Keith Strudler

In the post-script of Super Bowl LVIII, there will be considerable conversation about the Taylor Swift effect. Some of that will be conspiratorial, like whether the NFL and perhaps the US government secretly colluded to make sure the Chiefs both made and won the Super Bowl to maximize her impact on commerce and perhaps even change the fate of the upcoming election. But other parts will be far more grounded in reality, especially around the popularity of the sport and, in particular, the Super Bowl itself.

Today, the week of the Super Bowl, I’d like to talk about one of America’s sports obsessions – Dartmouth men’s basketball.

I feel like Facebook birthday reminders kind of killed this, but there used to be a pretty sizeable section in greetings card racks in the drug store for cards essentially apologizing for missing your birthday. So even though you didn’t get your gift when you expected it, here it is now.

At some point last Thursday morning, we realized that one of our two cats had gone missing. If you’re a pet owner, you likely know this feeling – or you can imagine it. You’re basically frantically searching through every deck and garage in your neighborhood while running a social media campaign worthy of the drop of a new Taylor Swift single. And before I bury the lead, yes, we did find George the cat, ending up 48 hours later hiding in the springs of a couch we had put in our garage. But in that run, what you realize is there are lots and lots of people, most who you’ve never met, who care deeply about your pet and hoping your find him. In other words, despite the perception of a highly divided and angry public, we all can coalesce around our collective love of cats.

So in case you haven’t noticed, which is pretty much impossible, it’s been pretty cold around the US the past week or so. Like arctic cold, the kind of cold where TV news runs stories about how quickly a bottle of water freezes kind of cold. There were a lot of cities that had a minus sign in front of the temperature, and that’s in Fahrenheit. Which is worse. So, it goes without saying, this past weekend was not the best to hold outdoor sporting events unless they involved a dog sled.

Sports commentator Keith Strudler shares his thoughts on the influence of NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers.

At the end of the TV show The Office when the character Andy Bernard seemed to fulfill his lifelong dream when he secured a job at his alma matter Cornell yet realized he missed his life in Scranton, he famously said, “I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them.” This is one of the more prophetic quotes from a show that was famous for more satirical ones, and not just to Cornell grads who admired Andy’s reverence to the Big Red, a cappella group and all.

Perhaps my favorite stat line from this NBA season is that out of the 27 games the Golden State Warriors have played, temperamental star Draymond Green has been thrown out three times and suspended twice for a total of nine games and counting. That’s because his current suspension, which came for hitting Phoenix Suns center Jusuf Nurkić, is indefinite, and will probably run at least three weeks.

I spent last weekend in Tallahassee, Florida, a trip that had absolutely nothing to do with Florida State not making the college football playoffs. I was there to run a master’s 10k cross country race, something I do about once a year. It’s become an annual tradition with a group of people I ran cross country with in college years and years ago, back when we were much faster and less achy than we are now. All of us still run, slower of course, but really we use the race as a way of everyone getting together.

Sports commentator Keith Strudler shares his thoughts on the college football playoffs.