It's The Circle, The Circle Of Liiiiiife...

Count me as one of those kids who was a sneaker addict growing up. I never had enough disposable income to really go crazy (my parents would buy me 1 pair of sneakers a year whether I really needed them or not, and I would usually save up enough to buy another pair a year on my own), but I made the most with what I had. Weeks’ worth of research (and by “research” I mean pouring over Eastbay catalogues) would go into my decision, and I would keep my shoes in pristine condition. New sneakers rarely got scuffs because I would reserve them for playing ball indoors, but in the event that they did get a blemish they got the royal treatment: bleach, toothpaste, whatever it took to keep them looking new. Eventually though, I would get a new pair and “demote” 1 of my other pairs. I kept such care of my sneakers that they would last for years, but I still had a natural progression which kept me from stockpiling dozens of shoes at once. I usually kept my 2 newest pairs in my office at school. These were my indoor balling shoes. I would keep anywhere from 2 to 4 pairs in my room at home, which were kind of my all-purpose shoes: street shoes, shoes to wear to class, shoes to ball outdoors, etc. Finally, I kept a singular pair of sneakers (my oldest pair at the time) in the garage at home for mowing the lawn and yard work. This pair was usually on its last legs, covered in grass stains and cement, and starting to get a little bit mousey. When I would get that new fresh pair, the lawn-mowing pair would get thrown out, the oldest pair of all-purpose sneakers would become the lawn-mowing pair, and all the way down the line.

That's just beautiful...

The problem is that in the few years since I have moved away from home, this naturally occurring system of checks and balances has disappeared. I don’t have a lawn anymore, and I only play basketball once a week as opposed to 4 or 5 times a week. Also, I used to wear sneakers to class and work 9 out of every 10 days when I was in college. Now that I’m a participant in the daily rat race, I spend the majority of my time wearing dress shoes. So, my sneakers are seeing less wear and tear over every stage of their life cycle. All of that means that I should be buying sneakers less and less often, right? Wrong…I am a sneaker addict after all.

My demand for sneakers may have gone way down over the past 3 or 4 years, but my means for buying them have gone up. While I’m not exactly making bank at my current job, I’m making much more than my $10 an hour college job, and Krissy and I don’t have any kids or a house or anything expensive to pay for yet. And I will say that the frequency at which I buy myself new basketball shoes has gone way down lately. I probably only get 1 pair of new basketball shoes a year now (and my most recent pair was a gift from Krissy…when you’re a sneaker addict trying to quit the habit, it doesn’t help if your wife is an even bigger sneaker addict than you), and seeing as how I don’t play nearly as often as I used to I could probably get away with buying them even less often than that, but I can’t help it being the sneaker addict that I am. However, I used to only buy basketball sneakers because their sole purpose once they came out of the box was to play basketball in them. The purposes of those shoes evolved over time into whatever I needed them to be, but that’s how they all started out. Now, I buy trainers for the gym (prior to that I hadn’t owned a low-top sneaker since elementary school) and sneakers specifically to wear out with a pair of jeans or something as well. So, where I was only acquiring 1 or 2 new pairs of sneakers a year before, it’s probably like 3 or 4 pairs of shoes now. The result of this is a glutton of sneakers everywhere around our apartment. It was time for some population control.

So, when I got rid of my old pair of Iverson’s (the original “The Question”) this morning, it was with a heavy heart. I had contemplated getting rid of them this past summer when I had begun to play ball outdoors with them (they had started to get worn and come unglued in certain spots), but they just weren’t quite worn out enough for me to toss out just yet. I figured eventually a day would come where I would get them so beat up and dirty from hiking in the woods or digging a car out of a mud hole or something random that I could justify it to myself. This past weekend gave me a reason (albeit a weak one) after my friend Mac borrowed them to play ball in after forgetting to bring a pair of shoes of his own. Mac's feet are a good size bigger than mine, and the parts of the toe that were already coming apart looked even more worse for wear afterwards. The shoes had definitely seen better days, but I couldn’t bring myself to simply throw them out, so I dropped them off in 1 of those clothing bins for homeless people. Crisis averted…the shoe circle of life goes on.

Why couldn't they have just stayed like this forever?

Cue Elton John.

