Steelers Coaching Candidates

With Mike Tomlin resigning, the Steelers are looking for a new head coach for the first time since 2007. In case you're wondering, yes, I wrote about the Steelers hiring Mike Tomlin back then since this blog is old! There is a lot of speculation about potential candidates to be the fourth head coach of the Steelers since 1969. I'm here to add to that speculation! Some of these people listed below are legitimate candidates. Some are not. In any event, I hope that you enjoy this.

(The picture above is from a much younger Mike Tomlin when I compared his expression to a Game of Thrones character.)

Many people are clamoring for someone associated with the Indiana University football team to take over in Pittsburgh. While you probably believe that I'm writing about current IU coach Curt Cignetti, who turned arguably the worst major football program in college football history into a national championship contender and someone born in Pittsburgh, worked at Pitt, and got his first head coaching job at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP), I'm looking at someone else. 

Antwaan Randle El 

Randle El is one of the best players in IU history, but he also played five seasons for the Steelers. More importantly, he served as an offensive assistant in Tampa for two years (and got a championship as a coach when the Buccaneers won Super Bowl LV), held the wide receiver coaching position with the Detroit Lions for 4 years, and is now the wide receivers / assistant head coach for the Chicago Bears. He's a winner and has had success in all of coaching stops. El Yeah!  Oh, he also did this.

Hines Ward

Currently, the Associate Head Coach and Wide Receivers Coach at Arizona State University. He previously worked for the Steelers, Jets, and at Florida Atlantic University. A 3-7 record as the head coach for the XFL's San Antonio Brahmas is a little concerning. Oh, he also did the thing in the video above.

Danny Smith

Big Gum has been patient, lurking in the background of the NFL. They have a stronghold in baseball, where major league dugouts universally have large containers of gum. Big Gum may feel that the time is right to make its mark in America's biggest sport. The poster person to represent Big Gum is clearly Danny Smith. He's also from Pittsburgh and graduated from Central Catholic High School.

Cam Heyward

The Steelers could make history by becoming the first team in the modern NFL to have its head coach also be an active player. And who better to do that than Cam Heyward. Seems highly regarded and well respected by his teammates. He's a leader. Curly Lambeau and George Halas were successful in both roles with the Packers and Bears respectfully in the 1920s. Let's try it again for the 2020s! (Tom Landry and Dan Reeves were both players / assistant coaches, and they both did pretty well too.)

Larry Foote

Current run game coordinator / outside linebacker coach for Tampa. Definitely seeing a trend of former Steelers who go to Tampa to coach. More importantly, I get to share this picture again!

Byron Leftwich

Former Steelers QB who won a Super Bowl as the offensive coordinator in Tampa (again!). He deserved to be a head coach then. It seems like he worked for Deion Sanders at the University of Colorado last season, but he’s not listed as part of the coaching staff on Colorado's website, and there were reports that he may have been a volunteer. For once, the internet is not really clear on if or when he was employed at Colorado.

Joey Porter, Sr.

Thanks to drawing a personal foul penalty on Adam "Pacman" Jones, he helped the Steelers win a playoff game against the Bengals. (Many people may remember the two personal foul penalties to essentially seal the game for the Steelers, but the entire last few minutes of this game were absolutely bonkers.) 

(Sorry - You have to watch the video of the end of the January 2016 Steelers-Bengals playoff game on YouTube. Won't let me embed it here.)

Cedrick Wilson

I have no idea what Wilson is up to, but I feel like he needs to be included here since he was also a wide receiver on the Super Bowl XL winning team with Ward and Randle El. Don't want him feeling left out.

Ryan Clark

He's good on TV. While that means absolutely nothing, he and Pittsburgh broadcasting legend Sally Wiggin seem to have mutual admiration for each other, so that counts for something.

Bill Cowher

Bring back the Hall of Fame coaching legend from retirement. Plus, if he wins a Super Bowl in the first few years, we can all say that he won with Tomlin's players!

Am I missing other legitimate candidates? Absolutely. Is it more fun to write a post about people with Pittsburgh ties? Also absolutely!  Here We Go!

