Time passed by a few weeks later, my girl and I feel out about high school pass drama. I wanted until I was here to wanted to be truthful with her instead of doing it while I was home, which caused me to lose her! As far as I knew it! I thought about giving up like the rest of the people around me and go home. I wanted to just stop everything so bad but I had to many new friends here that wouldn’t let me go.

I was doing so Well in football! I knew that something had to make a hug turn around when I started playing as a true freshman at IWCC. People here still didn’t know who I was other than  my friends. Life was starting to turn around, as so I assumed! Third game of the season and I break my foot. I couldn’t think of anything else that could bad  happen! I had never been hurt to where I would have to wear a cast for any body part of mine. I really didn’t know what to do anymore. NO LONGER MENT TO BE HERE! (is what was heavily running around my mind).

Seconds, mins, hours all went by like they went by like they were years. FOREVER! I had been so down and depressed that I wouldn’t handle the stress anymore! As my life started to go by I was no longer a student/athlete but a student. I began spending most of my days At the student center were I met some of the most coolest ladies ever. As far as I knew it they slowly help me get my life turned back around. They gave me a job which allowed me to focus on my work, they allow me to help with events, I became a blogger for the IWCC Blogger team and most of all they where my friends! Cant forget about everyone in admissions, they always had my back!  No one would allow me to give up on myself so easily and thank God every day for that!

As you can see my first semester here was the craziest time ever, but over a period of time things begin to change. I am now the student body president of the school, Melody and I are back together ; I’m back at it in football!

As freshmen at any school, take your time at how you do things and who you allow yourself to be around because you really don’t know how that person can help make your life better or worse!Things happen in life, so when something goes wrong or not your way don’t feel like it’s the end of the world and there is no one to talk too. Anything is possible!!! Strive for greatness because greatness is looking for you!

It’s a subject that’s been of interest to me for a few months, and I asked two player reps — Cleveland Browns linebacker Scott Fujita(notes) and Baltimore Ravens cornerback Domonique Foxworth(notes) — about it on an NFLPA media conference call on Jan. 11. George Atallah of the former NFLPA also chimed in.

Me: This is kind of an out-there question, but is there anything anywhere that would prevent NFL players from forming or joining an alternate league in the event of a lockout and/or CBA expiration?

Atallah: I think it’s an interesting question. Well look, once the contract expires, all bets are off. Once the CBA expires, [the players are] unemployed.

Fujita: That’s kind of what I was going to say. You know, if there’s a lockout, we don’t have a place to go to work. Could the players start their own league? Yes, absolutely, that could happen. Will it? I don’t know, but yes, that’s kind of a far-out-there question.

Foxworth: I mean, we’re unemployed at that point. We’ll be looking for work anywhere so if there’s a league that’s offering us a reasonable deal, it’s not unreasonable that an unemployed man would take a job that offers him the ability to demonstrate the skills that he has.

Me: Ooookay.

Fujita: And maybe we’ll coach in runaround teams, too.

Foxworth: That was awesome. I want to be the owner of the Baltimore [Brands].

Funny ha-ha, yes, but according to former Tennessee Titans defensive end and current free agent Jason Babin(notes), it’s an idea whose time may have come. The NFL has never experienced a work stoppage when alternate leagues were in effect, and while the UFL has no illusions of competing directly with the NFL as the American Football League and United States Football League did, players who love the game, or who want increased exposure for their skills, or who have run out of money in an extended stoppage, may very well jump ship. Babin’s no scrub, either — he made his first Pro Bowl in 2010 after racking up 12.5 sacks for the Titans. And former Dallas Cowboys practice-squadder Troy Bergeron(notes), a receiver who just signed a reserve/future deal with Dallas, wound up skipping off to the Arena League.

“Right now, I am free and clear to do as I please,” Babin recently told Jim Wyatt of the Tennessean. “I could play in the Canadian Football League if I wanted to.”

More importantly, he could play in a UFL that has been dealing with a lawsuit brought by Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who loaned the league $5 million and was rather unhappy about not receiving payment. It’s well-known that Cuban has thought about buying teams in other sports — he tried unsuccessfully to purchase the Chicago Cubs in 2008, and you’d think his entrepreneurial instincts would certainly pick up on the possibility of owning a team filled with NFL players, even in the short term. Other entrepreneurs, who see the cash cow the NFL has become (no matter what the league’s current owners may have us believe), might buy in and resuscitate the UFL for the kinds of short-term gains the younger league might provide if it was literally the only game in town.

