-- Citizen D
I was sitting outside of my classroom today and due to my location was forced to listen to two of the most un-athletic people in my class loudly debating the finer points of college basketball. To hear them talk, they both have intimate and personal knowledge of the players, coaches, trainers and medical staff of several regional collegiate basketball teams. They also seem to know exactly what training regimes, offenses/defenses and policy when interacting with the media are optimal to winning championships. These young gentlemen should stop this mediocre pursuit of higher education; they could make millions working for different teams, or billions working for the casinos.
Michael�s Rule of Arm-Chair Quarterbacking: If you can�t actually do something, then you have no business commenting on it.
And yet I am not at all impressed by their pontifications. You see, they are both quite out-of-shape, don�t participate in any of the sports programs here, and have lungs more conducive to loudly spouting their opinions than running up and down the court. I occasionally see one of them at the gym, running in row with all the other old, fat ladies on the treadmills. Apparently no one told him that fast walking while staring at the spandex next to you doesn�t count as exercising. The other frequently wears the championship t-shirt our soccer team won last year; he put his name on the roster, only showed up for the first game, and scored two goals for the other team, but he wears it anyway. I thus find it hard to believe that either really knows more about box and one defense or the split v offense than they regurgitate from the ESPN commentators.
Michael�s Rule of Ability: One�s ability is inversely proportional to quantity and severity of one�s self-promotion of their ability.
Standing around in the same vicinity I see an ex-pro NFL player. I see a former nationally ranked tennis player. I see several amazing basketball players with collegiate records and IM championships here in grad school. I see tri-athletes and marathon runners. Etc. Yet I�ve never heard them loudly voicing their opinions. Nor have I seen them wearing team jerseys as the previously mentioned windbags frequently do. Why? Because they have skill and they don�t have to prove it to themselves.
So please, if you�re obviously a couch potato, brag about how your lvl 88 Diablo II Amazon has the Windforce bow like I do, but leave the team jerseys to the real players, the No Fear t-shirts to the Navy Seals and the ESPN commentary to Rush Limbaugh. You�re not fooling anybody.
-- Michael