Hey Tiger Woods, look out for these shady characters...

Dear Mr. Tiger Woods,

Welcome to a non-Masters event. The following folk will be in attendance. Best of luck and stay focused on the hole!

Sincerely,
Quail Hollow attendees

Carmelo Anthony fans from Utah

This was an ad shown during game 1 of the Denver vs. Utah series on Saturday night. Definitely a bit strange and apparently something from Nike.

Check it out and share your thoughts...

St. Patty's Day

Well, we had a very fun and busy last weekend. It included an epic day of skiing, a nice Boulder hike up Sanitas, a tour of Avery Brewery and some intense Scrabble at the Mountain Sun.

Tony came in town to visit and meet Dylan.

Ranger helped teach Dylan the finer points of playing fetch.

There were birthday party's galore and Dylan figured out how cool balloons are! He erupted with excitement every time he saw one!

And at the end of the weekend, Dylan and dad took a nap together in mom and dad's bed.

Happy St. Patty's Day!

Jimmy Heuga

When I was a youngster I took a trip from Wisconsin to Colorado with my dad. We got to ski Vail a few days, went to a Broncos playoff game and had dinner with Olympic legend and Buff Jimmy Heuga.

My dad's boss was a pretty big skiier and evidently a friend of Jimmy's so we had the chance to have dinner with him. It's one of those one-time meetings that has stuck with me all these years later.

Most people know or have heard of Billy the Kidd. How could you not. But Jimmy was was an American alpine ski racer who became one of the first two members of the U.S. men's team to win an Olympic medal in his sport. After multiple sclerosis prematurely ended his athletic career, he became an advocate of exercise and activity to combat the disease.

Heuga was born in Tahoe City, California on September 22, 1943. He grew up in Squaw Valley, California, where his father Pascal, a Basque immigrant from southern France, operated the resort's cable car. Jimmie Heuga was on skis at age two and began to compete in the sport at age 5; he appeared in a Warren Miller ski film at age 9. Heuga was named to the U.S. Ski Team in 1958, becoming the youngest man ever to make the squad as a 15-year-old.^[1]

He attended the University of Colorado, where he was coached by Bob Beattie for the first time. A three-time letterman, Heuga won the 1963 NCAA championship in the slalom. With Beattie also leading the U.S. Ski Team, Heuga, along with fellow Buffaloes Billy Kidd, Buddy Werner, and Bill Marolt, formed the squad's nucleus for the 1964 Winter Olympics. Both Kidd and Heuga became the first American men to win Olympic medals in Alpine skiing, respectively capturing silver and bronze in the slalom.^[1]

Heuga died on February 8, 2010, at Boulder Community Hospital in Boulder, due to complications that stemmed from multiple sclerosis.^[2]

• finished sixth in the slalom and fourth in the combined at the 1966 World Championships at Portillo, Chile
• joined the pro racing tour following the 1968 Winter Olympics where he was 7th in the slalom and 10th in the giant slalom.
• was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1970, which derailed his ski racing career at age 27.
  • early symptoms were first noticed in 1967
• founder of Can Do Multiple Sclerosis, formerly The Heuga Center for Multiple Sclerosis.
• the first NASTAR National Pacesetter (1968)

Jimmy passed away on February 8, 2010.

NFL Championship Sunday

In my opinion, today is likely the best football day of the entire year. You have the NFC and AFC championship games on back-to-back. It seems that year after year these are the best games of the NFL playoffs.

Here are some thoughts:

Vikings vs. Saints:
Old Man River (Favre) versus Captain America (Brees). This has all the ingredients of an amazing game. Potent offenses. Solid defenses. Tons of speed and two teams use to playing on turf in domes. High scoring and lots of offense! Over-under of 60 points, which I think they'll hit. Brett Favre on the cover of SI this week....

Advantage: Saints.
I can't stomache having 2 weeks of Favre coverage and people talking about how great he is at 42. Six months ago the press was bashing him for his inability to make a decision (for what seems like the 20th time in the past 4 years). Now, they love him. Me, I am sick and tired of Brett Fav-ruh.


