There may be five regional teams competing for state championships on the field this Saturday, but the Bassick Lions are in a battle for a national title online.
This is one of 10 finalists in the State Farm Friday Night Feats video contest on YouTube. If the video of its last-second win over city rival Harding receives the most ratings, the Bassick football program will win the $15,000 grand prize.
Now the teams competing in CIAC finals on Saturday have to win on their own, but Bassick needs the public’s help. Please click on the below video (which will brink you to YouTube) and rate the video. Again, Bassick will win if it gets the most ratings.
Heck, it’s only going to take a minute out of your day, and will help your neighbor out.
Voting has begun, and runs through Dec. 10.
Here’s the press release that was issued Tuesday through PRNewswire.com:
State Farm today announced the 10 finalists of the Friday Night Feats high school football video contest on YouTube. The contest highlights the biggest moments from this year’s high school football season – big hits, Hail Marys, break-away runs and miracle finishes – as voted by the fans themselves. A panel of judges selected the finalists from the 51 videos fans voted as Zone winners. Viewers will choose the grand prize winner by voting for their favorite video on YouTube between Dec. 3 and Dec. 10.
“The Friday Night Feats contest has captured some of the biggest moments in high school football – from early season match-ups all the way through the playoffs,” said Hall of Fame lineman and Friday Night Feats judge Anthony Munoz. “State Farm is excited to be there for the all of the schools who have participated this year. Now it is the fans’ turn to be there for their schools as they vie for the grand prize of $15,000.”
Friday Night Feats Finalists
Summerville High School (Summerville, SC) – “SHS Football #3 Safety Punt Return”
Roland High School (Roland, OK) – “Air Ranger”
Broken Arrow High School (Broken Arrow, OK) – “2009 Friday Night Feats – Ronnie Price Broken Arrow High School – Hurdles Over Defender”
Mountain View High School (Mesa, AZ) – “MV Bounce Pass”
Mount Mansfield Union High School (Jericho, VT) – “Greatest or Worst play in football history depending on your side”
Gray’s Creek High School (Hope Mills, NC) – “Gray’s Creek Bears – Devonte Cooley LEAP”
High School (DeLand, FL) – “Deland Bulldogs Shontrelle Johnson TD run vs Wekiva Mustangs”
Bastrop High School (Bastrop, TX) – “Bastrop’s Josiah Monroe to Auston Shipley”
Rockdale High School (Rockdale, TX) – “Rockdale Tiger Football – Sanders to Wright Hail Mary 2009″
Joining Munoz on the Friday Night Feats judging panel were Scout.com Recruiting Experts Scott Kennedy, Steve Robertson and Brandon Huffman, as well as Kid Reporter Daniel Radov from SIKids.com. The panel determined the national finalists based on the “wow” factor, athleticism, impact of the play, and creativity of the video, which included the title and brief description of the play.
Now it is the fans’ turn to vote with winners announced on Dec. 14. The grand prize is $15,000 with $10,000 for first place and $5,000 for second place. State Farm will have awarded almost to $160,000 to schools during the Friday Night Feats contest this year.
To view contest information and contest rules visit www.FridayNightFeats.com. To see the finalist videos and all of the others submitted this year, visit the State Farm Friday Night Feats contest on YouTube at www.youtube.com/fridaynightfeats.
So was the New Canaan-Greenwich game as exciting as the scoreboard made it seem? It sure was. New Canaan came back and won it 35-34. Here’s a roundtable discussion I did after the game on BlogTalkRadio with Jason Intrieri of the FCIAC Football Blog, Rob Adams of WGCH, and Matt Levine of WSTC/WNLK.
We tried to get New Canaan head coach Lou marinelli to come on the air, too. But we couldn’t get the message to him on the field. Apparently the New Canaan fans pouren out onto the vield, making it a virtual sea of students.
Can anyone tell me who is running against AmyMarie Vizzo-Paniccia and Michelle Lyons for City Council in the 134th district?