A Miserable End To A Miserable Season

It’s been a week or so since I last made a fantasy or any other update on here, but it wasn’t because I was hiding in the fetal position somewhere. I actually got to the acceptance stage fairly quickly, as I knew even if I made the playoffs my team was likely going nowhere. Either way, the odds were greatly in my favor to at least get in. If I won I was in. If I lost, I could still get in as long as Krissy lost and my brother Dan didn’t win his own matchup and outscore me by more than 50 points. From early on in the weekend, it didn’t look like I had a shot to win, but it looked like Krissy was out of it pretty early on in her matchup also. The only problem was that I had the perfect storm of a bad fantasy weekend, and Dan’s team put up a wopping 123 points. Matt Hasselbeck, who I picked up thinking that he would be a solid fill-in starter, left the game in the 1st half and got me 1 point. Plaxico Burress, in a game where the Jets beat the Chiefs by 4 touchdowns, put up 0 points. Mike Wallace, who had carried me at times earlier in the year, put up a pedestrian 7 points. DeMarco Murray broke his ankle in the 1st half and got me 2 points. CJ Spiller, in a blowout loss to San Diego, got me only 5 points. Jermichael Finley was held without a catch in Green Bay’s game. The only players that did anything for me were Roy Helu, who had his 3rd 100 yard rushing game in a row, and Seattle’s defense. My total output was my yearly worst by far: 53 points for the week, good enough to be outscored by Dan by 70! Adding insult to injury, I had 3 different receivers on my bench (Laurent Robinson, Julio Jones, and Nate Washington) who had at least 24 points apiece. Now, I would have never started all 3 of them because Mike Wallace is a must-start every week, but I could have conceivably started 2 of them over Burress and Spiller for example…especially Julio Jones, who I had consistently started (when he was healthy at least) all season despite having an up-and-down year. To put a positive spin on it though, this mercifully ended what was by all standards a pretty crappy fantasy season for me. Earlier in the year I complained about being unlucky, but my final record was 6-8, and in all honesty this was a 6-8 fantasy team (and all things considered I had to work pretty hard and get pretty lucky even to get to 6-8). Why was this team such a failure? Let’s run down the list…

1. Michael Vick…I have detailed this before, but prior to our league’s draft I heard ESPN fantasy guru Matthew Berry explain on a podcast why he would take Vick if he had the 1st pick in a draft this year. It went something like this…the Eagles have an explosive offense, and last year Vick put up numbers that would have made him a top 10 fantasy quarterback and a top 20 fantasy running back if you isolated his rushing stats (if you extrapolated those stats through a full 16 games). Vick came with risks: a lack of consistency over the years, the propensity to get injured, etc…but if he played up to his abilities and stayed on the field, it would essentially be like having an extra player in your starting lineup every week. I understood the riskiness, but I bought into the theory hook, line, and sinker, and when I found out I had the 1st pick in our draft this year, I didn’t hesitate in taking Vick. Unfortunately, Vick was inconsistent, got hurt early and often, and the Eagles were a bust in general this year. The theory works though…just ask Cam Newton owners this year. Cam went undrafted in our league though, but he is the overall 2nd rated fantasy player in the league right now behind Aaron Rodgers (by the way, while I had completely bought in to Vick, Rodgers was my 2nd choice). Vick’s current ranking is still a respectable 47th, but the pick killed me. I ended up dropping him with a week or 2 left in the regular season (during his most recent time missed due to injury). The result of this left me with a revolving door at quarterback this year including Josh Freeman, Tarvaris Jackson, Carson Palmer, and the aforementioned Hasselbeck. I did pick up Jay Cutler for a couple weeks, which was a good pickup except for the fact that he broke his finger, causing me to drop him shortly thereafter.

2. A bad draft in general…At season’s end I only had 5 of my original 14 picks still on my roster, and that’s generally not a good sign. I guess it could mean that you were really wheeling and dealing to try to make improvements. Also, it’s pretty common to have a lot of turnover with the guys at the back end of your draft, including kickers and defenses. However, it also probably means that you drafted crappy, and you have to replace a lot of the dead weight on your roster.

3. Injuries…One of my favorite “Dad” sayings is, “Sometimes, it’s better to be lucky than good.” Well, that is rarely more true than in fantasy football. Injuries are part of the game, and some guys (Vick for example) are more injury-prone than others. Still, most good fantasy teams (much like the real teams) are partially good because they managed to not catch the injury bug that year, but on my team injuries spread like a pandemic. Aside from Vick being in and out of the lineup, 2 of my best running backs going into the season were put on injured reserve during the course of the year with leg injuries. Felix Jones was my 2nd round pick, but I dropped him fairly early on in the year when he was out with a shoulder injury. His replacement, Murray, was my number 1 back by the end of the year, but even if I had made the postseason I would have been in big trouble, as Murray was placed on injured reserve after last week’s injury as well. Speaking of a little luck going a long way…

