Blogrule

Sports officials are always "cracking down" on something. In recent years, basketball refs have gotten tougher on carrying and other traveling violations. MLB umps are evidently looking more scrupulously at neighborhood plays. NFL officials are taking a closer look at ball control on end zone catches, which has already had a drastic effect on at least one game.

In college football, however, the hot-button issue for officials over the past few years has been sportsmanship. Now, I can't say I blame them when things like the "LeGarrette Punch" happen, but sportsmanship has to have a limit, a point at which winning becomes, if not desirable, at least acceptable. I don't know if the officials truly understand this, though. After watching the first couple scores of the UNC/ECU game Saturday, I felt like that game's refs expected the players to be ashamed of their successes.

In the first quarter of the game, both teams scored a touchdown and both teams subsequently scored an excessive celebration penalty, but neither of the scoring players or any of the offensive players really did much more than run around the end zone and maybe give a chest bump or two. Both were the sort of celebration you might see after a third-and-ten conversion. There weren't any cell phones, sharpies, or popcorn involved. Nobody inducted themselves into the Hall of Fame. There wasn't even a Dikembe Mutombo finger wag. All told, the celebrations were pretty lame.

After the second call, one of the ESPN announcers smartly called the two penalties "excessive officiating," which I'm willing to concede.

On their face, these calls are simply about sportsmanship and a (possibly antiquated) understanding about respect for the game. But there's also a free speech issue here, something that's come up in passing in some of my class discussions about different Englishes. I know that I just blogged about these discussions, but I love the fact that we're even having them and that my students seem legitimately interested in the outcome especially considering that free speech is essentially a necessity for any sort of successful university to actually exist.

At any rate, the most relevant question for this post is this: how do we draw the line between steadfast rules and space for creativity?

Or, considering all the emotion surrounding and infused in college football, would the game really be that much worse off with an occasional Lambeau Leap?

Event of the Week:

Halo 3: ODST launch on Tuesday. Maybe it's because I'm busier now and potentially less "tapped in," but this seems like the quietest Halo launch since, well, ever. Even the first one, which I'd barely heard of at the time, had a huge launch party since it was synonymous with the release of the original Xbox.

Scribblenots

In between my three jobs and sleep, I've found a little bit of time to play the new WB Games game Scribblenauts. Since one of my colleagues has already reviewed it for the Star-News
blog, I figured I'd write a little about it here because I have...thoughts.

Firstly, the concept of the game is really the best part (and really appeals to my profession).

Scribblenauts is a puzzle game where the player tries to reach "starites," which are just stars, on various different levels. To do this, the player can literally materialize things onto the screen by writing the name of those things. So, for example, if you write "ladder" a ladder shows up on the screen and can be interacted with in various ways.

So, conceptually, the game is all about creativity, puzzles, and vocabulary, all things I'm a fan of.

But there is a bit of a flaw in the game's conceptual space.

Oddly enough, the issue arises out of something that we've been talking about in most of my classes: different Englishes. After reading Amy Tan's essay "Mother Tongue," we had conversations about how we communicate differently based on who we're talking to. For example, I might tell Bryan that he just said something stupid, but I would never say that to my students. The final result is that people develop different vocabularies and have different ways of communicating the same thing.

(By the way, most of my students wrote about their different Englishes in their blogs.)

Different Englishes become a problem for Scribblenauts because there's no way to know what the developers had in mind for a particular word that players might type in. For the most part, results are predictable, but more than once I've been completely surprised (and usually disappointed) by the object produced by one of my scribbled words. At these moments, the game is essentially a guessing game.

Generally, this isn't a considerable problem but more an exercise in both creative thinking and/or minor frustration.

Other times...

Question of the Week:

If you could materialize anything out of thin air, what would it be?

My take: Right now, I'd love some sort of machine to grade these 125 student essays I've received over the past few days. Or maybe just my own TA.

Honor roll

With MJ going into the Hall of Fame today, Sportscenter has pretty much been Michael Jordan central all day – that and Boomer-ville.

I don't know if this was a coincidence, but Rick Reilly made a rare appearance as an SC anchor last night for the LA version. In talking about Jordan, Reilly suggested that the NBA should just completely retire Jordan's #23, a la the MLB and Jackie Robinson's 52 or the NHL and Wayne Gretzky's 99.

Arguments tend to be polarizing: before he mentioned anything, I would have disagreed with Reilly about an NBA-wide ban of the number 23, but since he brought it up, I've decided I'm totally against the idea of retiring jerseys.

According to legend (or stories I heard growing up), MJ wore the number 23 because he was half the man of his older brother, who wore number 45. But a ton of basketball players growing up the 90s – including LeBron James – had a different reason to wear number 23: Michael Jordan.

