The good news, none of you tried to kill me in the last seven days, I think. The bad news, I did get hit by a car while riding my bike –– coincidence? I think so. I don’t think any true tennis elitist would be driving a gold, American branded sedan. Tacky at best. A true tennis fan would either drive a Lexus if they were from California, or a couple thousand pounds of German muscle if they were from anywhere else. Regardless, I’m alive and couch-bound. So what have I been doing with all my spare time? Watching sports, obviously –– can you believe they pay me to do this?

This past Saturday evening I was on my way back home from Collegetown when I decided that I should stop at Insomnia Cookies to see if I could win myself a free cookie. A few minutes later, I left with my free cookie, moving to 3-for-3 on Saturdays this semester. I also left knowing this – when one small Japanese man injured his jaw in 2007, an American hero was born. 

For those unfamiliar with Insomnia Cookies’ Trivia Challenge, I ask: what’s wrong with you? They have a new trivia question each day, and if you get it right, you can get a free cookie – as long as you purchase something else. I recommend buying a milk to go with a free peanut butter cookie.  

Clarification Appended

Sure, I wasn’t alive when the Honorable Ken Dryden ’70, one of the most decorated goaltenders in NHL history, led Cornell to the 1967 NCAA Frozen Four championship nor was I there to witness former New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley will his Princeton Tigers to a Final Four berth in the 1965 NCAA Tournament. However, I was in the audience last night at Bailey Hall as both Ivy immortals reminisced about their respective athletic and political careers.

Staying together for the kids? How about keeping the kids together for the grown-ups.

Baseball has been doing it since Branch Rickey orchestrated the purchase of minor-league teams in 1920s St. Louis. In the modern game, with revenues skyrocketing, new attendance records every season and profits as high as ever, young talent in the MLB is often as prized as a dominant starter or established power hitter.

In today’s game, a young right-hander in the Bronx can have his own t-shirt and catchphrase, and a third baseman with an all-American smile has made the sports world believe that the bastard child of the AL East can compete with the big boys.

So sure, Joba Rules, and Evan Longoria helped bring a pennant to (smirk) Tampa Bay.

Ah, September. Sports fans fully comprehend how dreadfully dead the months of July and August can be. Between the NBA playoffs and the start of the NFL season, therein lie the middle months of baseball, a sport that clings to life with few headlining series after an exciting beginning of the season where teams typically etch their names into their division banners early on. But I guess that when the voices of Buck, Costas or beloved Berman begin to fall hard on your ears, you can always flip channels to soccer or more likely, the World Series of Poker.

For the past two weeks, the pages of the Cornell Daily Sun have been saturated with columnists eagerly offering unsolicited advice to bright-eyed, bushy-tailed freshmen: Explore Ithaca. Don't stress. Don't drink. Don't think about the future. Think about the future. Smile more. Succeed at sex without really trying.

It's all fascinating advice, and it's all based on the absurd notion that the smiling mug shots in this publication know better than you, the reader, how to live your life.

So I'm going to add one more nugget of unqualified advice to the clamor:

Go to a Cornell sporting event and cheer on your team.

Over the course of the past 10 months, I have come to understand what countless others before me have undoubtedly realized: Cornell is hard. Keri Hilson tells us that sometimes love “knocks you down.” Well, the same can easily be said of academia and college life in general. I can’t begin to count the number of times I’ve wondered whether I belong at this institution of apparent super geniuses and overly-ambitious types whose desperation to get ahead would put most politicians to shame. The follow-up question has always been, do I actually stand a chance of matching up to such natural ability and/or motivation? Or am I merely incurring a quarter-million dollar debt for my parents –– in doing so quelling all their hopes of a peaceful (early) retirement in Bermuda?

First off, hello there, my name is Rahul Kishore, and you’ve probably never heard of me before. They even give you a mugshot of me so you can find me on your daily walk through campus and either give me a high five or wring my neck. Talk about accountability. 

For the large majority of you, you’ve never met me and you probably never will. I’m a lowly sophomore in “the College” and generally I’ve become a slave of this paper and other student organizations. But for the few moments of the day I’m not being proverbially “pwned” by Cornell, I get around to watching, but rarely playing, sports. 

Anyone who picked up the Daily Sun yesterday would have had a tough time missing the quartet of headlines on the front page warning of the impending doom facing Cornell as a result of the nation’s recent economic downturn. Inexplicably missing from yesterday’s outcry — the cancellation of intramural ice hockey.

It is undeniable that the latest casualty to campus-wide budget cuts — intramural ice hockey — is the headliner of a long list of “things-administrators-have-decided-are-less-important-than-other-things-and-will-no-longer-be-funded.” And yet, I only found out about this a couple of days ago.

From Greek mythology’s heroic Herakles (the original World’s Strongest Man, a god among men) to Bill Clinton (who won a Rhodes Scholarship … though the former president’s greatest athletic achievement was probably a nice round of golf), history is full of “professional” athletes who became leaders of men in the arenas of both politics and sports.

Next Thursday, Cornell gets to play host to two of these characters.