The 6 Things You Need To Know For April 12, 2019

  1. Losing Is A Truth Serum: You had us at hello, coach Bennett. The national championship UVA head coach shares the same name as famous crooner Anthony Benedetto aka Tony Bennett, and he’s making a sweet song of a different kind with the beginning of this quote. It gets better however, since the rest of his thought goes like this: “That’s when you really learn about people. If we can lose together, and we can still survive–to me, that’s the foundational piece.” From marriage, to business, and of course sports, there isn’t a better way to balance your perspective on things. We love winners, we follow winners, we put winners to an immortal status in so many phases. But without understanding the pain intimately, there’s very little appreciation for the joy that inevitably makes its way back into your realm. The emphasis on winning is healthy, and it without winners and losers, you have a harder-than-necessary time getting a healthy comparison about where things stand. Winning at all costs however, could bring about more damage, and lose sight of the fact that we’re all in this together. You don’t have to like losing, that’s ridiculous, but embracing the pain can be just as healthy as emphasizing getting a dub. They don’t exist in mutual exclusivity.
  2. Take a bow, Tampa: Let’s head away from the gridiron for a second and pay homage to something Tampa and the Bay Area in general can say they go pound-for-pound with anyone in the country. With the scorching-hot start from Plant’s Peter Alonso for the Mets, that got us to thinking about just HOW DEEP the talent on the diamond is, and has been, for decades. Here’s an article (sorry for being so outdated) that should get you to thinking. It’s’s take on the Top 5 MLB players from Tampa. Not to mention googling any variation of “high school baseball players from Florida in the MLB” will find you a list of royalty from the past, present, and future. While football gets all the love, let’s call it what it is, a baseball state.
  3. STEP YOUR (tattoo) GAME UP: You think you’re a fan? You sure you’ve got heart and soul invested into your squad(s)? Then you better check out Argentina and how they roll with their clubs. Granted, they don’t exactly have the plethora of leagues to keep you invested all year long like us, but the teams THEY DO HAVE, have supporters that are absolutely nuts. Take this for example. HERE IS AN AWESOME idea for folks that like to get inked. There’s this little (sarcasm, look up these two teams on YouTube) futbol rivalry between Boca Juniors and River Plate. Two teams located on opposite sides (literally and figuratively) in Buenos Aires. They hate each other worse than the Yankees-Red Sox, Gators-‘Dawgs, ‘Noles-‘Canes, and Republicans-Democrats times 1 million. They literally cannot sit next to each other while cheering on the Argentine National team. Yes, that sounds excessive, and yes, it’s entirely accurate. So when one rival beats another for the club championship of the entire continent (Copa Libertadores) last summer, what do you do to capture that same immortality? You do this–a dude had a QR code tatted on his forearm that plays (yes it actually does) the winning goals from YouTube when activated. Is it too late to get Manchester United’s 1999 treble-winning performance against Bayern Munich? Asking for a friend. CHECK THIS OUT—>

4. NOPE!: There’s nothing more to be said other than, we are in trouble.

5. SCHEDULE TIME: A bit of a change of speed from the individual team schedules today. Instead, let’s take a look at the statewide (including our area teams) schedules for the rapidly-approaching spring season, shall we?

6. Ethan Forrester, Land O Lakes High School, 2020, QB