After a couple crazy week’s of travel I finally got home to enjoy a few hours of doing nothing this weekend and decided to pop on “The Founder” starring Michael Keaton. There’s a couple reasons why:

1. I kinda like these “based on a true story” sorta kinda movies.
2. Michael Keaton has been one of those guys I’ve always liked (“220. . .221. Whatever it takes”) and has had somewhat of a comeback in recent years.
3. I’ve ate a lot of McDonald’s in my life.

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Duffy leads the Royals Rotation.

That’s right it’s baseball season! Sure March Madness is upon up and it seems like the Super Bowl just got over, but my brain is on summertime and Kauffman Stadium. So along with that it’s also time for for my kinda annual Royals preview. Mostly because there have been a lot of years I’ve wrote about the Royals but can’t remember all the years I’ve done it.

After achieving the ultimate accomplishment in 2015 the Royals clawed their way through the 2016 season to finish 81-81. To the casual baseball fan most would say the Royals lost their magic and 2015 was one of those lucky flukes or perfect storms.

Like most Royals fans I was disappointed in the overall record and finish of the Royals but wasn’t upset with the outcome. I think most true blue Royals fans would say it was almost a miracle to finish .500 after the dumpster fire that became the starting pitching rotation and the other injuries they encountered. It wasn’t mid 2000’s KC baseball but it wasn’t what we’ve become accustomed to either. Continue reading →

Downtown Owl is a book by Chuck Klosterman set in the fictional town of Owl, N.D.  When I moved to North Dakota last year my friend Brad said, “You need to read Downtown Owl.”

Months went by and I was back in Nebraska for a Saturday night when Brad reminded me again on one of our Omaha drives, “You need to read Downtown Owl.”

Of course I gave him the, “Oh yeah, you said that before. Yeah, I’ll definitely check it out man.”

On Friday, December 23rd I was back in Nebraska for the holidays. I had already finished up one Christmas the night before with the my brother and his girlfriend. Friday was my off day before getting back into the season of Christmas the next night at my Grandma Baker’s and the next day with my sister’s family. Brad was back “in the creek” so we decided to meet up and see how life had been going.

Like a couple of 90 year old men, we drove around looking at Christmas lights in small towns be mesmerized by the lack of lights or the overabundance of lights on any given block. There was also a lot of confusion as we crept past one house who had baby Jesus in a manger being overlooked by Santa Claus and Rudolph. (Go back and read that sentence one more time, and think about it for a second.) Continue reading →

Kevin Donley and the University of Saint Francis Cougars won the NAIA National Title tonight beating Baker University, 38-17. It’s the first championship for Donley at USF and I don’t know if I’ve mean more happy for a program or coach in all of my years of covering the NAIA.

One of the biggest reasons I covered the NAIA for as long as I have is because of the relationships I created with the coaches. After a few years and showing that I could be trusted many of them let me into their programs and into their personal lives outside of football.

My first real venture into meeting a lot of coaches began when I did “The Two-A-Day Tour”for my old web site. The concept was easy; go interview coaches and players all over the country during fall camp and add a bunch of content to the web site.

The execution was a little tougher. When I called to set up each of these stops I got met with a lot of resistance and questions. Who are you? Why do you want to do this? What’s the catch? Continue reading →