Leroy Hill signs; I want football season to start today.

Link

Hill is in the fold. We officially have a linebacker trio that can make a bid to be the best in the league. This team isn’t without its weaknesses, but I’m excited. I honestly think the NFC West title is coming back to Seattle this season after an awful 2008.

Happy to be escaping the isolated corner.

I love Washington state. It will always be home to me, regardless of exactly how long I stay away once I move. With that said, I don’t love how isolated it is from most major cities and tourist attractions. You can’t go very many places by car within a day, something I imagine that people east of the Rockies probably take for granted.

From Bellingham, I can drive to Seattle in 90 minutes, and…that’s about it for significant places you could make a comfortable round trip in a day to. Portland is another, but if you’re north of Seattle there’s almost no reason to ever go to Portland; it offers almost nothing that Seattle doesn’t. It’s mostly just that other city you drive through on the way to California.

Okay, so forget a one day round trip…what about a place that will take a good bit of driving time, but you can still have a decent trip there in three or four days?

A couple of Seahawk tidbits.

The only damper of a really good draft weekend was Tim Ruskell’s decision to remove the franchise tag from Leroy Hill. I figured that this was the end of Hill in Seattle, and while I tried to make peace with it, I couldn’t dismiss it as a blow to our 2009 hopes. Granted, I think we can do okay by plugging in DD Lewis or Lance Laury on the weakside at linebacker, but obviously we’ll experience a dropoff.

Here’s an encouraging bit of news…

Top 10%

Indiana is a great school. From what I can gather, someone can be around the GPA median and have some good career options, in the immediate area if nothing else. However, this isn’t Yale, Harvard or Stanford, where you can land just about anywhere in class ranks (I actually don’t think Yale ranks its classes) and have truly great choices at your disposal. To open the biggest doors, it seems like you have to land in the top 10%. I have no doubt that there are exceptions, where a person networks remarkably well and opens doors that way, or is well-connected (which I’m not, in the legal world) and opens doors that way. In general, though, to maximize chances of success…top 10% has to be the goal.

Great trade, Ruskell.

Trading our 2nd round pick for Denver’s 1st round pick next year is absolutely brilliant. Sure, it’s too bad to get one less player this year, but we’re going to be loving life next year when we get to pick twice in the first round (and hopefully Denver’s will put us back in the top 10).

As if we needed more incentive to root against Denver week after week…we definitely have one now. Heck, I’ll even root for the Raiders at least two times next year.

Today sure feels better than a couple of years ago, when we had all but wasted a first round pick on Deion Branch and didn’t pick until late in the second (where we picked up Josh Wilson, who is…okay).

Welcome to Seattle, Aaron Curry.

It surprised me that when the Seahawks were making their pick, I found myself pulling for us to pick Mark Sanchez. I had warmed up to having a franchise quarterback waiting in the wings when Hasselbeck hits the end of the line. Hopefully going in another direction is a vote of confidence for Hasselbeck’s health though, because I love the guy and am in no hurry to see the end of the Hasselbeck era.

In general though, I think we were in a good position where we really couldn’t screw up this pick. Curry, Crabtree, Monroe, trade down…I would’ve been fine with any of it. I didn’t jump out of my seat when we picked Curry, but I’m happy with it. Like when we picked Steve Hutchinson some years ago, Curry appears to be one of those can’t-miss safe picks that should be a great linebacker for years to come. Great play, great character…I think we’re going to really like having him in Seattle.

I look forward to seeing who we take in the second round; Ruskell has shown that he knows how to strike gold in the second (and considering how aggressively he’s willing to trade up, we could easily see the Seahawks pick in the late first round too). In the meantime, I’ll just hope that the 49ers and Cardinals screw their picks up, and that Arizona gives Anquan Boldin away for nothing in the meantime.

Thank you, Jim Sterk. Thank you.

Thousands of people wrote in, and Sterk listened. The Apple Cup is not being sold, and will be played in Pullman every other year. Money is still a problem for WSU’s athletic program, but I’m glad that ruining the Apple Cup isn’t the solution they went with.

Thank goodness. Between our biggest rivalry game staying put, and Ken Bone seemingly holding onto the incoming recruiting class that had initially committed while Tony Bennett was still our coach, a couple of potentially disastrous weeks for Cougar athletics don’t seem so bad now.

