A Word About Professional Wrestling

There is no shortage of good programming about professional wrestling.  That seems a little ironic because the actual programming that professional wrestling puts out is not meant to be taken seriously.  Very serious things happen to professional wrestlers, but it only gets formally communicated to the audience if it serves the story....and there are many parts of that story that are not at all serious.  The line between fiction and reality is very blurred and so there are times when something goes horribly wrong that the audience thinks it's part of the show.  And there are times when you're told something horrible has happened, and you might even witness it happening, and it is all scripted.  In many ways, it served as a prototype for how politics looks today.  Kayfabe is the part of wrestling that is only supposed to be discussed backstage.  The audience isn't supposed to be in on anything that is kayfabe.  There is a lot of kayfabe in politics where you'll find that people who behave like mortal enemies on television are actually working together behind the scenes, but they have to sell their hatred of the other party to their home constituency.  I'm going to spend a few paragraphs pointing out how pro-wrestling isn't really any different than anything else that is respected in society, and try to explore the reason why it doesn't get any respect...at least not the typical kind.

Post Loss Musings From an OSU Fan On What May Actually Kill Football

I've experienced the pain of being a Buckeye fan in the 90s.  I thought we'd exorcised those demons when Jim Tressel took over and shocked the world in 2002.  Then in 2006, I invited a crew of family and friends over to attend a beer and buffalo wing soaked coronation led by our Heisman Trophy winning superstar quarterback.  That night, Urban Meyer and his Florida Gators broke my heart into 1,000 pieces.  In 2007, I was still numb from it so that loss to LSU didn't hurt so much as it just sucked.

I didn't expect to be CFP champions in 2016 due to the lack of any consistent offensive identity that season.  But I expected the game with Clemson to be close, and that we'd have a chance to pull something out like we did against The Team Up North a few weeks earlier.  It was New Year's Eve and I was at a party.  Many of the people I was surrounded by didn't care about football or OSU nearly as much as I did.  There were a few Buckeye haters there too.  Everyone was also drunk.

Sports Movies continued

Before I tackle the big kahuna of sports movies, I want to give a heartfelt shout out to Remember the Titans (2000) as my Honorable Mention.  It was really tough to leave it out.  Based on the true story of Herman Boone's uphill battle to integrate a high school football team in Virginia in 1971, the film conspicuously telegraphs that we'll be gathering round the screen for a sermon about racism.  This will either immediately turn people on, or turn them off.  There's a thing about the 'Hollywood tackles racism' thread that gives off a "this will make white people feel good about themselves while doing nothing for black people" vibe.  To do this well, you want to make sure your movie isn't this:

There's a reason that's funny.

Sports movies

The Gen X movie series kicks off with the Sports drama.  I'm going to try to stay as true as possible to pointing out what is culturally significant or important all throughout this.  As I mentioned in my introductory post, the sports drama is very hard to do in an original way.  Which brings me to the second runner up in this category.

Doing the big dance!

I remember the days well, when the Connecticut Huskies losing to Holy Cross was just another day in the basketball season.  There was no "wait 'til next year!" it just was.  In my freshman year at Hamden High School, an athlete named Scott Burrell graduated and went on to play a big part in changing that.  First he had to turn down an offer from the Seattle Mariners.  Once past that hurdle, he joined a UCONN Husky squad that included Chris Smith, Tate George and Nadav Henefeld.  They would go 31-6, collecting a Big East Conference Championship and an appearance in the Elite Eight, eventually falling to tournament runner up Duke.  That was a year where whoever went to the finals would have to face a UNLV team that was and may still be unrivaled.  But for those of us in Connecticut, this will be the crowning moment for the year that truly gave birth to Husky-mania:



To us, what would later happen in 1999, 2004, and 2011 was only a matter of time; and none of us doubted it.

Why do I hate Michigan?

My last post was a dissertation on some behavioral observations about Michigan fans on the shallow end of their fanbase gene pool.  I mentioned that someday I would describe my history as an OSU fan, and in order to do that post justice, it was necessary to do some introspection on just why TTUN is just so God awful.

Malaise and Blues

This is the first post about college football and I may be putting the cart before the horse but this topic is timely.  Some day there will be a post on my evolution as fan of Ohio State football, but this isn’t it.  Also, noting my allegiance, it may seem odd that I refer to a certain program by name here.  There are plenty of other derisive names to use when referring to that team, and I use them often; but for this post I’ll step back from all of that just to avoid turning this into some sort of rivalry shtick.  And one last thing before getting started…