4. Sleeper picks (or lack thereof)…Most leagues aren’t won with the top picks in the draft. Sure, a superstar can have an unbelievable year, but it always seems to be the guy that is shrewd and lucky enough to get those players who have great years out of nowhere that end up winning. Last year when I won our league, I got Arian Foster, Matt Forte, and Fred Jackson in the middle rounds of the draft. I don’t even remember who I used my draft picks on for the 1st couple of rounds because it didn’t matter…those 3 picks basically won it for me right there. This year I tried to employ a similar strategy of grabbing a lot of “2nd tier” backs in the middle rounds with the hope that a couple of them would breakout from the pack. Hightower and Jackson were having solid and great years respectively before they got hurt, but the fact that neither James Starks or Ben Tate really ended up being sleepers for me hurt almost as much as those injuries. Starks has been fighting off injuries the 2nd half of the year, but even prior to that he hadn’t done enough to separate himself from Green Bay’s other backs in their multi-back system like I had hoped. I thought Tate was a smart pick given how Foster pulled the same hamstring like 3 times in the preseason, but while he’s having a great year for a backup running back, he’s still just that: a backup running back. I drafted 5 running backs in total, but none of them, for one reason or another, were one of my starting 3 running backs the last 2 weeks of the regular season.

5. Inconsistency at key spots…Wallace and Finley had been great at times for me this year, but they have been wildly inconsistent as well. Wallace’s decline has been more steady, as he started off the season on pace to break all kinds of single season receiving records. The combination of defenses paying more attention to him, the emergence of Pittsburgh’s other receivers, and the Steelers renewed commitment to the running game as we’ve crept into the winter months seem to be the cause of that. Finley has been more of an enigma, catching 3 touchdown passes 1 week, and disappearing from the offense completely the next. Blame the fact that the Packers have like 1,000 good skill position players for that. At this point, they have still been the 5th and 6th most productive fantasy players at each of their positions this year, but I would have traded a little more consistency for the couple of big weeks that they had.

6. No number 2 receiver…Percy Harvin was penciled in as my 2nd receiver at the start of the year, but when it quickly became apparent that Donovan McNabb couldn’t play anymore I traded him away. In retrospect, I should have held on to him a little bit longer, as he’s had a decent 2nd half of the season with Christian Ponder at the controls of the offense. Julio Jones has had 2 or 3 great weeks, but has had several other weeks where he hasn’t played due to injury or just hasn’t performed when he was on the field. I rode him for much of the year while he was healthy just hoping to catch lightning in a bottle, but as I mentioned before I stupidly sat him when I could have used his production the most this past week. Still, my number 2 receiver position was my biggest revolving door of all. It also may have proven another point when it comes to fantasy: having depth is nice, but sometimes too many choices can be a bad thing too.

In the end, I have no one really to blame but myself. Sure, I was unlucky with injuries, but I outsmarted myself on several draft picks and moves during the season. I guess I can take solace in the fact that as bad as I drafted and as unlucky as I was with guys getting hurt, I was able to piece together at least a mediocre season. Free agent pickups like Helu, Murray, Robinson, and Burress literally kept my season afloat when I probably should’ve been eliminated weeks before. Hopefully for my next fantasy team I can combine that resourcefulness with a little better luck and drafting as well.

The Replacements

The last time I mentioned fantasy football on here was October 26th. A snapshot of that point in time had me at 2-5 overall and on a 2 game losing streak (good enough for 9th place in a 12 team league). Michael Vick had a bye week that particular week, and even when he was on the field he was playing like garbage. Fast forward 5 weeks later, and lamenting picking Vick as my #1 overall draft pick is the only thing that has remained the same. After not playing in the last 2 games and already being ruled-out of this Thursday’s game in Seattle, I decided to drop Vick from my roster. It’s a stunning turnabout for a guy that I thought could potentially win the league for me by myself. Looking back now, it was a horrendous pick. I could’ve gone with a safe choice at running back like Adrian Peterson or Arian Foster. Even though those guys have suffered through injuries during different parts of the year, they have both been solid. I could’ve gone with Aaron Rodgers, who was actually my 2nd choice. Even though running backs are generally safer picks, I felt that the top-tier QBs had the most potential for having ridiculous fantasy years. Even Rodgers would have been a safer pick than Vick though. I decided to gamble on Vick because while he had the biggest propensity to do exactly what he has done so far this year (namely, keep getting hurt and playing lousy for the most part), he also could have had the greatest season in fantasy football history if he played his best and stayed healthy. Unfortunately for me, he has done neither. Meanwhile, Rodgers is the top rated player in all of fantasy this year…while Vick is currently a free agent in our league along with the likes of QBs on IR like Matt Schaub and busts like Tavaris Jackson (I actually picked Jackson up for 1 week for an emergency start).

A familiar sight this season.

