DaveZdyrko.com

The football team likely won’t produce a first day draft pick for the first time in ages, but at least the University of Miami has come out #1 in Playboy’s list of top Party Schools for 2009! I guess that’s better than nothing. It’s all about the “U”!

I’ve been meaning to blog about this but it kept slipping my mind. After doing a bunch of research and watching the UMass Division 1-AA championship game he won as a head coach, I must say that I’m feeling extremely happy with the Miami Hurricanes’ hiring of Mark Whipple to be Assistant Head Coach and Offensive Coordinator.

He seems to have a great offensive mind and his track record at UMass, Brown and New Haven on the offensive front is astonishing. The praise being thrown his way by guys like Bill Cowher and Andy Reid are also fairly significant and his former players seem to like to throw out the “genius” tag when talking about him.

The only thing that makes me have concern is the fact that it seems a bit odd for someone to be have been in the coaching business for as long as he has without getting any true big-time opportunities, especially if he’s deserving of the overly-used genius moniker. Then again, there could be numerous reasons other than lack of ability that could cause something like this to happen. It’s not like he’s getting any automatic Rooney Rule interviews.

As big of a whooping that we’re getting, it kinda makes me laugh a little amongst the tears that the Miami Dolphins’ are pretty much getting their asses knocked out of the playoffs by the Miami Hurricanes. Ed Reed’s INT return for a TD pretty much ended my hopes and then McGahee’s long burst pretty much put the final nail in the coffin. Throw in Ray Lewis’s excellent play, including his effort in causing that 19 yard loss on the reverse by Tedd Ginn, and today it’s clearly all about the “U”.  Yesterday also saw some big performances by Edge and Antrelle Rolle, so the ex-Canes have done the school proud this weekend.

It’s official. Jacory Harris is my least favorite Miami Hurricane in the history of the football program. He’s been so hyped, people have been begging for him to get the start, and he finally got a big shot in tonight’s lame ass bowl game against Cal in San Francisco. He started the game off horribly, then showed some promise in the middle, and then absolutely choked down the stretch to hand the game to the weak ass Pac-10 team.

First, he fumbled inside his own god damn 5 yard line. Take care of the fucking ball you fucking moron! Just take the sack or throw it away, don’t run around with the ball loose like the world’s biggest moron. His idiotic fumble resulted in a Cal TD that gave them a 24-17 lead with 2 1/2 minutes left to play. So, he has a shot to make up for it, right? Well, yeah, except his idiotic play continued.

It began with our retarded offensive coordinator starting off with a straight run play, that netted us nothing and took some time off the clock. Then Jacory, dinked and dunked it 3 times to gain 9 yards and a first down while taking a minute and a half off the clock. Then the brainless wonder takes off running and instead of just stepping out of bounds like he had a clear shot to, he cuts it up field and takes off another 30+ seconds off the clock. He waisted 2 minutes just to gain about 15 yards. Pure genius. I hate him and blame his retarded ass for us losing to Cal.

EDIT: January 15, 2009 — Now that some time has passed, my hate for Jacory has faded. The truth is that it was a fairly meaningless bowl game that the team was expected to lose and, as is the norm with me, I often just get too worked up over any game the Hurricanes lose. I’m back to being a Jacory fan and am now anxiously awaiting for National Signing Day to see if the Canes can land another solid top 10 class!

I don’t want to jinx it, but there are reports that Miami Hurricanes’ offensive coordinator Patrix Nix has been contacted for the vacant Head Coach position at Auburn. All I have to say about this is, PLEASE TAKE THE JOB IF IT’S OFFERED! He is the absolute worst offensive coordinator that’s ever been at UM during my lifetime and since he’s been running the show offensively, the team has completely lacked any sort of consistency or identity. The only time we’ve even looked like a passable offense has been whenever we’ve played a lowsy Big 12 school that doesn’t believe in defense, like Texas A&M. I really hope he takes the job and if not, Randy Shannon better fire him at season’s end or RS will be on my shit list.

Obviously, I owe plenty of thanks to the “Wide Right” Gods in how they’ve helped my ‘Canes beat FSU several times and subsequently won National Championships. Now you can chalk up an apparent fantasy football victory to their credit. I went into the game with all my players done and up by 14 points with Kellen Winslow and Ryan Lindell left to play for my opponent. It was looking really good for me in the first three quarters, but then things started to get frightening.

