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Thoughts from the Week... |
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Written by Chris DiIonno
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Thursday, 01 June 2006 |
The most frustrating thing as a writer is to develop an idea and then as you go to write it realize that someone else has already done it. That has happened to me about five times this weekend. Whether it’s about the restoration of the NBA playoffs to Barry Bonds -- it has already been said and you’ve already read it. Oh well that’s the price you pay when you decide to go to a friend’s wedding and don’t have access to a computer for a week. Just some really quick thoughts from the sports world in the past week:
- In regards to Chris Weeden’s article about Penn St. beating Maryland to the recruiting battle: he’s absolutely right. But this isn’t a new development. Maryland being successful at football is. Penn St. isn’t the first team to “steal” recruits right under from Maryland’s nose, and they certainly won’t be the last. Let’s not act surprised when a perennial 5-6 team loses local recruits to one of the more powerful college football programs in the country. Instead, we should be more surprised when Maryland is able to recruit a top tier quarterback from Pennsylvania, than when PSU takes a wide out from Maryland.
- I picked up the first NFL preview paper yesterday. It’s probably the best feeling of the summer, when you walk by a newsstand and your eyes are so bored of glazing over loads of midseason baseball reports – then you see it: The NFL Forecast. I love college basketball, but it really is a crutch that I use to help me get closer to the start of the NFL season. When the NBA Finals are over, I have no idea how I’m going to make it through the next couple of months.
- Speaking of the NBA, here is further proof that if your crazy, you’ll stay in the spotlight for an entire year not just during the season: Gilbert Arenas getting arrested because he came to the aid of a no name teammate and then proclaiming that “I’m a basketball player” you can’t arrest me followed by Stephon Marbury telling us that “he wants to die a Knick”. I don’t even have to say anything else here.
- I just saw Mission Impossible III the other day, and believe it or not, I didn’t hate it. In fact, it was one of those movies that were secretly very enjoyable as long as you just put your brain on cruise control (no pun intended) and don’t try to outthink the movie. Speaking of Cruise, even though he’s legitimately crazy he makes good movies. I was looking through IMDB and the amount of stuff that he’s in that I like is pretty staggering. He’s like the Ron Artest of Hollywood: you never know when he’ll snap but if you put him on your team, you know you’ll get a pretty solid outing from him every time he steps in front of the camera.
- Some thoughts from the wedding: Watching one of your friends get married is a traumatizing enough experience as it is. It’s even worse when said friend is younger than you are. On a smaller scale I get the same feeling in my stomach thinking about that like when I think about how I’m actually older than LeBron James, yet he has 150 more million dollars than I do.
The best two words in the English language (for 23 year old guys): Game seven, double header, and open bar.
Best moment of the evening: during the reception, the father of the bride stands up and starts making his toast. He goes through the usually mushy lines about how great Pete (my buddy) is and how lucky of a guy he is, and then out of no where he pulls out this football analogy about how he’s this veteran quarterback and Pete is this hotshot running back and how it’s hard to hand off the football (his daughter) to this guy, but he knows it’s the right thing to do. Absolutely hilarious.
It was especially funny to me because I’ve played football with Pete before, and the guy has hands like a paddle. Couldn’t catch anything. Also the look on the bride’s face when she realized she was being compared to an expensive piece of pigskin – well worth the price of the plane ride up there.
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