Why I LOVE October

October is obviously the best month of the year and now that it's almost over (seriously, how did that happen?), I figured I'd better put together my little list of reasons why I love it before it's over...

1. Baseball postseason - NLCS, ALCS, and the World Series

2. Start of the NBA season

3. NFL season in full swing...

• 3b. Fantasy football fun!

• 3c. Sundays no longer suck!

4. College Football season!

5. Fall colors and leaves and autumn gorgeousness

6. Cool enough to be comfortable outside [without serious risk of heatstroke (even in the deep south), but not so cold you risk frostbite]

7. Tailgating!

8. Apple cider and hot chocolate with marshmallows

9. Pumpkin everything - pumpkin patches and carving, roasted pumpkin seeds, pumpkin ale, pumpkin cheesecake, pumpkin bread, pumpkin pie... yummm!

10. You get to finish it all up with Halloween - a holiday synonymous with candy, cute little kids that you only have to see before they get overly full of sugar, and dressing however the hell you want!

Nature, Nurture, & Gestalt Psych in Football

The Pouncey Twins of UF

For some reason today I was thinking about the advantages of having a sort of "sixth sense" for your teammates in football and just being aware of one another and how that can make such a huge difference - between mediocre and pretty darn good and between good and great. Then for some reason I connected this to the advantages that siblings have in tennis when they play as doubles partners. Siblings that grew up together, have known each other their entire lives, that have practiced together more than apart... they just seem to "get" each other and have a sense of chemistry that's nearly impossible to develop without the nature and nurture ties. I'm thinking of the Williams sisters and the Bryan brothers in tennis.

But then I started to think about how this might translate to football and if there were any examples in football and I thought of Pouncey twins at Florida and then the Williams brothers for the Minnesota Vikings (both defensive tackles). There aren't that many other prominent examples right now, and unfortunately, it's not that easy to narrow down searches to brothers who have played football together (at least not without letting myself spend five hours looking). It's funny how that doesn't seem to be something anyone's really considered, yet so many broadcasters talk about guys who have a sixth sense for teammates and the position of the ball and yet we've ignored the obvious advantage of these blood connections and how valuable they can... and perhaps more importantly (or at least fascinatingly), what happens if we split these pairings? I think you'd lose a tremendous amount... at least for the brothers in football. You'd lose the symbiotic relationship, the whole as more than the sum of its parts-phenomena. Not that the Pouncey twins or the Williams brothers wouldn't be good without each other, but I don't think they'd come up with some of the plays they do without the other one. Just look at the Horton brothers at USC (Southern Cal, the other USC) - one switched positions AND transferred to play with the other!

It's interesting to think about what will happen with the Pouncey twins, as it's difficult to imagine that they could be drafted together, that one would last an entire round and you would have to make a trade pretty early to get two picks together to get them (otherwise you'd have one twin and everyone else would know you have the other and be able to squeeze you for a lot to get the other one... well, "a lot" being relative to what draft round the twins go in).

Just something interesting to think about, a new thought on nature and nurture combined with some Gestalt psychology for this autumn Saturday full of college football!