Nerds on Sports

A week or so back, the NCAA amended college football’s (and as well as the other sports’) recruiting policy to forbid coaches and recruiters from text messaging high school players. This may not seem like a particularly big deal. But for someone like me, an avid fan of college football, this development is meaningful, significant, and a reflection of how terrifying the machinery of collegiate athletics.

Those that know me well know that I have a near psychotic obsession with Boston College sports. I’m a football season ticket holder, belong to two B.C. sports message boards and donate to my alma mater’s athletic fund with regularity. I’ve got a lot of pride in the school that educated me, and I cheer like a madman for my Eagles.

I am, of course, no different than the millions of other red-blooded college sports fans that live and die by their teams. I know Notre Dame alums that travel to South Bend every year to give a nod to Touchdown Jesus and watch a game. I know folks from Harvard and Yale that describe their times in school as simply “we were 3-1 during my tenure.” I know families in Florida that fiercely argue over where you could get a better show: in The Swamp or at The U. Heck, I know that 92,000 people went to Alabama’s spring scrimmage. Their spring scrimmage. This kind of pride (and the rivalries that it spawns) create brotherhoods rooted in cultish devotion. And while I love being part of a community that exhibits such passion, I realize that this passion manifests itself in peculiar and often disturbing ways. Folks want success so bad that their love becomes a destructive force, driving coaches out of a job and tearing up the lives of the kids that play. Read more »

Red flags are here to stay. No, not warning flags, the challenge flags thrown by NFL coaches. The NFL owners voted to make instant replay a permanent rule. But they still haven’t come up with a solution to the crappy “overtime decided by a coin flip” problem.

Now this isn’t the interesting part of the news because the NFL has been instantly replaying under these rules for 2 years and nothing is changing. The fun fact here is that the owners said that if we ratify the instant replay rules than we promise to have high definition cameras installed in all stadiums. That’s right, they weren’t going to do it if there was no replay. Hey, owners, some people like to watch the game with 720 delicious lines of bright colors refreshing 60 times per second.

And since I really don’t have much to say myself, I will force you to visit this random San Antonio Spurs blog and read about the NBA rookie debut of James White.

Have you ever created a custom game type in Halo 2? Have you created created any custom types where the rules didn’t involve killing everyone or some of the rules are based on trust? One of the most widely known of these custom types is zombie where the special rule to follow is to switch to the green team after death. Well, I like to try and create my own new types sometimes just as idea. Of course, being a sports nerd, I have to see what sports I can mix in.

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