Well I know what you might be thinking here. A sports agent was caught smuggling in Cuban cigars. Nope that’s not the case here.

Gustavo “Gus” Dominguez and four others were charged with conspiracy to smuggle Cuban immigrants into the United States, including some that were baseball players.

“Though the case involves a Beverly Hills sports agent and talented baseball players, it is remarkably similar to the human smuggling operations that ICE (the immigration agency) encounters every day,” Julie Myers, the agency’s assistant secretary, said in a statement. “The ringleaders put the lives of illegal immigrants at risk and sought to profit from their labor.”

According to the indictment, Dominguez and two others successfully smuggled in 19 Cuban Nationals into Florida and transported them to Los Angeles. There they were provided with food and clothing along with a place to live and began baseball training there. It is not know whether or not any of these players were signed by any major league clubs.

Is the guy that hard up for money that he has to illegally import players into the country. A good percentage of the Cubans who defect to the United States usually end up with a decent major league contract with the agent taking usually 10% of that. Is spending the rest of your life in jail worth that? To me, it is not. But obviously Gus Dominguez and his associates thought they could get away with this. It will be interesting to see as this case comes to fruition whether or not any of these players were signed by an major league clubs.

Just seen on espn.com, the San Diego Chargers stud linebacker will be suspended for violating the NFL’s steroid policy.

Merriman’s positive test was “definitely for steroids … not one of those supplement deals” said a source with knowledge of Merriman’s suspension

Look to the left at the picture and look at his arms. They are huge. Just goes to show the people in Congress that the steroid policies set forth by each league are working.

Well, in Friday night’s UCONN football game, it was actually close for a little bit. At the end of the first quarter, the score was West Virginia 3 UCONN 0. Early in the second quarter, the game was actually tied 3-3. West Virginia then kicked another field goal to take the lead 6-3 and never looked back from there.

Pat White, WVU QB, busted open a 45 yard run for a touchdown and then right at the end of the first half, West Virginia scored on a 1 yard run to close the scoring at 20-3 for the first half. Amazingly at half time, UCONN had held West Virginia’s star running back, Steve Slaton, to 15 yards rushing on 9 carries.

An early interception by UCONN QB, Matt Bonislawski ended his day. Luckily for UCONN, West Virginia was unable to punch it in. A field goal by West Virginia and and 1 play drive consisting of a 52 yard TD pass from Pat White to Rayshawn Bolden put West Virginia up 30-3.

DJ Hernandez who took over for Bones, ran one in from 5 yards out. Terry Caulley added a two point conversion to make the score 30-11. Just a few minutes later, Steve Slaton busted open a 56 yard TD run to end the scoring for the game.

Some notes and observations from tailgating and the game itself:

• In the beginning of our hold’em game, our tent decided to take off and hit the people behind us. We had staked that thing in but it wasn’t good enough to hold that thing from the gale winds. The tent was rendered useless to us but the hold’em game continued anyways out in the elements. We pulled one car back and sat between two cars using them as shields from the wind to play. This proved adventerous as occasionally some cards went flying.
• In a classy move at the end of the hold’em game, Ken and Marc donated the winnings to Mat to help pay for a new tent.
• It appears we might have a QB controversy at UCONN. Matt Bonaislawski was ineffective again and DJ Hernandez proved to be more mobile at QB. The problem is that DJ is still making the stupid mistakes that cost him his job in the first place.
• Tony Ciaravino will be handling all the extra points and field goals within 40 yards for the time being. Matt Nuzie will attempt anything over 40 yards.
• UCONN’s running game was nonexistant again. Although, if you saw the size of the West Virginia front line on D, you wouldn’t have run the ball that far either.
• UCONN needs to get bigger at all the skill positions in order to compete with the big boys.

I would like to touch on that point briefly. This was supposed to be UCONN’s first year in the Big East but with the earlier defections of Miami and Boston College, they started play a year earlier. It is also UCONN’s 5th season as an 1-A school for football. So what does that mean? Well it means that it’s gonna take time for Coach Edsall to build up his program and recruit the bigger and stronger players. Folks, it’s gonna take time for UCONN to be the team that we expect. The basketball teams here at UCONN have spoiled us with their winning ways. It will come in time for the football Huskies. Just be patient.

Ok I set up a poll and am giving it a trial run to see how to make it be an actual post. Since I haven’t quite figured that out yet, go here to vote on How Bad Will UCONN get beat by West Virginia in football on Friday.

Am I in Vegas? Did my buddy just put a quarter in the vibrating bed??

