Isaiah Ming has been a horse for the Harmon Hawks' backfield this season.
Here are Ming's highlights, courtesy of Ming himself.
Pirates football team leads the way in awards
Eight different Piper Pirates football players earned awards at last weekend's KCK Preps Awards Presentation. Head coach Chris Brindle and linebacker Colton Beebe took home two of the top three awards.
PHOTOS: KCK Preps Awards ceremony
Check out some photos from last weekend's awards show at The Legends Theatre in KCK!
Prospect Profile: Tanner Eikenbary (Piper)
Here's a look at Piper Pirates quarterback Tanner Eikenbary.
KCK Preps Prospect: Kendall Short, Mill Valley
Despite missing nearly half the season, Mill Valley Jaguars running back Kendall Short finished with over 700 yards of total offense and 12 touchdowns.
HIGHLIGHTS: Harmon Hawks running back Isaiah Ming
Isaiah Ming has been a horse for the Harmon Hawks' backfield this season.
Here are Ming's highlights, courtesy of Ming himself.
HIGHLIGHTS: Bonner Springs quarterback Jordan Jackson
Jordan Jackson has been a very nice surprise for the Bonner Springs Braves this season.
As a sophomore quarterback, Jackson has tossed seven touchdowns without an interception this year. As Jackson's performance has picked up, his team's overall success has.
Highlights are courtesy of David Brox.
-----
For information on how to receive your own highlights, check out David Brox' Sports Highlights Unlimited here.
OTHER SPORTS: Why, to put it mildly, Major League Baseball sucks
For the high school players who read this blog, it’s important to note that I say “Major League Baseball,” not “baseball.”
Baseball still is a very fun game in itself. It’s fun watching high school baseball and it’s even fun to check out college baseball occasionally, outside of the fact college baseball uses metal bats – an insane idea on so many levels.
I love the game itself. The following is not an attack on the sport itself.
But I hate the league.
Here’s why:
1. The obligatory “small market teams have no chance” point. Any fan of baseball knows this, so I won’t obsessively pound my keyboard on this. But as much as been made how Boston, Philadelphia and New York did not make the final four, the fact is big markets and middle-sized markets still dominated the postseason. The league championship series consisted of Texas, Detroit and St. Louis – three teams that have payrolls at least double of that of our beloved Kansas City Royals.
The only small market, Cinderella story consisted of the Milwaukee Brewers, who were promptly brushed aside by St. Louis. Since Prince Fielder looks to be gone, the Brewers’ chances for the next year may ride the same plane Fielder does out of Wisconsin. As great as Dayton Moore has built the farm system, I keep on imagining those guys will end up in New York, Boston, Anaheim, Texas and Philadelphia. I, for one, cannot not wait to see Eric Hosmer win the 2020 World Series MVP as the first baseman of the Boston Red Sox.
2. No hard salary cap. This really could be part of the first reason, but the salary cap point needs to be made. There are two primary reasons why I believe the NFL is the favorite sport of 35 percent of Americans polled by Harris-Interactive last year, compared to just 16 percent of fans saying baseball. First is the fact football is just more of an exciting sport. Second is the salary cap. The salary cap makes it possible for a publicly-owned team in little Green Bay, Wisc., to win the Super Bowl four times.
The cap makes it possible for teams like Buffalo to make four straight Super Bowls, though it does not guarantee that a kicker will make a late field goal in the Super Bowl.
It makes it possible for markets in Denver, Nashville, Kansas City, Minneapolis and Phoenix to keep up. When more fans from more teams are interested, that’s a good thing. As a Royals fan, I often lose interest of the team in June. If the NFL did not have a salary cap, John Elway would not have spent his entire career in Denver. He would have ended up with the Jets, Giants, Eagles, Redskins or Cowboys eventually.
Another reason to support a salary cap is it eliminates the lame luxury tax. The luxury tax system gives bad owners an excuse not to spend money. It's easy for bad owners to depend on the Yankees, Red Sox or Cubs to spend a third world country's economy on players. A hard-cap would close the gap between the small market and large market teams. The luxury tax is the equivalent of earmarks in Congress – it keeps the small market owners happy, but doesn’t fix the system.