2025 Pittsburgh Pirates Predictions Recap

We're about a week into 2026 and a few days after the thrilling Steelers-Ravens game, so now is the perfect time to, um, see how everyone did with their 2025 Pittsburgh Pirates predictions! Yes, the baseball season has been over for 2+ months and the Pirates season ended 3+ months ago, but one of the questions below centered around 2025 in its entirety, so that's why you're getting this now. While I'll give a summary of the questions and results, this is the season predictions post from last March.

1. What do you expect from Paul Skenes this season?

So Skenes is awesome. On the surface, Skenes' 10-10 record seems to show like he had an average year. In reality, Skenes was the best pitcher in the National League and won the Cy Young award thanks to an ERA of 1.97, a WHIP (walks and hits divided by innings pitched) of 0.95, and 216 strikeouts in 187.2 innings. That's the best ERA in baseball, best WHIP in the National League, and tied for second in the NL in strikeouts. Just dominant. 

Pretty much everyone thought he would be great though some believed he would be better than others. Nubyjas, Noah, and Andrew predicted he would be a Cy Young candidate, and James wrote that it would be disappointing if he didn't win the award. Jim R. predicted 2nd in the Cy Young voting and maybe he would have been if there was one Cy Young award for all of baseball, though my rant on this is best suited for another time.

2. Who will lead the Pirates in home runs?

The answer was Oneil Cruz with just 20. Ethan, Noah, Jim R., and 1992 were all correct though went higher on the overall number. Saxboy just wrote Oneil.

3. Will Derek Shelton get fired and when?

James predicted that Shelton would get let go in September, and Josh thought during the season. Jim R. simply wrote fired. Shelton actually got fired on May 8, 2025.

4. Will Paul Skenes and Livvy Dunne get engaged in 2025?

Yes, I waited to publish this post just to see if Skenes would propose to Dunne before midnight on December 31st. He did not. Instead, Skenes shaved his mustache! 

Ethan, Noah, and Jim R., and Saxboy all predicted no. 

5. Who is your surprise/breakout player for the Pirates this season?

The answer was probably Isaac Mattson. He was drafted out of Pitt in the 19th round of the 2017 draft by the Angels and reached the majors in 2021 pitching all of 4 games for the Orioles. Mattson then pitched in 3 games for the Pirates in 2024. So coming into 2025 with 9 & 2/3 major league innings pitched, there were no expectations for Mattson. He ended up solidifying the bullpen, particularly after David Bednar got traded, with a 2.45 ERA in 47.2 innings pitched. 

Other nominees: Dennis Santana (picked by Saxboy!) Jared Triolo (his September was amazing), and Braxton Ashcraft. Jim L. gets a partial credit for predicting Spencer Horowitz who had a solid season.

Ethan and 1992 both predicted someone from the bullpen, but picked Kyle Nicolas. who regressed some this year with a 4.74 ERA and 1.37 WHIP in 38 innings. (Noah picked Nicolas too.)

6. Will any of the Dodgers, Mets, or Braves not make the playoffs?

So the Mets and Braves failed to reach the postseason. The Dodgers won a thrilling World Series. 

Nubyjas thought a difficult NL East would be problematic for the Braves or Mets. James, Ethan, Jim L., and 1992 all thought the Mets would miss the postseason. Josh and Andrew predicted that the Braves would miss the playoffs. Only Jim R. and Saxboy were wrong in thinking that all three teams would reach the playoffs.

7. What's your overall prediction for the Pirates?

Well, the Pirates finished with a disappointing 71-91 record and last in the NL Central. No one thought they would be THIS bad. Josh was closest in predicting a 74-88 record.

So now we're not that far away from spring training. By acquiring Brandon Lowe and signing Ryan O'Hearn, there is some optimism heading into the season, but that's for a future post. The next prediction might be if I do one of these posts again for 2026!

Thanks to everyone for participating!

North Dakota and Southern Manitoba

I’m all about timely blog posts. That’s why I’m finally writing about my time in North Dakota and southern Manitoba as part of my annual-ish hockey road trip…which happened more than a year ago. Better late than never, right? I mean, I wrote about eating in Winnipeg and attending the Pittsburgh Penguins-Jets game last year, so that was somewhat timely!

