We are entertaining a foreign guest, specifically a 14-year-old French girl, at the moment and given how entertainment-challenged Morehead is, we've been racking our brains to find appropriate activities for our youthful ward. Friday night, it fell to me to acquaint her with the "savage ballet" that is American football in the form of a local grudge match between Rowan and Morgan County High Schools. This was the first high school football game I have been to in nearly two decades, basically since my own days as a marching band geek, and it was an unsettling experience. ...

Last Saturday, while many of America's football-watching eyes were focused on a little contest in Columbus, OH, something much more important happened back east in Cambridge, Mass: as Yale trounced Harvard, 34-13 and claimed part of the Ivy League championship. For those who would like to celebrate the blessed event with me, please listen to Bull-dog and Down the Field (performed by the Yale Precision Marching Band). Feel free to sing along....

Normally, I consider even engaging with the 'arguments' of demagogues like Bill O'Reilly to be self-defeating, but I've been nursing this grudge for almost two years and I finally get to say 'I told you so.'...

As a native of the Greater Philadelphia Media Market, I don't really want to talk about the Iggles' loss in the Super Bowl. I'm not really in mourning or anything, we GPMMers are used to disappointment, and we did manage to keep the game interesting right down to the end. I just don't have anything that interesting or witty to say about the game. Instead I'll just refer y'all to Mark Bernstein (interesting analysis of what makes the Patriots great and how it relates to New Media research) and the Vidiots at TeeVee.org (witty panel discussion of the spectacle's high- and, more often, low-lights. While I don't agree with them that the game was dull, I definitely agree with their assessment of the the commercials. CareerBuilder.com's chimps and Kinko's/FedEx's groin kick were the clear winners of that competition).

It's that time of the year again: the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship (aka, The Tournament). After a one-year hiatus, I am again keeping a bracket. I am sure I will do very badly, as usual, but that is not really the point. Making picks tournament picks is a tricky business. One must negotiate a complex web of emotional attachments (in this order: teams from Philly; teams in the Big East, except Syracuse; the Ivy League champion, especially if it's Princeton), irrational grudges (any team coached by Bobby Knight or Jim Harrick; Duke; North Carolina; Indiana [still under sanctions for the Knight Era]; and when in doubt, anyone from the Big 12), and spontaneous fascinations (obscure teams with funky nicknames [e.g., the Manhattan Jaspers or the Southern Illinois Salukis]). One must weigh one's loyalty to a program or coach against past disappointments (oh, Cincinnati, how many times will you burn me?) and negotiate the inevitable good-vs.-good and evil-vs.-evil matchups. In the end, it is not about being right, but about creating an alternate reality in which basketball results would always make you happy.

I really don't follow college football (that's American football for our overseas readers), but right now it's impossible to avoid discussions about the "National Championship" and about how the evil computer rankings employed by the Bowl Championship Series to determine who plays for the championship are to blame for what will probably be a split title between University of Southern California and Louisiana State University. See, for example, this article ....