On the bandwagon

No not Obama's; my feelings about him haven't changed since the election. I'm talking about the Philadelphia Eagles. I use that title because I am not usually that much of a sports fan, my main interest in spectator sports comes from betting on them. My top 5 favorite athletes of all time are horses: Seabiscuit, Secretariat , Smarty Jones, Curlin, and Cigar (and I'll be damned if I can name their jockeys without looking them up, though I do remember that Seabiscuit's jockey was played by Tobey Maguire in the movie!)

Still as a lifelong resident of Montgomery County Pennsylvania it is hard not to get caught up in the excitement. It was similar when the Phillies won the World Series three months ago; an event that I wanted to mention here but never got around to at the time. True, the Eagles still have two playoff rounds to go before getting to the Superbowl never mind winning it, but I have followed the Eagles at least slightly both this season and in the past whereas I hardly knew the Phillies existed in recent years. The point is in both cases there is/was celebration in the air, a good cure for both post-holiday blues and the grimness of other events dominating the news of the day.

I do wonder if I'll still root for Philadelphia area teams when I move to New Hampshire, something I plan to do as soon as financial and job market conditions permit. Of course, in college sports I will still support my undergrad alma matter Villanova - I usually follow basketball there, especially close to and during NCAA tournament time, football not so much, though it is interesting to note that a school with a division I basketball team and a division I AA football team, should see its most successful graduate athlete be a professional football player (I mean no disrespect to Kerry Kittles by suggesting that Brian Westbrook has been a more successful pro-athlete than him, and I would certainly be willing to listen to someone who wanted to argue otherwise). As for my MBA college Drexel, its basketball team has occasionally been a contender and I would probably take pride if any of its teams did gain the national spotlight, though, I have not generally been inspired to root for those teams. I have had other fleeting loyalties to college teams but I'll save that for another post.

Getting back to New Hampshire, I do believe there are some college teams the locals root for but I don't know the details. There are the "New England" Patriots but honestly they are mostly a Boston team, a team that despite their name represents a place that is the antithesis of everything I love about New Hampshire. Anyway, while I do feel more of a sense of identification with the members of the Free State Project than the people who I share a location with by accident of birth in Southeastern Pennsylvania, my fellow FSPers to the extent that they are sports fans are just as likely to be fans of teams from the areas from which they originated as fans of NH area teams. Still, I have a dream of bringing pro-sports teams to New Hampshire in stadiums that are entirely funded by private money. Of course, this would require welfare queen team owners to agree to terms that might allow them to profit immensely but without ripping off the taxpayers which they believe is their birthright. One possibility would be to allow gambling within the stadiums and allowing private stadium owners and team owners to share that revenue. Of course, the sanctimonious pro-sports leagues would no doubt oppose that on empty moralistic grounds (officials in the MLB, NFL, NBA, and NHL are, after all, in the pockets of organized crime, much like the politicians who make the laws regarding gambling, prostitution, drugs, etc., making sure those activities are kept underground where gangsters can take their cut; as for NCAA well, again, it will take another post to deal with the scum who run that vile organization).

Anyway "Go Eagles!", if for no other reason than I would like to see if Andy Reid can manage to grow a decent beard by Superbowl Sunday! (I do sympathize, I've grown beards twice before in my life, and when its in that scruffy state the itching it causes would most definitely constitute torture if it was not self-imposed).

PS This post like my last one was at least partially inspired by Renegade Evolution. As such, I have decided to add what appears to be her pet organization - Sex Workers' Outreach Project to my (so far very small) list of links on this blog. I will also be sending them a donation. I know it's not a whole lot but I figure it's a start, and I am giving SWOP priority over other causes I support besides the Free State Project, for now.

By the way, now that football has (or at least had) become a topic of blogging again, I wonder if this will bring any new blog entries from Jill Brenneman. I see she did comment on Ren's post on the subject. It is always good to hear from her. I once exchanged comments with her when she was known as Jill Leighton and was running a radical feminist site known as stopprostitution.org. Even then she seemed very nice and was able to disagree quite agreeably. Of course, a much more hardline antisex radfem chimed in and behaved the way that you would expect a hardline antisex radfem to behave. But Jill while not outright condemning or distancing herself from her vicious colleague made it clear that she did not speak for her. I was pleased, but not surprised when I learned that Jill had left the dogmatic world of antisex feminism behind her.