Besides attending a hockey game in every NHL city, another life goal is to visit all 50 states. So as part of visiting Winnipeg to see a Jets hockey game, we decided that we had to find a reason to go to North Dakota, which is a short drive away. The initial idea of last year’s hockey trip was to attend a Winnipeg Jets game and a University of North Dakota hockey game. Unfortunately, the timing didn’t work unless we made the trip in the middle of winter (which we didn't want to do). So instead, we attended a UND football game. I mean, of course you go to a college football game when you’re in North Dakota!

So let's start with the drive from Winnipeg to Grand Forks, North Dakota. Do you know what is between the Winnipeg suburbs and the Manitoba/North Dakota border? Not much though now that I’ve driven in Iceland, the area between Winnipeg and Grand Forks is a metropolis. So highlights of Southern Manitoba:

Hemp Oil Canada! After probably about 25 miles of driving through nothing after leaving the Winnipeg suburbs, we passed the Hemp Oil Canada factory. (Apparently, the company is now known as Fresh Hemp Foods.) There were (and I assume still are) also a series of homes across the highway from the factory. While I didn't think that there were still company towns, Ste. Agathe, Manitoba may just be one. According to WikiPedia, the population of Ste. Agathe in 2021 was 643. Feel like at least half of the population has some sort of affiliation with Hemp Oil Canada,

After another 20 minutes of nothing, we came across Morris, Manitoba (population approximately 2,000), home of the annual Manitoba Stampede which seems to take place in July of each year. Would I like to attend a rodeo in Manitoba someday? Yes. Will it ever happen? Extremely unlikely.

After another half hour of nothing, we reached the US border. When we entered the United States and returned to Canada later in the day, the border control seemed confused by our visit. Why were two guys from Virginia and another from New York crossing the border driving a vehicle with a Manitoba license plate? The concept of a rental car seemed to escape them. 

We finally arrived in Grand Forks, and after a stop at the UND bookstore to buy some souvenirs (meaning T-shirts for my kids), we made it to the Alerus Center for the football game between the University of North Dakota and University of Northern Iowa. It’s a somewhat odd arena/stadium. It’s more of a field house. There are stands on each side with no or limited seating in the end zones. I know you really don't care about a recap of a football game that took place over a year ago, but I have some pictures and videos to share. 

I liked how the teams shook hands before the game. Don’t remember ever seeing that before.

We went to a late lunch / early dinner at a place called Smiling Moose. It was fine. However, a few days after I returned home, I learned that there was a Ground Round only a few miles from the stadium. Ground Round was one of my favorite restaurants growing up in Pittsburgh, and there are only a few remaining. Not going to Ground Round was the only regret of the trip.

Around the corner from Smiling Moose is the Grand Forks curling club. The door was open, so we walked right in. There was one guy there setting up the place for the start of the curling season which was a few weeks away. He was super gracious in letting us walk around. 

On the drive back to the hotel, we stopped at the St. Vital Curling Club, founded in 1933. This Winnipeg curling club has members that won Olympic medals! I think we hoped that we would be able to try curling ourselves, but there were league competitions going on, so we just watched for a few minutes and left.

A few more pictures from Winnipeg. Did you know that Winnie the Bear, later Winnie the Pooh, is named for Winnipeg?

My Favorite Songs of 2025

Full disclosure. I'm not sure if I'm going to have a best and worst of the year post for 2025. I have a selection for both the best and worst song of the year, so I can share that the best is in the post. By the way, I highly recommend the posts by Josh on his favorites of the year (this is his favorite songs post).

Here are my 11 favorite songs of the year in no particular order.

Alex Warren - Ordinary

What a voice. And this song just explodes in the chorus. 

Taylor Swift - Fate of Ophelia

All she does is write hit song after hit song.

Role Model - Sally, When The Wine Runs Out

Will Role Model be a one-hit wonder? If he is, this is a really good hit. Enough that I wrote about him twice now this year.

Sydney Sprague - Flat Circle

I learn of most music these days from listening to the Hits1 station on SiriusXM. I learned of this song from The Tony Kornheiser Show podcast which regularly features music shared by listeners or their family/friends. This is one such song. I love the guitar riff.