By the way, how rare is it for a league to not need a team in Los Angeles to succeed? That’s why the NFL is awesome and why MLB is not.
3. 3 hours, 21 minutes. That’s the average length of a baseball game in 2010 (I can’t find a 2011 figure yet). Instead of finding ways to crack down on steroids, the United States Congress should have discussed ways to cut the average game down to around 2 hours and 45 minutes.
Why are some pitchers allowed to wait 30 seconds between pitches before they deliver their next pitch? It should not be possible for me to be able to use the bathroom at the beginning of one at-bat and come out a few minutes later…with that at-bat still going on. It would be interesting to compare the average amount of time a high school pitcher takes to deliver a pitch compared to a professional.
On a related note, why are batters allowed to call time out as much as they can? NFL teams get three timeouts a half – I’ve seen batters back out of the box two or three times in the same at-bat. Baseball needs to implement a 15-20 second pitch count. If the pitcher does not deliver the ball in that stretch, it’s an automatic “ball.”
4. Instant replay needs to be expanded. Before I get the "wouldn't that take more time" response, I'll disagree. Would it really take that much time for a replay official to sit in a booth in the stadium and signal "safe," "out," "home-run" or any other call from the stand? Plus, the meetings between umpires also take time. Eliminating those meetings will make the replay expansion time neutral.
5. Too long of a season. There are 162 regular season games. If you add on the postseason, a baseball game is happening on nearly half the days of a calendar year. To be fair, the NBA and NHL's regular seasons should not be 82 games, so this is not just a baseball issue. Again, college football and the NFL gets this right. College football and the NFL consist of between 25-30 percent of the sports calendar year. It's enough to have a full treat without dragging on. An MLB season feels like death row. Two-thirds of the way through each season, I wish they'd stick it in the electric chair. Trim the season down and eliminate some of the excessive divisional games. Speaking of which.....
6. Too many games against division opponents. I'm one of the few fans who doesn't mind interleague play. Sure, those Houston Astros-Kansas City Royals games in July can be weird, but it's better than the countless divisional games. Every time I turned on the Royals this year, it felt like they were playing either the Cleveland Indians or Detroit Tigers each time. As bad as the Kansas City Chiefs could be this year, at least the New England Patriots and Green Bay Packers are coming to town. The NFL's schedule has just six divisional games and 10 games out of the division. College football teams don't play the same league opponent twice. As a fan, the variety of opponents appeals me. I could not be the only one tired of seeing the exciting, dramatic 18th game between the Chicago White Sox and Minnesota Twins this season. Outside of seeing last year's Washington, Sumner Academy and Schlagle basketball teams do battle 20 times, there's no scenario where seeing three or four teams compete against each other repeatedly excites me.
Baseball still is a very fun game in itself. It’s fun watching high school baseball and it’s even fun to check out college baseball occasionally, outside of the fact college baseball uses metal bats – an insane idea on so many levels.
I love the game itself. The following is not an attack on the sport itself.
But I hate the league.
Here’s why:
1. The obligatory “small market teams have no chance” point. Any fan of baseball knows this, so I won’t obsessively pound my keyboard on this. But as much as been made how Boston, Philadelphia and New York did not make the final four, the fact is big markets and middle-sized markets still dominated the postseason. The league championship series consisted of Texas, Detroit and St. Louis – three teams that have payrolls at least double of that of our beloved Kansas City Royals.
The only small market, Cinderella story consisted of the Milwaukee Brewers, who were promptly brushed aside by St. Louis. Since Prince Fielder looks to be gone, the Brewers’ chances for the next year may ride the same plane Fielder does out of Wisconsin. As great as Dayton Moore has built the farm system, I keep on imagining those guys will end up in New York, Boston, Anaheim, Texas and Philadelphia. I, for one, cannot not wait to see Eric Hosmer win the 2020 World Series MVP as the first baseman of the Boston Red Sox.
