Screw Northwestern sports, man, the World Cup is on! (And no Northwestern athletes are involved, oddly enough.)
- Over the weekend, 2,000 of my schoolmates, a few of my friends, and about 100 varsity athletes graduated from Northwestern University. These punks had the luck to have Michael Wilbon, who, quite frankly, probably has more to do with the fact that I attend Northwestern University than anybody else on the planet, address them (audio is in this link). I'm not one to listen to other classes commencement speeches - in fact, I barely plan on listening to my own a couple years from now - but, sweet Jesus, I'm so jealous. I highly advise you click and listen to that speech. If my commencement speech is in large part about game 7 of the NBA Finals and features a Mike Tyson quote and is about how the speaker found his passion through pressing himself to be uncomfortable in his chosen field of writing about sports, I'll deal with it, but for now, I'm going to put that speech on hold and listen to it again in two years and pretend it's mine.
- Big news, in my opinion: new uniform news for the past five years or so has come in two ways: teams unveiling their jerseys in elaborate pressers/fashion shows, and video game leaks. NU had one of the two this past week, as NCAA Football 11 shows this screenshot:
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- Not much not to like about that. I really hope that's actually what we're dealing with. The reintroduction of black and Northwestern stripes and removal of the USC-style shoulder straps our current jerseys feature is really all I could ask for in a jersey: it's distinctive and looks classic. Hope to hear something official from the athletic department soon, big ups to Spread Far the Fame for breaking this a while ago, looks like they were on the money.
- Similarly, big ups to Mike Kafka, who got signed last week by the Eagles. His ups are less big though, because SFTF probably won't get 2.5 million dollars for the thing I was congratulating them for, so they need the positive reinforcement more, while Kafka has enough going right for him without the bigness of my ups.
- After the Outback Bowl, I forgot to update the Fitz Intense-o-meter, leaving it at 9.4 for a few months. Well, that's my fault, but I've now changed it to his new offseason intensity level, of a 3.8, of which symptoms include the ability to cause ants to catch on fire as if they were under a microscope in the sun merely by thinking about them. You're probably like, "3.8? That sounds reasonably high!" Well, according to my stats people, Fitz has never been recorded at an intensity level lower than a 2.6. He was 11, he had a half day at school, and he spent the rest of the afternoon riding a swingset when his mom bought him an ice cream bar from a Mister Softee truck. A young Fitzgerald responded by doing 150 pushups and yelling "GET SOME" loudly enough to deafen a nearby housecat. In the offseason, he allows himself to lower his intensity to a mid-3 level, approaching the 3 barrier in his sleep, but it should be noted that a 3 on the Fitz intense-o-meter translates to a 8.7 on the average person's intense-o-meter, or 9.1 metric intensity units. This is how mad you get when your face starts turning red and your forehead veins start becoming visible. This all to explain why even, in the least important time for football of the year, when even recruiting is sort of taking a backseat, Fitz is still registering nearly a 4 on the intense-o-meter.
- Vote in the poll I have below. I always get self-conscious about poll votes, and really want to know whether or not you guys think I can beat Tyrell Sutton in Scrabble. It's important. (for the record, T-Y-R-E-L-L is worth more points than R-O-D-G-E-R, so he's got me on that front.)
I'm bored. Can somebody join the conference again?