Meet the new boss...same as the old boss

Well, that's how I see this year's NCAA Division 1 women's basketball tournament finishing up.

The same four teams that won their regionals in the 2024-25 season's go-'round are back at it: UCLA, Texas, South Carolina, and eventual champion Connecticut...with the Huskies rolling to their 12th wonen's D-1 title (and first since the 2015-16 campaign...when Geno Auriemma's club pulled off a four-peat).

Right now (6:06 PM Central time), the semifinals are about to tip off...so, here goes with the predictions:

Connecticut over South Carolina, UCLA over Texas...then on 4-5-2026, the Huskies will be beat Cori Close's Bruins. Again.

Tomorrow, this season's NCAA Division 1 men's basketball tourney heads for the home stretch...and it doesn't look so cut-and-dried (at least to these eyes).

So...with that in mind...here's how I think that cycle will shape up:

Connecticut over Illinois, Arizona over Michigan...followed by...Dan Hurley's Huskies taking care of Tommy Lloyd's Wildcats on 4-6-2026.

Come to think of it, any one of those four D-1 men's teams can be the final club to cut the nets down.

Anyway...I hope your favorite men's team and your favorite women's team win!

It's that time again...

It's that time when both NCAA Division 1 basketball tournaments come down to four teams each.

Got to admit...I've slacked off a bit since last year when it comes to follow college hoops (2025 has been a year to deal with health issues, among other things)...but I'm still a fan.

I'm typing this in the middle of a game...but I'm going out on a limb to make predictions, anyway.

Women's: South Carolina over Texas, then Connecticut over UCLA...then the Gamecocks taking care of the Huskies on 4-6-2025.

Men's: Auburn over Florida, followed by Duke over Houston...with the Blue Devils stopping the Tigers on 4-7-2025.

Okay...now it's back to watching the games to find out what'll really happen.

Hope your favorite teams are still standing!

Fifty Years Ago Today

It changed America's spirit.

It changed politics.

It changed history.  

It helped turn television into America's leading source for news and information.

And, yes...it made for a somber Thanksgiving and a somber Christmas.

On what turned out to be a sunny day in Dallas, TX, one of three bullets fired from the Texas Book Depository ended a history-making presidency one thousand days after that tenure began.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the youngest ever elected to the most talked-about political job there is (he was 43 years and almost six months old when elected on 11-2-1960), the first Roman Catholic person to get the job, and, as things turned out...the last standing US senator to win a presidential election in this country during the 20th Century.

And the fourth (and most recent chief executive) gunned down by an assassin.

I'd turned eight years of age eleven days earlier. And I was one of the millions of Americans who cried when it happened. 

Yep, I was born during the Dwight Eisenhower years...but I barely remember living through Ike's second term. Compared to memories of Eisenhower's last four years as commander in chief, I've got more memories of JFK's abbreviated term of office.

And those memories include his inaugural speech, his handling of the Cuban missile crisis, a nuclear test-ban treaty signed during the JFK years, America finally getting its space program rolling (okay, flying), the creation of the Peace Corps, and Kennedy's stand on civil rights. 

It took Joseph's and Rose's second son a good while to get hip to the message that advancing freedom all over the world (a message the 35th President brought out in his inaugural address) also means advancing freedom right here in these fifty states.

But after 250,000 assembled in front of the Lincoln Memorial on 8-28-1963, that did it.

And those Southern Democrats Kennedy spent most of 1960 trying to woo in order to take the White House back from the Republicans were just going to have to get hip, too.

Almost a week ago, someone from the Associated Press turned in an article talking about the speech JFK gave in response to the 1963 March on Washington. (The AP article made it to this past Monday's Omaha World-Herald, and that's where I saw the report.) 

One thing the article's author put in really struck me. It was the observation that, in lots of American homes during the bulk of the 1960s, you'd find pictures of three prominent people: Jesus Christ, Martin Luther King Jr., and...John F. Kennedy. 

Three symbols of hope.

Three symbols who ended up brutally murdered.

And these three symbols were killed before any of them could reach the age of fifty.     

When Kennedy took a bullet from Lee Harvey Oswald, it began the demise of America's famous "can-do" spirit. 

Don't think so? 

Think about all the talk about health-care reform...and about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. Think about all the talk surrounding whether immigration reform should take place here in the United States. Think about what's being said as to whether effective gun-control laws can ever get passed here. And now we talk about whether we should see to it that all of our country's children get a decent education...rather than how. 

One thing's for sure: Oswald's act (no, I'm not into conspiracy theories...especially about just how Bobby's and Ted's and Joseph the Younger's brother died) led to the 1965 proposal of the Constitution's 25th Amendment...an amendment that finally got ratified on 2-10-1967.

When Lyndon Johnson moved up to the presidency this afternoon in 1963, the nation went without a vice president...until LBJ's 1964 runningmate, Hubert Humphrey, became America's second-in-command on 1-20-1965.