To top it off, my team has been devastated at RB. Tim Hightower had already been lost for the year with a torn ACL by my last fantasy post, but my only fantasy stud, Fred Jackson, has since been placed on IR with a broken leg also. If you factor in that I dropped Felix Jones several weeks back in favor of his backup, DeMarco Murray, when he was out a couple of weeks with a shoulder injury, only 2 of my top 7 picks are even still on my roster…and those 2 guys have been shaky at best for me lately. Mike Wallace’s pace has slowed dramatically since the beginning of the year when he looked like he might challenge the single season record books for receivers, and Jermichael Finley could have 3 TDs 1 game and then go weeks without sniffing the end zone again. In fact, if you look at my draft results the only players still on my roster that I originally drafted are Wallace, Finley, James Starks, Julio Jones, and Ben Tate. Jones has had a couple of big weeks, but seems to miss every other game with a bad hamstring. Tate and Starks have been good spot starters, but 1 is a backup to the best back in the league, and the other splits carries with Ryan Grant in a predominantly passing offense…not a good combination if consistent production is what you’re after.

Oh, Mike Wallace...wherever have you gone?

With all that info, you would probably guess that I went from 2-5 to 2-10 by now…and yet I’ve managed to win 4 out of 5 to move to 6-6 overall. Even stranger, there is a logjam in the middle of the league standings right now (5 teams at either 6-6 or 5-6-1), and with last week’s win I moved from 9th place all the way to 5th due to tiebreakers. How is this possible? Well, the 1st thing is that as bad as I drafted, I probably have been that good at picking free agents up. Murray, Plaxico Burress, and Laurent Robinson (who knew?) have all saved my ass in various weeks. The other (and more important factor) has been that I’ve been very lucky, which ironically is something I didn’t have in the beginning of the year at all. Back on October 26th, I had scored more points than almost every other team in the league, but had the most points scored against my team as well. I was in 1 of those stretches where if I had the 2nd highest point total of any team in a particular week, I just so happened to play the guy who had the most points that week. Since then, those numbers have kind of evened out, as I’m more in the middle of the pack in terms of total points scored and points scored against. Which means even though I had my share of 119-108 losses earlier in the year, I’ve had a few 77-67 matchups go may favor since then as well.

Now, if only I can avert any other disasters for 2 more weeks, I should at least make the playoffs, and getting a chance to make a playoff run is really all you can ask for in fantasy sports. So, even if Starks or Tate might be slightly better plays, I felt it was only right to roll the dice and go with the backups of the guys I used to have this week (Murray, CJ Spiller, and Roy Helu). I also couldn’t resist changing my team name to “Injured Reserve.” I know they say you shouldn’t tempt fate, but nothing about this fantasy season has been conventional for me thus far…why should it stop now?

A heavy dose of Roy Helu against the Jets would be just what the doctor ordered.

Another Burgandy and Gold (And Blue) Monday

Each of the Redskins losses during their current 6 game losing streak have been agonizing in their own way, and yesterday’s 27-24 home loss to Dallas followed along that same path. Their 20-13 home loss to the Eagles was the long-awaited Rex Grossman-meltdown game. Take back his 4 interceptions, and who knows what the outcome would have looked like. Their 33-20 loss at Carolina was a reminder of how bare their cupboard truly is. The Panthers, who are no good yet in their own right, at least were able to show off their shiny new toy in Cam Newton. In that game, the Redskins happened to turn to a 30 year old journeyman who had never won an NFL start (and still hasn’t). The 23-0 sha-lacking handed to them by the Bills in Toronto showed a complete lack of effort and preparation by what is supposedly a professional sports team (they allowed John Beck to get sacked a franchise record number of times against a team that hadn’t been able to touch an opposing QB all season long until that point). The ugly 19-11 loss to San Fran at FedEx Field wasn’t even as close as the score indicated. The 49ers were superior enough to play sloppily and unevenly, and yet it still appeared that they were just toying with the Skins for most of the game. Last week’s 20-9 loss at Miami served notice that the season was, for all intents and purposes, over. The Dolphins had only gotten their 1st win of the year a week before. If Washington could find a win anywhere on their schedule for the rest of the season, certainly it would be in Miami, but afterwards it was tough to envision another winnable game for them in 2011.

Sunday’s OT loss to the Cowboys was a different animal all together. The Redskins were an almost unheard of 7.5 point home dog to a divisional opponent (and hated rival). Washington made enough bumbling plays to assure everyone that they were in fact the same old Redskins: a Fred Davis fumble, an ill-advised Rex Grossman interception, letting an All-Pro yet not exactly “fleet of foot” tight end score on like a 60 yard pass play, allowing the Cowboys to pick up a 3rd and 15 in overtime, etc. And yet at the same time they actually displayed some fight and enough play-making ability at other times that they probably should’ve won the game. A win would have done some good for this franchise. It would have ended a 5 game losing streak, avenged another last second loss to said hated divisional rival from earlier this year, and put the Skins at 4-6, which as bad as they had been for 5 weeks would have only put them at 2 games out of 1st place in the mediocre NFC East with 3 divisional games still left to play against the Eagles and Giants…still, while that would have put them mathematically still in the playoff hunt, I think only the most widely delusional Redskins fans would mistake that for an actual shot at making the postseason, but as fans all we ask for is the illusion of hope sometimes. When Graham Gano’s 52 yard overtime field goal attempt sailed just a smidge wide, and then the Cowboys kicker narrowly made his attempt only a few minutes later even that glimpse of hope was extinguished yesterday as well.

