so i've been letting the Oregon fans i know have it pretty bad since the Ducks failed to bring home the BCS National Championship in last night's game against Auburn. they definitely deserve it after all the crap they talked throughout the season but i've decided to give it a rest. they gave it their best shot and they should be proud. sure their best shot wasn't good enough and sure they made it all that way only to come home empty handed. but that's no reason to be ashamed. maybe if they would have played a tougher non-conference schedule instead of playing New Mexico, Portland State, and Tennessee, whose combined records this year were 9 and 27. perhaps then they would have been better prepared to take on the SEC champs. maybe they should have spent more time worrying about how to score on teams with quality defenses and less time, like seventh grade girls coordinating their outfits, worrying about which uniforms to wear. who's to say. whatever the case, be proud my Oregon faithful of what you almost accomplished. sure you lost on the biggest stage your school has ever been on, but you sure looked cool doing it.

on a loosely related note, i recently discovered an odd fact about the sports teams i like and dislike. nearly every college or professional sports team that i strongly dislike has either green or red (or pinstripes) as a team color. that's not to say that i dislike every green or red team, but my least favorite teams all have these colors in common. on the other side, my favorite sports teams all wear either blue or purple. my favorite pro teams are the Dodgers and Lakers while my favorite colleges are Washington and UCLA. there are a few other teams, like the Suns, Clippers, Colts, Cowboys, Vikings, and Chargers, that i like but i wouldn't go so far as to call them my teams.

in college, my least favorite schools are Oregon and USC. i also dislike Ohio State, Nebraska, Washington State, and several others who all wear red, and Miami in green. There are a few other schools i don't like, such as Notre Dame, that have blue as a color but they also have green as a secondary color. in addition, their blue is a navy blue and of the few teams i don't like that have blue it's always a navy blue. BYU, Cal, and Arizona (who also has red) would fit into this category as well. still with me? in the NBA there is really only one team that i absolutely cannot stand, the Boston Celtics. there was a time i would have mentioned the Spurs or Pistons in this category but not so much anymore. in the NFL i strongly dislike the Jets, Patriots, 49ers, and Eagles. finally, in baseball the teams i root against are, of course, the Yankees, Red Sox, Phillies, Braves, Padres, Cardinals, and Angels (although they're way behind the others.) the Yankees need no explanation but as a Dodger fan you'd think the Giants would be on this list as well. considering they knocked off the Phillies i'm giving them a temporary reprieve. true the Braves, Padres, and Cardinals have blue in addition to red but, again, it's dark blue. perhaps a secondary rule to all of this is that i tend to dislike teams that are in the same conference or division as the teams i like. this may seem obvious but i was amazed by the number of Pac-10 people who were pulling for Oregon to beat Auburn. i really don't understand the logic of favoring one of your rivals over an out of conference team that you really don't have anything against. i love the Pac-10 but only because it contains Washington and UCLA. i've actually grown kind of fond of Oregon State as well but mainly because they're Oregon's arch rivals and they beat USC a couple times. as for everyone else, i want them to lose to outside schools as much as i want to beat them.

you may have noticed that the list of teams i dislike is quite a bit longer than the list of teams i like. you may have also noticed that i dislike pretty much every team from New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. i have a friend who says he decided to, at some point, try and let go of his dislike for certain teams and schools and focus on rooting for the teams he likes rather than against the ones he doesn't. well not me. i find sports to be one of the few things in life where it can be healthy to root for someone to fail, especially when you consider that so much of this is based on personal geography. after all, the outcome really isn't that important in the scheme of things, despite the level of importance we tend to place on winning. someone has to win and someone has to lose. as someone else i know so eloquently put it to me recently, i love sports hate.

the kobra strikes again. after cruising to victory in game six, the Lakers overcame a double-digit second half deficit on their way to an incredible game seven victory and a second consecutive NBA championship. despite an off shooting night, Kobe hit clutch free throws and grabbed big rebounds down the stretch. Gasol also played well but Ron Artest might be the biggest reason the Lakers can, once again, call themselves champions. sorry Boston, maybe next year!

