Thanks to Every Day Should Be Saturday for this hilariously scathing takedown of some football-oriented country crap rock from Kenny Chesney.
A sample paragraph:
He sucks, and most things do, but when he dips his toes across into the realm of football they deserve to be chainsawed off at the nearest convenience. The entire song is supposedly about football, but it’s really about how Kenny Chesney should be bound and gagged, bundled into an uninsulated rocket filled with honey badgers, and shot into the sun. Oddly enough, this is what we think every Kenny Chesney song is about. Hm.
[Whoops, I've had this post sitting in my draft folder since October 2009. Might as well post it now...]
Why? Because the US tied Costa Rica today in the last minute of their final World Cup qualifier in the North and Central America (CONCACAF) group, which, when combined with Honduras’ victory in their own qualifying match today, means that Honduras has qualified for the World Cup. Big news in a small, soccer-mad country, dealing with the aftermath of a military coup earlier this year. The video below is pretty great; check out the “USA! USA” chants at the end (and a guy in a devil mask wearing a US flag as a cape, on a scooter). HT to Grant Wahl (SI soccer writer) via his Twitter feed.
Hilarious music video. I guess crappy pop music transcends language barriers. If you’re wondering how I stumbled upon this, I provide thanks to Every Day Should Be Saturday.
For the first time since graduation in 2000, I caught Big Game in person this year. Jim Harbaugh has turned around the Stanford program in a big way after a 1-11 season in 2006, the last year under Walt Harris. Coming in to this year’s game, most Cardinal fans were very optimistic: Stanford had just beaten Oregon and USC in consecutive games, exerting their will on the opposing defenses, and Cal would be without Jahvid Best, their best player. Unfortunately, things did not work out as we had hoped, but I had a good time nonetheless with my friends Siedel and Cynthia.
Some photos from the day (click for larger versions):
Siedel and I with our styling fraternity Big Game shirts from 1996 and 1998, respectively. We sold these as fundraisers.
We met up with some old friends, who were also former players, at a tailgate next to the stadium.
Cynthia poses with a Weenie.
I was able to get some good shots of the game action with my telephoto lens.
[Note that this post continues after the jump. You have to click on Continue Reading on the bottom right at the end of the post.]
Recently, some disparate events have come together to make me increasingly uncomfortable with the impact on the brain from extended football playing. Given my position in life, with no role in the NFL or public health decision making processes, this manifests itself in reduced enjoyment when I’m watching football. I have a low-level thought in the background, when I’m not focused on this exciting play or that terrible call, that these players are beating up their own brains with every play and every impact. Each time a pulling tackle slams into a defensive end, the OT’s helmet is protecting his skull, but his brain is hitting the inside of his skull and causing some level of damage.
For some time, I have had similar feelings about the impact of football, but especially extended time in the NFL, on players’ joints and their bodies as a whole. Sports Illustrated has run several commendable articles over the years, profiling retired players who, at 45 or 50, have the bodies of a 65 year-old. That problem is only going to grow worse, despite advances in health care and increased retirement health care and pensions for NFL retirees, because average player weight at nearly all positions has increased dramatically over the decades–every collision is that much more violent. Force = mass x acceleration, after all.
