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Daily Thoughts

Wow it has been a long time since my last entry. One of my friends even said to me “Why is your last entry January 4th, and its almost February?” I could only lower my head in shame and respond “Sorry, I’ll write more as soon as possible.” Well like how it usually happens, while encompassed in my daily life I encountered a situation and boom, Bam! A entry came to mind (I feel like Emeril with that Bam comment; for all you Food Network fans out there).

These are my daily thoughts for today. How many of you have seen someone where a jersey, sweatshirt, t-shirt or other form of apparel that had a sporting logo or brand on it? I’m sure many of you were like “I have seen thousands of people, and know plenty that do it.” While that may be the case, that is not the issue of my entry.

My problem has more to do with “How many of these people actually are familiar with the team or sporting brand they are for lack of a better word ‘sporting?” One day in class, I noticed a guy wearing a Brazil jacket. I’m going to myself “this guy likes soccer? This dude knows about Brazil soccer?” I’m like no way. And then I thought to myself, there must be hundreds of people that wear this sort of stuff and really have no clue. Furthermore, I won’t accept the response “well I like the colors, or brand it is made by i.e. Nike or Adidas. Unless you are a female, that is not a valid response. You should not be allowed to wear such apparel if you are not familiar with the sport, let alone with the team or league or event you are wearing.

So I came up with a solution: For people who wear a certain team’s apparel; hat, shirt, sweatshirt, jacket etc., must know at least five current players from the team and the last time they won a championship (depending on type of league i.e. Premiership in England, a team could have won the FA Cup, Champions League or the regular season). For a person who likes to support an individual i.e. NASCAR, Formula One, Indy Racing Series, should probably be aware of who their crew chief is. How many races the individual won the year before (or if it is middle to end of current year) be aware of how many top 5-10 finishes they had and how many races they won during the current year.

If the person decides to wear some apparel that represents a league as a whole such as the National Football League, National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball or National Hockey League, they should at least be able to name ten teams in each league and who won the World Championship of their sport the previous year.

I guess the same goes for brands such as The Rose Bowl, The BCS National Championship, The Kentucky Derby and events such as that.

Next we have apparel that might represent such teams as the USA Hockey Team, (two hockey references will never happen again, don’t worry) USA Gymnastics Team, or the USA Olympic Team in general. This gets tricky. Depending on how the previous Olympics went for the aforementioned team or teams, I’m not sure where I want to go. First and foremost if the team you are wearing won one or more medals including gold, you have to be 100 percent aware of that if someone were to ask you “Hey, how did that team do in the last Olympics?” Also knowing the year and location of the last Olympics competed in would be nice, but more of an added bonus personally.

Finally we have college sporting apparel. For anyone who knows me well, I love my college sports. I follow two teams really Syracuse and UMass Amherst. I would put my knowledge of their triumphs and tragedies over the past five years up with anyone, especially with UMass as I went to many, many sporting events in my four years. I think first of all, it is not crucial if you actually went to the school or not. Most people have affiliations to certain schools from parental influences (such as mine with Syracuse) or live in a town or city where there are no other major professional sports teams in the immediate area (like Lexington, Kentucky) that is fine. As a general rule if you wear apparel that just has the university name or college you are probably free from ridicule (OK so not everyone is a sports fanatic or fan like myself). But, the ridicule begins if you decide to wear apparel that not only indicates the school but a team on it as well i.e. Syracuse Basketball, or UMass Hockey. In this case, it is crucial to know certain basic things. Again, the last national championship if they have ever won one (Orange in 2003), and if not maybe the year they made the frozen four or even the NCAA tournament (UMass has never done either in hockey). In the case like my beloved UMass Hockey team, which has never made the NCAA Division I Hockey Tournament, I’d say naming 5 or more players would be sufficient, and allow you to wear such apparel.

In conclusion, I feel that in general being able to name 5-10 players (depending on sport) is important for any person sporting such apparel for college sports or any team specific apparel.

Going back to my initial story of how this entry came to fruition, I didn’t want to ask this guy “Hey, you a fan of Brazil soccer,” for two reasons. The first one being that I didn’t want to embarrass him if he said no. Secondly, I wanted to avoid that extremely awkward and dreadful response of “Na, I just like the colors and/or na, I just picked it up at _____store the other day, it was on sale or something.”

These are my daily thoughts for today, thanks for reading.



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