there was a time when i wasn't a big believer in listening to music while working out. basketball has long been one of my favorite forms of activity and, unless you're playing at the park, chances are you're not listening to music on the court. football is, of course, not very conducive to music listening either being that you're wearing a helmet. although there was often music on in the locker room and weight room in high school and college, it's been at least a couple years since i spent any quality time in either of those.

anyway, these days i've started back up jogging as my primary form of exercise and i've come to realize how motivating it can be to listen to music while running. with that in mind, i've decided to compile a list of 10 of my favorite songs to listen to while running. some make obvious reference to running but others are just songs that i put on my mp3 player because they seemed like good, upbeat tunes. so without further ado, here's the list. click the song title to check out a YouTube video of each song...

1. Aerosmith - Train Kept A Rollin' a funky rock song that, despite the likely undertones intended by the artist, i've chosen to interpret to mean "just keep running." off their 1974 album "Get Your Wings", this song was released two years before Alicia Silverstone was born.	6. NWA - 100 Miles And Running one of my all time favorite gangster rap songs, this NWA classic makes it easy to pretend like you're running from the police. their performance of this song live on the Arsenio Hall Show is one of the best live rap performances ever.
2. Bill Landford - Run On For A Long Time best known for cover versions done my Moby and Johnny Cash, this song has a old time sound that probably wasn't even funky when it was first released. nevertheless, the lyrics and harmonies are great and i find it motivating. Moby's version (called "Run On") is pretty cool too but, like most things, there's nothing quite like the original.	7. Pharcyde - Runnin' another hip hop classic but for entirely different reasons. this song came out in 1995 as, what many consider to be, the golden age of rap was making it's unceremonious exit from the airwaves. there is an obvious connection to running because of the title but the message here is that you can't keep (can't keep) running away from life.
3. Gnarls Barkley - Going On this is one of the best songs i've heard in the last 5 years, not only because of the incredible sound but the wise and almost spiritual lyrics as well. in running, as in life, you must always continue going on and be prepared to go it alone.	8. The Creation - Making Time this is a song that i first heard when it was featured in the movie Rushmore during the montage scene showing each of the extracurricular activities that Max participates in. it was released in 1966 and still holds up all these years later.
4. Mass Influence - All Out i can't remember when i first heard this song but i had in stuck in my head for what seemed like years. then one night, at an Ugly Duckling show in Anaheim, the DJ played it and i got the name from him. a friend helped me find the song and later we also found the sample that it uses, which is a great song by Bill Evans called "55 Days at Peking."	9. Twisted Sister - Burn In Hell yet another song that i first heard in a movie, it wasn't until more than 20 years later that i would actually learn to appreciate it. this is the song that Twisted Sister is shooting a video for when they make their cameo in the 1985 classic "Pee Wee's Big Adventure." as it turns out, this is an awesome song with a surprisingly moral message.
5. Megadeth - Skin 'O My Teeth this is just an awesome metal song that reminds me of the days when i first began to expand my musical horizons. it features one of my favorite headbanging guitar solos and always gives me a boost of energy when it comes on. as the song says, with running there is "no escaping pain."	10. Ugly Duckling - Einstein Do It despite having no real lyrics, this song has series of build ups and peaks that make it well suited for use as running music. demonstrating the incredible scratching and beat-digging abilities of DJ Einstein, this is probably my favorite track off the group's 2009 release "Audacity."

Honorable Mention: Pink Floyd - Run Like Hell; Black Moon - How Many Emcees; Kraftwerk - Trans Europe Express; Sublime - Paddle Out; Pearl Jam - Spin The Black Circle; GZA/Genius - Liquid Swords; Metallica - Master Of Puppets; Beck - Devil's Haircut; English Beat - March Of The Swivelheads (song at the end of "Ferris Bueller's Day Off")