Welcome to the original Bob Dole Sports blog.
However, I'm thinking about renaming it Bob Dole Blog, or Bob Dole's Blog, and not just because you almost swallow your tongue everytime you say it. The real reason I'm thinking of changing it is because I'm not really about the subject material I'm going to cover here.
Sure, lots of it will be sports. Lots of it. That's because I love sports. However, I don't have cable and because of this I don't really watch sports ever anymore. I just read about sports which, traditional thinking be damned, makes me qualified to write about it.
Besides not actually watching any sports, a second problem is that I really don't know very much about sports. Already this blog is seeming like a bad idea. In fact, there's only really one league I'm on top of. And given that the league in question is The League Formerly Known as the NHL, most people won't even give me full points for that.
Still, regardless of indifference in the USA (I'd say who cares, but its really the only market that matters) and the fact that there's at least 10 non-sports/quasi-sports that are legitimately concerned bigger sports in the USA than the NHL, I'm going to remain as one true fan. At least until Gary Bettman finally ends my misery and relocates the entire league to the deepest fires of hell.
But I also follow basketball and baseball. Not an expert on either front, but enough so that I'm going to want to talk about them anyway. No football, though. But its not that I hate football or think that its a bad sport (although I actually do not like it, and I actually think that its a bad sport), but its more that I just know nothing about it.
Granted that I'm from Toronto, my devotion to hockey, casual affection for basketball and baseball, and apathy towards football may make me out to be convincing evidence of the existence of the "Geographical Determinism of Sports Fandom" phenomenon. Yes, its probably true. In many ways, I like to paint myself as the living embodiment of the Toronto/GTA early 20s Sports Fan Demographic. The fact that I'm a devout Montreal Canadiens fan doesn't ruin this because the team you actually cheer for is a product of circumstance and personal taste. The sports you follow, conversely, is the true form of the Geographical Determinism Sports Taste effect.
Anyway, I was originally saying that the blog's title is poor because I'm not going to deal with sports (although I'm guessing that's probably not the only reason its a bad title). I'm sure there will probably be just as much about movies, TV, and pop culture as there will about sports. There might be a little about music, but other than composing hyperbolic psalms to the heavens about my favourite recording artists that would make James Lipton or George Strombolopopolopous blush, I'm going to avoid too much about music because its hard to write about and its so subjective. I'm also going to avoid a lot of politics for the same reason, and while I follow politics to a certain extent, the fuzzy guy on the street I met the other day who was trying to convince me that the Government was controlling my mind through flu shots probably is a) more interesting than me, and b) more accurate than me.
Anyway, the first real topic is coming up soon. Its probably going to either deal with the Montreal Canadiens decidedly underwhelming offseason (although that may be harsh considering we might have given Sheldon Souray 26 million; on second though, it was maybe a good offseason; lets say I'm "whelmed" by it), what the Blue Jays should do (ie, who they should fire), or some blather about this Junior Summit Series and its '72 counterpart.
Also, its probably going to have a name. Fingers crossed that Blog Dole isn't taken.