Ahhh...the illusion of hope.

What kind of drives me crazy about this season is how people have generally lost sight of the fact that this was supposed to be a rebuilding year in the 1st place…such is the curse of having a surprising 3-1 start I guess. And the Shanahan regime has been far from perfect, but I think it’s fair to say that most of this team’s problems stem from poor decisions made by previous eras of Redskins decision-makers. I guess it is less fun to talk about the sins of the last 10-15 years than to bash the current head-honchos though. For years, Washington was constantly in win-now mode as they signed every high-priced free agent they could find and gave away early round draft picks like they were free samples at the supermarket. This personnel acquiring style generally doesn’t work in any sport, but especially not in pro football. What it did was allow the Redskins to at the very least be mediocre every year, usually hovering in the 6-10, 7-9, or 8-8 record range. Every once in a while they would actually have a year where they were good enough to be 9-7 or 10-6 and make the playoffs, but this was more fool’s gold than anything else, further convincing the Redskins brass that they were only a player or 2 away from being a true Super Bowl contender, and thus continuing the personnel cycle described above.

What’s happening this year is what knowledgeable Redskins fans have feared for quite some time. Eventually, someone at Redskins Park would come to their senses and realize that the real-life fantasy football league strategy they had been employing wasn’t working, and they would finally decide to burn the whole thing down and start from scratch. The side effects of that previous strategy include a lack of young talent, a lack of depth, and an abundance of overpriced and rapidly aging players. Cleaning house is absolutely what needed to be done to fix the franchise for the long term, but having a truly ugly season or 2 is kind of the cost of doing business. Shanahan’s biggest mistake thus far was the 1st big decision he made since signing on with Washington, and looking back it might be one the franchise doesn’t recover from before Shanahan’s time in DC is up: Donovan McNabb.

I don’t think many people thought McNabb coming to DC was a bad idea at the time. Hindsight tells us differently, but even though some wondered why Philly would trade McNabb within the division I think most people thought McNabb was a good fit with the Shanahan offense, and at the very least he would be a serviceable stopgap QB for a couple seasons. I don’t remember anyone saying he would be a huge bust that wouldn’t even make it through a full season in Washington before being relegated to wearing a headset and a baseball cap. McNabb was only 1 player, but it may have set the franchise back several seasons. 1st, it meant Washington had wasted another year without finding their franchise quarterback. Outside of Sam Bradford, the crop of QB draftees was pretty weak that particular year, but perhaps Shanahan could have signed a less expensive stopgap that season (or just rolled with Rex Grossman as a stopgap a year earlier). Also, the draft picks they gave up to get McNabb (a 2nd round pick and either a 3rd or 4th round pick) could have helped further along the rebuilding process as well. 2nd round picks should be immediate contributors and NFL starters in my book. I would consider a 3rd/4th round pick as a guy that might need a little more seasoning, but who could be a starter after a year or 2 as well. That’s 2 potential starters right there. Like I said before, hindsight is always 20/20, but knowing what we know now wouldn’t you have rather suffered through Grossman as your starter last year, used that 2nd round pick on another offensive lineman, a corner, or maybe a rush-linebacker (like they got with Kerrigan this year)? Then, depending on what you got the year before you could have either used your 1st round pick this year on Kerrigan (who looks like he is a stud…so if you think I want a do-over on him, think again) and taken Andy Dalton in the 2nd round, or used your 1st rounder on someone from this year’s talented crop of rookie QBs like Blaine Gabbert or Christian Ponder. I don’t remember the exact order of the draft, but it’s not like they couldn’t have gotten 1 of them by moving up or down in the draft or something. Either way, the team would have been a season or 2 ahead of where they are now in the rebuilding process.

This guy would sure look good in burgandy and gold.

Unfortunately, Shanahan tried to kill 2 birds with 1 stone. He tried to start the rebuilding process while at the same time still trying to stay good enough to “win now” by rolling the dice with McNabb…unfortunately, sometimes the dice come up snake eyes, and you walk away with nothing. McNabb proved this year that it was more than just him and the Shanahans not seeing eye-to-eye last year, as he was every bit of a bust in Vikings purple as he was in burgundy and gold the year before. That’s little solace for fans of a team that have seen this script play out far too many times over the last 2 decades though, and it may end up serving as the legacy of the Mike Shanahan Redskins era in the end. All we (as fans) ask for is the illusion of hope at this point…something we probably won’t feel again until next year.