Colts vs. Jets:
Young upstart Mark Sanchez versus Peyton Manning. There was a great article in the local paper this morning about Mark Sanchez and his best friend relationship with CU wide receiver Scotty McKnight. Pretty cool that these two guys have been friends since 2nd grade and are still close to this day despite busy schedules and distance apart.

It will be too hard for the Jets to come out of Indy with win, but some how...

Advantage: Jets.
Here's to long time friendships and the under dog prevailing. Peyton Manning's sponsors will be bummed he's not around for the Super Bowl. We'll still see plenty of him, just not playing.

** Enjoy the games today!

Introducing Dylan's blog!

With a start of new year, we've added a blog focused on Dylan. It's still a bit of a work in progress but looks really good so far! Click here to access the site.

I am going to stop sending out direct e-mails of new blog posts through my mailing list. If you get these blog posts via e-mail and want to continue doing so, please respond to the e-mail and I'll keep you on the list. If not, no big deal and no need to respond.

You can still come to this blog to check out my various Musings on your own and I have a link to Dylan's blog on the top of this blog page for all future needs. Just simply click and go!

Thanks for tuning in and.... Go Buffs!

Bobcats shout out

So I'm headed to a Nuggets game this Monday as they host the Charlotte Bobcats. Somehow, the Bobcats are 9-1 since January 1st and some folks are calling them the best team in the NBA as of right now (see video below).

Well, since my buddy works for the [lowly] Bobcats and as a result Dylan has a bunch of their gear, I thought it best to share a video and article from NBA.com.

Good work Bobcats! At least I can expect a competitive game at the Pepsi Center this Monday night.

This had to hurt!

I briefly turned on a Texas A&M vs. Washington game Tuesday night. With 5 seconds of watching the game they had a stop in play due to a player injury. The amazing part was how long they showed this player prior to realizing he had a pretty major injury. See if you notice something wrong with his leg.

This is what they showed:

Basketball at MSG = Unbelievable!

A group of us had a once in a lifetime opportunity while in NYC a few weeks ago for a Bachelor Party.

Sean had a major hookup with the New York Knicks and got us an hour of court time on the hallowed grounds of Madison Square Garden. Granted it was 10am on a Saturday strapped in the middle of a long bachelor party weekend, but everyone showed up and brought their "A" game.

We managed to get out on the floor closer to 9:30 and had nearly 90 minutes (4 full court games to 21) of playing ball. The gang included about 14 guys and we played full court on the most famous NBA court!

It was just an absolutely amazing experience and some really competitive basketball games. I have been considering my official "retirement" from hoops after the experience. I figure I played some of the best basketball I ever have so I might as well go out on top! Hey, there aren't many better ways to go out!

Here are some photos of the gang. Just an amazing experience.

You know we ALL do it...

A video has popped up of Tiger Woods at last weekends golf tournament. The camera caught him, err, doing something we all do. I guess you could say Tiger let one rip before he ripped it!

Favre... go back to Louisiana, get on your tractor and mow your yard! Again!

SO... I'm pretty sick and tired of Favre and this whole "as far as now is concerned, I'm retired" BS he keeps spitting. This has gotten beyond OLD!

Part of me thinks ESPN and it's 24/7, 12 months a year coverage of the NFL needs to drum up some good stories, so ol' Brett is just a pawn in their game. Then reality strikes and I realize this guy loves the spot light and attention as much, if not more than, the likes of Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, OJ Simpson and the like.

MJ decided he had to keep coming back, despite it tarnishing his legacy (luckily he had 6 titles to fall back on).

But then I Brett's 'ah shucks, I'm just a country boy' bit is part smoke and mirrors. Yes, he is a small-town guy, but after all those years with the Packers and all those post-seasons of "will he or won't" retire I am just plain sick of the story.

Brad Childress says Brett Favre "was worth a conversation," but the Minnesota Vikings coach insists the veteran quarterback remains retired -- as far as he knows.

