Go Blue! Beat MSU!

Its rivalry week in Michigan: the UofM vs. MSU football game takes place at noon today in East Lansing.

Josh and I are hanging at my parents, watching the game with my favorite State fan, my sister.  But we are hoping Michigan kicks State's butt!  My parents are claiming to be neutral, but I think my mom is secretly rooting for Michigan because she feels bad for me since State has won the last 3 years in a row.

Here are my picks for the week:

10 pts: Oregon over Arizona St

9 pts: South Carolina over Mississippi State

8 pts: Oklahoma State over Texas

7 pts: Virginia Tech over Wake Forest

6 pts: UNC over Miami

5 pts: Texas A&M over Baylor

4 pts: Illinois over Ohio State

3 pts: Texas Tech over Kansas State

2 pts: Michigan over MSU

1 pt: Florida over Auburn

UPDATE: 39 points, somewhat disappointing week.  Good thing I had my confidences in order, bad thing I couldn't pick the winners.  Josh fell the third, I'm hanging onto 6th place.

All I have to say is GO BLUE!

Numero Uno

Wahoooo!!!!  I won something!  Well.... sort of.

I mentioned here that I participate in two College Football "Pick 'em" style games during the season.  I post my ESPN picks here every week, for shits and giggles, and I don't mention the Michigan Alumni pick 'em that much.  Over 1,000 people play in that one, and really, having to pick over 20 games each week and a blow out leaves me a lot of room for error.  Not last week...

My first ever PERFECT WEEK!!

Click to enlarge 

Wahoooo!  Since 7 other people also had perfect weeks, they selected the winner of the $50 gift card via a random drawing, and I'm positive it was rigged because I didn't win.  Oh well, these bragging rights will last a while :)

Wine and Victory!

What a weekend!  This will be a long post, but it was an eventful and busy weekend.  I had a lot of fun up north, drank a lot of much-needed wine, "watched" Michigan beat Notre Dame in one hell of a nail-biter while drinking and dancing in a gay bar, watched the Tigers complete their third consecutive series sweep, and got a good long-ish run done.  Whew!

So on Saturday, I carpooled up to Traverse City with some great girls.  We grabbed a quick bite to eat downtown and then headed up to Suttons Bay for a wine tour.  It was such a beautiful weekend and the scenery was gorgeous!

The view from Leelanau Cellars Tasting Room

The wine wasn't bad either.... We went to four wineries on the Leelanau Peninsula: 45 North, Chateau Fontaine, Good Harbor Vineyards, and Leelanau Cellars.  45 North had the best wine, and Leelanau Cellars offered the best tasting experience (as in, all you can taste), but Chateau Fontaine wasn't far behind.  I would not go back to Good Harbor, we didn't have a great experience there, unfortunately.

 Ready to start the wine tour at The Vineyard Inn on Suttons Bay

Gettin' our drink on!

After the wine tour, we chilled on the beach at the Vineyard Inn before heading back to our condo at the Grand Traverse Resort.  While getting ready to go out, I took the opportunity to turn on the Michigan game (though muted) to follow the action in between gift opening and other things.  At one point someone said - "Pizza, Beer, and a Football game - this looks like Neil's [the groom's] bachelor party!".  Ha!  Girls still know how to have fun!  We beautified ourselves and headed downtown to Sidetraxx, which is a gay bar.  You know what they do NOT put on TVs inside of gay bars?  Sports.  So, this girl "watched" the last quarter of the Michigan game on ESPN Gamecast on her cell phone.  It was sufficient (though I caught up on the video replays later), and I am so glad I got to spend the night celebrating Magen!

Me and the Bachelorette!

And besides, if I stayed behind, I never would have had the chance to see this beauty:  a Disco-Chest!

Only in a gay bar... I hope anyway.

We took off pretty early the next day to get home and recuperate.   I spent a good portion of the afternoon on the couch and watched Doug Fister and the Tigers sweep the Twins for their 9th win in a row!  They are on FIRE right now, and it is so exciting to watch them play.  I just hope they can keep this momentum into October and win then too :)

Around 5:00, I got my butt off the couch to go for a run.  I spent the day hydrating fairly well, so I really wanted to get a good 14-miler in.  This would officially put me back on track for the marathon, having only missed 1 long run (an 18-miler) and 2 weeks worth of shorter runs.  I made it!  It wasn't pretty at the end, but that was a great cap to a week of come-back running.  Here is how Week 13 shaped up:

M 9/5: 9.18 bike, 49:27, 11.1mph; 2.55 easy, 22:39, 8:52 pace
Tu 9/6: 4.02 easy, 37:34, 9:21 pace
W 9/7: 5.21 easy, 48:30, 9:18 pace; first half of P90X Shoulders and Arms
Th 9/8: 7.06 easy, 1:05:03, 9:13 pace
F 9/9: Rest
S 9/10: Rest - up north
S 9/11:14.0 long, 2:14:58, 9:39 pace
Week total: 32.84 miles running, 9.18 bike

After all that, I am exhausted!  To cap off the night, I watched a replay of the Michigan-ND game on the Big 10 Network.  It's great, to be, a Michigan Wolverine!!!!!

VICTORY

So is it 10, or 12?

I thought this article welcoming Nebraska to the Big Ten by Rick Reilly was pretty good ("Cornfrontation" - had me laughingout loud!).  And it made me excited for college football all over again.

Starting this fall Nebraska and Colorado are leaving the Big 12 the join the Big Ten and PAC-10, respectively.
So the Big Ten now has 12 teams. (Though it has had 11 since Penn State joined years ago.)
And the Big 12 now has 10 teams.
This is just meant to confuse those learning to count.

I think they need to work on their logo a little more.  (And the division names, I really hate the division names).  I really don't understand why they are trying to make the I and G in BIG look like a 10, since TEN is still the second word.  And there aren't 10 teams, there are 12.  So I just don't get it (though if there were ever 16 teams, the G does look like a 6).  This one isn't as bad:

source

I don't have any logos of my own to share, but I hope that some marketing kid at one of these schools comes up with something.  I know if I were a marketing professor, my final assignment in all of my classes would be to figure out what to do with the Big 10 to 12 teams mess and come up with a new logo and division names.

I am kind of excited about the conference playing an extra game and determining a champion.  I would like to see them add two more teams in the future, but this is a fine place to start.  I hated the divisional split at first, but I've started to come around.  In any given year, it could play very lopsided, but that happens (look at the Big 12 last year).  They did protect the Michigan-OSU game, but in the future I could see them playing back-to-back weekends.  (Yes, I said in the future.....  both schools have some rebuilding to do.) 

A little more than 7 weeks to go, and we start the era of Hoke.  GOOOO BLUE!