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Ready or not, here comes NGS II, bigger and better than ever, at least according to NGS I winner Ty Hildenbrandt, who got the inside scoop before anyone else knew about it. We're way ahead of the Super Bowl, which for its first two years wasn't even called the Super Bowl but was known as, simply, the NFL Championship Game. The Super moniker, as well as the silly roman numerals, came later.
I wasn't blogging yet at the beginning of the first NGS contest, but got to see the last couple of rounds. Wow. Intense, bitterly fought, hotly contested. It was like watching Eli, Peyton and Archie toss a football around at the Manning family picnic.
After reading that NGSII would be starting this week, I had to make a decision - compete or watch from the sidelines? I hadn't written competitively since my days as a cub reporter for Notre Dame's student newspaper, The Observer, in the heady days of my freshman year in college. Many of the writers I would be competing with weren't even born back in those days when a computer was something that took up most of a whole floor of a building, and word processors were considered cutting edge.
Sure, I've lost a step - I can't turn the double entendre like I used to. My days of stretching a single thought into extra paragraphs are mostly behind me. Likewise, I know I've lost some of the bite off my breaking-news. I have bad knees and can't sit at the computer for hours on end like some of these young guns. But I'll tell you something. They don't turn a phrase anymore like we did in the old days. Heck, some of these rookies have never even seen an IBM Selectric!
I realize I can be a little slow to react to the fast-breaking news on a day blog immediately following a night blog, and that maybe it's best now if I take the day off after a late-ending night blog, particularly if it went into extra paragraphs.
Likewise, posting blogs about different cities on consecutive days might not be the best thing for me, either. I don't recover as quickly as I once did, but isn't experience worth something? I was watching and discussing sports when a lot of these up-and-coming hotshot bloggers were discussing the best way to build their blocks, not their blogs.
What I've lost with age I like to think I make up for with experience. I know how to work a tired subject - If you doubt me, check out anything I've written about Barry Bonds - it's hard to believe there be a more tired subject than that, and we're just getting started in the investigation. I know how to position myself at the keyboard so as to avoid carpal tunnel syndrome. Experience.
I'll admit it, I've lost a little off the old fast-quip. I can't challenge the reader by coming right at him anymore. I have to nibble at the edges of subtlety, move the thoughts around, make the reader think I'm going one way and then go another. On a team full of Nuke Lalooshes, isn't there still room for a Crash Davis? Someone who's been around for awhile?
And another thing. Not all of us old guys are going to pull a Favre or a Clemens. We're not all going to play both sides against the middle. I pledge right here and now to sign for a full season; and to help the team avoid potential cap problems, I wouldn't even expect an unreasonable signing bonus - say something in the neighborhood of $5,000?
But I understand if the organization feels the need to go in a different direction - sometimes you just have to get younger. At least there's free agency. I've heard rumors the front office at ESPN.com might have room on their staff for a steady old veteran who knows his way around the keyboard.