ATL: The Capital of College Football

December 7, 2012 //
0
Atlanta is far more than just the capital of Georgia

Atlanta is far more than just the capital of Georgia

By David Hauser

The 2012 SEC Championship should go down as one of the greatest college football games ever.  On College Football’s Conference Championship Weekend, for yet another year, it was the only championship game that mattered.  The SEC reigns supreme for another season and Southerners could not be more proud to let the rest of the country know it.

You see, I am a temporary resident of Atlanta for the year, so I’ve gotten just a sip of the flavor and a whiff of the aroma of the college football culture down here.  And I’ve quickly come to learn that Atlanta is the Capital City of College Football in this country.  While the entire state of Ohio may gasp in horror at this statement and Austin, Texas and Eugene, Oregon may insist otherwise (as some of Nate Silver’s numbers might suggest), there is simply no other city where college football means more and where the population is more overrun with zealotry and pride than Atlanta on autumn Saturdays.

Atlanta is the melting pot of the SEC: an amalgamation of Crimson Tide intensity, Gator devotion, and Gamecock pride, reaching across ethnic and social status divisions as one region passionately engaged and tuned in on fall Saturdays.  I’ve joked with my new co-workers here that it seems like it would be a sin to host a wedding on a Saturday during football season in the South and they responded with a straight-faced nod and a “yeah, sounds about right” (one colleague intentionally planned her wedding on a bye week of fiancé’s adopted team).

The people of the metropolitan area of Atlanta further revealed their passions for college football this year when it was announced that taxpayers would pony up $300 million in tax revenues to contribute to the construction of an entirely new retractable roofed Georgia Dome in order to continue to have a state of the art facility to host the SEC Championship (among other events), despite the fact that the current Georgia Dome is only 20 years old and received another $300 million of renovations just 5 years ago.

SEC fans flock to the Georgia Dome like the Salmon of Capistrano (or a lot of them just live here)

SEC fans flock to the Georgia Dome like the Salmon of Capistrano (or a lot of them just live here)

Adding to this town’s football enthusiasm, is the fact that taxpayers are willing to foot the bill for the construction and improvement of this celestial football monument while in the same year rejecting a one-cent sales tax to drastically improve the transportation grid in one of, if not the worst, trafficked and gridlocked cities in America.  So if you are scoring at home, Atlantians (or ATLiens if you prefer the homegrown Outkast label) are willing to spend 90 to 180 minutes of every single working day sitting in traffic if it means they can remain America’s Capital of College Football.  The ball is in your court Columbus, Ohio and Eugene, Oregon…but I don’t see you making this level of commitment to the cause. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories College, Sports

Jay Cutler: Teenage Mutant Ninja Quarterback

October 3, 2012 //
0

By David Hauser

First off, let the record state how difficult it is, in this the year of 2012, to find an actual hardbound (not even leather-bound nor smelling of rich mahogany) copy of the English dictionary.  But one university research library and two reference section workers with Masters in Library Sciences degrees later, just as I suspected, Jay Cutler’s picture is indeed printed right alongside the definition of “petulant” in the English dictionary.

Capricious? Check.  Insolent and rude? Check.  Fussy disposition? Emphatic check.

Ever since the mysterious self benching in the 2010 NFC Championship against his Bears’ ancient rival Packers, which resulted in Caleb Hanie’s 15 minutes of sports almost fame, the sports world has been scrambling to label and understand the moody man from Santa Claus, Indiana. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories NFL, Sports

Thur$day Night Football

September 14, 2012 //
0

In Roger Goodell’s tireless quest to further monetize the NFL (because you know these owners are broke and whatnot), the Thursday night on-field product suffers and injury risks rises

By David Hauser

Roger Goodell, the self appointed crusader and czar of NFL player health, found it within his complex web of cognitive dissonance to courageously demand teams play on 3 days rest, so the world can get yet one more night of football…and perhaps, oh I don’t know, his owners can make a few more greenbacks.

In yet another bout of wild hypocrisy (to go along with “Bountygate”), for the first time ever the NFL has scheduled weekly Thursday night games in order to commandeer one more night of voluptuous and bountiful TV ratings.  Better yet, with the Thursday night monopoly on professional football his The NFL Network can gain further leverage with Time Warner Cable in their endless bickering to add the 24-hour football network to more households (at a hefty price of course) and big markets.

