Darke County View

Put down the baby, forget about college football playoffs, and focus on our country, PLEASE!!!

As I was looking for sports stories to run today, I came across a story about Congress approving a bill stating that college football will have a playoff system as opposed to what they have now.

As a sports fan, I have never really understood why college football ends their season the way they do.  I mean, basketball has March Madness, and that’s always a fun time in my book.  But college football has a bunch of “Bowl games,” or games sponsored by some big company that didn’t know what else to do with its advertising money.  And anymore, it seems like everyone gets into a bowl game, even if it is the Bob’s Vegetable-Mart Tomato Sauce Bowl.

Back before all of the nation’s corporations got involved, bowl games were special.  There was the Rose Bowl, the Sugar Bowl, and a few other big name games for those teams that were actually successful.  Now a team can get into a bowl game if they win a game or four.  What’s special about that?  Is it just so coaches can say, “Yeah, we stunk it up on the field this year, but we made it into a bowl game, so it’s okay.”

But anyway, back to my original point and the reason I named this blog “Priorities?”

At the end of the article regarding the new college football playoff system, it said that Obama was one of the many that was pushing for this!  It even had a quote from Obama, stating, “I’m going to throw my weight around a little bit. I think it’s the right thing to do.”

What the heck?  Our country is in the middle of a recession, and millions of people are struggling to get by or are unemployed.  And our President is “throwing his weight around” for a college football playoff system?  And Congress is wasting time (and probably money as well) talking this issue over all while families are losing everything because of the economic situation.

Are you scared by this?  Because I sure am!

The one in back is for a friend, the one in the middle is for my sister, and the one in front is for that cousin that used to kick me in the gnads every reunion. I hate that guy.

I never know what to get ANYONE. It’s not that I don’t have money to spend, and it isn’t that I don’t care about the people I’m supposed to be getting gifts for. It’s just… I hate stuff. Useless stuff. Does Dad really need another tie? No. But you get it because you’re supposed to get something, and you don’t know what else he might want. You know why? Because when you walk around talking about what you want, it annoys people.

Then there’s the flip side: if you DON’T get someone anything, or you go the safe route of getting a gift card, it apparently shows exactly how much you care about someone, which is complete and utter bull. (I love you $25 worth. AND THAT’S ALL.)

I guess what I’m trying to say here is that I have no idea what to get people during Christmas, even the people I love. I love practical gifts, but do they feel the same way? (My favorite gifts, the ones that I really dug, were a bag full of food from my Grandma and new tires from my Dad on my 22nd birthday. Absolutely practical, and incredibly useful.) But what do you get a guy who’s spent the last 40 years acquiring stuff? Or a grandparent who’s done the same for even longer? It’s a conundrum. I just wish that the whole gift part weren’t even a part of the equation. Make Christmas more of a thanksgiving, where you get together with family and just hang out instead of going into debt buying meaningless trinkets for each other.

But, then, nobody asked me, so there you go.

April Brubaker, secretary for Bradford Schools Superintendent Jeff Patrick sent us these pictures that were taken by Rita Leis, the elementary secretary, of the beautiful rainbows that were seen over Bradford this morning.

Brubaker jokes in her email that Patrick has been lost since the rainbow sighting. She stated that he came in and put on his Leprechaun suit and went out the door in search of the Pot of Gold!