(A drum roll, please.)
……Welcome to Tracking the Semester: SM 221 at Bowling Green State University. I aim to serve as an unofficial tour guide to the course, overseen by Dr. Nancy Spencer, by way of this blog during the Fall 2009 semester. The official title of this class is SM 2210 – History & Philosophy of Sport. As indicated by the title, you can anticipate subject matter from the class to be tied into each post. In addition to discussing class related material, I plan on sharing my opinion on a variety of sport-related topics and supporting those opinions with fact, and links to noteworthy articles and video. You can also look forward to witnessing my conversation veer off course from time to time, and this is where I expect Dr. Spencer and my fellow classmates to chime in via the comments section.
During our first class meeting, we spoke about the athlete or sporting event, from any era, that we would like to see in person. My choice was to witness Usain Bolt at the recent Track and Field World Championships when he demolished the former World Record time in the Men’s 100m. Visual evidence can be seen here.
Are. You. Kidding. Me? That video produces chills. He is super-human fast. Rumor has it that he prepares for his races by eating chicken nuggets. If this is the case, why isn’t there a global shortage of this prepared food? Despite his never-seen-before speed, analysts believe that he can shave fractions of a second (precious in the racing world) off of his time by developing a more structured and consistent start out of the blocks. The fastest man alive becomes even faster? That is difficult to imagine, but I would love to see it happen. My father once told me about a legend attached to former Negro League Baseball player Cool Papa Bell, saying he was so fast that “he could turn off the light switch and be in bed before the room went dark.” True or not, I think we can apply similar dimensions of speed to Mr. Bolt (aptly nicknamed “Lightning”).
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My goal for this course is to learn about the earlier periods of sport/sporting events, and how the games themselves became such significant part of our society. The primary concern that I have in this class is maintaining this blog, because I view writing as an unpaid chore – something that I may not want to do, but a necessary task nonetheless.
With that, I will bring post #1 to a close. I hope you continue to check in to see how the semester is progressing. Thank you for stopping by, you may resume your normal web-surfing activity.
