Baseball TIme

Here is a uniform I designed for an assignment in Sports Marketing. I love baseball and found Ben Hill on Twitter. He is a blogger for MLB and reports on the minor leagues. He has a great job (yes, I'm jealous). One day I ran across this post on Pensacola getting a AA team and voting on a name. I took that and made it an assignment in Sports Marketing. My students drew one of the names and had to create uniforms, a mascot, and an Opening Night promotion. I was so humbled when Ben created an entire post about my assignment. You can see it here. Anyway, I gave the uniforms a shot too - I chose the Aviators. Here are my unis.

Home uni

Away Uni

Alternate Uni

Change is good...

Made some changes today. Decided to make the focus of this blog sports marketing, which is one of my passions. You will probably see a lot of uniform creations here because that is my current obsession. And without further adieu...

This is my first shot at a uniform set from my Sports Marketing class last year. I called the team Fire Ants and borrowed the logo from USC-Sumter.

Here are the uniforms. My students said I "stole" too much. So I created another set...

This is the Black Knights. Created logo all by my lonesome. The uniforms lean towards Oregon's football uni's. The helmet is supposed to be like the helmet Oregon used in the National Championship. The shoulders are supposed to look like diamond plate. Oregon had a faux-diamondplate look a few years ago. I kept the actual color of silver to make it look cooler.

Home uniforms. Created three sets: home with white pants, away with black pants and alternate with green pants.

A Change is Needed....

There has been some movement in the AQ Qualifying Conferences (Utah, TCU, etc..) I thought I would share my thoughts on a possible alternative to the BCS.

It can be viewed here:

Alternative to the BCS

View more presentations from illini3sc.

The Challenge

Last week I was in Cleveland, TN with the youth group from my church for a conference called CIY Move. It was an excellent conference with some amazing speakers. The main speaker was Jeff Walling and he was incredible. His message and delivery knocked me to my knees and I was moved (no pun intended). Many of the kids had some great spiritual challenges presented to them that week as well. I had a blast hanging out with the teenagers, in spite of the lack of sleep, :)

Anyway, the last day we were all handed what was called a Kingdom Worker card. It was a challenge to help us activate our faith after what we experienced at the conference. You could hand the card back and not take the challenge, but if you opened it you committed to accepting the challenge. In my zeal, not only to be a leader, but to help push me to show my faith, I instantly opened the card. Wow. If anyone doesn't think God has a sense of humor - well, you're not in my shoes, because I know he was laughing as I read my challenge card.

It said this (paraphrase) - You must drink only water (not bottled water) for the next year. Pray for the millions who do not have easy access to clean water. Use Active Water as a tool in your challenge."

Talk about hitting me where it hurts. I LOVE my sodas and G2. I hardly ever drink water. But I accepted the challenge and am going to do it. I am currently on Day 5 and so far it hasn't been too bad. Last night, I had a serious Coke jones. But I got through it and today is another day.

I'll keep you updated on my challenge and also keep you abreast of any fundraising I might do for ActiveWater during the year.

Here We Go Again....

Once again, in my sporadic nature, I am trying to get this blog going consistently. While I love Twitter (@illini3sc), it tends to abbreviate topics I'd like to elaborate on a little more. Hopefully I can find some consistency in this.....

For today, it's my annual MLB Predictions Post. Today is Opening Day (probably the greatest day of the year) and I need to put my picks down in print so that I can see how bad they turn out once the season is over. So, without further adieu:

American League
East - Boston Red Sox: offseason moves and better health this year is too much to deny
Central - Chicago White Sox: adding to Dunn to potent lineup with good staff wins it
West - Texas Rangers: A's are sexy pick, but don't trust their offense. Rangers can mash.
Wild Card - Tampa Bay Rays: Yes, I am not picking the Yankees. Rays have great pitching and added Damon and ManRam to lineup.
AL Champ - Chicago White Sox: Lefties will shut down AGon & Papi in playoffs.
C y Young - Justin Verlander
MVP - Josh Hamilton: lots of candidates, but I can't pick against my boy!

National League
East - Philadelphia Phillies: even with their injuries that rotation is too stacked to lose
Central - Milwaukee Brewers: Not buying Reds pitching and think Cards will be hurt by Wainright loss enough for Brewers to sneak up an win it. Greinke HUGE get by them.
West - San Francisco Giants: again, pitching. Oh yeah, that Posey kid is good too.
Wild Card - Colorado Rockies: the consensus is the Braves, but I'm holding off on them for another year.
NL Champ - Phillies: Who else? Great pitching beats great hitting in postseason.
Cy Young - Roy Halladay
MVP - Troy Tulowitzki

World Series Champs - Philles: read above about pitching. So, there you have it. Picks destined to go horribly wrong because I picked them. Let the brow beating begin!!