“I know those leagues would love to grow their awareness and if they got a certain amount of high-profile guys to join in, the money would go from the NFL pool to the CFL or UFL pool and maybe they could negotiate a TV deal,” Babin told Wyatt. “Now that would scare the [stuffing] out of the NFL owners if they could pull something like that off, you know?

“So the NFL owners are fighting two fights. They are fighting a lockout fight, and they could be fighting the rise of the other leagues. They make themselves vulnerable the longer this lockout goes on.”

If the players don’t win the antitrust lawsuit that begins on April 6, and the owners are permitted by law to lock the players out, the odds of a quick settlement are dim at best. The owners would likely use the leverage given by a lockout to dictate terms. But if a high percentage of the players were to play in a different league, it could be a victory on two levels. First, the players would prove that this really is about the game to them. Second, the players could build equity in the hearts and minds of an American public that, for the most part, doesn’t care at all about the specifics of a labor fight — they just want football.

And the machinations of an alternate league could be one way for America to have it.

by:

H/T: Mac’s Football Blog

For most Japanese, the rolling outages instituted in the wake of the twin disasters translate to inconvenience, sacrifice and economic loss. But for tens of thousands who are now homeless and huddled in evacuation centers in the hard-hit northeast, the stakes are much higher.

“In known evacuation centers, people who reached actual evacuation centers, you have a half million Japanese displaced. They don’t have water, they don’t have electricity, they don’t have oil,” said Sheila Smith, senior fellow for Japan Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. “And the temperatures are… dipping below freezing because it’s snowing in most of those regions. So there’s an acute humanitarian crisis today in Japan.”

Nuclear plant occupies engineers
The difficulties don’t end there. Engineers with the Tokyo Electric Power Co., who normally might be working to get shut-down nuclear plants back online, are instead occupied with a meltdown at the company’s Fukushima Dai-ichi plant

Interactive: How a nuclear plant works

And for the aid organizations who seek to help the displaced, the lack of power in the quake zone and freezing temperatures are one more reason to rush, and one more challenge to face.

The disaster that struck Japan on Friday knocked out about one-fifth of the country’s 55 nuclear reactors, which normally provide nearly 30 percent of the total power in the country. It also clobbered many thermal plants and knocked out an unknown portion of Japan’s electricity transmission system.

1.  Size, magnitude
   A massive 9.0 magnitude earthquake — fifth largest since 1900 — struck at 2:46 p.m. local time Friday (12:46 a.m. ET), centered approximately 100 miles east of Sendai city on Japan’s main island, Honshu.

   Tsunami
   The quake generated a tsunami of at least 23 feet that swept boats, cars, buildings and tons of debris miles inland in Japan. Smaller swells struck other Pacific Rim countries and even the United States, causing serious but far less extensive damage.

   Casualties
   Police have confirmed approximately 3,300 deaths, but government officials have estimated that at least 10,000 people have been killed.

   Nuclear plants
   The fuel rods at three nuclear reactors at the Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima Dai-ichi plant are believed to be in various stages of melting, and a spent fuel pool at a fourth reactor has been damaged and was leaking radioactivity. Authorities have ordered the evacuation of a 19-mile radius around the plant.

   Other impacts
   Transportation and communications systems were largely paralyzed and large swaths of the country remain without power — estimates range from 1.2 million to 4 million households. Rolling blackouts have been imposed to conserve power around Tokyo and northern Honshu. Some commodities, including gas, are scarce. The Japanese government estimates that 1.4 million households have no access to safe drinking water.

In the northern part of the country, in addition to powerless evacuation centers, the Japanese government said Monday that some 1.25 million homes were without heat, and nearly 3.2 million people were facing reduced gas supplies in the coming days. Other estimates put the number of homes already without power two to three times higher.

In the city of Ishinomaki, previously home to about 164,000 people, Britain’s Guardian newspaper reported Monday that survivors seeking heat and shelter crowded into a Red Cross hospital, which was one of the only buildings in the city that still had power.

Video: At least 15,000 people missing in Japan (on this page)

In addition to those with no electricity, customers in many parts of the country are having to cope with three-hour rolling blackouts instituted Monday by TEPCO, the largest power company of 10 in the country and the operator of the Fukushima plants. It said Monday that the rolling blackouts would affect 3 million customers, including large factories and buildings, and would likely continue through the end of April.

On Tuesday a second utility, Tohuku Electric Power Co. said it would also implement electricity rationing, Kyodo News Service reported. Tohuku covers a large swath of the country north of Tokyo, including many of the areas hardest hit by the tsunami.