2. No hard salary cap. This really could be part of the first reason, but the salary cap point needs to be made. There are two primary reasons why I believe the NFL is the favorite sport of 35 percent of Americans polled by Harris-Interactive last year, compared to just 16 percent of fans saying baseball. First is the fact football is just more of an exciting sport. Second is the salary cap. The salary cap makes it possible for a publicly-owned team in little Green Bay, Wisc., to win the Super Bowl four times.
The cap makes it possible for teams like Buffalo to make four straight Super Bowls, though it does not guarantee that a kicker will make a late field goal in the Super Bowl.
It makes it possible for markets in Denver, Nashville, Kansas City, Minneapolis and Phoenix to keep up. When more fans from more teams are interested, that’s a good thing. As a Royals fan, I often lose interest of the team in June. If the NFL did not have a salary cap, John Elway would not have spent his entire career in Denver. He would have ended up with the Jets, Giants, Eagles, Redskins or Cowboys eventually.
Another reason to support a salary cap is it eliminates the lame luxury tax. The luxury tax system gives bad owners an excuse not to spend money. It's easy for bad owners to depend on the Yankees, Red Sox or Cubs to spend a third world country's economy on players. A hard-cap would close the gap between the small market and large market teams. The luxury tax is the equivalent of earmarks in Congress – it keeps the small market owners happy, but doesn’t fix the system.
By the way, how rare is it for a league to not need a team in Los Angeles to succeed? That’s why the NFL is awesome and why MLB is not.
3. 3 hours, 21 minutes. That’s the average length of a baseball game in 2010 (I can’t find a 2011 figure yet). Instead of finding ways to crack down on steroids, the United States Congress should have discussed ways to cut the average game down to around 2 hours and 45 minutes.
Why are some pitchers allowed to wait 30 seconds between pitches before they deliver their next pitch? It should not be possible for me to be able to use the bathroom at the beginning of one at-bat and come out a few minutes later…with that at-bat still going on. It would be interesting to compare the average amount of time a high school pitcher takes to deliver a pitch compared to a professional.
On a related note, why are batters allowed to call time out as much as they can? NFL teams get three timeouts a half – I’ve seen batters back out of the box two or three times in the same at-bat. Baseball needs to implement a 15-20 second pitch count. If the pitcher does not deliver the ball in that stretch, it’s an automatic “ball.”
4. Instant replay needs to be expanded. Before I get the "wouldn't that take more time" response, I'll disagree. Would it really take that much time for a replay official to sit in a booth in the stadium and signal "safe," "out," "home-run" or any other call from the stand? Plus, the meetings between umpires also take time. Eliminating those meetings will make the replay expansion time neutral.
5. Too long of a season. There are 162 regular season games. If you add on the postseason, a baseball game is happening on nearly half the days of a calendar year. To be fair, the NBA and NHL's regular seasons should not be 82 games, so this is not just a baseball issue. Again, college football and the NFL gets this right. College football and the NFL consist of between 25-30 percent of the sports calendar year. It's enough to have a full treat without dragging on. An MLB season feels like death row. Two-thirds of the way through each season, I wish they'd stick it in the electric chair. Trim the season down and eliminate some of the excessive divisional games. Speaking of which.....
6. Too many games against division opponents. I'm one of the few fans who doesn't mind interleague play. Sure, those Houston Astros-Kansas City Royals games in July can be weird, but it's better than the countless divisional games. Every time I turned on the Royals this year, it felt like they were playing either the Cleveland Indians or Detroit Tigers each time. As bad as the Kansas City Chiefs could be this year, at least the New England Patriots and Green Bay Packers are coming to town. The NFL's schedule has just six divisional games and 10 games out of the division. College football teams don't play the same league opponent twice. As a fan, the variety of opponents appeals me. I could not be the only one tired of seeing the exciting, dramatic 18th game between the Chicago White Sox and Minnesota Twins this season. Outside of seeing last year's Washington, Sumner Academy and Schlagle basketball teams do battle 20 times, there's no scenario where seeing three or four teams compete against each other repeatedly excites me.
