These might be a bigger deal if anyone cared about college baseball

College baseball is not a powerhouse like college football or college basketball. Though baseball remains among the the top-three sports (along with football and basketball) on the pro level, college baseball doesn't inspire the same following as the major league version.

Even as I type this, my fingers keep wanting to type "college basketball" instead of "college baseball".

There are a number of reasons. College baseball's premier event, the College World Series is more confusing to follow than in other sports. About.com tells us how it works:

Each team is sent to one of 16 regional sites throughout the country. The teams are seeded 1 through 4 by the selection committee, with No. 1 facing No. 4 and No. 2 facing No. 3 in the first round. The teams then proceed in a double-elimination bracket.

After that round, the remaining 16 teams are then split into eight super regionals, where two teams will face off in a best-of-three series. The super-regional winners advance to the College World Series.

The eight teams that qualify for the College World Series are separated into two four-team, double-elimination brackets, playing the same format as in the first round. The winners of those tournaments will meet in one best-of-three championship series to determine the champion.

Of course, it's still better than the BCS.

Another reason college baseball isn't as popular is because even if a college baseball star is drafted with the first pick of the baseball draft, it could be two or three years before he works his way up the minor leagues to be in the major leagues. Sometimes they never make it there at all.

Also, many of the best players skip college completely and head straight for pro baseball when they graduate high school.

Finally, the draft, which has helped the hype for football and basketball players drafted by their respective teams, is much different in baseball.

Wikipedia:

Unlike most sports drafts, the First-Year Player Draft is held mid-season, in June. Another distinguishing feature of this draft in comparison with those of other North American major professional sports leagues is its sheer size: the 2006 draft lasted 50 rounds and 1,502 players were selected. In contrast, the NBA Draft lasts for only two rounds (60 selections) and the NFL Draft for only seven rounds (256 selections if no picks are forfeited).

So why do I mention this?

Well, there have been two amazing games in the college baseball regionals in consecutive days. Today, Florida State beat Ohio State 37-6, the most lopsided game in college baseball history.

This came just a day after the longest game in NCAA history, 25 innings. One reliever pitched 13 scoreless innings and had 12 1/3 innings of no-hit ball.

And I bet that these stories were trumped by some regular season MLB games.

Going viral

Just about every time someone uploads a YouTube clip of themselves up on YouTube, somewhere in the back of their minds is that this might be a clip that goes viral -- that becomes the Next Big Thing on YouTube, a video that will bring them fame if not fortune.

Somewhere around 99.99% of people who upload videos to YouTube never realize this dream. But Brandon Hardesty was one who actually did realize this dream and parlayed his love of certain movies and his acting ability into, well, fame.

The Washington Post Magazine did a 6,000 word article on Hardesty and his videos.

I don't want to give anything away from the article, but go ahead and read it. It's worth it, trust me. I would never lead you wrong.

To the right is an example of one of his earliest videos, a reenactment of a famous scene from the '80s teen angst-fest that was The Breakfast Club.

Time lapse videos of change on Earth

A blog at the Wired magazine website has a series of interesting changes in the earth over the past decade, sometimes for good but usually for, well, not good.

For example, take a look at a time lapse of Lake Powell in Utah and the effects of a drought on the lake over the past ten years:

Southern Utah’s Lake Powell was once teeming with boaters, fishers and vacationers. But from 2000 to 2005 its water level dropped from 20 million to 8 million acre-feet, due to severe drought. Water levels have rebounded a bit, but are expected to plummet to levels even lower than those of 2005 during the next serious drought.

Fifteen word movie review for Fast and Furious

I saw Fast and Furious at the second run theater. Wasn't worth the two dollars.