Raye - Where Is My Husband

And this song is one that I love for the drums.

Ragga Holm - Liour Vel 

A song I heard several times on Icelandic radio. Still have no idea what it's about or any of the lyrics.

K-Pop Demon Hunters (Huntrix) - Golden

Only the biggest song in the world. We're all going up, up, up.

AJR - The Big Goodbye

I want to see AJR in concert with my kids. Think it would be a great show. And while this probably isn't even in my top 5 AJR songs, I just like it.

Tame Impala - Dracula

The video has a bad word in it so NSFW. I've seen or heard Tame Impala's name for several years but this seems to be the first song that's getting "pop" airplay. It's really good.

Ravyn Lenae - Love Me Not 

Another song that I just like.

5 Seconds of Summer - Not OK

Spoiler. This is my favorite song of the year. If I write a best of 2025 post, I'll explain more then.

2025 Hanukkah Videos

Happy Hanukkah everyone! It's that time of year when I share Hanukkah videos from around the world. With the tradition of pickles at Hanukkah growing each year (at least in my mind), I was curious to see if 2025 Hanukkah videos mentioned pickles or at least showed pickles in the background. Enter the dream collaboration of Monty Pickle and Kosha Dillz!

Monty Pickle has lots of wonderful Hanukkah content. Here's the dreidel song as an opera.

On to videos without talking/singing pickles. The rivalry between Six13 and Maccabeats might be at a level never seen before. They both have K-Pop Demon Hunters themed Hanukkah songs this year. 

Maccabeats include dancing pigs in their video but not a pickle?!? C'mon!

Y Studs enters the chat with a Jonas Brothers medley.

Huge credit to the Miami Boys Choir is keeping donuts on their desks without eating them.

So many a cappella groups! We need other songs and activities.

And for real little kids, there are some cartoons including one by Cocomelon.

Again, no pickles other than Monty Pickle. I challenge artists and educators to include pickles in their 2026 Hanukkah songs and videos.

Kevin Durant With Guys Shorter Than Him

PAWRA's BACK, ALRIGHT! If you don't remember what PAWRA is, and really why would you know this, PAWRA stands for Pittsburgh Athletes with World-Renowned Athletes. Previous posts include Kenny Pickett with Wayne Gretzky, DeAngelo Williams with Christian Pulisic, and Sidney Crosby with Maria Sharapova. Well, we got a good one today. Pictured below is Kevin Durant, currently a member of the Houston Rockets and likely one of the 20-best NBA players of all time with Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang, and Boko Imama of the Pittsburgh Penguins.

The Rockets visited the Dallas Mavericks on Saturday night, and with the Penguins playing the Stars the following evening, it appears that Malkin, Letang, and Imama enjoyed a night out. In case you're wondering, Boko is listed at 6'1", Geno at 6'5", and Kris at 6'0". They look like me if I was pictured with them! No word on if Durant had any idea who he took a picture with. And did the Pens players not want a picture with Anthony Davis or Cooper Flagg?

Photo from the Pittsburgh Penguins.

My Sports Betting Post

I've been thinking about writing some variation of this post for a very long time. It’s long. I’ll include some videos to provide a break.

If you watch or listen to sports on television, radio, online, or in person, you are inundated with advertisements for sports betting. All of the professional sports leagues and some (many?) individual sports teams have partnerships with various gambling companies such as FanDuel, DraftKings, and BetMGM. Even if you are able to ignore the commercials, the announcers give live odds with graphics showing them. ESPN highlights scores and schedules via the scroll on the bottom of the screen but will also show game odds. It's impossible to avoid sports betting. More on this momentarily.

Virginia legalized sports betting in April 2020. Online sportsbooks started accepting wages in early 2021. I downloaded the BetRivers app several months after that. I got some type of sign-up bonus and deposited maybe $50 or $100 of my own. I was down to the last few dollars in my account for the 2022 NCAA men's basketball tournament championship between Kansas and North Carolina. I had some type of bonus bet where I picked Kansas to win the national title before the tournament began and would get a pretty good payout if the Jayhawks won. If I lost, I told myself that I wasn't going to make another deposit, and I would be done with sports betting. Kansas won, so I won.

First break!

