Michael Allen: What American Sports Fans Are Missing: Part One: Australian Football

This is a image from last season's Grand Final, not some kind of war.

   

The United States of America is, arguably, the best country in the world for sports.  There’s something for everyone.  We have four gargantuan professional sports leagues, a steadily growing soccer league with a bright future, a thriving college sports organization, motorsports, horse racing and poker.  Americans are always a major competitor in the Olympic Games.  I’ve even seen a game of chicken foot broadcast on ESPN.  The USA sports party is wild.  But there are a few guests, some foreign, others local but a little shy, leaning against the wall that we should offer a few drinks.

Chad Underwood: Remembering Tupac Shakur

 

   When I was thirteen, I managed to get my hands on a copy of Kanye West's The College Dropout and it changed the way I listened to music forever. Before that, I pretty much just listened to Train and Dave Matthews Band with my dad (sometimes I still listen to those bands), but hearing Kanye was my first true rap experience. I loved the sound and how every single time I popped it in my portable CD player (Wow, we had those?) I discovered some new wordplay I did not realized the first time. It was incredible.

Mark Vance: Contagion Review

   Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion could not have come out at a better time. Contagion, a film depicting a catastrophic epidemic, opens on the weekend of the ten year anniversary (strange to call it an anniversary) of the tragic events of September 11. It is hard to not think about the aftermath of 9/11 and its affect on the world populace and I think it is best to keep these thoughts in mind while watching this great film.


    Let’s get the “well duh’s” out of the way. The film looks fantastic. The directing is spot on. The pacing is swift and the film is entertaining throughout. All of this comes with a Soderbergh film. What did stand out to me even more was how improvisational each scene felt. The pauses, the stuttering, the “uhs,” all feel organic and genuine. Scenes that lesser movies would have made cliché come off as authentic. Deaths come at a shock to characters who can’t take it in immediately.  Only when several months have passed is when it finally hits. And it hits hard. The dialogue and acting, involving Matt Damon, Marion Cotillard, Jude Law, Laurence Fishburne and many more, easily makes these people feel like real people and that this horrible epidemic is really happening. 

Chad Underwood: Hockey's brutal Summer, and how Fall could change that

The 2011 Lokomotiv Yaroslavl Hockey Club.

   
The hockey world usually stops to take a break after the Stanley Cup is awarded to the champion of the league each June. This off-season has been anything but a break. In the past four months we have had three NHLers commit suicide: Derek Boogaard of the New York Rangers overdosed on pain pills and alcohol, Rick Rypien of the Vancouver Canucks killed himself after fighting depression, and recently retired Wade Belak, was found hanging in his hotel room.

Rick Dahrens: My relationship with NASCAR

Fact: NASCAR stands for National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing.

   
   While some might like to call it the “non-athletic sport created around rednecks”, I simply like to call it NASCAR. It’s been a part of my life since 2001, and will always continue to impact my life. I even have aspirations to somehow incorporate NASCAR into my career.   

Chad Underwood: Tha Carter IV vs. Watch the Throne

Three of the four rappers are featured in this column. T.I. is in jail...again.

   Three hip-hop heavyweights release two albums not even a month apart, forcing me to take my first stab at some album reviewing. First, Jay-Z and Kanye West dropped Watch the Throne (August 8th), a solid album that takes chance after chance and makes it work. Tha Carter IV, released last Monday, is an album from the likes Mr. Dwayne Carter, AKA Lil' Wayne. Both albums have what it takes to be considered for a Grammy nomination, but which one stands alone as the best Hip-Hop album of the year so far? They both make very good cases.

Michael Allen: "My NFL Marital Status: Single and Okay With It"

  

   

   I grew up in central Alabama, where college football was easily the most-watched sport.  In that area, people respect the National Football League, but it is nowhere near the conversation piece that Crimson Tide or Auburn Tiger football is.  I was brainwashed from an early age to be an Auburn fan.  My parents have had season tickets since shortly after their graduation from the institution in 1982.  I have been to at least 100 Auburn football games at this point in my life.  It’s a major part of my life and always will be, especially now that I’m halfway though my college career on the Plains.