Yay Bird's team!

Mike and I were happy to see Virginia Tech beat Tennessee 37-14 before getting to stay up for New Year's. Now we want Mike's team to beat the team with the really really old coach.

-Bird

Bird and Mike go bowling

It's almost time for the first bowl games to start - Southern Miss and Middle Tennessee play in the New Orleans Bowl on Sunday - so Bird and Mike wanted to talk about their New Year's plans.

Hi everybody! After Uncle Jam/Daddy sings his concerts we get to watch bowl games. We like the ones with actual name names like Orange Bowl and Sugar Bowl because when our teams are in them it means they did well. We think the Chick-fil-A Bowl that Bird's team is in is especially bad cause Bird doesn't want people to eat other birds.

We saw this thing where sometimes schools lose money even though they have teams go to bowls. This is poopyhead! We think that at least if someone like the San Diego County Credit Union wants to name a bowl after themselves they should at least give enough money for the schools to break even.

Merry Christmas! -Bird and Mike

----------

James here again. There's actually two legitimate reasons the San Diego County Credit Union has the advertising budget to sponsor a bowl - they are the largest bank-type institution based in San Diego; yet, they face immense competition from, among other places, the largest credit union in the world. I can't give the first person who gives the right answer anything but a pat on the back, but I'm interested in seeing if any readers know the answer without looking it up on Wikipedia...

Yay Bird's and Mike's teams!

LSU survives Arkansas comeback bid, 33-30 in OT

Williams, Hokies run past Virginia, 42-13

We are very happy that our teams won! We are especially glad that Mike's team learned from their mistakes and figured out how to read the clock and make it stop. We hope Buzz's team (Georgia Tech -ed.) wins next week so that Bird's team doesn't have to go to Atlanta again and maybe (in my dreams -ed.) they play here in the sugary game instead.

Uncle Jam wanted to talk about CavMan's team needing a new coach so we will stop talking. -Bird and Mike

_____________

Every newspaper in Virginia already has their piece ready for when their coach, Al Groh, is fired. Much as I liked seeing them lose, football at Virginia Tech would be even better if their principal rival were competitive, so I make the following statements as constructive criticism.

There are a few inherent disadvantages that make it difficult for UVa's football team to succeed in the long term, no matter who the coach is. Tonight at the hotel where I work I ran across one UVa fan who blames everything on UVa not wishing to make any exceptions in their academic admission standards to accomodate athletes.

The nearest parallel I could draw to schools that have a structural difficulty recruiting some athletes were the service academies. I think that UVa could overcome their limitation most easily if they went away from a pro-style, athlete-vs-athlete approach to playing and adopted a "college" strategy-vs-strategy method. Paul Johnson showed at Navy and now at Georgia Tech that a disclipined ball-control offense can make up for having fewer star athletes. Since he's presumably not available I'd go after Navy's new coach, Ken Niumatalolo, who has at least kept Navy up to the point where they were able to drive the decisive nail in Charlie Weis' coffin.

Introducing my alter ego

Allow me to introduce you all to my nephew HokieBird (or just Bird for short). As you can tell, he is an incredibly cute stuffed Care Bear-like version of Virginia Tech's mascot. He lives with his mommy (my sister), his cousin Mike the Tiger, and several other stuffed animals up in Virginia.

Bird and Mike have wanted their own blog so they could talk about football and other things that interest stuffed animals with the minds of ten-year-olds. Unfortunately, they have a hard time using a computer, since Bird can only type with his beak and Mike chases the mouse because he thinks it's an actual mouse. When they found out I finally started my own blog they danced like in the Charlie Brown cartoons! When one or both of them want to say something they're going to tell me and I'll type for them. With that said, it's time for me to turn the proceedings over to Bird!

Hi everybody! I'm glad I get to talk to all of Uncle Jam's friends now. I actually got to say something on the Internet a few months ago, when the New York Times previewed my team. For that I had to learn Pig Latin. Next year if I do a preview there maybe I'll move up to real Latin. Anyway, Mike and I are sorry that Mike's Coach Hat acted like a poopyhead at the end of their game last week. We know a lot of Uncle Jam's friends in New Orleans like Mike's team so we try to watch them whenever my team isn't on.

Anyway, I also wanted to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving! But please, don't eat turkeys like me; but feel free to eat ham from pigs like the team Mike plays this weekend.