Now the news this week is Minnesota gave Favre "a week" to decide if his surgically repaired shoulder is good enough to play another year. And news this morning that Favre's family has booked a block of rooms in Green Bay the weekend the Vikings visit the Pack on November 1. Can we say DRAMA!!?!!

Now, let's talk about Cutler and what a immature baby he is and how Bus Cook represents both Favre and Cutler... now there is a story I can get excited about!

Favre, go back to Louisiana, get on your tractor and mow your yard so I can wear my Favre jersey in public before my son is big enough to wear it. That's all I'm asking for!

Ready for the big Nuggets game tonight!

For the first time in a long, I'm not in the minority as a huge Nuggets fan. With the team stomping New Orleans and Dallas in reaching the Western Conference Finals for the first time in 20+ years, Melissa and I have been having a blast watching this team grow! The entire city is now firmly behind them as well. It creates a pretty fun buzz around town.

We are REALLY excited about Game 3 tonight in Denver. Dylan and Dad are already sporting their Nuggets gear for the big game tonight.

When we were in the hospital for two weeks the only TV that I would watch were the Nuggets games as they made a strong late season push to win their division.

I've been "able" to stay up late watching games the past two months as the Nuggets games have became the time when I fed Dylan (when he was bottle feeding early on) or when he and I got to hang out on the couch and get a good snuggle in.

Game 1 against the Lakers was a great game and the Nuggets made too many mistakes in the last 90 seconds of the game before bowing to LA. Carmelo Anthony's play showed me the team was ready to win this series.

For Game 2, I had class and missed all but the last 5 minutes of the game. I called Melissa as I left class and she was INTENSELY into the game - as she has been really into the Nuggets herself for the past two months. Melissa's first comment to me (paraphrasing) was "This is a great game! However I think Kobe has the look on his face like he's going to kill someone and Melo just has this big, confident smile!"

As a semi-interesting side fact: the Nuggets are UNDEFEATED when playing at home since Dylan was born 8 weeks ago. I kind of think that makes him their good luck charm. Here's to the Nuggets winning tonight!

The Heisman Trophy

Well, Cinco de Mayo did not bring about any margaritas or even chips and salsa for me this year. It's actually quite all right however.

Rashaan Salaam's 1994 Heisman Trophy wandered into our office on May 5th, which gave all the Buff alumni in our office the chance to hold the trophy and take photos.

I realize this was a bit random. A women at our office is married to the head pro of the new Colorado National Golf Course and at the Heisman was on display at the dedication ceremony over this past weekend, as previously seen on this blog. So in returning it to Dal Ward it made a quick pit stop at work.

It wasn't quite like holding the Stanley Cup but it's pretty close for this guy.

Big event for CU

CU now has it's own golf course, Colorado National Golf Club.

Over this past weekend there were dedication festivities for Colorado National Golf Club -- the new home for CU's golf teams -- as well as a ribbon cutting ceremony to dedicate Colorado National Golf Club. This represents a "true" home course for the Buffs for many years to come. Over the past 20+ years, the Buffs have changed their home course on a somewhat regular basis.

Formerly Vista Ridge Golf Course, the links were purchased by Steve Kerr, a former CU golfer from the 80s. On the foggy, rainy morning a couple hundred Buff backers were in attendance, including professional golfers (and former Buffs) Steve Jones and Hale Irwin.

The CNGC clubhouse on Saturday was decked out with all sorts of past and present CU memorabilia and awards. Outside, lined up on one side of the putting green, were 12 carts, each painted with the colors and logo of a different team from the Big 12 Conference.

Of particular interest, parked on the side of the putting green was a range-ball picking vehicle colored red and white, with a Nebraska football helmet on the roof and an "N" emblazoned on the front. Keep in mind that range-ball pickers are often the target of people hitting balls on the practice range, and what better target for a CU fan than a symbol of the NU football team, long a dreaded nemesis of the Buffs.

NFL Amazing!

This is one of the cooler videos I have seen in a long time! Check it out:

George Karl - NBA Coach of the Year?