Winslow got 30+ yards bringing his point total up to 4 and Lindell made a couple of extra points bring him up to 9; this made the score 67-66 in my favor after Dawson made that 56 yard FG to give the Browns the lead with 93 seconds left to play. I was actually hoping that Dawson would’ve missed because then the Bills would’ve just run out the clock but he made it with plenty of time left for Buffalo to get into FG range. Then the idiotic Romeo decided to squib kick it and put give the Bills prime field position near mid-field and the Bills quickly marched into FG range. I was absolutely livid. I was thinking that he would surely make the kick and I would lose to one of our league’s worst teams 69-67.

But then when the Bills were lining up for the field goal I thought to myself “wide right” and then I typed “WIDE RIGHT” in my aim chat window to Dave Toole. Then the announcers started talking about “wide right” in the Bills lore…and then…Lindell missed the kick “wide right” and I squeaked out a 67-65 victory! And unless the official scoring changes between now and this morning, I will be sitting pretty at 8-3 and with a playoff spot potentially locked up!

Already stated it after the Hurricanes game on Thursday and I’ll state it again after today’s narrow escape by the Dolphins against the Oakland Raiders — a win is a win. I thought we might have blown a great opportunity to stay strong in the playoff hunt after that long kick return for a touchdown gave the Raiders their first lead of the game, but my boys came through in the clutch and drove for the game winning field goal with less than a minute remaining to seal a victory. Miami is now 6-4 and if they can upset the Pats next week and if the Jets lose to the Titans, then we will be sitting in a position never thought possible — atop the AFC East!

The one apparent downer to my fruitful football weekend, which began on Thursday, is that my fantasy football team has a very precarious 15 point lead over one of the worst teams in the league, with that team still having Winslow, Randle El, and Lindel to play. He also has the Cards D going right now while all I have is 2nd string Mewelde Moore. If I lose this game, it was be heartbreaking given the competition and the fact that I got home 1 minute too late and was stuck with BenJavus Green-Ellis who I was going to bench in favor of either Ted Ginn Jr or Lance Moore (15 and 16 points respectively) if Sammy Morris was cleared to play, which he was. I ended up with 0 points in that slot instead of at least 15. The late work day on Thursday just might cost me a victory that I was favored to win by 51 points. Sad Christmas if that happens.

Go Terps! Thanks to the Maryland upset of North Carolina today, my Miami Hurricanes are completely in control of their own destiny in the ACC. If we can beat Georgia Tech and North Carolina State then we’ll likely be getting a rematch with FSU in the ACC title game. We actually have a legitimate shot at making it to the Orange Bowl this year. At the start of the year, particularly after coming out of the gates 2-3, I may have hoped for a BCS bowl appearance, but I never thought it was a realistic possibility with this young team. Yet, here were are now in the driver’s seat in our division of the ACC. We still have some tough games ahead of us, especially next Thursday at Georgia Tech, but I’m just thrilled that we’re in this position and am excited about the possibility about being a National Power again within the next 2-3 years. It’s all about the “U”!

For starters, I had amazing nights out on both Friday and Saturday. Both evenings were loads of fun and there were plenty of hot chicks to entertain everywhere we went. Then things went really good with all of my football teams on both Saturday and Sunday.

The Miami Hurricanes took care of business against Wake Forest and still have an outside shot at the ACC title or at least being bowl eligible. The Dolphins played great today and beat down the Buffalo Bills, with Ginn Jr finally showcasing his playmaking ability. And that’s not all, my fantasy football team scored 109 points and barring a 40+ point outburst by Scaife on MNF should up its record to 6-2 and into a three-way tie atop the division.

And in what might quite possibly be the best news of the weekend, I weighed-in this morning at 299.6 lbs. Hopefully I won’t ever allow myself to go up past the 300 mark ever again for the rest of my life. If I do, I give you permission to put a bullet in my head. It feels good to be back under 300 lbs and I can’t wait till my wrist and ankle/foot heal up so I can start getting back into the gym on a regular basis.

Ah, yet another loss in the lowly ACC conference and against our arch-rival Florida State Seminoles. This is going to be a long and painful season of watching Miami Hurricanes football and we’ll likely finish near the bottom of the conference again. BUT, I am TREMENDOUSLY happy with the fact that the team finally showed some heart in the 2nd half and the 4th quarter. The kids were down huge at the half but didn’t run away scared with their tales between their legs. Instead, they fought extremely hard in the 2nd half and were in the fight till the very end only to lose 41-39.

They were sloppy and made so many mistakes throughout the game, but this team is so young that I’ve come to grips with the fact that I need to expect those things. What impresses me is the tremendous amount of talent I see from our freshmen and the fact that they never gave up in this game. I’m proud of my baby Canes. It’s, still, all about the “U”!