The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/tag/sports_column/page/2/)
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.
Unless you are a Vikings fan or Brett Favre’s wife, who cares that Favre signed with Minnesota?
It’s been over a decade since we have seen the younger, more agile Favre lifting the Lombardi Trophy above his head.
I get it. The man has grit. He has charisma. Guess what? He also has gray hair, a beat-up arm and pretty soon, an AARP card.
I understand he won three Most Valuable Player awards and holds numerous records, including the most consecutive starts by a quarterback in the NFL, but he was not even the greatest quarterback of his generation. Favre’s best years were during the previous Democratic administration, and that was 12 years ago.
The guy that hauls up a 3 with .4 seconds on the clock. The guy that smashes his opponent into the glass to preserve the 1-1 tie in overtime. The girl that makes a diving catch in left field with the bases loaded in a one-run game.
You are probably not that person.
You are where you dreamed you’d never be. Sitting next to a few other guys, maybe even wearing the number of someone who actually plays because jerseys only run up to 99 and your team has over 100 players. When people ask you why they’ve never seen you on the field or the court, you reply that you are on the bench. They smile at you and nod, although you can feel a slight change in how they regard you from when you had told them you were on the team.
A noun, the simplest form of grammatical constructions, is constantly reminded of how replaceable it is with pro-nouns. But having fallen in love with so many pros myself — i.e. Jose Lima, a model of professionalism — I ask why pronouns are so elevated above those they antecede? I’ve yet to find a “you” or “him” paid for his services, and certainly not “I.” What makes pronouns pro, like the pros we call heroes in the world of sports?
The pronoun that has caught my attention lately is “we,” and we the people of the sporting world deserve an explanation as to the true meaning behind this two-letter word. It is so beautifully simple, yet has so many levels of meaning.
I have heard, on occasion, that I can sometimes be, well, a few ticks to the left of acquiescent. I admit, I can be rather insistent during debates — always friendly discussions, of course — and I should say that my sophomore year I was given the distinctly dubious title of Queen Bellige (as in belligerent). I prefer, however, to think of myself as passionate, rather than hotheaded and tenacious, instead of obstinate. It’s all just semantics in the end, right? Just don’t ask my mother.
Four quantitative reasoning and physical/biological science courses for all Arts and Sciences students. All PAM majors must cover nine Human Ecology credits outside of their major. Each and every ILRie will spend a semester with Professor Gold and labor law.
However, there is only one requirement that bonds all Cornellians who hope to ever escape East Hill, baccalaureate degree in hand:
Seventy-five yards of watery peril.
Indeed, the only shared experience every Big Red undergrad is guaranteed to have by graduation day is successful completion of the infamous Cornell Swim Test and two physical education courses.
I’ll say my farewells in a minute, but I have to vent first and no I’m not talking the Coors Light commercial type of way — even though that sounds like a tantalizing idea. What is up with these Ithaca bees? I just walked up college avenue, through the Ho Plaza to the library and I swear I had to swipe away at least ten bees from my face. I got people out here looking at me like I’m crazy because my arms are flailing all over the place wildly as I try and get them away from me. One, I never got stung before and I’m not cool with the idea of getting stung even once, it’s not in my life plan. Two, even IF I was to get stung, I’d be damned if it were by one of these steroid injected buzzing insects. Listen, back in middle school, I used to go on outdoor education trips.
This column has been hard to write.
I have been looking forward to having a goodbye column since before I even had a column. My friends are probably tired of hearing about my parting 5,000-word magnum opus that I’ve had in the works since freshman year.
But that’s just how I think.
I began looking forward to my high school reunion before I even graduated. My last year at summer camp, I based my actions on whether I thought they would create a lasting memory. In the words of John Dorian, I’m a “sensi.” I’m an emoter, if you will.
But that’s all been hard for me recently. I’m having trouble not being bitter.
I was going to start this column differently. I was going to start this column with a GO BIG RED! With a happy exclamation and gold stars all around. And then, predictably, just when I had readied the celebratory poppers and had the Krug Grande Cuvée on ice, (Which wasn’t cheap, by the way. I blew $350 on that bottle, and I highly doubt I’m going to be able to return it!) a certain Big Red sports team lost! Ouch. It took some time, but I feel I have now recovered sufficiently, with a little help from my friends Krug and Cuvée, of course and I will now attempt to transcribe from memory the column I was going to run before Saturday, aka “the Big Red Disappointment.”
I can’t imagine why anyone would get involved with sports journalism. Most aspiring journalists dream of crafting an investigative story to reveal some deep-seated corruption in government; most sports fans avoid writing altogether. Sports journalists apparently come from that dead zone of the Venn diagram between “aspiring journalists” and “sports fans.” It’s not always a rewarding job; athletes whine that they don’t get enough attention and non-athletes complain that they get too much — after all, why spend so much time dissecting the intricacies and storylines of sports, an industry that has been equated with religion as an “opiate for the masses,” at least according to a lecture by Prof. Issac Kramnick, government.