College Football: The Most Important Sport in America. Period.
Bigger than the NFL, more intense than the NBA, more meaningful than pro baseball, NCAA football is the best game in the country.
by Greg M. Schwartz for PopMatters
There’s nothing like it. When it comes to a sport’s impact on the fabric of American pop culture, none can rival college football. The NFL, NBA, and Major League Baseball may have a more visible global presence but, judging by sheer numbers alone, collegiate football truly is the all-American game. While major professional sports leagues field an average of roughly 30 teams, the NCAA’s grouping for Division-I football alone includes 119 squads, spread across the country in every state. The most popular of those teams play in stadiums that hold over 100,000 fans, while NFL stadiums hold no more than 80,000. This discrepancy is in part because major college teams draw from all over their state, as opposed to just one metropolitan region. The type of player who performs for those packed stadiums differs too.
In college football, the players simply care more. NFL teams are generally comprised of what amounts to mercenaries, playing for the highest bidder. In college football, it’s different. Despite the rise of national recruiting, most teams generally field players who grew up in the same region as the school they are attending. And since only a handful of players on the best teams will go on to the NFL, most college players are fighting for team pride and tradition, rather than a signing bonus or contract. In the words of Lou Holtz, the legendary, former coach of Notre Dame and South Carolina, “They don’t get any salary, they just wanna win.”
This kind of investment means that game day atmospheres at NFL games can rarely match the emotion of college game days. To begin with, college games attract a crowd of alumni, fans who have invested more than just the price of a game ticket; they’ve spent what many consider the best four (or more) years of their lives at the school. Add to that mix the students themselves, usually packed into designated student sections where undergrads employ ever-increasingly creative ways to fly their colors and show support for their team. In the past, this has included things like making up humorously obscene lyrics to their rival’s fight song. The Wisconsin band, for example, has recently been disciplined for its uncouth behavior toward rival teams. Such behavior may simply be kids being kids, but since college players are less experienced than pros, they’re more susceptible to being affected by the raucous atmosphere at road games. As such, college fans stand a better chance to actually affect the game they attend by providing their school with a real home team’s advantage...[READ MORE]
Related link: Rutgers beats Louisville to keep undefeated season alive
Politics
We Are the World: If the U.S. insists on running things, everyone on earth should get to vote in U.S. elections
by Steven Wells for Philadelphia Weekly
The day after the U.S. reelected the worst president ever, Britain's Daily Mirror newspaper ran the exasperated headline: “HOW CAN 59,054,087 PEOPLE BE SO DUMB?” Never has a single phrase so neatly summed up the feelings of 6 billion people (that's the rest of the world's population, rough estimate).
The U.K. is stuck with Tony Blair. Like Bush, he committed the unforgivable crime of lying about the reasons for going to war. Trouble is the only realistic alternative to Blair's Labor Party is the even more right-wing Conservatives—the party of racism, reaction and Margaret bloody Thatcher.
In the U.S. you had the chance to vote for a candidate who wasn't a lying sack of warmongering shit. One who didn't pretend to believe in the literal truth of the Noah story. Or use homophobia to get votes.
Instead you reelected an imbecile who isn't fit to run a seafood stall.
I think it's time the U.S. franchise were extended worldwide. The Roman Empire eventually granted citizenship to many of those it conquered. I see no reason why the new Rome should be any less magnanimous.
Americans who don't vote make me furious. U.S. elections are the only elections that matter. They decide how fast we're going to fry the planet, how incompetently the war on terror will be fought and how horribly the reputation of Western civilization will be marred by the systematic use of legalized torture...[READ MORE]
Music
Someone asked for a re-up on this, so here you go:
Radiohead & the Posies - "In My Mind"
Featured Album: Ted Leo, Guitar for Jodi (1999)
I've been a huge Ted Leo supporter ever since I first got my hand on Ted Leo and the Pharmacists' Shake the Sheets. Yet, before this morning, I never knew that he fronted a 90's punk band called Chisel.
According to Rocket-Fuel.com,
Ted Leo fronted the band Chisel, which combined punk politics with music that evoked a number of late 70s/early 80s rock and punk bands, from Husker Du to The Jam. Along the way, they built up a strong following. After their breakup, Ted Leo went on to write songs on his own. His solo shows are always changing; you may see him one day with just an electric guitar, or a tape machine, or with a new band called The Pharmacists, including members of The Secret Stars, The Make-Up, and The Warmers. Some days, you might hear something very much like Chisel; on other days, you'll hear hints of experimental music and dub. Ted Leo's debut solo album brought a number of these disparate elements together; in places, the songs were straightforward and featured only vocals and guitar. Some added looped beats; others were sonic collages of found sounds. Some loved it, some hated it.
This seven inch, [Guitar for Jodi], released several months before the full-length, serves as a middle ground of sorts. The songs, though the recording quality is far from perfect, will appeal to many fans of Chisel while simultaneously pointing to what is to come. "I Need a Roof" is Leo and an effects-enhanced electric guitar making music in a style that's reminiscent of Billy Bragg's earlier work: jarring guitar playing with vocals that stand out. "Lost on the Way to Load-In" has a more propulsive sound to it, as drums give the song forward momentum. These drums have a particularly processed sound to them; even if I hadn't seen Leo doing a karaoke of sorts to this song, I'd probably have guessed that most of the music heard here has been prerecorded and dubbed many times. "The Great Communicator" winds things up with intelligent lyrics dealing with cultural differences and problems of communication.
As a whole, this is clearly a solid release, establishing Ted Leo as a solo artist on the same level as the critically acclaimed bands that he's worked with.
Tracks off Guitar for Jodi:
Ted Leo - "I Need a Roof"
Ted Leo - "Lost on the Way to Load In"
Ted Leo - "The Great Communicator"
Wanting to know more about Chisel, I tracked down some tracks and information courtesy of Epitonic.com:
Along with fellow DC natives the Make Up, Chisel helped bring the infectious sounds and far-out fashions of mod culture back to the rock underground. Taking cues from The Jam's legendary frontman Paul Weller, Chisel's charismatic scratchy-voiced leader Ted Leo shaped his band's engaging brand of rough-edged, loose-limbed, hook-heavy mod-punk, in the process helping set off the nascent garage-rock revival of the late '90s. Like Make-Up leader Ian Svenonious, Leo's roots lay in DC's emo/hardcore scene, a background which lent itself well to his forays into mod/garage-rock with Chisel, as he was able to avoid the fruity pretensions which so often afflict purveyors of '60s rock nostalgia, instead creating something dynamic, vibrant, and contemporary.
Leo formed Chisel in college back in 1990 with bassist Chris Norborg and drummer John Dugan. After several years spent consolidating their fan base through constant touring and numerous seven-inch singles, Chisel finally issued its first LP in 1996, the explosive 8 A.M. All Day, a 36-minute effort with more hop than a Mexican jumping bean which saw the power trio augment their already distinctive stripped-down mod-rock sound with horns and organs for a touch of '60s soul, terrific vocal harmonies, and some moody instrumentalism. With the following year's classic Set You Free, the trio continued to develop the increasingly complex songwriting of their debut album, offering a darker and moodier collection. These were unquestionably two of the finer rock records of the 1990s, the sort of albums it seems likely kids of future decades will discover to their delight and astonishment, the same way kids throughout the years have been discovering The Who, The Clash, and The Jam. Unfortunately, two records was all we got, since Chisel broke up soon after the release of Set You Free.
Chisel - "8 AM All Day"
Chisel - "Do Go On"
Chisel - "Six Different Ways" (Cure cover)