The Office: “Broke”

I didn’t do much more than chuckle during this episode…it wasn’t insanely funny…but I loved it. Loved it. Watching Michael own David Wallace in the buyout negotiations was one of the most gratifying things I’ve seen in the last two seasons. They built the scene up so well that you were really nervous that Michael was going to blow it, then he proceeds to just kill Wallace at the negotiation table. Dwight falling out of favor with Charles, Michael cutting off Charles and telling him, “No. You’re done”…moment of triumph for Michael, moment of triumph for Pam as she has moved up to a less demeaning job, and they even found a way to bring Ryan back without it being annoyingly contrived. Brilliant stuff all around.

Kind of a nice footnote about the ranking bump

I was looking into what statistic caused IU’s ranking to go up, since any number of things can make that happen. The one that jumps off the page is a pretty significant decrease in acceptance rate…for years, it consistently stayed around 40%. For last year’s entering class, the statistic suddenly dropped to a 25% acceptance rate. Selectivity is one of the factors that USNWR judges by, and that’s one noticeable improvement that IU made.

As promised, the other cliché that I detest.

“Whatever doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger.” I picked on a fairly large group of Christians with my last post, but this silly cliché very much extends to the secular world. So I’m not picking on anyone of any particular faith (or lack thereof) with this post, but I am picking on anyone who utilizes this phrase and believes in it. It’s categorically wrong.

Some wounds heal; some wounds scar. I’d venture to say that the wounds that completely heal probably do make you stronger…but that leaves a large amount of bad events completely unaccounted for. I’d certainly argue that tons of bad things happen that make us weaker rather than stronger.

NFL Draft is on Saturday

I’m always excited to sit and watch the Draft. It’ll be especially fun to see the Seahawks sitting in the top 5 for the first time in ages…though obviously we had to pay our dues by watching that awful 2008 season to get there.

I don’t have a horse that I particularly want in this draft. It would seem that Jason Smith, Eugene Monroe, Andre Smith, Mark Sanchez, Aaron Curry and Michael Crabtree is the group we can expect the Hawks to pick from, and I’m fine with any of them. My slight inclination is toward one of the tackles (J. Smith, Monroe, A. Smith), but I’m more than happy to pick up the linebacker Curry or the WR Crabtree.

I won’t be mad if we take Sanchez, but it’ll be a bit of a warning sign that our team doctors aren’t expecting much more from Hasselbeck, and as such I don’t know if we’ll have a lot to look forward to this coming season. I’m fine for drafting for the future, but I don’t see why the Seahawks can’t be right back on top of the West in 2009. It’d be nice if we could take an impact player now and get back to winning games, but of course Matt’s back is going to have to cooperate for that to happen.

I don’t think any need is entirely glaring, so I don’t think we’ll go wrong by taking the best player available. If Crabtree is really all he’s cracked up to be (and I think he is), he’s worth being taken despite our WR corps looking pretty good. You don’t pass on Michael Jordan just because you’ve got Manu Ginobli…

During the course of the draft, I want to see us get help on the offensive line, the interior defensive line, running back, safety and a quarterback. I don’t think linebacker is necessary to address, but if Curry is perennial pro bowl material, then by all means take him. Same as the Crabtree situation.

I’ll blog about the draft as it happens this weekend.

Christianity’s dumbest cliché

“Everything happens for a reason.” This is what far too many Christians like to say when something bad happens to them. It’s their coping mechanism to tell themselves that what just happened to them is all part of God’s plan…and it’s nonsense like this that compelled people like Karl Marx to refer to religion as “the opiate of the masses.” Religion isn’t supposed to be some irrational coping mechanism, people.

Look…if you want to throw another common line at me like, “Through God, all things are possible”…I’ll nod in agreement. That one is true. God can help us turn about just any bad situation around, to find some silver lining in it and go forward with something positive. I very much believe that.

But we have free will. And let’s not mince words: we’re all morons. As such, we go around screwing everything up. I thought that pastor Grant Fishbook made a good analogy when he likened God to a GPS system that sees us repeatedly going off course, then just patiently keeps saying “recalculating” and giving us a new good course to take. The GPS will never give up, it’ll just keep giving you the right route until you finally decide to stay on course. There’s always a chance for recovery from a wrong turn; there’s always a chance for salvation. Heck, God is so good at being able to seamlessly redirect crappy situations into being good ones that he’s got a bunch of people running around saying “everything happens for a reason.” No, no, no. “Those things never should’ve happened…but since they did, let’s make the best of it.” That’s the proper reaction.

For the record, nothing negative happened to me to inspire this subject, I just heard that saying one too many times and had thought for a few days now that I should blog about it. So…there it is. At some point I’ll get around to writing up a rant against another stupid cliché that I hate, “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” Complete and utter nonsense, but that’s a rant for another time.