Hoodie Time

Christmas’ and birthdays kind of take on a new meaning the older you get. It’s cliché to say, but at a certain point the pleasure you get from giving really does outweigh that of the getting. It’s gotten to the point where I almost don’t care if I get a single present on those days…well, “almost.” I mean, what kind of sad pathetic loser would I be if I didn’t get 1 Christmas present, right? Anyway, as you get older you seem to go through different phases in terms of the gifts that you get from people. I think this is partially because as we get older we all get increasingly harder to shop for, which lumps everyone’s gift-giving ideas into 1 or 2 distinct areas. When you’re 5, you are so easy to shop for. Toys, video games, and anything with a Ninja Turtle on it are all gold, but those days can’t last forever.

Bam!

For example, there was one Christmas when I was 11 or 12 where I got like 4 duffel bags from various people. It’s a smart present for a kid who was playing on a million sports teams and needed something to haul around all his junk back and forth to different practices and games, but 4 from 1 Christmas? For the record, I think my parents forgot to coordinate on that particular gift that year (thus both getting me one), and I think I got 1 each from an aunt and I think maybe my Grandma as well. Once I hit puberty, aftershave seemed to be the gift de jour from my aunts, uncles, and more distant relatives that I only saw a couple times a year. As a 14 year old, I had enough aftershave products on top of the dresser in my room that you would have thought you just walked into a Macy’s or something.

At some point, hooded sweatshirts became the go-to gift idea for me. This was perfectly fine because I love hoodies. During high school and college, I can hardly ever remember wearing actual “jackets,” as when the weather turned cool enough I would just start whipping through my hoodie rotation. When I was working my way through college for the Rec Sports Department, I think I had a different UMBC hoodie for every day of the week. This “gift phase” started when I was about 15 or 16, and it ended…well, actually it’s still going in some ways. For example, I probably haven’t gotten a hoodie from my parents since I was a teenager, but I can think of occasions where my siblings, Krissy’s parents, and her brothers have all bought me hoodies over the last few years. (Even Krissy has bought me a few despite knowing I have a closet full of them. This is as much because she loves shopping for athletic apparel as anything else.) And why wouldn’t they? They are affordable (even the relatively expensive ones), sensible (they know I go to the gym and play sports), and it’s just about all anyone sees me where when I’m not at work.

If they're good enough for the president of the motherf****** USA, they're good enough for me.

This has become a double-edged sword…take a look at our appartment’s coat closet and it is lined wall to wall with hooded sweatshirts. Including fleeces and zipper-downs, by my count as of yesterday I owned 17 hoodie-like things. Krissy’s side of the closet has at least that many as well. The problem is that we all eventually have to become grownups, and you only get to wear a hoodie so many days of the week when that happens. It was time to do a little bit of spring cleaning on that closet…but where do you begin?

To start, I decided that it would be stupid to get rid of my favorites, which included a hand-me-down black UMBC hoodie that Pat left in his office after he stopped working there (I ended up getting his job and, consequently, the sweatshirt), a grey Nike zipper-down, and a blue Old Navy fleece. I also couldn’t bring myself to get rid of an older white Adidas hoodie that Krissy had gotten me as a gift (even though there is some kind of stain on the sleeve that no amount of bleach can get out). Similarly, I decided against things I had gotten as recent gifts, like a couple of Under Armor hoodies, a Caldwell College hoodie, a blue and red Nike zipper-down, and a black Jordan hoodie. These are the sweatshirts that I had gotten most recently, but for the most part hadn’t even gotten a chance to wear much yet…thus the reason for this hoodie purge in the 1st place. I also didn’t allow myself to get rid of an old gray Under Armor UMBC hoodie. This was partially because it is Under Armor, partially because it is about as comfortable as any article of clothing I own, and partially for sentimental value…the hoodie was a gift from my old UMBC boss, and it kind of reminds me of a simpler time when what I didn’t make in money I made up for in free clothes, shaving cream, and other swag.

There were a couple of others mixed in there as well, but that didn’t leave a lot of options for what I could get rid of. 2 were pretty easy choices: a nondescript blue fleece and an equally nondescript blue hoodie that I think I had gotten as gifts from my Grandma and Krissy’s Grandma, respectively. After that it got tougher…a gray Quiksilver sweatshirt that I wore the heck out of during high school and college, a darker gray Old Navy fleece that I also wore a ton in college (mostly because it did a good job of covering up my neck-acne…sigh), and a size XL gray Adidas UMBC hoodie that I only wore a couple times ever because it was ginormous on me (it was another work gift though and a really nice sweatshirt…if only I had been given a “shmedium”).

