The odds are pretty small that I’m going to be the first person to spot the rollover. The AAA assignment is likely completely random and I bet has already rolled off the prison manufacturing line.
Keep an eye out and let me know when you see the change.
UPDATE: ZZN
The Rochester Avenue bridge, called the most structurally deficient in Johnson County, will be replaced next year.
When the bridge was built in 1934, Rochester Avenue carried IA 1 on the way to West Branch. IA 1 was rerouted at the end of 1963 shortly after I-80 opened north of Iowa City.
When the IGHSAU said it was creating five classes and using “5A” as the top designation instead of adding “A” for the smallest, I thought there might be the potential of a school designated A for football but 2A for some other sport. I was right.
Despite being in Class 1A for softball this summer, North Tama is now one of the smallest Class 2A volleyball schools. The full BEDS list is here. North Tama is seven students above the cutoff. The first opponent in the postseason? Hudson, which had grown too large for play against NT a while ago. On the boys’ side, the football team is doing quite well this year in Class A.
The makeup of each sport’s class can vary based on what programs are sharing. It will be interesting to see if the girls’ class split stands for basketball season as well, in which case it’s a good thing the girls got to the state tournament last year. Being a small fish in a big pond takes getting used to.
“My father had a farm in eastern Dallas County…” — “Progress,” Robert John Ford (from the musical “Utopia”)
The sight last week was so incongruous I couldn’t pass it up. Three bins, one tractor, one cornfield, just like so many other places in the state — except for the background. The harvest scene was surrounded by suburban multi-family units and buildings for the fastest-growing school district in Iowa. In the past the land was along what used to be a gravel 300th Street in rural Dallas County. Now it’s beside the four-lane-with-turn-lane concrete of University Avenue inside the Waukee city limits.
Cornfield in Waukee, across from Prairieview Middle School
I don’t know who owns or farms the land; it’s unlabeled on this map of property owners in the area (PDF). I don’t know if the owner has been offered money, and if so how much. Farmland in Dallas County is worth more than $7,500 an acre, but here in the middle of it all that would be an ultra-lowball offer. Its time as farmland, though, is certain to be short. Continue reading
Since I travel a lot, I have steadfastly kept a table of gas prices since college. Mostly, this was to calculate my mileage. However, as time went on, the chart became less of a personal measurement and more a log of just how insane the price increases were. I am also able to “control” the variables by filling up at the same gas station most of the time.
Here’s what the list price was for super unleaded (10% ethanol blend, 89 octane) at that gas station the past eight years on the date(s) nearest October 1.
Today, it’s $3.699, which by my data set is the highest price ever seen in October — twice as much as 2004 and 55 cents higher than last year.
It’s not that Iowa State’s path to a bowl is now much harder, or that there’s another quarterback controversy, or the fear that West Virginia is going to imitate the Nebraska teams of the ’90s and drop 70 points. It’s that ESPN Big 12 blogger David Ubben is vindicated in his dismissal and disdain of Iowa State, and there isn’t a single thing that can be said in rebuttal.
Sigh. We’re still Iowa State.
Saturday’s loss to Texas Tech is yet another case of Iowa State being unable to capitalize on a bye week.
However, there is a little more to it. Of Iowa State’s seven eight games after bye weeks in the past nine seasons, five opponents were also playing after a bye week.
Opponents after a bye: 2004 Oklahoma State (bye), 2004 Kansas State (Colorado), 2005 Army (Baylor), 2005 Kansas (bye), 2008 Kansas (bye), 2011 Texas (bye), 2011 Oklahoma State (Texas Tech), 2012 Texas Tech (bye). The two three teams that didn’t have byes the previous week are, coincidentally or not, ISU’s only victories in that group. In fact, ISU’s five six post-bye-week wins since 2000 came against teams that did not have a bye the previous week, although 2001 Ohio had played on a Thursday.
Part of this is due to calendar quirks: ISU has generally avoided having a game after Thanksgiving, effectively ending the season a week earlier. This is partly why there were no bye weeks in 2006, 2007, 2009, or 2010. The only post-Thanksgiving home games this century prior to this year were 2001 Iowa (W) and 2004 Missouri (L-OT).
In short, technically you can’t lose to the bye, but in practical terms, it seems like just that.
EDIT 10/2: The week before last year’s Oklahoma State game was also a bye. This kind of messes with the original premise. However, OSU didn’t have a bye the previous week.
Shoulder work remains to be completed on the new road from US 71 to IA 4, reports the Sioux City Journal, whose editorial board is pleased.
If the ribbon ceremony is the weekend or the day before Thanksgiving, I will try my best to attend.
Now I shall go away before being taunted a second time.