So, when push came to shove…

It certainly involved some luck, but at the end of the process I ended up being accepted by, and attending, the school tied for highest-ranked among all that I applied to.

In case you ever wondered why I didn’t reach any higher with my applications, the reasons are basically these…

I had absolutely no shot at a top 14 school (the top 14 is the elite tier of schools…the same 14 schools have comprised the top part of the list for decades now, with Georgetown being specifically at #14 for 10 straight years). I might’ve taken a run at it if I had scored a 170 like I wanted to on the LSAT, but with a 165 I simply wasn’t going to get in. I’m obviously perfectly content with that 165 now; my disappointment at the time largely stemmed from a fear that my score simply wasn’t good enough to overcome my poor GPA, I knew I had scored well on the test. As it turned out, my score was enough to get to go to a great school at less than sticker price.

Texas, Vandy, USC, UCLA…none of those were going to happen either. With better numbers, I would’ve definitely applied to Texas and Vandy at least, not so sure about the LA schools. Los Angeles is not a place I aspire to live in. One of the funniest examples is #19, Washington University of St. Louis. Statistically I would’ve maybe had a shot here, but I wasn’t too interested. For starters, St. Louis is crime-infested and dangerous, even moreso than places like Detroit…so the location wasn’t a draw. Beyond that, as a Washingtonian, I didn’t want to have to go through explaining 20 billion times, “I’m going to Washington University.” “Oh, University of Washington?” “No…it’s this school in St. Louis.” “Oh.” That conversation would’ve happened so many times. Forget that, I didn’t want to put myself through it. My opinion would’ve differed if it was in an actually appealing location, though.

The other highly ranked school that I brushed aside was University of Minnesota, for weather reasons. That’s right, the viking you know and love flat-out fears the frigid cold of the Great Lakes region. That’s the same reason that University of Wisconsin didn’t see my application. North of Indiana is further than I wanted to push this cold weather thing.

At that point, you’re getting into the mid-20’s and the allure of high rankings starts to lose its luster because you start getting into schools that are pretty regional and don’t give you much mobility to move away from the area very soon after graduation. I knew I had to pick places where I could make peace with staying in the area for at least a few years after finishing the degree, and my choices reflected that going forward. Indiana seems to have some semblance of national mobility, but we’re just going to have to see how things shake out in a few years. I’m really not worried about that right now; at this point I just have to pull the best grades possible, network as well as I can, and hopefully things fall into place for me. In the meantime, I want to enjoy the ride.

Sheesh, really?

That post with the new USNWR law school rankings has been up for all of 12 hours, and it’s easily my most viewed post ever that I’ve written on either blog?

The obsession with rankings is pretty amusing, honestly. How much this jump means for IU Law is up for debate, it might not make that much of a difference in the long run (though I obviously hope it will), but the fact that these rankings inspire so much traffic and interest seems like a pretty clear signal that they shouldn’t be dismissed entirely.

Some argue that outside of the top 14, schools 15-50 will largely place the same. That certainly oversimplifies things a bit, as schools like Vandy, Texas, USC and UCLA certainly offer better prospects than going to University of Maryland (for instance). For that matter, statistically Illinois and Notre Dame are both schools that place significantly better than those at the bottom of the top 50…can Indiana’s career prospects match those schools as its national reputation improves? That remains to be seen. I’m skeptical on that front. They might well be like University of Minnesota, ranked 20th and highly respected but not having the same national reach as some of these others.

If it compels more firms to conduct on-campus interviewing there in the near future, that’ll be a really good thing. That’s what I care about. I’m already confident that I’ll get a great education there, and that I’ll enjoy the time I spend there; I’m just looking for the possible effects on career prospects. Regardless of how much or how little the effect is…this can only be good news, it certainly can’t be bad.

Nice! Indiana makes a big jump in the newest rankings.

Yes, I used an exclamation mark.

My law school, which was ranked 36th nationally when I committed to it, has jumped all the way up to #23 in the newest U.S. News and World Report rankings. It shares this #23 ranking with two other schools that I was trying to get into but was rejected and waitlisted at, Notre Dame and Illinois. This was one of the biggest jumps throughout the rankings, and nobody else moved up anywhere close to this much within the top 50 (the only thing that came semi-close was UC-Davis jumping from #44 to #35).