So, there you have it: originally 17 sweatshirts cut down to 12. That’s still a lot of hoodie and hoodie-like articles of clothing, but I reduced my sweatshirt count by about 30%, which freed up some much needed closet space. It also consequently will allow me to have less of an aneurism when I need to pick out a sweatshirt to wear since I have fewer things to choose from in the 1st place. And yet this all has the smell of futility to it…odds are that people will continue to buy my hoodies, and those unused hangers will have new sweatshirts on them in no time. I guess there are worse things to complain about though. Here’s to never growing up!

Just When You Think Things Are Going Well...

As much as I have written about sprained ankles and knees, pulled hamstrings, and things like that, I’m convinced that the worst possible sports injury on this level is any type of lower back injury. When you hurt your back, the pain and limitations are not just restricted to that area. It's just as difficult to bend over and pick something up as it is to get your legs to move where you want them to go or to reach up to grab something from a shelf. If there is any truth in back pain being hereditary, I probably have the bad back gene. I have heard all the stories of my Dad and his brothers comparing notes on their bad backs over the years, and every once in a while my brother and I have suffered back spasms as well. Of course, this might have more to do with the fact that we all have participated in athletics and some degree of manual labor of the years than genetics, but either way it is a common trait that we all share.

One of the great things about being a kid is that all kids are basically rubber band men. Your body seems fully elastic, and can contort in ways that don’t even seem humanly possible as an adult. Rolled ankles and twisted knees have no effect. You can play all day long, come back the next day without any muscle soreness or stiffness, and do it all over again. I remember suffering my 1st “back spasm” when I was 12 or 13 years old. I was on a travel basketball team, and we had a weekend tournament where games were taking place at multiple sites across a particular county. That weekend was the 1st time that I had to come to grips with the fact that I wasn’t an “invincible” kid anymore. I was in fact human. We had been scheduled to play 3 games that day: 1 in the morning, 1 around noon, and the last 1 later in the afternoon. During the 2nd game, I must have done something to tweak my lower back, but being the impervious to pain kid that I was I couldn’t pinpoint an exact instance when it happened. Nevertheless, riding in the car on the way to game 3 of the day caused my back to tighten up, and so I had suffered my 1st sports-related back injury.

The worst back injury I ever had happened during my freshman year in high school. During a basketball game against DeMatha, I stupidly stood in to take a charge in the 4th quarter when we were already down by 20 points. I got the call, but as I hit the floor I immediately felt my back tighten up. That game was only about midway through the season, but the injury lingered for another 2 months or so until the season was finished. There were many days I would miss practice to give my back an extra day of rest in order to be ready on game days, my teammates and coaches nicknamed me “Charles Barkley” (and not for the way I played), and for the rest of the year I wore 1 of those back braces/supports that you usually only see middle-aged dads and guys moving furniture for a living wear.

The uniform of the 45 year old man.

Since then, I have suffered slight back spasms every once in a while, but nothing as severe as that high school injury, but this weekend I felt a slight pull in my lower back after catching a pass near the goal line, and trying (unsuccessfully) to tight-rope walk my way into the end zone. I had some tightness in my back the rest of that day, but it didn’t prevent me from playing basketball the next morning (albeit not going full-bore). Fast forward to this morning when I felt a shooting pain in my lower back as I was sitting at my desk at work...once again, sitting seems to be the worst thing you can possible do if you are having back spasms. The pain was so sharp, that I actually started to sweat, and as I’m writing this I have to position myself in a way that looks like a Louisville slugger has been shoved up my keister. So anyway, count me out from the gym for at least a day or 2 as I hope to avoid any further setbacks. Back pain…such a pain in the ass.

Danger!

Roll Tide

I have become less and less of a college football fan over the years. Part of this is because I’m a grownup now, and I don’t really have the luxury of spending all of Saturday AND Sunday plopped on the couch from 12pm-11pm. Part of it is that I didn’t go to 1 of those big state schools with a powerhouse football program. I know a lot of people that went to schools like Florida, Ohio St., or Penn St., and the traditions of college football like homecoming weekend and tailgating are as engrained in their lives as Christmas trees or Thanksgiving turkeys. I went to a school with no football program at all, so I don’t have nor will probably ever have that kind of connection to the sport. Similarly, I grew up in Maryland, an area that was Redskins territory and Redskins territory only at the time. No college football program in the area was really big enough to compete for the population’s attention. If I had grown up or had family from an area where college football is a birthright, it may have been a different story.

Enter into the conversation my gym buddy, Scott. Scott’s family is from Alabama, where you basically have to decide whether you are an Auburn or Alabama fan by the time you get baptized. That being said, Scott would tell you that he bleeds crimson. Every once in a while, I like to rile Scott up by talking about a very sore subject for him: Boise St. Most fans of SEC teams share the same superiority complex that Scott has. They have good reason to feel superior too. While I’m too lazy to look up the actual stats now, I know for a fact that the SEC has won more national titles than any other conference since the BCS’s inception, and throughout any given year the top 10 ranked teams in the country from week to week could be littered with 4 or 5 SEC teams. SEC teams pass the eye test too, as the quality of the athletes and the speed of the games doesn’t even compare to that of other conferences as a whole.

