My Misunderstanding

Another busy weekend down, another AAU tournament done, and another weekend closer to summer. This was a very interesting weekend as I learned how to ensure that the other team has no idea what play you are calling. Chilling out in Concord High School on Saturday night, I watched some 16-year-old guys teams walk onto the court. I had never seen one of the teams before, the St. Bruno Cougars, and I did not recognize any of their players from my variety of regular-season wanderings through the state. However, as we all know, AAU teams travel from all over to play, so I did not think much about the fact that I didn't know them. However, as soon as the game began, I realized I had no idea what these players were talking about. No, it wasn't a new strategy that I had never heard of; the players were all speaking French. I am not sure how well the other team knew French, but I honestly had no idea what these guys were talking about. Normally, I can break down codenames such as the relatively generic "five" meaning man-to-man defense or "fifty-five" meaning full court man-to-man. However, these guys could have been explaining the entire game plan, and I would not have known the better. I guess those are the hazards of being a Latin student in high school. So, my advice to any team that will play against the team I intend to have in the future, speak any language besides English or Latin, and I'll have no idea what you're talking about (although I do intend to become multilingual sometime in my future; the idea has always intrigued me).
Photo by Ian Muttoo

Who Owns the Podium?

Did anybody else watch the US versus Canada men's hockey game on Sunday? Well, you were definitely not alone. MSNBC got 8.22 million viewers to watch this highly touted matchup which was the second most viewed program in network history behind only election night coverage in 2008 which garnered 8.23 million viewers. Wow, it's crazy that the election of the leader of the free world barely outscored a preliminary round hockey game. Don't get me wrong, it was an awesome game; however, who would've known at the beginning that the game would be great? Apparently, everybody must have known. MSNBC has been around for a while, and they have broken some major stories. Why then would a hockey game be so important?

The first obvious answer is because simply it is the Olympics. However, there is a deeper reason why I believe that the game was so important. Near the beginning of the Olympics, Canada set a goal of leading the medal count on their home turf in Vancouver. According to an article that was previously written in the Houston Chronicle, Canada has spent $117,000,000 over the last five years on a program called Own the Podium designed to obviously knock the United States and Germany off the top of the podium as they have traditionally been. These Olympics have been about more than just good fun competition for the Canadians I believe. Until they won their first gold medal of these Olympic Games which was in fact the first Canadian gold medal won on home soil, the media continued to emphasize the fact that these athletes were all under immense pressure to win the first gold. Therefore, I would be curious to see what percentage of this viewing audience were fans of the Canadians. This group would seemingly be the most driven to continue this goal, which doesn't appear to be reachable at the moment, of becoming the top Olympic team in the world.