I signed up for FanDuel in October 2022 and transitioned away from BetRivers. I started on DraftKings in February 2023, probably thanks to some type of Super Bowl promotion. I don't think that my initial deposit on either site was more than $10. While I'm not 100% sure of the accuracy, in my three years on FanDuel, I believe I have won about $150. I think I'm up around $500 on DraftKings. That sounds pretty good, and winning is definitely better than losing, but I'm starting to think I have a problem.

What concerns me most about the prevalence of sports betting is the impact on kids, primarily for those from the ages of about 12-25. (And yes, I know that people in their 20s aren't really kids.)  Actually, it's not the prevalence of sports betting; it's how easy it is to bet which is concerning. I knew a bookie when I was in college. I made one wager with him on the January 1996 Steelers-Cowboys Super Bowl and that was it. I've also made a few bets at sportsbooks when visiting Las Vegas over the years. In both those cases, you had to physically go somewhere to make a bet. Now, all you have to do is download an app and you can make bets on all kinds of things 24/7. Sure, wagers on football (NFL and college), baseball, and basketball are probably the most common in America, but you can wager on anything. Snooker, badminton, tennis matches in Argentina or Indonesia. Any soccer league in the world. There is always the opportunity to make a wager on a live sporting event. And yes, I'm guilty of doing this. 

Here's a video of me in Iceland going between the tectonic plates separating Europe and North America!

Lucy (my cat) often wakes me up around 5:00 AM. After I feed her, I regularly go on my phone to check email, see if anything big is happening in the world, and find out whether I won or lost bets from the previous night. I've also been known to make a wager on some live tennis or soccer matches without knowing anything about the players or teams. I should probably mention that I historically wager about $10-$15 a day. Nearly all of my wagers are $1. Sometimes, I go crazy and make a $2 bet on a game. Relatively low stakes, but I spend way more time on betting sites than I should. I also follow at least a dozen sports betting people on Twitter and check out a few different sports betting shows online. As I wrote above, I've had some success, and winning money is obviously better than losing. However, the issue isn't the money. It's the time. I don't think I want to know how much money I've made per hour spent on the betting sites or reading/following bettors. It must be insignificant. Actually, what’s even worse for me is the FanDuel Faceoff app. You play various cards or strategy games (such as Freecell solitaire and Boggle) against people for money. Even when you when, FanDuel wins. And when you lose, FanDuel wins more. By the way, I'm glad there wasn't a Minesweeper game like this when I was in college. I would still be in debt.

While I try to hide it from them, my kids have seen me on the sports betting apps. The Moose (14) seems to only care about sports. He loves ESPN. I'm pretty sure he's seen the Bad Beats segments they have on Sportscenter. Although I don't watch Pat McAfee, I know that he does, and there's probably some sort of gambling aspect on the show. (At a minimum, ESPN shows odds on the bottom scroll.) The Moose recently asked me how old you need to be to bet on sports. I was leaning towards stopping sports betting before he asked me this, but this sealed it. Do as I say, not as I do doesn't really work. It's time to delete the apps, but it's not that easy. And this is another way that the sports gambling sites get you. Courtesy of some boosts, I have several season-long wagers. I have $10 (to pay out $21.50) on the Steelers making the playoffs. $5 (to pay out $10.45) on Sidney Crosby having more regular season points than Jack Hughes of the New Jersey Devils. $10 (to pay out $27.40) on the Washington Wizards winning over 20.5 games. (As I'm typing this, the Wizards are 3-16. I thought they could win 25% of their games. Looks like I have chosen poorly.) 

With the cash out option gone, it seems like these apps will remain on my phone through the end of the NHL and NBA seasons until these bets are settled.*

The Moose is probably one of thousands if not millions of people asking the same questions. When can I start betting? How much money can I make? When The Moose asked me about sports betting, I tried to explain to him that the reason there are so many betting commercials is because the sports books are making millions of dollars. 

