Once a generation a writer comes along who shakes the very conventions of his craft, a writer who unhinges the doors of the reader's conceptual dungeon and thereby reveals a world of possibilities previously unkown, unseen, and unimagined.
Sadly I'm not that guy. I'm the guy who writes the things that fill the time during the interminable 8 months between New Year's week and Labor Day weekend which is obscenely bereft of college football action. These things I write go by the name "Free Form Friday." Why? Because the names "melophone", "Gerry DiNardo" and "Lester Bangs" were already taken. Consider this your open comment thread of dubious coherence, and have a great weekend:
Maestro, cue the theme music:
Assuming you choose to ignore the NFL (certainly your right, and one the exercise of which no one could blame you for) the closest thing to football action right now is probably college recruiting. One particular college recruiting story that caught my attention this past week was the meteoric descent of New Jersey defensive back Yuri Wright. At one point Wright was being pursued by the likes of Georgia, Michigan and Notre Dame. He's a big, fast safety prospect with a good nose for the ball and solid hands.
But what's gotten Wright in trouble is not his hands. It's his thumbs. The ones that he used to type out some of the most ill-concieved tweets you'll read (caution, crude language alert). Those tweets ultimately got Wright expelled from his high school, Don Bosco Prep, and now have a player ranked among the top 100 in the nation trying to justify himself to college coaches as a guy they can take a risk on. Admittedly, I've seen current Georgia Bulldogs type stuff just as bad as these on Twitter. It's one reason we now have folks in Butts-Mehre who actually monitor these things and send players to "Twitter jail" if they start to get embarrassing.
And I know we're talking about a high school kid, and most of us wouldn't want to be held accountable for a lot of the things we said in high school. There's no telling what 17 year old me would have tweeted. It probably would have been awful. But here's the thing: college coaches don't care so much about whether Wright's social media presence indicates that he's a misogynist or racist. They care that he could be representing their programs and doesn't appear to have the good sense to get to the end of some of those messages and hit the "delete" button. College athletes at bigtime programs, like the University of Michigan, cannot take a chance on a guy who appears to have bad judgment.
I would have written more recruiting coverage over the past week or so but for the fact that I've been sick. Specifically, I've had a sinus infection. I've learned through the years that telling someone you have "a sinus infection" is like telling them you have "a Chevy". Because there's a helluva difference between owning a Volt and owning a V-8 Silverado with a lift kit, winch, 32 disc CD changer and a set of solid platinum truck nutz. My sinus infection was the latter. It did however provide my internist with a good laugh when he asked "does this hurt?" then pressed on my face in some secret area that could only be learned about during an elective in medical school taught by Mr. Spock. After I came to from the Vulcan Death Press he put on me, he handed me a prescription for some antibiotics. Praise be to the antibiotics and ibuprofen I'm back. If this were 1812 I'd probably be slowly working my way toward an early grave with something labeled "rheumatic fever." Hooray modern medicine!Remember kids: The Lord loves a working man, don't trust whitey, see a doctor and get rid of it.
Finally, speaking of poor children born in Mississippi, the gang at Red Cup Rebellion have come up with a surprisingly accurate flow chart designed to decide your SEC fandom. My only quibble with it is that Mississippi State fans also have a pretty good history of killing unusual living things. But I can't blame the RCR crowd for not being able to acknowledge the existence of actual MSU fans. The urge to slight little brother is one of the small ways we know it's the offseason. Until later . . .
Go 'Dawgs!