Hit the Back Button to Move Fwd by Gavin Richardson

bcs is my friend : whats wrong with college football rankings

my buddy thomas is a texas fan is rather upset by the latest fun from the bowl championship series rankings that put his longhorns out of the big 12 championship game and likely out of the national championship. i have my own strong opinions which i got into rant mode. figured i'd share them here. if you can't read between my sarcasm and serious thoughts just ask or take me to task.

i'm with you thomas as a bama grad. texas should be in the game. its painfully obvious how swaying the polls are to the whims of what happened last weekend.

if texas was on the primetime tv last saturday and showed no defense and scored 60 points against another team who had no defense then they would have held onto their 1st place standing in the b12 south by keeping ahead in the bcs.

as history goes, the media loves oklahoma and what have they done in championship games? generally they tank with only one national championship win (seven years ago). they are even the great team that lost to a non-bcs conference.

texas when they got a shot only beat the, at the time before kick-off, the 'team of the century' as the pundits were calling usc. let it be known that the big 12 is 6-8 in bcs bowl games, four of those losses come via oklahoma, i anticipate another one coming. texas is 2-0 in their shot at bcs bowl games.

i don't know why they don't consider tradition, it doesn't leave from weekend to weekend. the team you thought was so great one weekend shouldn't just fall away the next, just as one you didn't think was as good as another doesn't just leap ahead of the other this late in the season.

plus an offense cannot win a championship. the colts never did till they sured up their offense. the '92 miami hurricanes got throttled when they met the alabama defense. no one gave the ravens much of a chance with dilfer, but how'd that turn out? i have no confidence in a team that cannot stop another team from scoring.

okay, that feels like sufficient rant. texas got hosed because our pundits are more into fads than they are into sustainability and sound teams. they love the quarterback, or the single person talent on a team, over the offensive and defensive lines.

note: i am glad they still hold fast to the undefeated being number one, bama gets no respect for being undefeated except that as tradition goes an undefeated team gets default number 1 status. it pissed me off when ohio state got there with slow teams in the past, but it's proving helpful for my team this year.

all that said. bama beats florida in a close one that almost gives me a heart attack. then rolls on to beat oklahoma by hitting sam bradford into the chin and pushing their o-line back and stumping their wide-outs with an awesome secondary. or florida wins and beats oklahoma and scores more points than bo jackson in techmo

social media & jujitsu : focus on the groundswell

i've been reading groundswell at the suggestion of many social media / marketing types. in the early stages of the book its pretty basic for someone who has been immersed in social media for the last 4-5 years. i liked this acknowledge of the real power behind social media tools.

So many words have been written about blogs, and blogging, social networks, and user-generated content that you might think that understanding those technologies will equip you for the new world.

Wrong.

First, the technologies change rapidly. And second, the technologies are not the point. The forces at work are. Like the jujitsu master, you must understand how bodies move, not just learn a single block or throw. You must develop a feel for the groundswell.

With that in mind, here's the principle for mastering the groundswell: concentrate on the relationships, not the technologies.

In the groundswell, relationships are everything. The way people connect with each other - the community that is created - determines how the power shifts.

-groundswell, charlene li & josh bernoff

world aids day : its preventable

today is world aids day, and we all need to take some action to keeping aids at the fore front of our causes. if you are united methodist tribe member like myself, or anyone for that matter, you can contribute to the global aids fund, which still hasn't met it's goal of raising $8 million in four years (i believe that number represents 1 dollar per member). maybe its time to put some posters around your office, church, or home to be a reminder.