I don't think I shared this story before. I got my Masters degree in Higher Education and Student Affairs. For one of my classes, two of my classmates and I did a small research project on gambling among students at our school. I remember very little about this. I'm sure we had some theories or conclusions, but I don't recall what they were. However, at around the same time as we finished a paper, I attended a student affairs conference and went to a session about gambling among college students. The basics of the session was that there was a lot of programming and resources dedicated to combating binge drinking and alcohol abuse. There was nothing about gambling prevention/education and very little research into this. I really could have done a substantial paper/project about gambling among college students with one of my professors, but I was too lazy. I was already overwhelmed trying to balance school and work. I didn't have the time or energy to do a project in my "spare time." All of this is to write that I truly hope there's more research and activities about this now. I can't imagine how many college students are addicted to sports betting and how many are in debt. 

To start, I'm going to delete the FanDuel Faceoff app and unfollow some accounts on Twitter. Then, I need to lead by example and completely stop betting. 

* Though not the point of this post, I'm sure there's a way to delete the apps, download them again in April or May, and cash out, and then delete the apps again.

Gas Price Explanation

I’m not an economist, but I’m going to play one on the internet today. I mean, I have a minor in International Business, so that has to count for something. Basically, I learned that culture is important in business. And guns and butter are a thing. 

Which brings me to gas prices. They can differ significantly depending on location and time of year. There are taxes involved, which impacts the price, as well as supply and demand. For example, with millions of people traveling for Thanksgiving and more people needing gas, you can expect prices to increase. There's also microeconomics and macroeconomics. I'm just going to write economic terms!

All of this brings me to a gas station a few miles from my Northern Virginia home. Last week, I dropped off my two younger kids at school and got gas for the car. The price was $2.759 per gallon. Nearly 12 hours later, I returned to the same gas station and the price was $3.099 per gallon, an increase of 34 cents. Knowing that this would be pointless, I went inside the store to ask for an explanation. The guy simply said that they have no control over the pricing as this is done by corporate.

So my next step was contacting corporate. While I won't say the name of the gas company, the first three letters are the same as a star closer to Mercury and Venus than Earth. It's also very hot. Anyway, this company passed me on to their partner, who has free Slurpees on a specific day in July, since they own and operate this location. 

This is the message I received:

Thank you for contacting us with your question about the change in fuel price at our location in redacted.  Although I do not have the specific metrics as to why the price changed yesterday I do know that our Fuel department felt the need to change the price throughout all of Northern Virginia.  The prices may go up or down several times a weeks for any number of reasons.  I appreciate your interest in this matter and for being a loyal customer.  

Now my turn:

I appreciate your quick response. While I certainly understand that gas prices may fluctuate regularly, an increase of 34 cents per gallon on the same day seems extreme. I'm just trying to figure out an explanation of why there was such a significant increase in such a short amount of time. Are there any specific reasons?

Naturally, I haven't heard anything back from my email. There wasn't a natural disaster in Northern Virginia causing disruptions in getting gas to the station. Instead of speculating, let's play a game. Please leave your guess (real or silly) as to why gas prices at this particular station went up so much.

Quick Rant

There are certain types of shampoos or lotions that open by twisting the cap, so it pops up. Here's a picture since I'm probably explaining this poorly.

It looks simple enough to open. You twist the top either left or right once or twice around, and the pump pops up. Except that it's never that easy. I find that I turn the top hundreds of times without success. And it's not like this happens only occasionally. This happens at least half the time we get these types of bottles. 

Look, I know there's videos about how to successfully open these containers, but how about someone coming up with a design to make this much easier and less complicated!

By the way, from the video above, how much of the product are you wasting just to open the stupid container?!?

Life In Pictures

I take pictures for myself and my family, and I like to share some of them online. And then they sit on my phone for months if not years. So today, I'm putting together a post showing some of the things I saw and did over the last few months.

I took my kids to a high school baseball game in the late spring, and Pedro Tulo noticed the ring of the guy sitting next to us. It turns out that he is a retired baseball scout who spent most of his career in the Detroit Tigers organization. This ring is from the team winning the American League in either 2006 or 2012. I ended up talking with him for much of the game but the conversation mostly focused on Northern Virginia high school baseball. He still likes going to games.

The Baseball Project is a band who sings songs about baseball. They have a song about Ted Williams. A song about how Dale Murphy should be in the Hall of Fame. The video below is part of a song about Harvey Haddix and perfect games from when I saw them in September. I should probably mention that two members of The Baseball Project are Peter Buck and Mike Mills. They were also in another band you may have heard of called R.E.M.