What is lost in all of this is the fact that the product looks terrible on Thursdays.  The complex uptempo offenses, amazing quarterback play, and gifted skill players fans have fallen in love with in the last 2-3 seasons all require time to master execution and rest up from the prior week’s bloodbath.  But Goodell won’t have it, not when there is more $$$ on the table.  Goodell shrewdly selected a Bears v. Packers matchup, that had all the makings to be one of the best games of the year.  But due to his greed and insistence on placing this game on a Thursday night to spotlight his network (making it ever the more noticeable to cable viewers who do not receive the NFL Network), what could have been one of the marquee games of 2012 turned into an unwatchable slopfest.

Yes, Clay Matthews racked up 3 sacks and both defenses were conceivably more active, but anyone who watched the game knows that this was more of a product of offenses depleted of healthy skill players, lacking practice, and unable to execute.  Mark me down as one voice willing to forego an extra night of football to enhance the quality and health of the game.  And Roger, your big crafty master plan to convince me to call up my cable company on YOUR behalf to beg them to pay your ransom for your precious product…yeah…that’s not happening either.

Tags , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories NFL, Sports

#Livestrong Dateyoung

August 24, 2012 //
0

By David Hauser

There’s no shaking the Full House effect.  Bob Saget can go around for another 15 years as the most gutter mouthed, culturally insensitive comic on the comedy club circuit and we’ll all still remember at least part of him as Danny Tanner.  Same goes for the Olsens, if not even more so, as they rammed 892 straight-to-VHS unintelligible sing-a-long videos into our collective consciousness over a four year period (that without fail were always on in the backgrounds of extended family gatherings to keep the younger cousins quiet, while the older people could get drunk).  So yeah, when I heard that Lance Armstrong dropped other more age appropriate (and quite fetching) gals like Sheryl Crow and Tory Burch for the likes of an Olsen twin, I may have been quick to pass judgement and raise an eyebrow or two.  Maybe it’s ‘only 15 years’ of age difference, but he’s got to know he can’t date an Olsen twin, it’s just creepy.  Prove to me that Mr. Livestrong, as an awkward 17-year-old cranking out RPMs on his stationary bike in his parent’s basement, never once viewed a re-run of Full House and then maybe we can re-visit this conversation.

With that, it’s Friday, and I’m off to go listen to some of the early Jesse & the Rockers LPs.

Tags , , , , , ,
Categories Pop Culture, Relationships, Sports

Photo Essay: Philly Teenage 90s Bedroom

August 10, 2012 //
1

By David Berlin

After graduating law school and taking the bar exam this summer, I recently came home to live with my parents in suburban Philadelphia. Being temporarily domiciled in my childhood bedroom might not be optimal for getting the ladies, but at least I finally have time to document my collection of early to mid-‘90s sports memorabilia. My “No Fear” t-shirts, Starter winter jackets, and L.A. Gear light up shoes are all long gone, but a few priceless artifacts still remain.

First up – this vintage poster from 1997, celebrating the inaugural interleague baseball season.

The only surviving evidence that Travis Fryman ever existed.

Even though all six of these guys are still alive, doesn’t it kind of feel like you’re looking at a cave painting of ancient Egyptian pharaohs? Read the rest of this entry »

Tags , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories MLB, NBA, NFL, Pop Culture, Sports

Video Killed the Baseball Star?

August 1, 2012 //
1

Mike Trout: Major League Baseball and the Infinite Starless

By David Hauser

Who is baseball’s biggest star (or even biggest stars)?  This would be a silly question to ask in basketball and football.  To an enthusiastic baseball fan though this probably sounds like a simple question: the names Kemp, Verlander, Pujols, Jeter, Votto, Hamilton, Fielder, Trout roll off the tongue with the ease and efficiency of an effortless Joe Mauer crack of the bat.  But I offer this follow up question, would your mom or your girlfriend or wife be able to pick even one of these guys out of a visual lineup upon hearing these names?

Consider it the “metric of mom,” an advanced scientific measure developed by an overtime working, coffee induced, crack team at Cal Tech…or maybe not very empirical at all.  Science notwithstanding, it is an excellent place to start when talking about transcendent figures in culture.  Is someone so big that they defy age and gender in their gravitas?[1]

Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, and Eli Manning: I think it is fair to say they are known by grandmothers, much less mothers.  LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Dwight Howard: yes, yes, and yes in passing the mom metric.  We could probably even safely toss Kevin Durant, Blake Griffin, Drew Brees, and maybe even Aaron Rodgers into this category after their triumphant past few years.  However, I cannot come up with a single baseball player that I could say with 100% confidence that my mom would be able to identify by name or face (the closest I can surmise would be Evan Longoria, but only because he was cruel to Bree about her new husband and his practicing of cutting edge new exercise methods such as pole dancing).

