How To Be A Sports Fan: Lesson 4
This guest post is brought to you by a new Twitter friend, Ben Zajdel. Ben is a graduate of the University of Texas at Dallas, works in a Christian bookstore, watches entirely too much basketball (PERFECTLY okay with me), and has written a few short books you might enjoy. You can keep up with him at his website, or on Twitter, @benzajdel.
Before I start this article on superstition, you need to know a little about me. I have a degree in Historical Studies, which means I learned how to fact check old documents and make sure they’re legitimate. I am also currently pursuing a degree in Environmental Science, so you can probably guess that I don’t like approximations and guesses. I’m also a Christian, so I don’t believe in magic and voodoo and curses. I openly mock those who think magnets can heal you, and I dismiss most natural remedies.
That being said, how to be superstitious is one of the most important things a sports fan can learn. Read More…
Video Breakdown: It’s SHUMPERT
For NBA fans, the heart of the playoffs is exactly where they want to be, with countless great individual and team matchups.
One matchup that would be particularly intriguing if this was 1997 is the current series between the Indiana Pacers and the New York Knicks. Alas, this is not 1997, and the rivalry isn’t the same as when Reggie Miller was shaking his Cheryls at Spike Lee. However, there between Carmelo Anthony, Tyson Chandler and the reanimated corpses of Jason Kidd/Marcus Camby versus Paul George, Roy Hibbert and a cyborg named Tyler Hansborough who just wants to learn what love is, it’s still a fascinating series.
And then we have wildcards, such as the mysterious Iman Shumpert
Blending the arrogance of Reggie Miller with the hair of Patrick Ewing
Flip Flop Rock
All genres of music lend themselves to the occasional bad song. Rock music has good and bad songwriters, just as terrible composers surely existed back in the days of Beethoven, and just like how every pop song today makes your ears bleed. And yes, one could argue that for every Bob Dylan there existed a George Thorogood (more like ThoroBAD) when it came to songwriting.
In rap music, however, the spectrum is much, much wider. For every Chiddy Bang (on the good side of the spectrum), there exist at least 10 Soulja Boys (the WORST).
Never trust a man with a leopard print hat
If none of those names mean anything to you, that’s fine. None of that is terribly important. Rap music does have its fair share of great songwriters, its versions of Bob Dylan, if you will. And just like Bob Dylan, sometimes they don’t make any sense whatsoever.
Never trust a man with that kind of hat, either
Infallible/Inspired
I believe the Bible to be special. I believe it to be infallible and inspired by the Author of All. Maybe you share this view.
It’s a bit of a strange concept to think about. After all, we’re talking about documents that were passed down for many generations before ever being written down, and even after that, they had to be translated into language that we understand. So there’s all kinds of crazy stuff that doesn’t necessarily make sense to us in the age we live in. There are a lot of cultural differences that make things really, really difficult for us to understand.
But that’s where our viewpoint of the Bible itself comes into play. Because if we just think of it as some other book, we can disregard all the things that don’t interest us. However, if we view it as being infallible and being inspired, than we have no choice but to look at the content as being something entirely different.
We have to acknowledge that the content is in there for a reason. Read More…
How To Be A Sports Fan: Lesson 3
Alas! I have made my return to the GBOAT. I am making my contribution to the “How To Be a Sports Fan” series based on years of experience and observation. Also, as a shameless plug, I am undertaking a once-a-week, year long blogging endeavor over at my blog, The Ramblings of a Wayward Son. - Chandler
I have been around sports for years. I’m 28 now, and I remember waaaaaaay back when as a little kid playing T-Ball. I don’t know when that was, but it was a long time ago. I was never good at sports, but I have played, and probably more importantly, watched them for years. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from all of these years, it’s this:
In order to be a sports fan, you must overreact to everything.
This manifests itself in many different ways. Fans do it, announcers do it, and talking heads do it. And then after you overreact to everything, you have to get mad at ESPN for creating a culture in which we overreact to everything, essentially absolving yourself of any and all blame.
Make sense? No? Good. Let’s look at it more specifically. Read More…
The Long Fall
“Is it safe?”
I often find myself longing for this two-week period of my life from back in 2009. It was right after graduating from college, and I spent my time driving around throughout the Southeast listening to a lot of CDs cause I didn’t own an iPod.
It was exactly what I needed just out of school: time away from everything. I was coming off a particularly rough 2008 and figured that since my problems at this point in time were dealing with a couple of girls I found attractive and finding a part time job to pay my cheap rent, life was going alright. The future was wide open for me, which was exhilarating but also terrifying.
It is that free feeling that I keep coming back to as the years go by. Not the fear or the wandering or the confusion about cute girls. It is the feeling of freedom.
Yet I can’t help but think that the more I long for that period of time, I do it for the wrong reasons. Read More…
