4 Hard Downs: ACC Kickoff Recap, Core GPA & Improvement?
Getting better incrementally, my time in Charlotte while in Charlotte & what is new?
Right now, just sitting here watching a butt smoke while I make rolls to have pulled pork sandwiches for dinner tonight.
Been thinking about this for awhile now and while somehow my plans got hi-jacked, I will prevail and get to the finish line. Best way to get to the finish line?
SPOT THE BALL!!!
1st Down: Thoughts on ACC Kickoff
First thought, I reunited with the security guard who tried to kick me out last year for not wearing my lanyard around my neck. He is a good dude, but I don’t like people telling me what to do. However, I acquiesced and he and I became friends. I like wearing it on my belt where the credential is just enough to see under the line of my shirt; I lost this battle. So this year, when he saw me, he said, “Good on you brother, making my job easier.”
Tune in to Hand in the Dirt because Stephen Hartzell was there for that.
Secondly, good event, despite the Friday end date which, I will say, gave Duke a bit of the short end of the stick as their was a mass exodus post UNC to beat that Friday traffic. But all in all a good event where I got time a little time with Belichick, talked to some players and obviously spent a lot of time with friends and made new friends.
Good setup, staying in the hotel made my life easier in a myriad of ways and I did use my hotel room hack, using a hair dryer to heat up some leftovers. Didn’t get to do “Bald Boy Joy” with James Franklin because some other guy budged me at the elevator he was waiting for to take a selfie.
Now to do the survey and preseason voting.
2nd Down: Incremental Improvement
Fuck win totals dude. Are you better than a year ago or not?
This came up a lot with Virginia Tech and UNC last week at the Kickoff. They both could and should be better football teams than their 3-9 and 4-8 records respectively. One team has a new coach, another has a coach going into year two and I expect both are going to be better ran and function better than a year ago.
Virginia Tech is probably going to have a better record because their schedule is, on sight, more manageable than UNC. Yes, hosting Clemson, at SMU and Miami are tough games but most of these games are coin toss or should win games. UNC on the other hand has TCU, Clemson, Notre Dame, Pitt, Louisville and NC State.
I think they both will be better teams, I just think the Hokies have a better record.
3rd Down: Do You Know What A Core GPA Is?
I had to delicately ask this question to my wife who hates me asking rhetorical or gotcha questions in the form of “Do you know about ….” She hates it. Hates it when she doesn’t know. Hates it if she does know. I’m not in her head so I don’t know what she knows. So when this video came up I had to tiptoe to ask if this is something people know about:
Apparently no, people don’t know. Back in 1999, 2000 my parents and I knew about this. So did my guidance counselor. It isn’t a new rule. To be fair my parents had me setup to go to UNC or better as far as schools go; they were teachers, my mom actually was an SAT proctor and my dad tutored kids for the tests. I had an advantage and am checking my privilege. Core GPA reads as following:
Only those classes count. Not weight. Not electives. It isn’t new. We used to call it “The Clearinghouse” and if you didn’t get through Clearinghouse you were a partial qualifier (which has since been eliminated) or went to D2 or NAIA or JUCO.
What I didn’t realize is that it s a thing most people, hence the tiptoeing around the non-sports wife, don’t know about at all.
I had all my core requirements with a 3.8 GPA by the end of my sophomore year. It took took the SAT mid-junior year for my counselor to send me off to Clearinghouse and was a pretty quick turnaround and approval. All before my senior year. I had teammates still waiting on grades or trying to get grades up via summer school.
So when you have kids that recruiting analysts or coaches say, “we are still waiting on grades” that is what they main. I did not realize that people didn’t know this.
4th Down: Ice Cream Sandwiches
I had to do it to them again:
The first time I made these it was with plain vanilla ice cream with the same chocolate chip cookie recipe. This time, as you can see from the dark specks, that’s a cookies and cream ice cream with, and I cannot say this enough, OREO THINS.
Not the full octane Oreo, the thins. Let cream, more pieces of the actual crunch. It works two ways with the limited cream not upsetting the balance of your ice cream mixture and you get more Oreo bits without messing up the ice cream.
I will throw both the cookie and ice cream recipe up tomorrow for y’all.
Cheers!!!