Quick Sports Notes

Football and transactionalism and skiing

It’s a weird time around Chateau Steelypips, sports-wise. On the one hand, I’m spending a good deal of time watching and thinking about sports #content, but on the other, I’m relatively un-engaged by a lot of it. There are a handful of things going on, though, that are worth a quick note, so I’ll paste them together here.

— The most recent, and the proximate cause of this blog post, is Indiana defeating Miami for the college football national championship. I’m not much of a college football fan, largely because I blame the sport for breaking everything I liked about college basketball, but this is a nice story in a lot of ways. Indiana was an absolute joke for the last century or so of college football, but they hired Curt Cignetti from James Madison (of all places), who brought most of that team with him to Bloomington, and turned the program completely around.

This is, as I wrote last March, much more what I’m looking for from sports in general than what the sports media seem to want: it’s a classic greater-than-the-sum-of-the-parts sort of story. Hardly anyone on the Indiana roster was highly regarded as a recruit, but they absolutely smoked teams full of “five-star” players, because they fit well together as a unit. And that’s why I watch sports in general.

I’ll throw a link to Actual College Football Guy Rodger Sherman here, because he’s rapturous, and good for him. I would love to see more stories like this, and less about super-teams, but the way the business is set up, that’s not super likely.

— As noted when we went to see them in December, my NFL team, the New York Football Giants, was godawful this year, aside from rookies Jaxson Dart and Abdul Carter (and Cam Skattebo before his gruesome injury), so there wasn’t a ton to root for by the end of that season. They’ve generated a lot of fan enthusiasm in the last week or so, though, by hiring John Harbaugh, who was introduced today as the head coach.

I’m sort of mixed on this, as I’ve loathed the Ravens for years. On the other hand, Harbaugh is very much a Serious Candidate, and the fact that they were able to land him speaks well for the perception of the team’s potential. I don’t think they’ll be anywhere near as dysfunctional next year, at the very least, which would be a nice change after a decade of suck.

— Without a real rooting interest in the NFL playoffs, this is mostly a season of transactionalism, which is my least favorite part of sports. The Giants have hired a coach, but prior to that most of the energy in the parts of fandom I see was devoted to being angry that they won their last two games rather than tanking to get a higher draft pick. I find that whole approach gross and stupid— if you’re going to play at all, you should be trying to win, or what’s the point? The draft is enough of a crapshoot that I’m highly skeptical that losing on purpose is worth the karmic damage.

Meanwhile, the current status of the Yankees is basically this:

They’re locked in this endless standoff with outfielder Cody Bellinger and his agent Scott Boras, which is keeping them from making any other moves, and has the Talkin’ Yanks podcast guys about to gnaw off a limb. As with the draft stuff, I find a lot of this kind of silly, as even once they sign enough guys to round out the line-up, their actual performance is kind of a crapshoot. Which is why I try not to pay attention to the offseason in any sport, but I’ve gotten sucked in, and this is making me crazy.

— I’ve pretty much completely decoupled from college basketball, between the one-and-dones, the megaconferences and transfer portal homogenizing everything into sludge, and my favorite teams being mediocre to outright bad. The Pip’s an NBA fan, but his Bucks have been struggling, so he hasn’t been lobbying to watch games, and thus I’ve been out of the loop on that. I’ll probably try to pick up more of that, though, just to be following something where actual games are being played, not just endless tedious contract talk. It’s a little hard to find a good way to follow along, though, because so much of sports commentary has been taken over by endless shitty gambling talk that I feel a little dirty listening to podcasts I used to like.

— On the participatory side, it’s also been a weird several months. Back in November or so, I bruised a rib playing pick-up hoops, which had me sidelined for several weeks, and shortly after I got back I wrenched a knee skiing, which had me limping all through the holidays. I finally returned to the court last week, but between my injuries and the retirement of the last of the guys who’s been a regular in this game longer than I have, I’ve been surprisingly conflicted about it.

In a weird way, this is connected to the tanking thing from a couple of bullet points ago. I probably could’ve gone back to the court a week earlier than I actually did, because I was out skiing and jogging around then. I didn’t get back to basketball right off though, because I wasn’t confident I’d be able to push off my left leg well enough to play defense. I probably still would’ve been an improvement over some of the other guys¹, but I’m too personally competitive to go out there half-assed— if I can’t play up to the standard I expect, I’m happier if I don’t play at all.

(And don’t think I’ve missed the realization that I probably don’t have too many more years left where I can play to the necessary level…)

— To end on less of a bummer note, though, I have been able to get out and cross-country ski a bit, and that is something I’ll be able to keep up for a good long while, because I’m not actually racing anyone.

In particular, following the recent snow up here, I made a run up to Lapland Lake on Sunday, and skied a bit more than 12 miles. They’d gotten 5-6” of fresh snow, so it was everything I was looking for— really nice trail conditions, with enough grip to make the climbs reasonable, and the longer downhills pushing toward but not exceeding my ability to maintain control. Plus, with the fresh snow everything looked like a postcard.

Just an awesome day, albeit really, really tiring— I’m still a bit sore two days later…

---

And that’s the state of sports in these parts. Surprisingly little yelling at clouds, so don’t expect this to be maintained if you choose to click this button:

And if you feel so moved, the comments will be open:

1. One of the regulars’ idea of boxing out on a jumpshot is to watch his man run by him toward the rim and yell “Look out!” to his teammates under the rim.