Tohoku Electric officials said power rationing could run for several months — with outages of up to six hours a day in some prefectures, Kyodo reported, while the company worked to restore quake-damages thermal plants. Company officials said, however, that the rolling blackouts would exclude quake hit areas that are trying to recover.

“What’s probably going on in Japan is they are trying to get as much power as they can to as many people as they can,” said Walt Pollock, a retired vice president of power supply for Portland General Electric Co. “So they implement the rolling blackouts … to spread the pain.”

Replacing lost generating capacity suffered in the quake is a long-term problem — especially in the nuclear sector, where seriously damaged plants are unlikely to be repaired or restarted, he said.

“There’s no easy answers to how Japan would get … the kind power that 5 (to) 8 nuclear power plants provide,” said Pollock. “The number of nuclear plants they have off line is far greater than the generating capacity of the Grand Coulee Dam, the largest single power generating plant in the (U.S.) Northwest.”

There is not much information yet to predict how long it might take to restore some power to sections of Japan that were taken off line by the disaster.

“There are no completely isolated parts of the grid,” said Michael Levi, senior fellow for Energy and the Environment at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Japan has greater interconnection throughout the country than, let’s say, in the United States.”

“The big open question is, what impact has the physical destruction had on the grid itself” he adds. “So even if in theory you can wheel power from one part to another, if some of the transmission lines are down… that can make that task much more difficult.”

By Kari Huus

SANDS OF TIME

Stay up to date on the NFL’s labor situation as the owners and players work on a new collective bargaining agreement.

“First of all, the league has never presented a formal proposal for 18 games,” Smith told SI.com. “But more importantly, it’s something that our players don’t want. Eighteen games is not in the best interest of our players’ safety, so we’re not doing it.”

In other labor news, NFL.com reported that the entire NFL labor committee, excluding New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, is expected to be at Thursday’s CBA bargaining sessions in Washington. Kraft had a previous commitment and is out of the country.

Updated Mar 9, 2011 10:01 PM ET

“Scooby Doo”
Hanna-Barbera cartoons count for a large number of the old TV cartoons you probably watched as a kid, and Scooby-Doo probably ranks high on that list. The amazing crime-solving team and its lovable talking dog have graced Saturday morning cartoons from 1969 through the present. Whenever children gathered around to watch cartoons on Saturday morning, “Scooby Doo” was an inevitable feature. Even adults are fond of “Scooby Doo” thanks to the show’s psychedelic elements and the goofy antics of Scooby and his human buddy, Shaggy.

“The Smurfs”
They’re cuddly, they’re lovable, and they’re-blue? Another Hanna-Barbera cartoon, the Smurfs deserve their own entry due to their own large cult following. These sky-blue creatures lived in a forest, and each portrayed a different stereotype or archetype. Since any child could easily identify with one of the Smurfs, they quickly gained popularity.

“The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show”
“Rocky and His Friends” and “The Bullwinkle Show” were two separate animated television shows that ran from the late 1950s through the early 1960s. Both characters are featured in each series, so they’re collectively referred to as “The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.” Rocky and Bullwinkle weren’t well drawn, but they had amusing and engrossing scripts, and they appealed to both kids and adults with their clever pop-culture references and underlying social commentary.

“Popeye”
He eats spinach and gains incredible strength. He’s sweet on Olive Oyl. His archenemy is Bluto. Yes, you guessed it-he’s Popeye the Sailor Man! Also originally a comic strip, Popeye appeared in various television series over the years and remains an iconic cartoon character.

“The Pink Panther”
“The Pink Panther” started out as the opening for the “Pink Panther” series of movies, but the cartoon became so popular in its own right that it became a Saturday morning series. This pink feline won the 1964 Academy Award for Animated Short Film and now belongs in the annals of cartoon history.

“Garfield”
No-one could forget this grumpy orange tabby, his annoying sidekick Odie and his slow-witted owner Jon. Garfield was originally a comic strip dating from 1978, but 12 Garfield cartoon specials and the “Garfield and Friends” animated TV show brought this classic cartoon to television.

“The Transformers”
Who could forget “The Transformers”? Are they cars? Are they robots? Everyone knew the most popular Transformers and the forms they could take, and the show was so popular that it came back as an even more explosive and high-tech movie in 2007.

“Inspector Gadget”
“Inspector Gadget” was a lovable guy with gadgets that failed more often than not, and a niece who ended up doing a lot of the detective work for him. Voiced by Don Adams, who played Maxwell Smart in the old television series “Get Smart,” Inspector Gadget seems to share many mannerisms and a bungling personality with his predecessor.

those were the days!!!