Simply: Yes

The local sports news castors are drinking my kool-aid and discussing the Denver Nuggets very own head coach as a coach-of-the-year candidate. There is some warrant in this discussion, as previously discussed HERE. He deserves to be in the conversation and is showing why the Nuggets owner hired him several years back.

1) The Nuggets are the #2 seed in a very tough Western Conference. Preseason predictions definitely did not have the Nuggets as the #2 seed and had the Nuggets barely making the playoffs.

2) A second straight season of 50+ wins. A record of 54-28 was an improvement over a 50-32 record last year. All in all, the team played equally as well this year but was more consistent and won the games they were suppose to. That's a good sign of improvement.

3) Intangibles: the team played and looked like a true TEAM. This was not the case last year or the year before. This year's team showed real signs of maturity and the coach-player relationships were very good - no Kenyon Martin issues, AI was traded and the best players on the team generally showed up each and every night.

This season was truly special and now it's time to show up and play a tough first series against the Hornets. This should be a tough series for the Nuggets despite their #2 seed. Last year New Orleans was a game away from the conference finals.

Here's to a strong post season showing by the Nuggets: Let's get it on!!

Why I love Boulder.

I have a friend who wrote a "Why I love Boulder" blog recently. He did it as part of a bigger effort to promote Boulder.me as a business and technology start-up site. It's a great site but got me thinking about how I love living in Colorado and Boulder specifically.

Reason #1:

Right outside our front door we have skiing and outdoor activities within a few mile drive. It is definitely a perk to life and given the 36 week pregnant nature of my wife, I wanted to get a last spring ski day in.

So this past Sunday I went skiing at Eldora, about 21 miles west of Boulder. The drive goes up Canyon drive and through Nederland. It's an absolutely gorgeous drive and shows some of the best Colorado has to offer - winding river, beautiful mountains, a great waterfall and a lake up near Nederland. Plus Ned has one of my favorite micro-brew and BBQ places ever - Wild Mountain Smokehouse and Brewery. This place is great and is in Ned's little downtown (which also happens to be one of the last areas you can find where the town has decided not to have cell service). By all accounts it's a little hippy town. Ned also has Frozen Dead Guy days. Check out this link to see more about this unique, annual event. Frozen Dead Guy Days involves the city putting together a Coffin Race, people doing a Polar Plunge, and they even have a Parade full of floats.

The whole drive up I just keep thinking about how lucky we are and how great of a place we live. Part of my goal was to get a good day of spring skiing in and leave by 1:30 to get home in time for either a quick bike ride or a trip to the driving range. This was the end of my Spring Break from grad school and the thought of getting in "one last day" of outdoor activities prior to work, school and the forthcoming pregnancy seemed like a great day!

The spring skiing was actually really good in the morning and I got to rip off some diamond and double diamond runs, complete with moguls and trees. It was a blast and after the 16 inches of fresh pow-pow dumped three days prior, conditions were really great. So I headed home to enjoy the high-50's temps in Boulder and looked forward to hitting a few golf balls.

Lucky for me I ended up taking a break to eat a snack at home and waited for Melissa to get up from a nap. After she got up we talked for a bit and before we knew it we were running off to the ER and an ensuing c-section delivery....

A great weekend!

We are up in Breckenridge this weekend enjoying a little retreat. It's definitely been nice to spend some time with my wife and relax, a word that likely will have a new meaning in our lives shortly. It was also nice to get off the grid from work e-mails and school work. Aside from a little Internet surfing and baby gear online shopping, it's been a very chill weekend. It was in the 50s up in the high country all weekend so skiing wasn't much of an option. Of course we are leaving to head back home tomorrow morning and they are expecting 10-20 inches in the mountains over the next 36 hours... I guess timing is everything!

If you were like me and watched a ton of March Madness basketball this weekend, you have had enough Chevy, Taco Bell, State Farm and Capital One commercials to last you for a while (while Nike had a great commercial set throughout the weekend). There were some great games throughout the weekend and of course CBS had a best of One Shining Moment with an all-time best set of clips Saturday morning. If you missed it, it had 20+ years of highlights put into their video set to the classic One Shining Moment tune now sung by Luther Vandross. Of course this is NOT on their website and last year's One Shining Moment cannot be embedded for blog purposes, so I've copied a rough version below. If you want to click here, you can see a cleaner version on CBS Sports. If you have a link to the "best of" One Shining Moment, please e-mail me!


