Archive for August, 2009

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Pro Football Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony

August 8, 2009

Later today, the Pro Football Hall of Fame will induct wide receiver Bob Hayes, guard Randall McDaniel, defensive end Bruce Smith, linebacker Derrick Thomas, owner Ralph Wilson, and defensive back Rod Woodson.  It’s a very worthy class.  Expect a lot of Bills and Steelers fans there to support Smith, Wilson, and Woodson.

Last year’s induction ceremony was great.  Redskins fans filled the place, as Art Monk and Darrell Green were enshrined along with several others.  For my recap of last year’s ceremony in Canton Ohio, see http://myredskinsblog.com/2009/07/29/art-monk-and-darrell-green-inducted-in-nfl-hall-of-fame-class-of-2008/.

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8/9 update:  I saw the speeches yesterday.  They were great, especially the one by Rod Woodson.  The Buffalo Bills now have four Hall of Famers in from their four Super Bowl teams — Jim Kelly, Thurman Thomas, Bruce Smith, and James Lofton.  The first three obviously deserve it but Lofton is questionable.  It highlights the bias that there is against the Redskins – the fact that the Bills have more players in than the Skins.  From the Skins’ last four Super Bowl teams (three of them wins), they only have three players in the HOF — John Riggins, Art Monk, and Darrell Green, and before last year they only had one (and Riggins was only on the first of those four teams).  Gary Clark deserves it — his stats are virtually identical to Michael Irvin’s, plus Clark played without a HOF QB and played several years before Irvin when passing stats were lower.  Clark will not get in, though.

By the way, I’m so sick of all the Dallas Cowboys talk.  All Sirius NFL Radio did the other day was interview former Cowboys, then today I turn on the NFL Network and there is a special on about the Cowboy “triplets” (I don’t feel like mentioning their names). Not only that, but whenever the NFL Network runs old games, they always replay Cowboys or Packers (with Favre) games, and never Redskins games.

Back to the anti-Redskins HOF bias.  The team that glamorized the offensive line position and had linemen running to the opposite side of the field leading running plays has no offensive linemen in the HOF?  This is a travesty.  Either Russ Grimm, Joe Jacoby, or Jim Lachey should be in.

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First Annual Cruncher Weekend

August 8, 2009

Here are the photos from OWU Sig Ep Alumni Weekend 2009.  We hung out at the house, talked about old stories, went to the bars, and played a football game.  Nothing crazy happened, which is probably a good thing, but it was a great time.  It was a pretty good turnout considering we announced the date just more than a month in advance.

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This weekend will be held the last weekend in July or the first weekend in August each year for Sig Eps who graduated from Ohio Wesleyan in the late 80s or early 90s.  We might add an activity such as golf, but only about half of the people play golf, so we’ll come up with a couple of ideas.  We’ll probably have a slightly different group of people each year with some overlap.

Next year we’ll make sure the people who want to play football play, and those who don’t will sit.  One idea is to play the game early evening on the Friday so it’s cooler and people have more energy.  The first game unofficially ended in a tie.  It was Frandsen, Armstrong, and Falko vs. Apel, Blake, and Adams (Apel was not allowed to run). Chuck and Shad made it later.  It’ll be a real game by 2011.

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Eye Contact: Overrated and Misunderstood?

August 6, 2009

There is a huge misconception that if a person doesn’t look someone else in the eyes, it means that that person is not being honest or trustworthy.   There is nothing inherent about looking someone in the eye that indicates honesty.  Different cultures have different norms and social morays.

People from countries such as China and Peru do not normally look people in the eyes as part of their culture.  So for people to assume that when people don’t look them in the eyes, they are telling lies, that is obviously not always the case.

Another case in which this old belief doesn’t hold true is for people with autism.  For a variety of reasons – looking someone in the eyes can be too much stimuli or too overwhelming, listening and looking at the same time may be too hard because of sensory overload, or social skills such as understanding what people do in a particular culture may not come naturally – people with autism often have a hard time looking others in the eyes.  Here’s one explanation of how some people with autism comprehend spoken language: http://www.aspieweb.net/video-why-autistic-people-dont-look-into-eyes.

If you want to find out if someone is telling the truth or not, go to www.lyintamer.com.  Janine Driver is one of the authorities on the subject.  Rather than use eye contact or whether someone touches his or her face as an indicator of truth, establish a norm for the person’s style of speaking and body language,and then see if the person talks or acts differently than they usually do.  That can be a better tipoff on honesty than whether a person is looking you in the eye or not.

In fact, the idea that there is a correlation between eye contact and “truthiness,” as Stephen Colbert would say, has been around so long that those who wish to beat the system have used that as a way to say, “See, I’m telling you the truth.”  One time an ex-boss of mine looked me in the eyes nonstop without any breaks.  Instead of thinking he was telling me the truth because of the nonstop eye contact, I perceived it as him intending for me to perceive that he was telling the truth.  If anything, it is awkward to constantly look someone in the eye without any breaks.

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