The blog has been up for almost a week sans any content, so I finally decided to get something down so I can feel like I accomplished something of mild significance today.
While this blog will eventually be chalked full of rants and nerdy takes on all things sports, I felt that it would be proper to start off letting the readers know just where I am coming from.
If you didn't already glance to your right, my name is Nick Hiltbrand. I have lived in Columbus Ohio for the majority of my days, and I am a recent graduate of The Ohio State University with a BS in mathematics and a BA in Public Affairs Journalism. I know it's a strange combo, and no, I don't want to write articles about math. In college I covered sports for the school paper and did 3+ years of student radio, all while I was proving math theorems simply for the sake of redoing someone's work for the 1,000,001st time. I'm 24 years old, have five siblings and I'm notorious for the movies I haven't seen (i.e. Ghostbusters, Blues Brothers, Goodfellas etc.) If you were to ask my friends if I read, half of them may tell you I'm illiterate, while the other half would say I stopped after the third grade. Neither of these are correct however. I love to read, just not books. What the average person reads in book-form, I more than make up for with articles, blogs and magazines. I love sarcasm. I like to think I have a good sense of humor (I'm a guy => bathroom humor is hilarious) and I take the logical approach to most things. I'm pretty laid back for the most part, but I can get competitive/fiery on a few things like video games and most of all sports.
What do you know... a decent segue to my position(s) on sports...
1a. Let's go Buckeyes. 1b. F^&k Michigan. I will try and put a clamp on my tOSU bias, but I do bleed scarlet and gray, and the big house is the cesspool of the world.
Greatness is not defined by rings... Again, Greatness is not. defined. by. rings... Only in Basketball does it hold any weight at all, and even then it doesn't mean much. It's not Dan Marino's fault that he didn't have a 1,000 yard rusher in any year but one of his career, and that his career wasn't spent playing with the likes of Jerry Rice, Dwight Clark and Roger Craig.
If you want to fire a coach in his first two years, fine, but that's on you. I personally think that in all sports, you can be a great coach early, but you need three years at the bare minimum to have a fair assessment. In College sports, recruiting is 75% of the battle. I hate mid-majors/non-AQ teams because they don't deserve half the praise the rest of the country gives them, and the amateurism of college sports is vital as it is what makes them better than their professional counterpart in most cases... Oh and while the SEC is good at football, I don't really respect them for things like over-signing recruits and their coaches being sleazeballs. My girlfriend wouldn't be happy about that, because she is an Auburn alum and a "proud" supporter of the SEC.
The NHL killed themselves with the lockout. Major League Baseball needs to respect itself before they can expect fans my age to jump onboard with their product. While Golf wouldn't be half the moneymaker it is today without him, Tiger is a douche and not the golfer that Jack was and probably will never surpass him.
I hate the race card being played in sports, Colin Cowherd is a one-trick pony and (outside of his opinion on Tebow) I respect the hell out of Skip Bayless.
While there may be more contributors to this blog added later, for the time being it will just be me and my friend Andrew Jacobson. He's a Pittsburgh fan (I know right?), one of my best friends and one of the best parts about him (for the readers' sake at least) is that he disagrees with almost everything I have to say.
We'll try and contribute as much as we can, and we also have a podcast that we do once a week. Check it out at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/the-brand.
Adios
March Madness?
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