By: Dachary Carey

I was super excited to have her here with me that i being showing her the campus of I-Dub. From what she has told me, I-Dub is not what she expected to be, which was good. I gave her a tour of where i work at in the student center and the place where I hang ut at in the trio room. After our tour we went and got lunch from jimmy johns.” Being in Iowa is so different than being in Florida; People here are really nice and out going with another” she said.

For the time melody was here,  my best friend’s  family was so generous to allow us to have the entire basement to our self. I could have never image having everything work out so well just for her time spent here. Every morning we woke up to the smell of mouth-watering breakfast then would have a nice home lunch after the day was gone we all came home to a nice mid-west meal. When the day would be over after Melody and I would watch movies and play the Wii. It was a dream come true! Things made possible with the help of a loving caring family that calls me one of their own.

The day before Melody was going home, we all went to the West Roads mail in Nebraska. taffic wasn’t as bad as we really thought it was going to be but the mall was so packed with people who it took half-n-hour just to find a parking space. When it was all said a done we was on a shopping spear before we know it we all got separated at the door of yankers department. I had so much fun just watching her shop from store to store in the mall, I didn’t want the day to end but it was getting late  and it was time for us to meet up with everyone else. I had the night planed to take Melody out to the old market to go out to eat at spaghetti works but she was so tired for shopping that we decided to spend all our time together this one last time before I returned home for spring break in March.

One last dinner we had together up stairs with everyone before melody returned home back to florida, she received a call from the air port saying that her flight had been cancelled her flight. Everyone got really neverus but me because I had to make sure I got her home safely by any means necessary. I contacted the air port to ask what could she do to get another flight home and they made it so hard at first but then they allowed her to leave early the next morning.

 On the way to the air port that next day everyone jump in the truck to take her back. I didn’t wanna see her go, I didn’t want to be lifted alone

here in Iowa and felt so dam good to have her around. As I was crying in the back I began thinking  about everything we did for her time here. My face was water of tears but I looked up to check in her and she was whipping her face every 5 seconds to keep from me seeing

cry.We got there right on time to check her bags in to the sk cap and for me to walk her as far as I could through the air port. ……….! I love you was all I could say. I watch walk to go through the metal detectors , down the strip and onto the plane.

I miss her so much and cant wait to get hom to see her agin!

smle

A 16-year-old basketball player from western Michigan collapsed and died of an enlarged heart after hitting a game-winning shot to complete his high school team’s perfect season, ABC News reported Friday.

Wes Leonard was hurled into the air by teammates as fans rushed the court after he made the decisive layup in a 57-55 overtime win over Bridgman Thursday to complete Fennville’s 20-0 season, the Holland Sentinel reported.

But he soon fell to the floor after a team huddle and was rushed to Holland Hospital, where he died at 10:40pm local time.

According to Dr. David A Start, the forensic pathologist and medical examiner of Ottawa County, the cause of death was cardiac arrest due to dilated cardiomyopathy — an enlarged heart.

Earlier, as Leonard’s ambulance left for the hospital, Fennville Police Department Superintendent Dirk Weeldreyer said, “Obviously, in the midst of celebration, I think shocking is exactl

“It’s tough to take in,” added Leonard’s teammate Shane Bale. “It’s like somebody from your family, you know?”

Within hours, hospital spokesman Tim Breed confirmed Leonard’s death.

“All efforts were made after he arrived to help restart his heart, but unfortunately those efforts were not successful,” he said.

John Norton, the athletic director at Bridgman High School, said the outcome of the game did not matter to anyone in light of Leonard’s death.

y the word. And certainly our deepest prayers are with Wes and his family, and obviously his health is far more important than any game.”

“That was a good game, but when something like this happens, sports are pretty irrelevant,” he said.

The tragic passing came only days after Fennville coach Ryan Klingler had praised Leonard, who reportedly had the flu last week, for his health and conditioning.

“That’s what makes him a little different,” he told the Sentinel on Tuesday. “He takes care of his body better than probably anybody I’ve ever coached. Spends a lot of time on his own in the weight room. He’s a special kid.”

Despite still feeling the effects of the flu, Leonard led Fennville to victory Saturday in the final of the inaugural Southwestern Athletic Conference Tournament.

Leonard also played quarterback for the high school football team, leading the squad to the Southwestern Athletic Conference North Division championship this season.

He is the second Fennville athlete to die in the past 14 months. Wrestler Nathaniel Hernandez, 14, passed away in January of last year after suffering a seizure at his house following a match.

Fennville is a small town located in southwest Michigan, about 50 miles from Grand Rapids

-fox stops news