I guess if I went to hazardous waste day last Saturday I would have been bombarded with dozens of fliers as I waited in line to dispose of an old paint can.
But I didn’t, and I can’t even find this information online. Not on the City of Bridgeport Website (which tells me the next election is Nov. 4, 2008), not on the State Website. Heck, I can’t even Google it, no matter what search terms I use.
And I’m a fairly intelligent guy, mind you.
Bottom line is I want to know who’s running against the Democrats in my district – Vizzo-Paniccia and Lyons. Why? Because if they are not running unopposed, I will gladly vote against them.
I don’t care if my fellow Democrats blacklist me from whatever I can be blacklisted from, the bottom line is I’m voting for the best candidate available. If it means I vote for an empty chair, I will.
Here’s two reasons:
One of the two candidates stopped by my house over the weekend and stuck a Xeroxed flier in my door with a hand-written note asking for her vote. On it was a recent Letter to the Editor published in Bridgeport News and written by council members urging residents to stand up and fight a proposed building at Old Town and Main.
The reason: The letter said it didn’t want another dormitory to built on Eckert St. like the one that was supposed to be a medical building. But here’s the catch. City Council approved this “medical building,” that suddenly became a dorm. If they were that concern, why wasn’t anything to stop this “dorm” from going up? (By the way, it’s not a dorm, it’s housing that is being rented to Sacred Heart students)
The last straw was today, when I got a Re-Elect Vizzo-Paniccia/Lyons flier in the mail.
On it is the following quote:
The combined budget, which was approved requires a new tax rate of 38.7 mills, a decrease from the current rate of 44.6 mills
Connecticut Post
Makes you think Vizzo-Paniccia and Lyons got this done, and that you should vote for them because of that cap feather.
The council passed the budget 16-3 with Walsh and North End Council members AmyMarie Vizzo-Paniccia and Michelle Lyons voting against the budget.
So why are Vizzo-Paniccia and Lyons bragging about getting the mill rate down when they voted against the budget?
Maybe they think no one in the City of Bridgeport will care. Maybe they think deception works?
Well this hard-working Bridgeport tax payer does care, and Vizzo-Paniccia and Lyons won’t get my vote.
What does this have to do with high school football? Well they represent kids who go to Bridgeport Central and Notre Dame-Fairfield, as well as other high school football players. That’s good enough for me.
I’m very proud to return to my alma mater, Western Connecticut State University, this weekend. My father, Ray Parry, will be inducted into the Athletic Hall of Fame tonight, and it is a very joyous occasion for me and my family.
But returning to a place that still calls itself “WestConn?” Bleah, as Sean Patrick Bowley of the High School Sports Blog would say.
I’d like to say my diploma says “Western” on it, but I think is says “Connecticut State University” on it. But I’d rather have that on it than “WestConn.”
The first thing I think when I hear the acronym “WestConn” is this:
“Attention, WestConn shoppers. There is a Blue Light Special on Underwater Basket Weaving textbooks and materials in aisle seven.”
Cheap. Unsophisticated. Babyish.
And that’s a shame, because when I set foot on campus tonight, I’m sure I’m going to see a school that is all grown up. But after millions of dollars of academic and infrastructural improvements, the school still uses its baby name, “WestConn.”
You’re grown up now, WestConn, start calling yourself “Western.”
Like we did back in the early 1990s. Alphonso Robinson and I were co-editors of The Echo, the school’s student-operated newspaper, in 1991. We successfully got former school president Jim Roach and the school administration to refer to the university as “Western” instead on “WestConn.”
And that seemed to last through the 1990s. Then I saw “WestConn” overly-used in The News-Times and asked a former classmate of mine, who was a copy editor for them, why they were using it.
Turns out the school was proud to be called “WestConn,” no matter how silly sounding it was.
So how do we get Western to grow up? Well for one, students and alumni can stop calling it “WestConn.”
Another thing we can do is reach out to Paul Steinmetz, the Director of University Relations at Western and a fellow citizen blogger for Hearst Connecticut. Steinmetz is the guy who puts “WestConn” on every piece of information that goes out to the public (by order of some other higher-up at the school, I’m sure).
