A proliferation of pigskin pundits - time to cut the chatter!
Describe and analyze - Thursday nights through Monday nights, I am blitzed and blown out, not from watching too much football but from listening. I get that play-by-play is necessary; it’s the analysis after each play by some jarhead who would be better served by being quiet that exhausts me. Then there’s the studio shows before games plus the halftime and dreaded post-game analysis. Is commentating even a real word? The perfect job, “I do some consulting work and some in-game commentating followed by post-game cogitating." Sunday I was up and back to Temple University listening to Sirius satellite radio and "The Sunday Drive" show, which goes around the country plugging into all the home radio feeds. The most overused word is “huge.” I heard one slow delivery color analyst say, “This next play is so huge I can’t even describe it with my hands.”
Cross addicted - Crossover music, crossover cars, cross-trained and cross-fit. Seems everyone is totally crossed out. And we all understand and comprehend cross addiction to drugs and drink - look around the Thanksgiving Day table for who’s not there - but food is more abundant yet more subtle, the addictions more prevalent and varied. A year ago I gave up cookies, cake, ice cream and candy. I gave up alcohol seven years ago. And last week a foodstuff substitute barged into my harbor of roughage. I’m talking about that old standby, American Pie. Cobbler rhymes with gobbler - perhaps all the photos of 5K turkey trotters, striders and gliders sent me over the edge, but no one else I know eats four pies in one week. So bye-bye, American Pie, drove my Toyota to the pagoda to give Buddhism a try.
Sponsor shout-outs - I have rocked many a microphone at sporting extravaganzas from Punkin Chunkin to benefit basketball games, and I usually draw the line at “We’d like to thank our sponsors,” because no one is trying to hear that, and to me it makes it seem that the announcer should go find work at a carnival. “Hey, want to see where a horse bit me?” But sponsors help pay the bills and now television sports, in particular football and baseball, have individual plays that are sponsored; and to me that is lame. Imagine the great play-by-play man Keith Jackson: “That Alabama fumble and rumble by a 300-pound lineman is sponsored by Piggly Wiggly.” We are a step away from the Cialis Stick of the Game.
The Catholics are coming - Pope Francis is visiting Philadelphia in 2015 and 7 of 16 teams at the 2014 Slam Dunk Tournament are Catholic schools. You think that’s a coincidence? Catholic schools are all about basketball. Heck, Salesianum is the Delaware state champion and it is in the tournament as well as Christ the King, Gonzaga, Mount St .Joseph, Roselle Catholic, Ss.Neuman-Goretti, and St. Vincent-St. Mary’s. Throw in Sunrise Christian Academy and Our Savior New American School - not Catholic, the Pope gets no playing time - and you get a major religious influence in the tournament which should make the Freedom from Religion watchdogs in Wisconsin just a little nervous. Gill St. Bernard’s and St. Georges are nonsectarian schools; they just throw the word "saint" in front for street cred.
Snippets - Cape basketball opens the season at home Friday night, Dec. 5, versus Sussex Tech. The usual packed-house crowd is expected to shuffle in.
Tyreik Burton, a member of the Thiel College Tomcats basketball team from Greenville, Pa., halfway between Cleveland and Pittsburgh and a long way from Belltown, has appeared in all four games. "Tomcats" is a different name for a mascot for a coeducational school because to announce the Lady Tomcats makes no sense.
Head coach K.C. Keeler of Sam Houston State defeated Southeastern Louisiana State 21-17 last Saturday in the opening round of the 1AA playoffs. Keeler to Delaware: “How do you like me now?”
Wesley football will host No. 7 Hobart at noon, Saturday, Dec. 6, in the quarterfinals of the DIII NCAA tournament. Wesley beat MIT last weekend 59-0 as quarterback Joe Callahan threw for 268 yards and four touchdowns. The usual suspects are still lurking in the field, Wisconsin-Whitewater and Mount Union, and also Widener are still alive. Wesley is due to win this tournament, which would be “so huge human hands can’t measure it.” Go on now, git!
