll be celebrating the Ronald Reagan centennial with a coin toss.  Here’s a CNN story about it, and a quote:

The 100th anniversary of the late President Ronald Reagan’s birth is getting the football treatment in September, with teams across the country kicking off their games by flipping a Reagan Centennial Commemorative Coin.

Games played during the weekend of September 23 through 26 will commence with the coin flip, followed by a loudspeaker announcement and Reagan football tribute video, according to the Reagan foundation. Reagan was born on February 6, 1911.

I’m not quite getting this, but whatever.

But more important than any of this– including the game, frankly– is that it is once again band day.  I went to see that once a couple years ago and it is indeed a site worth seeing at least once.  The press release on the EMU sports page says there’s going to be 11 high school bands; that along with the EMU marching band means there’s going to be a lotta tubas and trombones out there.  Check it out!

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Posted in College Fun, EMU Events, Sports

The Emus vs Penn State “Tilt”

Posted on September 23, 2011 by | 12 Comments

I was browsing some articles about EMU’s football game at Penn State this morning– the Emus are 28 1/2 point underdogs– and I came across the press release article on the EMU sports page, “Football Travels to Penn State for Final Non-Conference Tilt.”

Tilt?  Is that a normal term for a football game, a “tilt?”  Is that a different way of saying “blow-out?”

Anyway, according to the article/press release, the game is going to be on ESPN2 at noon.

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Posted in In the media..., Sports