FilteringCraig

I just wanted to be the first person to call for Romeo’s firing this season. I don’t really have any new criticisms from what I had last year. People talk about how he flipped a coin to determine his starting QB in the first pre-season game this season. That didn’t bug me. Considering the lack of talent at the position on the team between Charlie Frye and Derek Anderson, why should he be steadfast in choosing which piece of cow dung he finds more appealing?

Also, the Browns brass has gone out of their way to make sure that the offense is being handled by hiring Rob Chudzinski away from San Diego. On top of that, they have re-made one of the worst offensive lines in the league. They have signed an experienced runner in Jamal Lewis who will almost assuredly have a big season so he can make the big bucks next season on a new contract. On top of that, the Browns have added a lot of names on the defensive side of the ball. Even if they aren’t pro-bowl type players, they will add a lot of much-needed depth to the team.

Come to think of it, the Browns have improved in pretty much every phase of the game this off-season. The only place where they haven’t improved is in Romeo Crennel’s seat. And that’s why I offer you a very un-impassioned cry for Romeo Crennel’s firing. The Browns are one step better than they were last year, but we probably won’t see too much improvement in the W column at season’s end. There will assuredly be plenty of clock mismanagement and I am sure one of the league’s worst challengers will continue to throw the red flag at worse moments than any other coach in the league.

So, I am going to beat you all to the punch. Despite the Browns trying to help Romeo in absolutely every way possible, he will still find a way to screw it up and I want him fired now. Trust me. I will say “I told you so” later this season when you all find your way to my bandwagon. I just am starting early.

I have been tagged by MisterCrunchy and now I tag Kiddicus Maximus because he never writes enough.

The reason that I blog has changed a lot over time. I have always liked writing. I originally started because I hated my life, I was depressed and bored and needed a hobby. That is also the same reason that I started playing guitar. For a while, I was just reviewing music. Then I started reviewing movies and TV shows. I blogged one season of American Idol. Now, I primarily write about sports, although lately, anything that appears worth writing about is decent fodder for me.

I almost wish someone would give me assignments like I had back in high school and college. Maybe someone should give me a list of assignments with which to choose.

Anyway, I hope I fulfilled the goals of this mini-assignment.

Now, get to writing Kiddicus.

Pixie Loves Books, originally uploaded by FilteringCraig.

I don’t usually post any cat pictures, but in this case, I thought it was kind of funny how Pixie eliminated reading as one of Jen’s options last night. I can’t understand how it would be comfortable to hug a book while sleeping, but the cat was totally down with enveloping the follow-up book by Khaled Hosseini who wrote The Kite Runner.

Anyway, Cuteness over.

I was watching Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel this weekend and it just totally ruined my day. I knew that they were doing a whole segment on dog fighting and I knew there could be brutal footage, but I figured I wanted to be somewhat informed about it anyway. I am not sure why I felt the need to be informed about something that happens in such a minute percentage of the time around the country, but I did.

And think about that for a second. How much dog fighting can possibly be taking place around the country? Granted it is an awful thing, but with basically less than a handful of people nationwide participating in this activity, the amount of time that we have spent talking about it as a nation is completely disproportionate.

Anyway, I was watching the segment on Bryant Gumbel’s HBO show and the story hit a breaking point for me where I just couldn’t watch it anymore. It is one thing to have all these animals bred to fight for money. How these “Dog Men” get their pit bulls trained to fight like that is where these people truly hit their lowest points. As I am watching they start talking about how these trainers will kidnap people’s pets right out of the backyard, take them to their fighting pits, duct tape their mouths shut and allow their killer pit bulls to just ravage someone’s pet.

This didn’t totally surprise me, but then Real Sports showed a clip of one of these helpless animals basically using the black lab defense pose where they roll on their back, while a pit bull systematically circled it and dismantled someone’s pet.

After about three seconds of this clip, I looked at my remote, hit the stop button and erased the show from my DVR. But, the damage has already been done. Now, I have to think about this horrendous thing all the time, even though the occurrence of dog fighting, nationwide, is a really statistically insignificant type of occurrence.

Being informed sucks.

I have a lot of running updates from this weekend. First and foremost, I broke the 100 mile mark overall since I started running with the Nike Plus system.

It took me 38 runs overall to get over 100 miles. My average time per mile was 9:31.

Also, this Sunday I ran in my first race. It wasn’t a big-time race and quite honestly the 5K run that I participated in was the undercard of the event which was really focused on the 10-mile run. There were only about 90 runners in the 5K.

Irregardlessly** of all that, I finished the race in just over 26 minutes. I came in 23rd overall, and 2nd in the 20-29 year old age group.

So, now a bar has been set. I know where I stand today after my first race. Now we will see if I can continue to increase the mileage and/or decrease my overall times.

Last but not least, I set a goal for myself to do 60 miles in 4 weeks. Here is my progress. I am slightly ahead of schedule, but I can easily see myself behind schedule by Friday because I will be in Columbus at a conference for three days. I will just have to run really far this weekend.

(** I realize regardless is the right word to use, but I have failed so miserably at getting people to stop saying “Irregardless” that my brother and I figured we would advance an even more preposterous version of the “word” to try and show people how ridiculous it is. Thus, I bring you, “Irregardlessly”)

I heard inklings at the end of the disastrous finals that the Cavs were considering hiring some kind of offensive specialist to help out Mike Brown. We all know he needs it in a serious way, as in cops who need bullets kind of way.

I understand the complexities with the salary cap that keep the Cavs from getting too much done in free agency and on the trade front, but someone tell me why they haven’t spent more of Dan Gilbert’s money on coaching when there is literally no limit to what a team can spend?

I haven’t been yelling and screaming about the relative inactivity up to this point, but we all know that the Cavs need to do something in this off-season to improve their chances next year. A lot of their players are in the upswings of their careers, so they should improve a little bit that way. But, I think that I speak for all of the Cavs’ fans out there when I say that the Cavs need to make a bigger improvement than just the progression of their young players.