Never again would America's government run sans a vice president.    

I've been going on YouTube to check out how ABC, CBS, and NBC (as well as WFAA-TV, the ABC station in the Metroplex) covered the events of 11-22-1963. 

Words such as "disbelief," "anger," "sadness," and "indignation" were reported to have come out of so many people's mouths that day.

Some of the mouths belonged to key government officials.

Speaking of key government officials...some of today's government officials would absolutely love to see the next US senator to have won the White House (that's right, the man in there now, Barack Obama) removed from the White House.

And at least one big-name hate-radio (oops...talk radio) host would love to see Obama (a US senator from Illinois from 2005 to 2008) gunned down. 

Really now...do we HAVE to go through this again, with another history-making chief executive?  

Haven't we learned anything from the events that took place fifty years ago today?

Thoughts? You Bet I've Got 'Em!

Last year, I set foot in the state of Texas for the first time in my life (the occasion was our family's first reunion in nine years). To get to America's Lone Star State, I traveled in a plane for the first time in ten years.

The reunion took place on Labor Day weekend in the Dallas/Fort Worth/Arlington area. And in between the hassles of getting in and out of both Omaha's Eppley Airfield and one of the world's biggest airports (Dallas-Fort Worth International), I did have a good time.

*Well, this week, the Metroplex opened up a new amusement park (see the pictures above). 

I've got to be honest with you: If I get a chance to go back to North Texas, and I want to go to an amusement park (and I mean a REAL amusement park), it's going to be Six Flags. (Correct me if Six Flags over Texas changed its name in recent years.)   

*Speaking of plane travel...I understand that, for the first time since enacting it earlier this year, Congress decided to back off a taste on upholding its sequester.

Today, after the Senate took action, the House voted to get many of the air traffic controllers off the furlough the sequester brought on.

The whole point was to help out all those frequent fliers and all those business travelers.  

It's fine that today's Republican-led House wants to put a stop to (or at least a crimp in) all those flight delays and cancellations. Restoring jobs to those air traffic controllers is great.

It's too bad those same US representatives don't have the guts to restore the money that keeps programs like Head Start and Meals on Wheels available to all who NEED those programs.  

*And speaking of guts...I'm still incensed at the 46 US senators who showed they wouldn't stand up to the National Rifle Association.

Some (if not all) of those 46 cowards (that's right, cowards) got on TV, radio, and/or this here World Wide Web to explain just why they wouldn't stand for background checks- the measures that would've made sure buying a gun here in America is no longer as easy as buying a carton of cigarettes. 

No telling how many of those chickenhearts (oops, I mean senators) told reporters "It wasn't an easy vote."

No telling how many of them cited the Second Amendment.

I mean, background checks were the very least of the demands gun-control advocates have wanted all this time. We keep hearing that nine out of every ten Americans who answer opinion polls have come out in favor of those background checks. 

Both of Nebraska's US senators (that's right, Republicans Mike Johanns and Deb Fischer) played chicken on background checks.

If you don't want as little as to put a background check between someone and his or her wanting to buy a "shootin' arn," then you're in favor of keeping the gun violence going. It's as simple as that.

*On something just a little bit lighter...after some details have come out this week, I'm not as excited about the upcoming College Football Playoff system as I would've liked to be.

And it's all because it'll be run by the same people who cooked up the BCS nonsense: The commissioners of the now five wealthiest Division 1-A football-playing conferences (Atlantic Coast, Big Ten, Big 12, Pacific-12, and Southeastern). 

I'd have preferred to see the NCAA take it over...but we keep hearing that there's no longer any real leadership in that governing body.

Got the feeling that the commissioners will rely on the USA Today and Harris Interactive polls (and maybe the Associated Press poll will be a deciding factor here, too, a la the past).  

And if that's going to be the case...instead of each league's champion qualifying for the playoffs, get ready for things to get to the point where all four of the playoff clubs will be from the SEC.  

One more, and I'm going to wrap it up: 

*Lots and lots of sports reporters and sports talk-show hosts have been worried about this year's NFL draft; the consensus feeling is that the 2013 selection process just doesn't have the glamor that last year's did.

It's time for the media people to calm down. 

More 2013 NFL draftees are going to turn out to have great playing careers than any of us might think. (Yeah...I know: How often do you get a situation in which an Andrew Luck, a Robert Griffin III, and a Russell Wilson come out of college at the end of the same academic year?)

Far as I'm concerned, all this media fear about this year's National Football League draft manifested itself in (1) a USA Today article about the biggest busts in the draft's history and (2)  an ESPN report looking back on the 1983 NFL draft...the one that produced Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterbacks John Elway and Dan Marino.

Don't feel disappointed that the Kansas City Chiefs went with offensive lineman Eric Fisher as their top draft pick- the NFL's first choice here in 2013.

And don't automatically label Geno Smith a failure.  

Let's just see what happens.

One thing that's happening is: My time is up. 

Thanks for reading "Boston's Blog!"