And hopefully, some day, the school will put on its big-boy pants and call itself by its grown-up name.
So how accurate are the state’s high school football polls? You’d like to think they are unbiased, and that the voters are well-schooled in what’s happening on the local gridirons. But let’s face it: Do I really know how powerful Montville, Berlin or Glastonbury are if my focus as a writer is Fairfield County?
The answer is no, but I still have a vole on the Connecticut Sports Writer’s Alliance poll. New Britain Herald sports writer Ken Lipshez told me befire the 2009 season began that the CSWA poll was supposed to be more geographically balanced than the New Haven Register’s poll, which had become a predominantly New Haven-biased voting base (even though New Canaan has 16 of the 21 first-place votes).
The Day of New London’s poll is represented by a pretty well-balanced geographic mix of coaches, and the results are usually in check with the other two state polls.
Full disclosure: I run a poll, too, the Bill Gonillo 5. The voters are local media members, and many of them don’t have a voice in the state polls. But they know the region and are in-touch with what’s going on in Fairfield County.
And the poll only includes teams in the Fairfield County-predominant leagues – the FCIAC and the SWC (so Pomperaug, New Milford and Oxford are in the mix), and these schools that are also based in Fairfield County: Fairfield Prep and Shelton from the SCC, Bullard-Havens and Abbott Tech from the CSC, and Fairchester schools King, Brusnwick and St. Luke’s.
So how accurate are the polls, and are there too many to go around? For that matter, should we really run amok and have some sort of fan poll? Or are polls just an overrated way to keep fans talking in the first place.
What we don’t know is if Stamford Academy would be able to support a football team on its own. Or for that matter, if head coach Wright Tech’s Trevor Jones – also the commissioner of the Constitution State Conference – will be around to run that team. He and offensive coordinator Fred Trumpler were employees at the technical school.
I did hear from Matthew Fischer of the CIAC today. He told me in an e-mail that the CIAC has not received any official notification regarding Wright Tech, nor has it been contacted by Stamford Academy in regards to this situation.
Should Wright Tech close though, its players are protected. Fischer wrote that if a school ceases to exist, it’s student-athletes will be immediately eligible at whatever school they attend next (assuming of course that they meet all other eligibility requirements).
I did drop Trevor Jones a line, but have not heard back from the Wright Tech coach yet.
Sounds great, he can stay home and life every CIAC player’s dream and play for the Huskies.
Really?
The announcement came the same day New Britain Herald reported that police arrested a second teen in the videotaped beating that took place on school grounds in May allegedly involving Jones Jr.
Timing is everything.
It’s like Wedding Crashers, when Sack was about to lose Claire to John Beckwith, so he puts Claire on the spot and proposes to her in front of the entire family.
Let’s see what happens. I think if Jones Jr. is found guilty, the offer has to be pulled. Let him walk on and earn a scholardhip. And if he’s found innocent (which may be touch since it’s allegedly on video), then we can just pretend none of this ever happened.
I also don’t think any NFL team is going to risk the backlash of signing Michael Vick, who just finished service a sentence for his role in a Virginia dogfighting operation.
I posted the question a few months back on Facebook, and my friends had mixed reactions. There was no in-between. It was either “this is America, he deserves a second chance” or “he’s a dog-killer.” The debate itself got pretty nasty between strangers on both ends of the scale.
As much as I love dogs, and it sickens me to think dogfighting is acceptable in some parts of the country, I think Michael Vick deserves a second chance.
The question is, what NFL team is going to take a chance on Michael Vick? Is a team willing to deal with PETA showing up to protest at every home and road game, and maybe even at training camp and practices?
And from a playing point of view, can Michael Vick fit in with any NFL offensive schemes? Vick was known to run if flushed out of the pocket, or if his receivers couldn’t get open. His last active season, 2006, Vick ran for more than 1,000 yards. And the Atlanta Falcons’ offense was based on him.