Well the shaking on Oahu was pretty minor, not enough to knock pictures off the wall. I was woken up by my bed shaking and then managed to walk out the window to hear some serious low frequency rumbling. Being on the eleventh floor wasn’t too good for the psyche, leaving me feeling pretty helpless. However it stopped after about 25 seconds, then a few minutes later a smaller quake. Big Island was hit pretty hard, being the epicenter, and maui was shaken pretty good as well. Eye witness reports talked about parking lots full of the ghetto cars with hydraulics on maui…well at least that’s what all the cars bouncing up and down looked like. Others actually saw tremor waves traveling down the asphalt roads. They cut power on oahu automatically, it wasn’t due to any damage. Power was brought back slowly through out the day, taking about 12 hrs in Waikiki, which erupted with deafening cheers when power came back on.

All in all an interesting day of sleeping, reading, and laughing at tourists in lines for the ABC stores which were letting people in one at a time. Locals would walk around the same corner to the mom and pop convenience stores with no lines. It was rainy, and crappy out so no use in hanging outside. There’s you update folks. Have a great day!

Note: This was written by my brother, Keith, who lives on the island of Oahu in Hawaii.

Well if your watching football and haven’t heard, there was a major earthquake this morning off the big island of Hawaii that measured 6.3 on the richter scale and an aftershock of 5.8. Ironically enough at the time I was calling my brother who lives on Oahu, he was calling me to tell me he was woken up by the quake. My brother is ok and is actually on his way to work at the Hawaiian Natural Institute of Energy to make sure that all of their projects are ok. For those who know my brother and want to know he’s doing, please call me on my cell and I will update you with information. Cell service is spotty out there and rather than have everyone call him at once, I will tell you that he is ok and will be checking in with me later

UPDATE at 4:30 PM: My brother just called and was actually more concerned that he was missing the football games today. So I gave him the scores. He did state that his projects at work were ok and that there is still no power on the island. From what he said, they took the power down on the island to look for damage and will be systematically powering the generators back up. Once he gets power, he will be filing a report with me. So stay tuned.

UPDATE at 5:30 PM: I just tried calling my brother on Oahu and right now there is no cell service. I will keep trying as my brother wanted some football score updates and I wanted to let him know that Hawaii was in a state of emergency. OK well i finally got in touch with his voicemail. I left him some scores and let him know I just read that he won’t be getting his power back until this evening. For those who don’t know, Hawaii is 6 hrs behind us here on the east coast.

UPDATE at 6:30 PM: I just read this on the Honolulu Advertiser’s website, “Officials hope to have power back to most of O’ahu by nightfall.”

UPDATE at 7:00 PM: The Honolulu Advertiser is now reporting the earthquake was a 6.6 magnitude on the Richter scale.

FINAL UPDATE From me tonight (9:00 PM): I know that everything is fine with my brother out there. I just haven’t been able to get thru in a while. Landlines on Oahu still weren’t working and the cell service is spotty still. No new news to report on my end. Look for my brother’s experiences here tomorrow.

In a nail biter game today, the Detroit Tigers came from 3 runs down to sweep the Oakland A’s and advance to the World Series starting next Saturday night. Magglio Ordonez hit a walk-off 3 run home run in the bottom of the 9th off of Huston Street to finish the game off 6-3.

Tonight kicks off the college basketball season for the UCONN Huskies with the Men’s Madness and Women’s Supershow at Gampel Pavillion.

The schedule for tonight is as follows:

• 6:30 PM-7:15 PM- Autograph session outside Gampel with Men’s and Women’s teams
• 7:30 PM-8:50 PM- Women’s Supershow
• 8:50 PM-10:15 PM- Men’s Madness

Look for the Lady Huskies to be led by their quartet of juniors, Mel Thomas, Brittany Hunter, Charde Houston, and Ketia Swanier. Also expect big things from Renee Montogomery, an early favorite for Big East Player of the Year.

For the men, tonight marks the long awaited debut of AJ Price, who was highly touted when he first arrived on campus. He was sidelined his freshman year with an intracranial hemorrhage in his brain and then last year was suspended for his role in “Laptopgate”. The men’s team is a young team this year and will be led by returning sophomore, Jeff Adrien. The men’s team boasts 8 new players this year, led by East Hartford’s Doug Wiggins and 7’3′ center Hasheem Thabeet, who has not been cleared by the NCAA yet to play.

While tonight is a fun night for both teams as the freshman get to really see what it’s like to play basketball at Connecticut, look for them to get their first real tastes of a Coach Calhoun or Coach Auriemma practice tomorrow.

As we get closer to opening night for both teams, check back here at Random Thoughts as I will do a review of both teams.

As some of you may or may not know, my brother resides in Hawaii. Well this was taken from a local TV station out there a few months back. Thanks to my brother for the tip about the video.

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Well as usual on a Sunday, I sit here and watch football and relax, peruse the normal sites of the day, Deadspin, ESPN, and of course Yahoo Fantasy Football. So when looking at Deadspin.com, I saw my blog’s name there and was like umm ok. So of course I had to check it out. Well the Mighty MJD, the weekend editor at Deadspin must ohave that thought the story was interesting enough to be included in the leftoverdome section of deadspin. You can see it here to see for your own eyes.