It was the whole premise of a Gatorade advertising campaign. Part of wanting to "be like Mike" meant wearing the number 23. If the NBA retires his jersey number, then that dream is denied.

That's why I think MJ is the poster child for why jersey numbers shouldn't be retired. Sure, it'd be nice to honor Jordan with a league-wide remembrance of the greatest player that ever lived, but that's all it would be, a remembrance.

But, what we've got now, with the Lebrons and the Jason Richardsons and the Jodie Meeks of the world, is a whole generation of basketball players who want to "be like Mike" in any way possible, and one of those ways is to wear his number. To me, that's a better way to honor His Airness. If imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery, then isn't it also the sincerest way to honor a legend? Of course the NBA wants to honor MJ's number – think about all the money he brought to the league – but I find it much more compelling and meaningful when young players choose to honor him.

UNC, where MJ played his college ball, has a pretty strict requirement for jersey number retirement: National Player of the Year honors. Considering that, there are only seven jersey numbers that are technically retired, though dozens of Carolina players arguably deserve it. (Tyler Hansbrough's #50 will be the eighth.) Instead, UNC has simply honored the jersey numbers of 36 deserving players, meaning that current players can still use their numbers. If UNC used that policy with all of their deserving players, then Rashad McCants – instead of wearing #32 – could have worn the jersey number of his childhood idol: Michael Jordan.

Question of the Week:

What's the last CD you bought?

My take: Blueprint 3. There are less than a handful of musical artists whose work I purposefully own. Jay-Z is on the top of the list. Behind him: Robin Thicke and Lupe Fiasco.

That blog won’t hunt

The MLB regular season is pretty much donzo, and it saddens me that it seems to have come particularly early this year.

The only races that are anything close to resembling competitive are the Wild Cards and the Western divisions. So, you know, who cares? Anything past the Central Time Zone isn't really worth keeping up with. (Plus, the NL Wild Card race is pretty much the same as the race for second place in the NL West.)

Technically, there are only two teams who cannot possible make the playoffs: the Washington Nationals and the Kansas City Royals. (Though Baltimore and Pittsburgh are each one game away.)

I don't know why I thought that would be a good blog topic. It really wasn't.

The ACC looked pretty miserable in the first week of college football, with a few exceptions. It started Thursday, when NC State lost to South Carolina with a low baseball score. Then Wake Forest lost to Baylor at home. Duke and Virginia both lost to FCS teams named the Spiders and the Tribe, respectively, which is just unfortunate. Then, in what was probably the biggest hit, Virginia Tech lost to Alabama in primetime on Saturday night, ending the ACC's only real glimmer of hope for a national championship.

I suppose the weekend ended with a bit of a bang, but it was a pretty sad affair otherwise.

Not as sad, of course, as Oklahoma's season essentially evaporating.

I know it's been a minute since it happened, but I do want to touch on the opening night shenanigans. Two things: (1) it sucks that LeGarrette Blount's career pretty much ended with one hit (and that it will end on a year in which he has a total of -5 rushing yards) and (2) Byron Hout's career, sad as it might be, should be over as well. Hout was certainly the instigator and, in my mind, the asshole of the situation. Blount's actions, though certainly not ideal, were considerably more civilized and understandable than Hout's.

Quote of the Week:

"It's like a hangover that lasts more than one day."

Brad Gilbert on Andy Murray's loss at the US Open.

Fluish

Most teenagers think they're invincible.

I'm not a teenager, but I couldn't remember the last time I was sick, so as far as being ill is concerned, I seem to have considered myself invincible for some time now.

As few but Bryan know, this isn't the first time I've been wrong.

My Monday night ended with a cough. But I woke up on Tuesday feeling fine. I was in my office by 11, waiting for my classes to start at 12:30. Between those two temporal flagpoles, my capacity to function was severely diminished. I had gotten sick.

It was what the university is calling "influenza-like illness (ILI)," and as far as illnesses go, it's certainly influenza-like.

I went home and basically died on my couch – for about four hours – during which time, I was literally rapt with fever. I eventually managed that, but I still felt like Satan's punching bag, so I missed my Wednesday classes as well.

After that, I started feeling better (though not well enough to blog). The worst of it lasted only about 24 hours, but I'm still left with my initial warning sign – a cough – and it appears to be getting worse rather than better. It's not a fun thing to teach with a sore throat in a classroom that still relies on chalkboards.

At any rate, I've survived, and my sense of invincibility has retreated to a more reliable, probably safer degree.

I'll probably skip Monday's blog, too, since it is a holiday and all.

Question of the Week:

What would be the best Marvel/Disney team-up or collaboration? Here are some suggestions.

My take: Hercules meets Hercules could work. Ariel from The Little Mermaid and the Sub-Mariner. Forge from the X-Men and Tron. The Lion King and the Black Panther. But seriously, any Pixar and Marvel collaboration would be awesome.