A forum to flush out the week’s ideas after a strong cup of coffee…
Of course I meant my Google Goggles post to be Run of Playish, but this section of Brain Phillips’s recent Grantland piece is eerie:
Soccer gives players more chaos to contend with than any other major sport.4 So there’s something uniquely thrilling about the moments when they manage to impose their own order on it.
And his footnote: “4. The classic American sports control the danger of appearing random in all kinds of ways — baseball constantly resets to the same starting position, football does the same while adding 29,384 rules about who can and can’t do what on which plays, basketball breaks itself into discrete timed segments, etc.”
And me:
…football’s comfort comes from it’s familiarity and predictability. And soccer’s thrill comes from its chaos…soccer seems to me a perfect form of chaos. Chaos confined to about an acre of grass, three or four crucial laws, and the ever-malleable limits of human physiology and imagination.
I’m going to go ahead and flatter myself by thinking we both watch the game the same way.
Does the recruiting season make you feel dirty? Bathe in Spencer Hall’s recruiting Layperson’s Primer and Glossary. A mild astringent that will cleanse the Tom Luginbill away.
My spirit animal was on Archer last night, and it was even better than I thought it’d be.
Happy Weekend, Y’all.
