Onward State - Week 1

Since almost all of my writing time is going toward Onward State, I thought I'd post what I write there on a weekly basis. I can't just let this blog go to waste while I contribute to a much more professional/thriving/focused site.

Week 1 Spans from December 3 - December 10:

December 3:

Harris Poll Flub Increases BCS Skepticism - My first post. Bonus - Jamie's over the top praise of the post in public fashion.

December 4:

Sheep Won't Be Headed To Pasadena - My first "Ohmygodohmygodohmygod I'm the first one to cover this" post. Yes, it seems silly to think about now - but keep in mind, I'm still feeling out the protocol for posting on the blog at this point.

College Dictionary: Sorostitute - Click on this one if you're looking for the funny. Well, more "semi-whimsical while avoiding swearing and offending people funny." College Dictionary may or may not be a reoccurring fixture.

December 5:

Rose Bowl Ticket Sale Details - Any opportunity I get to talk about Maybin, I'm takin' it.

December 9:

Bill Cosby's Coming To Happy Valley, You See - SOOOOO tempting to litter this post with House of Cosby references and videos, but I'm still chasing that unicorn known as professionalism. I almost ran down and tackled the majestic beast, but ended up including this video in the post. Nobody's perfect.

December 10th:

Joe Paterno: 2008 Coach of The Year Finalist - Felt I had to cover it after doing so many other football posts. It's probably just an attempt to feel like a real sportswriter - look at me, I'm Jason Whitlock! Too many black players are bojangling! Jeff George should be starting for the Vikings!

Devlin To Transfer - I couldn't believe my luck of checking the Daily Collegian within an hour of the story breaking - not only is it a "look, Mark broke another story on Onward State!", but a super interesting one (in my opinion) at that. Oddly enough, Managing Editor Eli Glazier wrote up a post and posted it just before I published mine. He was really cool about it, and we eneded up combining the two.

As you can see, I'm writing a shitload more.

Until next week.

Marshawn Lynch Makes Shaun Phillips Look Like Stephen Hawking

I recently devoted a post to ripping Shaun Phillips' grammar, spelling, and overall understanding of everything because I found his blog on Yardbarker and couldn't help but comment. I guess I should have looked harder on the site, because Marshawn Lynch makes the San Diego Linebacker look like a genius.

Thanks to the handy sidebar on the sports blog community's website, I happened to see that the quite talented, yet somewhat troubled, Buffalo running back had recently updated his account. To give you the best recreation of my reaction, i'll sample from some of Marshawn's best entries:

"well its bout dat time... time to put on da hard hat and put n sum dirty work... off season was koo i had a kids camp on july 12 in Oakland had a solid turn out bout 600 kids... Lamar Woodly LB from pitt and his cuzin Sam came out to help... had prizes 4 all da kids and sum good life learned lessons dat we talk to da kids bout... just runnin n da yard sayin whats up.....hold ya chin up.....nuh nuh nuh ....gone"

"whats good yardbarkers what it do its ya local neighborhood running back outta OAKLAND....in buffalo playin for da bills...if u looked at da headline reading DAMN its cause ive been out 4 da past two weeks and its been hurting me not to b out der wit ma teammates even if we losing....i just cant wait til i can get back out der wit ma bra bras (teammates).....but dis just ma lil intro until i can get back to yall wit a lil mo....stay solid til next time"

Suddenly, the idea of Lynch being stupid enough to not be aware when he hits "a dancing woman in the street" with his car is completely believable. Let's just hope his "bra bras" are "der" for him when Commissioner Goddell hands down his sentence.

Nuh nuh nuh...gone.

Somebody Get Shaun Phillips a Spell Checker

Sometimes it's easy to forget in all the glory of professional football that many of these athletically talented men are less than moderately intelligent. In some cases, they don't express themselves well. This is why I love Kissing Suzy Kolber, which routinely verbally eviscerates NFL players while still remaining loyal fans, and Yardbarker, which brings the fans on the same level as the players. Yardbarker features several blogs written by professional athletes, and some are better than others. Keith Rivers of the Cincinnati Bengals, for example, often writes thoughtful and extensive entires with proper grammar and syntax. Then there's Shaun Phillips of the Chargers, whose hobbies include "Learning about the world", weighing in on the controversy surrounding the rapid inflation of rookie contracts:

I think they gotta stop somewhere with this. I love that everyone is making money but its starting to get rediculous how much money unproven players are getting before they take a snap. There are future hall of famers that are not making as much in there entire carrier as these kids are making in one check. I think the nfl should take some notes from the nba on caping rookies. If you think about it most rookies don't really come into there own until 4th our 5th yr anyway. So just imagen how much there second contract will b if they where 2 play there whole 50mil contract out it makes u wanna laugh huh. My final note is more power to them cause I want everyone to get all the money in the world cause imma get mine.

Sp95

Where do I start? While I do agree with Shaun that it is 'rediculous' how young phenoms are "making more in one check" than hall of fame-bound veterans earn in their entire "carrier" and I do think that "caping" rookies a la the NBA is the solution, it's hard for me to "imagen" how we can take his opinion seriously when he doesn't even bother to spell out "be, to, and you." What did you save with those abbreviations, Shaun? Four letters? Factor in your decision to include proper punctuation and you're almost up to double digits in characters you didn't have to type!

Also, I think I saw his final note of "more power to them cause I want everyone to get all the money in the world cause imma get mine" on a bumper sticker. It was a long sticker.

But hey, I guess the joke is on me because a guy who types at a first grade level is making millions of dollars a year while no doubt sleeping with countless beautiful women - while I sit in my underwear eating a klondike bar amidst snarky blogposts.

Sexman Lives!

I read a blog called Filmdrunk because I not only like to hear about movies in development and Uwe Boll rumors, but have the information delivered to me in a humorous fashion at the same time. One of the highlights of this website is it's "official movie reviewer", a preteen dynamo simply known as "Sexman". Sexman holds nothing back - none of this timid Peter Travers bullshit.

While I traditionally enjoy Sexman's work reviewing movies (and occasionally his own pieces of cinematic achievements), he now forays into the political arena - and takes no prisoners. Here's his frank take on Hillary Clinton, factual information not included.




Sadly, this might be an appropriate barometer for a good 30% of the country's knowledge of the issues. Oh well, at least he's an Obama supporter.