Enjoy your week!

Play Tournament Challenge

This message is from Ryan Lee who is challenging you to play Tournament Challenge on ESPN.com.Get in on the excitement of this year’s NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. Compete against other fans as you fill out a bracket and earn points for every correct pick! Come out on top and you could win $10,000. Get a group together and earn plenty of bragging rights amongst your friends by winning it all. Best of all, it’s free to play and win.
Get in the action now:http://games.espn.go.com/tcmen/group?groupID=4799

Group: Best Damn Pool in da Land

Invite family and friends!!!

Here's what else they had to say:
Please join in and try your luck in this year's tourney!

Mid-season hoops recap

In a prior article, I delved into local hoops teams and made some predictions on how the seasons would progress. The crystal ball failed me in one team - the CU Men's Hoops team - and succeeded fairly well in another one - the Denver Nuggets. Here are my (abbreviated) report cards and I should note that I have followed both as much as someone who works and is in school can:

CU Men's Team: Coach Bzdelik's team is very young and has a lot of growing to do and has lived below the predictions I made for them this season. CU is not have a traditional powerhouse basketball team and doesn't have a lot of in-state talent to draw from. The last truly good-to-great player from in-state that went to CU was Chauncey Billups; and he was a truly great high school player and all-star in college (see below for more in Nuggets commentary). Even the player of the year winners for Colorado high schools that have come to CU have done mediocre to good on the college level (see Levi Knutson). The team has made progress and it's nice to see players on the team develop and improve their overall play during the season (the prior coaching regime often had highly-touted players come in as Freshmen and not leave much betters as Senior's). Good things should be coming the Buffs way as the team gains experience and more physical maturity.

This year's rotation includes 7 freshmen and sophomores and only one junior and one senior. This means they have the ability to improve and how shown signs of this all year. They have lost nearly 10 games in the final minute or two against teams that had twice the talent and size that the Buffs currently do. They play an offensive style (think of a more modern Princeton offense) that spreads out the defense and makes the opponents work hard on defense as the Buffs are constantly setting backdoor screens and moving in space. The defensive schemes are often what keeps the Buffs in the game as Bzdelik has played a mixture of man-to-man, zone match-up schemes and even the 1-3-1 half court trap. I can guaranty you no team in the Big 12 enjoys playing the Buffs, despite their lack of size and experience. Good things are to come for this program. Top Big 12 teams often struggled against the Buffs and their style of play. This leads me to believe that much better things are to come!

Denver Nuggets: The Nuggets are having a great year and leading their division (against the always tough Jazz and the upstart Trailblazers). This team is on pace for as many wins as last year and has the chance to be better in the playoffs as well as win more regular season games. Their is one reason for this and that is quite simply Denver's NBA All-Star point guard: Chauncey Billups. Everything this team was lacking last year (4th quarter poise, maturity, team play and an on court leader), Chauncey has brought to the team. This has improved Carmelo Anthony's level of play, Kenyon Martin has been a consistent contributor with a point guard that can distribute the ball and Nene is playing his best, injury free season of his career.

All of this leads to a few points:

1) Chauncey Billups deserves to be in the discussion regarding the League MVP. He may not deserve to win, but he should be in that conversation. Look at Detoit and Denver. These teams are the same as last year, sans Chuancey and AI are on different teams. Which team looks like they are going some where this year? That should tell you how great this guy has become.

2) George Karl is a possible coach of the year candidate. He had what could be one of the toughest seasons any coach could ever imagine last year given his team showed him little to no respect and at often times looked completely helpless/lifeless on the coaching bench. This team is performing this year and his off-season discussion with his team to play his kind of basketball and the removal of Iverson have greatly improved the Nuggets this year. His benching of Carmelo Anthony after he refused to exit a game was the move of a coach confident in his job and showed needed and necessary leadership.