Thoughts on Some Damn Good Football

So I frequently have long dialogues about/while watching football... sadly these are all with Bella or just yelled out loud, but I figured I should share them. So, thoughts on the early game -

• Cincy @ Pitt was an incredible INCREDIBLE game! Kind of makes up for the fact that I really don't feel like I've seen many good, memorable college football games this season.
• It's a bad sign when the most memorable college football games have been blown calls by SEC officials... and that's pretty much definitely what I'll be remembering in future years and I've watched an enormous amount of football.
• ESPN did a good job choosing to put Cincy on Thursday and Friday nights rather frequently. I don't think I would have been a fan of theirs or been excited to see how much they can do without those game times.
• ESPN (and ESPN on ABC) did a remarkably good job with human interest stories related to Cincy (throughout the season and today) and Pitt (I can only say today's was pretty good). I really began to like Cincy when they profiled Kelly and talked about what he was fighting for with contract negotiations - it's a ton of stuff for his coaches and his team. Cincy is one of two Division I schools that basically only practices outside on the main field and has no other alternative (no practice fields, and whatever inside facilities they need don't exist).
• They maybe went a bit far with some of the human interest stuff - talking about a player's mom who is recovering from drug addiction... it helped to explain why a certain player is a great story and why he was raised by his grandfather and why it's so sweet and incredible that he desperately wants to go to the NFL to buy things and improve his grandfather's quality of life.
• But they've gone a lot farther and with much less class, so at least they're improving (think Terry Bradshaw and the Sugar Bowl a few years ago when even his co-anchors/broadcasters were embarrassed).
• In the NFL, when it's really cold (or just a little cold and some overpaid whiners want a blankie), there are giant warm coats, little heaters, and people holding up shields from the wind... why couldn't they come up with coats for the Big East players? (Marcus Gilyard was shaking and teeth chattering and holding himself and jumping around trying to stay/keep warm.)
• Not okay to follow players into the tunnel in defeat... after they've lost and if they manage to get to the tunnel to show their emotions, leave them alone. Maybe it's different in the NFL when they're adults and being paid to play. But some of these guys are 18 years old and if they've done the right thing by going to a private area, you should not follow and broadcast it. Showing the coach - fine, he's a grown up and this is his job. But it's kind of like animals in a zoo that can go to a little area when they don't want to be looked at or have kids tapping glass or whatever. You don't then follow then into their little private areas and expect them to let you pet them and everything to be fine. You just don't...

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!

Two Notes

Two notes and thoughts from tonight -

Even though Clemson lost by 3 points tonight, the rush of that comeback reminded me why I love football and why I spend months pining away for it to begin again. The incredible high of watching one of your guy come down with the ball when height, weight, and physics say he'll be overmatched, the thrill of an inconceivable comeback. Even in defeat, the highs were pretty darn high. And I didn't even have to get off the couch (well, technically I did go over and watch with a bunch of friends, but I didn't personally have to face multiple 300+ pound linebackers trying to crush me for more than 3 hours).

I keep reading random stuff about sleep patterns, night owls and early birds, etc. because I seem to have the weirdest sleep schedule ever. I used to be able to nap and be a normal person and now I end up with weird insomnia at times and then occasionally survive quite happily for 2 weeks with an average of 3 hours a night. So, anyways, I saw this Scientific American article that claims that night owls actually get a nice performance/alertness boost 10ish hours after waking up, while early birds do NOT get a boost! Ha! Awesomeness. Obviously this doesn't explain my sleep patterns and who knows how much to trust it, but it's exciting, if only for the placebo effect it provides.