Here is a simple truth: Kris Humphries has better name recognition than Albert Pujols by moms and wives/girlfriends.  Maybe this is not even particularly surprising considering Humphries is more well-known for his 72-day stint as reality-TV husband of Kim Kardashian, than for his impressive efficiency for collecting rebounds on the hardwood.  However I would go one step further and say that Humphries is an overall larger superstar amongst all ages and across both genders than Albert Pujols (the most productive power hitter in Major League Baseball over the last decade, a man who is fair to mention in the same breath as Ruth, Aaron, and Mays as one of the greatest ever to play the game).  And I have proof. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories MLB, Sports

Late July. NFL Training Camp Hype. Ryan Kalil.

July 25, 2012 //
3

July 25, 2012 Charlotte Observer, Ryan Kalil Issues his guarantee for a Panthers Super Bowl this year

By David Hauser

Heck, I’m not even laughing, I’m just impressed.

Impressed first, that a young guy is so well versed in his franchise’s roots, especially considering that Kalil is a Cali kid with no ties whatsoever to the greater Smoky Mountain region.  How does he know so much about such a young and mostly anonymous NFL franchise, a team that he grew up literally 5,000 miles away from?  A lot of professional athletes get tagged with the mercenary label: there to get a pay check, fame, and a bunch of twitter followers…and barely know what city they are playing for.  Not Kalil, you can almost feel the retro-active pain he feels for his club’s “Dom Caper Years,” when all that Panther Nation[1] had to root for was possessing the league’s most unheralded fantasy QB in Steve Beuerlein[2] and rooting for one of the greatest names to ever bless the field of sport in tailback Tshimanga (pronounced Tim-monga) Biakabutuka. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags , , , , , , ,
Categories NFL

Newsroom Poised to Anchor HBO 2.0 with Unabashed Enthusiasm

June 27, 2012 //
0

By David Hauser

Once upon a time, HBO aired The Sopranos, The Wire, Six Feet Under, Deadwood, and critically acclaimed but short-lived (and too expensive) Carnivale.  This would be an incredible decade for any network, but almost forgotten 10 years past, this programming was all aired in the same run (2001-2007). HBO was the catalyst for the golden age of television we currently live in with this string of plot laden and character thick hits.  But then HBO lost its way.  And the competition caught up.

In the summer of 2005, Six Feet Under came to a close and over the next two years each of these HBO created mega hits all expired as well.  Viewers primed to expect nothing but excellence from the premium cable content provider saddled up to their new feigned HD screens as HBO re-loaded for it’s next big run.  Instead HBO served up Hung, How to Make It in America, Treme, and the list of duds rolled on.  This while other networks like AMC, Showtime, and Fx jumped into the “thinking TV game” with the likes of Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, Dexter, and Louie.  HBO even got beat at its own game by an arcane, clunky, good ole’ fashioned broadcast network when ABC struck gold with Lost. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Pop Culture

Mad Men: Season 5 Comes to a Close

June 11, 2012 //
0

By Adam Gavin

In arguably the best season in the show’s six year run, Mad Men Season 5 came to a close last night.  The finale felt like it feel a bit flat, almost digging for a cheap cliffhanger when it needn’t to.  However, with no major story lines left agape it feels like Matthew Weiner & Co. have the freedom to take the show in unexpected and fascinating new directions once again starting next season.  Here’s a meme paying homage to Roger Sterling in all of his Season 6 glory.

Tags , ,
Categories Sports

$2 Billion Ballpark Hot Dog

March 29, 2012 //
0

By David Hauser

Economists question the wisdom of paying $2 Billions for the L.A. Dodgers

Is there something in the Dodger Dogs we do not know about….perhaps uncut diamonds?

It would only be appropriate of Frank McCourt to bring Stan Kasten and Magic Johnson’s ownership group to the Dodgers’ team store after they’re done at the concessions and comp them all a a few Dodger jackets….preferably the one’s made of fleece.

Tags , , , , , ,
Categories MLB
« Older Entries
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.