Memory Trigger

I can remember when I was little and my parents huddled our family around the television and we watched the U.S. womens national soccer team win the world cup against China on penalty kicks. Watching the national anthem play before the game and how the camera panned over the whole team as they stood their trying to control their emotions. After that I signed up for soccer the next fall and what first exposed me to the sport. I now have another memory and feeling that comes with hearing the national anthem play. This last spring during the state semi-final and subsequent final they played the national anthem and I felt like I imagined the U.S. womens national team felt. Having worked so hard for so long and to have all the at stake for one final game the pressure was intense. I will never forget trying to casually sing along with the anthem in an attempt to calm my nerves as an influx of adrenaline coursed through my entire body. Now whenever I hear the national anthem play before any soccer game and the camera pan across the teams my memory triggers that same feeling of adrenaline and I can hear my captain and best friend's pregame speech getting us fired up for the game.

I am curious how the other team who we played feels when the hear the national anthem. Having been the obvious favorite in the final and having lost for the first time all season I wonder if the national anthem now brings on a negative trigger for them. I have looked and thought about that game countless times and almost everything I can think of it is positive, it would be interesting to compare with a player from the losing team how they remember it and if they have equal amounts of negative feelings toward it. It was later reported by one of their players that they overlooked my team and thought they had won state by beating one of the other favored teams in the semi. My teams mentality was that we had nothing to lose and everything to gain, their mentality must have been the opposite. With being such a heavy favorite and an undefeated record they must have come in with a completely different mindset then that of my team. I hope that I get a chance to meet one of the other players again and pick their brain on the subject, although they might not be as happy to remember that game as I will.

Rodney Jones and Klosterman Post

The Klosterman essay "33" looks at the deeper meaning of the rivalry of the Celtics and Lakers during the 1980s. It looks at the racial ties, the political ties, and the cultural patterns that the rivalry exhibits. It wasn't just because the celtics started 3 prominent white players but there was a deeper meaning behind the stereotypical rooting of white fans for the celtics and that of black fans rooting for the lakers. His essay really gets at the root of the way the culture of the U.S. during this time was set up perfectly for this rivalry to exist.
"The End of Practice" by Rodney Jones is a very moving poem which brings back many memories of myself being a former player. It is at its core a description of the events following a football practice but it tells the truth behind those actions. How youth sports are an assembly line which takes young boys and changes them through structure into men, and when this process is done those men move aside for the next generation of young boys to go through the transformation.
Klosterman appears to believe that we are all inherently racist whether we wish to admit it or not. I would have to agree with this assumption because as human beings it is in our nature to make decisions and judgments about everything. That is just the way our brains work and that is just natural. The conscious effort to fight this judgement is what makes us who we are. I relate this to the poem because the players in the poem are almost unconsciously going through the practice. "Fat boys like buffalo, lurching blindly." This line clearly shows how the kids going through the practice are being herded like buffalo to do the bidding of the coaches and the circle of life as they will eventually be the coaches or herders.

Dear Every ESPN Employee

Just stop. Never in the history of the world has there been this much annoying pointless banter about a backup quarterback who was statistically the worst quarterback in the league last year. Enough. If I have to see Trent Dilfer (The worst quarterback to ever win a super bowl) talk about how Tim Tebow's intangibles are what the league is missing one more time I am going to destroy my television. Just show me the top ten plays and talk about starters and teams that aren't irrelevant and then maybe, just maybe I will start to watch again. "Its Tim Tebows birthday" No, your right sportscenter that should be the lead story of the day. Even god is sitting on a cloud watching sportscenter saying to himself "god who the hell cares." Your coverage of the Jets this offseason has made it actually painful to try to watch any of your programming, the Jets are not going to win the superbowl so can we please have a discussion about the possible teams that do have a shot (Seahawks). There may be some of you that also dislike all the Tebow Time, but Skip Bayless is one of the primary culprits. In closing only show Herme Edwards inspiring speechs instead of Skip Bayless and Trent Dilfer, they make me sad.

Participants versus Spectators

For as long as there has been sport there have been both participants and spectators. Something I find fascinating is the type of kinship that fans or spectators feel with the team they support. With the use of the word "we" they are saying that they are part of the team when they may have never stepped on the field. With this curious connection spectators are able to form a bond with the participants and the participants are able to feel that sense of support while they are participating.
 Something else that I found interesting about this section of the reading was the description of how different levels of participation are divided. When you are a young kid the sense of community and fun is all that mattes in sport and then as time goes on you find that you must become must more committed and in many cases specialized to be able to compete. There is also a sense of a circle of life in sports when it comes to senior intramurals and how when you retire it is very common to play sports but much like you were a child simply for the enjoyment of the game and not for a scholarship or any other monetary reason.

Blog Entry #2

The Greatest Game I Ever Saw (Klosterman) is as true an underdog story as I have ever heard. With the "Iron Five" being chopped down to three with 106 seconds left on the clock and finding a way to come out with a victory was amazing. The most interesting thing about this story however is the striking lack of media coverage it received. The events of that game should have been spread throughout the nation however, no reporters came knocking until over two decades later. The popularity and effect on the community of junior college basketball in North Dakota was marginal compared to high school football as described in Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio (Wright). Every autumn Friday the town of Martins Ferry was able to escape from their real lives filled with heartache, depression, sadness, and even if just for a few hours be proud of their towns team.
The stark contrast between these two stories is more an issue of the cultural of sports in the local communities then it is of the games themselves. In North Dakota junior college basketball is not an escape from reality the author simply described it as a way to pass the time on a boring Sunday night. If a high school football team won a game with only 11 players or less that would be a huge story in the town, state, and possibly even the nation, that just illustrates the difference in popularity and importance of the two sports in the american culture.
Memory is very important in both the poem and the story. In the poem the people of the town are selectively forgetting all their problems during Fridays in autumn. In this brief window they choose to only think about the game and the pride in their town and forget about all the racial tension, domestic disputes, and work hardships they have to face on a daily basis. The basketball game is completely different with the memory of the amazing game on available to the few who actually attended the game because of the lack of television, radio, and newspaper coverage. The attendees of the basketball game try to hold onto the memory of that historic day while the attendees of the high school football game experience temporary amnesia from their lives. I can use aspects from both of these stories in my essay. The descriptive story telling of Klosterman and also the deep multidimensional metaphors of Wright.