So Petrino has decided to cut and run. No major surprise there although waiting until the season was over might have been nice. Where do the Falcons go from here? It would be great to make a run for Cowher but I kind of doubt he would want to come back as a head coach to a situation like this. From a PR standpoint, I think the Falcons need to at least see if he’s interested. I think they need to get a former NFL head coach or a high (offensive or defensive coord.) ranking assistant, not a WR or DB coach. Any names come to mind?

I’m really not feeling it for Pro or College ball right now. Obviously, the Falcons are a mess right now and it’s hard to get too excited about their prospects. Before all of the Vick mess, I was hoping that Petrino would finally figure out a way to best utilize Mike’s skillset. Now, we’ll never know.

As far as Tech goes, Gailey’s returned for another year of mediocrity, so that basically spoils it for me. While Ball won’t be there, neither will Calvin, so I don’t expect to see much to cheer about. I’m sure that there will be some huge wins, but those will more than likely be tempered with losses to teams on the Duke/UNC level; more than likely, these losses will come directly after those huge wins. Of course, we’ll lose to Georgia again, something that has become a Gailey specialty.

I’m sure i’ll watch both teams’ games out of a sense of duty, but I don’t see myself building any anticipation for them or getting too worked up over the results, whether they be positive or negative.

After driving back to Atlanta on the afternoon of December 30th, my dear mother and I made the drive down to the Dome to see the Peach Bowl. Parking was a pain as our secret lot was overrun by hippy types smoking their dope waiting for Widespread Panic to perform at Phillips. In fact, the lot was so crowded I backed into a metal pole, causing a little damage to my bumper as I tried to find a parking spot. Needless to say, the famous Colwell driving temper took over and I blew a gasket. Once we got situated, we made our way to row 26 in section 311, the last row at the top of the stadium. I sat down on a Falcons hat and tried to find the owner to my left but nobody was claiming it. I guess even the cleaning people at the Dome have given up on the Falcons.

 The first half was miserable as Georgia did their usual trick of falling behind. Stafford was erratic to say the least and when he did make a good throw to Kenneth Harris deep, Harris dropped the ball. The defense was hurt by a trick play that went for a TD that put the score at 21-3 at the half. The VA Tech band played the hokey-pokey at the half. I’m sure Dave and Steve have participated in this ritual during their annual trip to Blacksturd. In the second half, Georgia turned things around by doing an onsides kick after a field goal. Makes you wonder where Chan came up with the idea? The defense picked off 3 passes and forced a fumble as they rattled off 28 straight points to win it going away. Not a very successful bowl season for the ACC as the number 2 team in the conference loses to the SEC #5.

After 4 and a half hours of luscious sleep, I woke up early to drive back to Nashville for the Titans/Patriots game on Sunday. I tailgated with Scott and a few of his friends before the game. We also stopped by a Budweiser hospitality tent where Kim was working for free beer and hot dogs before entering LP Field. It was raining pretty heavily by kickoff and the field looked awful (the Music City Bowl was played three days prior). On one end, there was a mudpit at the 20. After the first quarter, we walked down from the upper deck to find Scott’s friends. Their seats were on the 15 yardline in the third row. I’ve never seen a NFL game from that distance before. The Pats led 19-3 until Pac-Man Jones ran a punt back 81 yards in front of us. The Titans got it as close as 26-23 in the second half but New England sealed it late with a TD from Testiclenerdy to make the final 40-23. Vince Young had a pretty bad game passing but did score on a 30 yard run in the third. I’m pretty optimistic Tennessee will make the playoffs next year as they have 10 draft picks and 40 million in cap space. I wish they could trade some picks and move up for Calvin Johnson but that isn’t likely to happen as their pick is too low for any team to justify trading down to that slot. Hopefully, Matt Millen will prove that idea wrong.

While in Chicago for the Christmas Holidays, Janet, Ismail and I made it to three games.

1. UIC vs. Illinois State at the UIC Pavilion

2. Blackhawks vs. Dallas Stars

3. Bulls vs. Heat

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Game 1 - UIC vs. Illinois State: A friend of mine from college named Luis still works at UIC and has a connection with the ticket guy, so we ended up getting free tickets for the game. The Pavilion is essentially the same as when I attended, except for some exterior changes and some restructuring of the entrance. The game itself sucked; the team looks very unorganized and undisciplined. They were losing by 13 points late in the 2nd half, but were able to actually pull ahead by a point with 4 minutes to go, but they had nothing left down the stretch and ended up losing by 9 points. The strangest thing about this game is that Jimmy Collins, UIC’s coach, was absent from the sidelines. We found out later that he has taken a leave of absence, but no reason has been given as to why except for “personal reasons”.

Game #2- Blackhawks vs. Dallas Stars: Tickets for this game only cost 10 bucks and were easy to get; attendance these days at the United Center (UC) for ‘Hawks games is low. Another friend from college, Edgar, met the three of us at the game. While I had been to the UC to see the ‘Hawks before, this was Janet and Ismail’s first time. Ismail was really excited about the game and was asking every day when we’d be going. He was also happy  to see the Stars as he remembered them from our trip to Dallas last Spring. The game was really close throughout and the Blackhawks ended up winning 2-1 on two goals from Akhripov. The biggest thing I noticed about the game is that the atmosphere sucked. At the old Stadium, it was incredibly loud and the fans were rowdy. However, the 14 K in attendance were not very loud even though the ‘Hawks have been playing really well since Denis Savard took over as coach. I think the UC is partially to blame for not being a good venue atmosphere-wise, but also I think that years of mediocrity and bad ownership have driven a lot of support away.

Game #3- Bulls vs. Heat: My friend Luis has a friend with Bulls Season tickets, so he contacted him about selling the tickets to us for the game. He sold them to us at face value- $50 a pop for upper level seats! Pricey as hell but none of us had ever been to a Bulls game at the UC, so I went ahead and bought them. Plus, I had just received an X-Mas bonus of $100 cash from school, so it covered it. For Ismail, we had to buy a $25 standing room seat as this was all that was left. The tickets go from $10 (very limited amount) to $50 and above. No tickets in the 20-30 dollar range, except for standing room. And I thought that the Hawks’ prices were a ripoff! This guy that I got the tickets from pays over $2000 a seat for a location that’s farther away from the floor than our $200 seats. However, the seats turned out to be pretty good in relationship with the action; first row of the upper deck on the baseline.

The game itself was really good; the Bulls had a huge lead, but blew it and the 4th quarter was action-packed. The Heat played without Shaq and lost Dwayne Wade for the second half to a wrist injury. The Bulls ended up winning 109-103 with Ben Gordon dropping 40 points. Jason Williams led the Heat with 28 points. This guy must be working on his shot in the off-season as this is the second time i’ve seen him light it up this year. I remember when he first started he couldn’t shoot for shit.

One of the scariest moments of the game was when James Posey took out Luol Deng on a breakaway, apparently a Riley-ordered stunt in retaliation for Wade getting injured by Hinrich in the first half. The next day, there were all sorts of allegations from both teams about rough play and cheap shots.

The atmosphere for this game was much better than the ‘Hawks game. The place was completely sold out and the crowd was really into it. The famous introduction featuring the Allan Parsons Project song got everyone pumped up  and pretty much everyone was vocal throughout the duration of the game. I still think that the UC is sort of a noise killer and not as raucous as the old Chicago Stadium, but the place can still get loud when it’s full.

Since nobody’s posting up in here, I figured I should post something to get everyone ready for the Falcons season…