To various degrees, my kids are all obsessed with sports. So every once in a while, I try to mix in a little culture. Twice over the last few months, I was able to mix sports and culture. In June, I took The Moose to Round House Theatre to see a 2-man show titled "King James." The show takes place in Cleveland and has four quarters: LeBron James' rookie season, after LeBron leaves, when he returns, and when the Cavs win the NBA Championship. Yes, there's plenty of sports talk, but the show is really about the relationship/friendship of the two characters over this time. 

Then, last month, I took The Moose and Pedro Tulo to see a revival of Damn Yankees at Arena Stage. I had never seen the show before, but I really enjoyed it. I'm also a big fan of seeing theater in the round. The run of Damn Yankees ended in DC, but I think the plan is for the show to go to Broadway. Both shows were big hits for the kids. 

In early September, I saw Ben Schwartz (Parks & Recreation, The Afterparty, the voice of Sonic) & Friends do an improv show at the MGM National Harbor. I don't think I've laughed so hard in a long time. Highly recommend seeing the show if they are in your neighborhood. It's improv, so every show is completely different. For those who saw the show in the DC area, you may remember the "Attentive" song for years.

Oh, I definitely did not expect to see a Steelers' Crosby jersey at the show!

I went to a late-season Nationals-Pirates game with the lowest attendance I had ever seen at Nats Park. We also shared an elevator with the Nats mascot, Screech. I have some pictures of him posing with my kids, and um, this one of the mascot avoiding the paparazzi. Also not pictures is my kids getting pictures or autographs with Spencer Horwitz and Cam Devanney of the Pirates.

As a staff development activity, we did some painting. Even though my pumpkin doesn't look quite like the model, I'm very proud of my work. This could be worth thousands some day!

Try to guess which one is mine!

Old School?

The older I get, the more I realize that I am a dinosaur. While I'm not anti-technology, I just like things a certain way. For example, earlier this year, I wrote about a Verizon commercial where people have difficulties using their phone as a boarding pass, and how it seemed like the perfect ad for me. I'm probably one of the few people who still use paper boarding passes when flying. This was confirmed to me last week. When checking in to a United flight at Washington Dulles airport, the screen asked me if I wanted my boarding pass sent by text, by email, or other. When I selected other, the screen again gave me the option of sending the boarding pass by text. email, or other. After picking other again, I was given the option to print the boarding pass. The screen/United reluctantly allowed me to print.

When I got on the plane, I reached into my bag and brought out a book. Yes, a physical book. I'm currently reading Project Hail Mary by Andy Weil, which is nearly 500 pages long. Reading on a screen would be much lighter, but I like a physical book.

Finally, at the hotel, there was an option to scan a QR code to give a tip to housekeeping. Pass. Still giving/using cash.

Sean = Dinosaur

Ironhead, What's With This Thingy

Earlier this year, I wrote about how future NFL Hall of Famer and fellow Woodland Hills High School graduate Rob Gronkowski returned to our high school for the reopening of the school's weight room. Gronk's foundation contributed a significant amount of money to make this happen. 

Earlier this week, another Pittsburgh sports legend visited Woodland Hills for a different endeavor. Cameron ("Cam") Heyward was the Steelers' first round draft pick in 2011. He is the son of the late Craig "Ironhead" Heyward, who was a legend at the University of Pittsburgh, had a successful NFL career, and is the star of one of my favorite commercials of all time.

Cam has been the anchor of the Steelers defense over the last decade plus, made the Pro Bowl multiple times, and won the 2023 NFL Walter Payton Man of the Year award for his philanthropic contributions and community impact. One of his initiatives is Craig's Closet, which provides free dress clothes to high school boys throughout Western Pennsylvania. Cam, his mother, and members of The Heyward House visited WHHS on Tuesday for the opening of a Craig's Closet at the high school. This is a very cool project, and I'm glad that Heyward is helping the Woodland Hills community. It also might be the only time where Heyward, a fellow graduate of The Ohio State University, can proudly say Go Wolverines!