This is where fans of SEC teams like Alabama, Florida, and LSU (and other big time non-SEC football schools for that matter too like Ohio St., Oklahoma, and Texas) get in trouble in my opinion though. No one would argue that Boise St.’s conference (the Mountain West I believe) is as good as the SEC, the Big 12, or the Big 10. No one would argue that even though Boise has had a pretty good recent string of success that their history, pedigree, and resources can’t match up with a school like Alabama. Alabama is likely to have a top 5 recruiting class every year until the end of time…the kids that Boise recruits aren’t slouches, but they are not on Alabama’s level in that way.

Because of this, even seeing a team like Boise creep up into the top 5 of the rankings is enough to cause Scott’s blood to boil. They have no business being ranked that high. They wouldn’t even go through an SEC regular season above 0.500. These are the types of things Scott will say arguing against Boise. These kinds of things aren’t even really worth arguing…heck, most of the really good SEC schools don’t even make it through their respective seasons unscathed. You can use a 1-loss Florida team and a 2-loss LSU team that each won the national championship in different seasons a few years back.

If you bring up points in favor of Boise St., Scott will shoot down all of them. If you say that they can only play who they are scheduled to play, he would say that they need to try to schedule some better teams. If you say that they have tried to and point to playing at Georgia and what basically amounted to a road game against Virginia Tech the year before, he would say that’s not enough. If you say that they won both those games (the game against SEC opponent Georgia handily), he will say both those teams didn’t happen to be “that” good anyway at the time. If you say that they try to schedule those kinds of games all the time, but don’t get any takers because most big time schools don’t want to suffer the possible embarrassment of losing to Boise St., Scott would say they need to switch to a different conference. If you bring up the fact that a school of similar stature, Utah, smacked Alabama in a bowl game a few years ago, and Boise beat another traditional football powerhouse, Oklahoma, a few years ago in a bowl game as well, these points are scoffed at and poopoo-ed as flukes.

These arguments are all just in fun, as for all I know Scott is right, and Boise St. would lose by 4 touchdowns if they played Alabama or LSU. That’s all well and good, and besides I should know by now that trying to convince a fan of a team from a power football conference that Boise St. or TCU belongs in the same conversation as them is like trying to convince a fanatical religious nut that evolution really exists. Still, what really got me riled up is when Scott tried to argue that the general public would rather see a LSU-Alabama rematch in the BCS title game this year than have to watch the winner of that game face Boise St. (hypothetically assuming that things would workout so that would be the matchup). This is the typical elitist attitude that fans of teams like Bama and LSU have…the fact is that Alabama and LSU (just to pick out 2 teams) are not as important to the rest of the sports viewing world as they are to fans and alumni of those schools. And besides that, Boise St. vs. [insert powerhouse football team] would draw in much more attention than Bama-LSU, round 2. 1st, the loser of that game won’t even make it to their conference title game, and therefore should be eliminated from contention right there. 2nd, people get tired of seeing the same thing, especially after the 2 week lead-in to the 1st game between those 2 teams, and the constant blubbering about it being jammed down our throats by ESPN and every other sports news organization. 3rd (and most importantly), Boise-Bama or Boise-LSU would essentially be the plot of every great sports movie of the last 50 years playing out in real life. I’m sorry, but “Hoosiers” wasn’t about 1 great basketball team beating another…it was the classic underdog story. Guys like Scott and I are fans of the game. We are going to watch no matter who plays...but non-football fans aren’t going to watch LSU-Alabama, the sequel. Doesn’t anyone remember the Butler-Duke NCAA title game from a couple years ago? It only got the highest TV rating of any NCAA game since 1997. The “little team that could” vs. the “unstoppable juggernaut team”…now, there’s a story. By the way, did I mention the LSU-Alabama game was a disappointing 9-6 snoozefest? I’m all for great defense, but I don’t think it exactly lived up to the hype, and I don’t think the masses will be clamoring to see it again.

The problem with the whole “Boise doesn’t belong” attitude dismisses the whole premise of sports in general. It’s about competing, and champions aren’t determined on paper or in preseason rankings. Sure, if sports was a beauty pageant, the Alabama’s, Oklahoma’s, and LSU’s of the world would win every year…but sports doesn’t work that way. It has to be proven on the field or on the court. And I concede that guys who think like Scott could be right…if Alabama and Boise played 10 times, the Tide might win 9 of those games. In sports where champions are determined by playing a series of games, that would definitely hurt Boise’s chances. But that’s the thing about this situation…they only need to win once. And that might make elitist college football fans angry, but that is in fact what sports are all about.