By Erie's Scribe on Sep 06, 2007 with Comments 6
The songwriter of The Edmund Fitzgerald, Mr. Gordon Lightfoot
Hello Cecilio readers, glad to be the new Thursday contributor for Cecilio Guante. Cecilio reminds me of the kind of guy who would have starred for the Cleveland Indians teams I grew up watching with my father in old Cleveland Memorial Stadium. Not the successful Tribe teams of the nineties or the squad that’s been slowly but steadily putting distance between themselves and the Tigers over the past two weeks. No, I grew up going to games in an 80,000 seat stadium that probably drew between five and ten thousand on any given night. You know, back when the Indians were so bad they made a movie about their ineptitude. Andy Allison, Brooke Jacoby, Mell Hall, Cory Snyder, Julio Franco (yeah, the same Julio Franco that’s in the majors today!) back when he was a young player on the rise…… I think Cecilio would have fit in well on those Indians teams.
Thanks for the intro yesterday, Cecilio’s Scribe, I’ve actually decided to go with Erie’s Scribe as my handle instead of CleveFan (since I’m on the editorial staff now). It’s mostly because The Scribe of the Edmund Fitzgerald doesn’t roll off the tongue like I’d hoped. Anyway, I’m glad to be blogging. To paraphrase Bob Wiley in What About Bob, “I’m blogging! I blog. I’m a blogger.” I’m not quite sure I understand adding links just yet, so those will come in future posts.
Anyone else excited that football is back? It was all football all the time on Saturday. Appalachian State?!?!! Are you kidding me? A Division I-AA school beating Michigan? I’m just glad they decided to bring television cameras to the Big House for that suposed mismatch so we could see highlights of that debaucle. Now might be a good time to brush up on those color commentary skills, Lloyd. By the way, what are they trying to call I-AA right now? The FCS? What? Does that stand for “Fred’s Cleaning Service?” “Free Clown Show? “Fricking Can’t Stand the fact that my alma mater is D-I in every sport except for football?” I thank my lucky stars that every announcer I heard was firmly against this idea. Great goodly moodly. I saw the Va. Tech pregame ceremony and wow it was pretty emotional. I generally don’t like to mix tears with my football (at least until after the Browns game), but I was okay with it Saturday. The Hookies might have been emotionally spent for their game against East Carolina, or maybe Skip Holtz is guiding the Pirates to a heckuva season, but Va. Tech better play better in Baton Rouge this weekend if they want to escape a schilaking. My only problem with the football weekend was getting hit with a full slate of college games on Saturday and then going no football, cold turkey on Sunday. I didn’t know what to do with myself on Sunday. There was a great void. But, how lucky we are this weekend because football is really here! I look forward to the feeling I’ll have right after the 3:30 games on Saturday when I realize that the football I’ve already seen has only been an appetizer for the opening week of the NFL that is coming in 18 hours.
I’ll end with a random question and a theory that’s rattled around my head since I found out I’d enter the blogosphere. Did anyone else notice that QB’s had neon green circular stickers on the backs of their helmets during preseason? What’s this all about? Is this to make it easier for D-linemen and Linebackers to find them? I don’t think I would want a flouescent dot marking the back of my head if I were being chased by 300 lb. men who are either as fast as or faster than myself. But, it would be great if these dots changed colors in relation to a QB’s performance and fatigue throughout the game. The dots could start green and go to bright, blood red after throwing three or more interceptions. After Ty Detmer’s 7 INT game for Detroit against Cleveland a few years ago, I think the dot would have exploded. Did anyone else see these dots? I can’t be the only one.
As for the theory, I realized it while watching hour after hour of Michael Vick coverage the day he plead guilty. The only interesting part of the day from my sports fan perspective was his statement. I thought it went well. Somebody who manages athletes finally figured out that having the athlete in trouble speak extemperaneously works much better than having the player read an obviously ghost written statement. But my problem with the coverage was that I didn’t want to watch people at a courthouse. I didn’t want to hear about the finer points of the United States legal system from ESPN legal analyst Roger Cossak all day long (although I will demand his legal services if I ever get into trouble with Johnny Law). I wanted to see sports highlights. Why not throw me a bone with a 20 minute Vick highlight reel, thus reminding me why he is so famous in the first place. Anyway, my theory tackles the question of why the arrival of football is so awesome (sorry, awesome is the only word I could come up with to accurately describe it). It’s not just because watching football rocks. It’s a signal that the ‘dead’ time of sports is gone for 9 months. The ‘dead’ time starts after the NBA/NHL finals and lasts until the first football weekend. During the ‘dead’ time there are so little sports but still tons of sports coverage, so we hear about legal matters, gambling scandles, motorcycle accidents and so on. Now that football is here, we’ve turned the page to a higlight rich environment. You won’t be able to escape the highlight reels. You’ll struggle to keep it all straight. You’ll be startled when a co-worker asks you “Hey did you see that that rediculous catch at the end of the BYU game on Saturday?” And then you’ll rush to your computer and surf straight to youtube.com. Welcome back, glad everyone made it through the summer.
Filed Under: Uncategorized
Tags: Appalachian State • Cecilio Guante • Cleveland Indians • East Carolina • FCS • Julio Franco • LSU • Mel Hall • Michigan • Roger Cossak • Skip Holtz • Ty Detmer • Vick • Virginia Tech
The songwriter of The Edmund Fitzgerald, Mr. Gordon Lightfoot
Erie’s Scribe. Good stuff. Glad to have you aboard. Here’s the quick skinny on the green helmet deal-i-o.
“The stickers are intended to inform game officials which helmets are wired for sound. Only one player is allowed to be wired on the field at one time.”
That’s some good insight erie’s scribe…don’t worry about the “awesome” comment. I think it was appropriately used. When will you be discussing the Ravens and there certain triumph over dem’ Bungles Monday night.
Glad you liked it Cecilio’s. Thanks for the answer on the helmet stickers. Is this going to carry into the regular season? I hope not.
Lord Baltimore, glad you enjoyed the insight, thanks for reading. We might get around to the Ratbirds vs. Jail-kitties matchup in next week’s post. BTW, can anyone think of a name for my Thursday columns? To quote Ned Flanders beatnik dad, “We’ve tried nothin’ and we’re all out of ideas.”
CS stole my thunder on the green dot mystery. Thats a buckeye! They’re used to identify the helmet that is in contact with the coaching staff, or in the case of charlie frye its the helmet that is apparently tuned into Casey Kasem’s top 40 count down.
Welcome aboard Doctor A. I’m glad you read the blog, and I want to give you a chance to take back the Charlie Frye dig. Now that he has a line in front of him, you will see that Charlie Frye=Bernie Kosar with wheels.
Will the dots be there all season? Will this lead to a spike in QB injuries? If you see a lot of QB’s going down early in the season I think we have a theory brewing.