Didn’t really expect to see such a jump, but I’m more than pleased to see that I’ll be entering a school ranked in the top 25. If they can keep this high of a standing over the next few years, it can only be helpful to my career prospects; as silly and arbitrary as people might think these rankings are, the very fact that law firms care about them means that they absolutely matter (whether they should or not). Besides my own selfish interests, I’m really happy for the people who work there that I’ve met over the last couple of months…great people, all of them, and I’m happy to see them get this kind of recognition for their efforts.

For anyone interested, here are how the rankings shook out with the amount of spots schools went up or down in them. I didn’t do this legwork of figuring out how much schools went up or down, but I’ll bold the ones I applied to.

The good and the bad.

The bad news is that the Mariners are woefully short on good hitting. The good news is that there’s clearly nobody noticeably better in our division. As we’re in the midst of what looks like a second straight loss to the Tigers (who are a good team, by the way), the A’s got shut out by the Jays and the Angels got swept by Minnesota (and with Vladimir Guerrero now out for a couple of months, this season is quickly heading into a tailspin for them). Unfortunately Texas did win today, but they’re not any good either.

I have no illusions about the Mariners winning the World Series this year…but it appears that we’re going to be relevant for most of the season, by default if nothing else. After last year, it’ll be good to still care about the M’s in mid-May.

If the Apple Cup is really being moved to Qwest Field every year, it’s a dark day for WSU athletics…

If Tony Bennett leaving Pullman wasn’t bad enough, now the Apple Cup is leaving Pullman too? The single biggest athletic event of the WSU calendar, no matter how good or bad our football team is?

Years ago, Rick Neuheisel, the snake who represented the University of Washington’s football program with remarkable accuracy, suggested this very thing. He suggested we play the game every year in a “neutral site” about 5 miles from their home stadium. Mike Price correctly laughed at it from our side, and the suggestion was dismissed.

The Office: “Heavy Competition”

The last few weeks, I really wasn’t on board with this Michael Scott Paper Company storyline. This week, though, it sharply turned a corner from being ridiculous to being a plotline with great potential. The difference, once again, lied in the writers’ ability to make Michael a truly likable and sympathetic character, rather than the cartoon character we’re sometimes subjected to. With the primary Jim and Pam drama from seasons 1-3 now squarely in the rearview mirror, the show’s quality really hinges on him to a large extent…and they walk a fine line with him. When he’s too stupid, the show suffers, but when he’s a lovable buffoon, the show can still be great.

Working through a two week notice takes a long time…

…working through a three month notice (now down to two) is just excruciating, especially at a job that has been the definition of dull from day one.

Nothing doing on the school front. I’ve made my arrangements; all that’s left is to keep grinding out a paycheck and eventually start packing, but it’s too early to do that yet.

In the meantime, I’ve been trying to enjoy some recreational reading, since I doubt I’ll feel like doing much of that for a few years. I finally finished The Brothers Karamazov (good but overrated), and have started into Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and Kafka’s The Trial.

Minus the pain of moving, June 26th can’t come fast enough…

2009 Schedule Released

Yes, I readily admit that I waited all day for the NFL to release their 2009 schedule, so I could start preparing myself for when the Seahawks would be playing. Here’s Seattle’s slate…

1	Sun, Sept. 13	vs. St. Louis Rams	FOX	4:15 p.m.
2	Sun, Sept. 20	at San Francisco 49ers	FOX	4:05 p.m.
3	Sun, Sept. 27	vs. Chicago Bears	FOX	4:05 p.m.
4	Sun, Oct. 4	at Indianapolis Colts	FOX	1 p.m.
5	Sun, Oct. 11	vs. Jacksonville Jaguars	CBS	4:15 p.m.
6	Sun, Oct. 18	vs. Arizona Cardinals	FOX	4:05 p.m.
7	Bye
8	Sun, Nov. 1	at Dallas Cowboys	FOX	1 p.m.
9	Sun, Nov. 8	vs. Detroit Lions	FOX	4:05 p.m.
10	Sun, Nov. 15	at Arizona Cardinals	FOX	4:15 p.m.
11	Sun, Nov. 22	at Minnesota Vikings	FOX	1 p.m.
12	Sun, Nov. 29	at St. Louis Rams	FOX	1 p.m.
13	Sun, Dec. 6	vs. San Francisco 49ers	FOX	4:15 p.m.
14	Sun, Dec. 13	at Houston Texans	FOX	1 p.m.
15	Sun, Dec. 20	vs. Tampa Bay Buccaneers	FOX	4:15 p.m.
16	Sun, Dec. 27	at Green Bay Packers	FOX	1 p.m.
17	Sun, Jan. 3	vs. Tennessee Titans	CBS	4:15 p.m.

I like it.