Roger Goodell, a Beowulf or a Hrothgar? While football joy currently reigns supreme in Miami, dark clouds loom on the horizon (to use a hackneyed metaphor). Even as more people than ever are watching football, the owners are unhappy with the current players’ contract and want them to take an 18 percent salary cut, along […]
Tag Archives: Sports
Coach James Caldwell, English Major
Colts Coach James Caldwell It appears that football will continue to occupy this website until the actual playing of the Super Bowl ends our annual week of collective hysteria and allows us to move on to other subjects. (Of course, as a Colts fan I am more hysterical this year than others.) Today I’m going […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Invictus", Authenticity, Death and the Compass, Ernest Henley, Football, Indianapolis Colts, James Caldwell, Jorge Luis Borges Comments closed
Colts Football Doggerel Annotated
Pierre Garcon after the Colts’ conference title win I promised an annotation for my weekend piece of doggerel in praise of the Indianapolis Colts so here it is. And while I’m focusing on such poetry, let me mention a similar endeavor that my cousin Dan Bates undertook in praise of the Boston Red Sox of […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Doggerel, Football, Indianapolis Colts, Robin Bates Comments closed
Brett Favre and the Poetics of Failure
Brett Favre I watched in amazement this past Sunday as 40-year-old Brett Favre, despite being pounded by the defense of the New Orleans Saints in the National Football League’s National Conference championship game, pulled himself off the grass time and time again to keep on playing. It was an extraordinary chapter in a career that […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Bull", Aging, Brett Favre, Football, Ralph Hodgson Comments closed
Manning as Beowulf, No Joy in Mudville
A quick update for today’s post: some football fans are elated this morning, some are dejected. “There is no joy in Mudville,” the immortal line from “Casey at the Bat,” may come naturally to citizens of New York and Minnesota – an instance of poetry providing solace by naming our pain. Here’s the passage: Oh, […]
Schadenfreude and the NFL
Brady tackled by Raven Ray Lewis As I did in my last post on the National Football League playoffs, I am admitting to secret sentiments I’m not proud of. It’s not enough that the player and the team I am rooting for, Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts, are winning. I have been reveling over […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "War Song of Dinas Vawr", Football, Indianapolis Colts, Thomas Love Peacock Comments closed
On Mark McGwire and Fallen Idols
Robert Redford in The Natural I take a momentary break from Margaret Edson’s W;t to address Mark McGwire’s confession yesterday to having used steroids. The man whose homerun race with Sammy Sosa “saved baseball” and who then refused to “speak about the past” in a Congressional hearing is finally opening up. Or at least opening […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Baseball, Bernard Malamud, Disillusion, Human fallibility, innocence, Natural Comments closed
Romanticism, Classicism, and Football
Peyton Manning Note: I owe the underlying idea for this post to a reader contribution to Stampede Blue, an Indianapolis Colts fan website. I have combed through Stampede Blue’s archives and haven’t been able to locate the original post. If anyone has seen it, I ask that they let me know and I’ll give proper […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "I burn my candle at both ends", Classicism, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Football, Indianapolis Colts, Romanticism Comments closed
Roger Federer and the Cavalier Poets
I’m going to put off my follow-up post to Twelfth Night until Monday because I just came across an interesting article that invites a timely response. As a tennis player and fan of Roger Federer, I am still vibrating over his having won at the French Open this past Sunday. After his archrival Rafa Nadal […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Cavalier poets, Sir John Suckling, tennis, To Althea from Prison, To Lucasta Going to the Wars Comments closed
