Update With Old Hound Photos

First of all, like most holiday seasons, the days of the week have gone out the window. My brain seems to be a day or two ahead of the actual day. A lot of football games on tv will do that to a person. So Friday night Walter and I tuned into the pre-game shows to pass the time until Indiana's kickoff at 6:30 CT. 

It was interesting to see all those ESPN "experts" backtracking with their love fest of Indiana Football after bad mouthing them for two straight years. Only Pat McAfee, the old Indianapolis Colts punter has gone in the opposite direction of ESPN and backed them over the same time period.  

You can see Walter was game ready 4:30 CT.

Long story short my team won. Not only won, but for the second time in these playoffs won big 55-22. Oregon scored a TD late in the game against an Indiana defense that had numbers on jerseys that I did not recognize... their subs were in. Young players that rarely get playing time.

So once again they beat a team with players ranked higher out of high school, bigger, faster and no way possible Indiana could beat a team for the second time in a season ... because nobody had ever done that.

I did not know until watching the local tv news the other night, there was a player from a small town of 5,000 people that plays for Indiana. His school is always good in football but the school is small in size where they play in Class 2 in Indiana. His town is 27 miles to the east and the same town as my veterinary is in, Boonville Indiana. He is the player to the left of the kicker.

Some of you might not understand this ... rarely do you see a player from a small school play on a team that is ranked #1 in the country of what I call "big boy football." He is on the same field where players from both teams will be drafted this spring into the NFL.

It is pretty amazing that you can go from an empty stadium at home in Bloomington Indiana 2023 due to too much losing .... to .... (this is at the start of the game where the IU band was in formation to play the national anthem.)

Traveling to Atlanta and filling up the majority of the 71,000 seats. Yes all that red is Indiana fans. That small corner of green in the corner is Oregon. They too were to be on the side but Indiana fans bought up all their tickets online before they did, or they just weren't that interested after having to fly the week before from the west to Miami to see their team beat Texas Tech. 

That empty stadium I showed you is now sold out every game in Bloomington Indiana. I have pointed out to a few friends that lean more towards academic side of the University and can't understand why you need to pay market value of $8M to $12M per year for a head coach ... just how much revenue is created by winning. Good football coaches win and are worth ever dime.

A few years ago it was announced that Alabama was making an addition $90M for the school by winning and giving Nick Saban a salary that was market value. At that time the market value for a great head coach was in the $10M while generating over $120M for the school in athletic revenue in a calendar year.

So ... IU plays in Miami against the University of Miami on January 19th for the National Championship. 

A few bits of trivia.

• The IU QB lives less than a half mile from the UofM campus
• A few IU players are from Miami and some of their high school teammates play for UofM
• The head coach of Miami played on same high school team as the dad of the IU Quarterback in Miami growing up
• 50 years ago this March Indiana won the College Basketball National Championship undefeated
• Can the Indiana Football team do the same thing? They have one game to go.

So once again until game time on the 19th, fans of both teams will be on X (twitter) bantering, sometimes arguing or even with some serious football discussions about the game with each other. Luckily X has a "mute" and a "block" button to get rid of the trash so to speak.

Now for some old hound photos ... some of them might be repeats where I posted old photos in the past.

July 8, 2021

April 20, 2020

The first minute I saw Walter. He literally crawled across the floor in fear when I called for him to come over to me.

April 24, 2020 

He latched on to Stella as soon as he walked into the house. She was his best friend.

April 24, 2020

By invitation he visited Sun & Spokes Bike Shop at their old location in Sierra Vista, Arizona

It is colder than I like today but the sunshine is bright. It doesn't feel like Sunday because I thought that was yesterday. Heart seems to be working okay as I take my blood pressure every morning. My pacemaker must have been sleeping as my heart dropped to 44 sometime between midnight on Friday until I woke up on Saturday morning. It is set at 60 as a minimum heart rate. 

Things are good though here in "the tropics" of Southern Indiana.