More information about Craig's Closet is available here. You can also learn more about Cam's visit to Woodland Hills with additional pictures here and here.

Keanu Reeves, Steelers Fan

Keanu Reeves recently appeared on the Kelce Brothers podcast, New Heights. Per the video here, the big revelation from the podcast (at least in my world) is that Reeves grew up as a Steelers fan.

While I’m not going to dispute Reeves’ childhood and fandom, I find it odd that this seems to be the first record of Reeves being a Steelers fan. That was going to be the premise of my post. In all his years as an actor, I figured Reeves spent time filming in Pittsburgh and at some point he would have mentioned in a local news interview that he liked the Steelers as a child. Turns out, it seems that Reeves hasn’t spent much time in Pittsburgh. It was a big deal when he got coffee in Pittsburgh in 2023 prior to playing a gig with his band Dogstar.* He also filmed the movie The Prince of Pennsylvania in 1988, but I can’t find any blog posts or reels of Reeves from when he filmed that.

So instead of being confused as to why we never learned of Reeves being a Steelers fan until now, we need to encourage Keanu to make a movie in Pittsburgh!

* About 25 years ago, I worked as a beer vendor at several Columbus Clippers minor league baseball games. (I was one of the guys walking around the stands yelling "beer here.") Dogstar played a concert after one of the games. I stayed for the first song, and they sounded pretty good, but I was tired and left the stadium.

10 Years of LearnedLeague

I was invited to join LearnedLeague in 2015, and it's become a significant part of my life. Before I get too far, LearnedLeague is the trivia league of all trivia leagues and features countless Jeopardy! contestants and champions. There are six divisions or rundles: A, B, C, D, E, and R for rookies. It's invitation-only, and you're obviously in R for the first season. R is the most difficult season. You face players of all skill levels, and without knowing their question history, you're somewhat guessing how to play defense. Plus, you're still trying to understand how all of this works.

My rookie season was LL66. Due to my terrible performance that year, I was naturally placed in an E rundle where I have pretty much stayed for the next 40 seasons. Every once in a while, I earned promotion to D only to get relegated back to E the following season. I've actually been very successful (for me) recently as I got promoted to D for LL season 104 and stayed up for 105, 106, and now the upcoming 107 season. Yes, we're now up to season #107. 

I know that I'm not explaining LearnedLeague very well and skipping a lot. You can get basic information as a non-member on the LearnedLeague website. There's also an LL Wikipedia page and articles about LL by places like The Ringer, The New Yorker, and Milwaukee Magazine.

In my now 41 seasons of playing, I've learned a lot about my knowledge base. My best categories are pop music, television, games/sports, current events, and American history in that order. Meanwhile, my five worst categories are language, art, science, classical music, and math. I've only got 5 of 133 math questions correct, which is like 0.004%. (Math joke. It's actually significantly better at.038%!) I really should try to find a way to improve these scores. Anyway, it's really easy to play defense against me. If there's a question about one of my best categories, assign me the lowest possible points. Conversely, assign me lots of points for the latter categories since there's an excellent chance I'm going to get it wrong.

The primary mantra of LearnedLeague is don't forfeit, don't cheat. I'm proud that I have never forfeited in 1025 matches. What's funny is that I should have forfeited my 5th ever match. I drove to Pittsburgh that day and stayed at a hotel with my two young kids at the time. I was busy and exhausted and didn't answer the questions. However, the LL website ended up being down for part of that day, so they extended the deadline by a day. Over the next ten years, there have been plenty of times when I fell asleep on the couch, woke up right around the 1:00 AM Eastern time deadline and got credit for completing the answers.

One of my favorite parts of LL is the offseason mini leagues. While there are plenty of mini leagues that aren't for me, there are others particularly focused on sports and music which are perfect. In mini leagues, you are placed in completely random groups. It's fun defeating A-rundle players who would crush me in general knowledge but not in genre-specific games. I actually had a close loss in a mini-league several years ago against Jeopardy! champion Brad Rutter!

LearnedLeague is not for everyone, but I do have referrals available if you want to check it out. Just let me know The first season is free, and then there's an annual fee. It's fun and you might learn something. Not trying to sell anyone on this. Just sharing my experience.