Turning down free food is just plain rude

We all know that diet and exercise work but are boring and that really skinny people are obsessively disciplined with frightening personality traits. Most of us reside somewhere in the expanding middle, our stop signs pop up but sometimes we drive through them motivated by pleasure or the social pressures of etiquette, because to turn down free food is just plain rude and reflects badly on the greater group if everyone else at a tailgate is getting after it and you’re eating an apple.

Last weekend in the Maryland press box, a hovel with a reputation for putting on quite a spread, I had to sign for a Jack-in-the-Box type bag, including listing my media affiliation. Inside this bag was a piece of cold fried chicken blanketed by a white roll, a bag of potato chips and a brownie with nuts. I am a fan of bad food, but the chicken was salty dog nasty and kicked by a gooey, nut-encrusted brownie and diet Pepsi I just felt gross at game time like a lineman after pre-game monkey roll drills.

TERPS OF THE WEEK - Prior to the game, while caressing a brownie with a jagged bite mark, I broke the rule of no cheering in the press box by going volume medium “Hey there’s Lydia! Look, she’s a Terrapin of the Week!”

You Delaware scribes know Lydia Hastings from Rehoboth/Dewey and Cape Henlopen. Now a freshman on the women’s soccer team here in College Park, Lydia’s image was flashed on the scoreboard along with teammate Annesia Faulkner, and Dan Cook caught the picture as other photographers looked at him like, “Who shoots the scoreboard?”

BABY MIKE - I brought my nephew Mike Frederick out to Cape football practice last Friday to talk to the team for 10 minutes. Mike, a Big 33 high school player in Pennsylvania, was a four-year starter at Virginia where he won the Dooley Award in 1994 as the best college football player in the state and was MVP in the Independence Bowl.

Mike played five years in the NFL for the Browns, Ravens and Titans – Super Bowl team - as a defensive end. Mike is a great communicator and when you’re 6-foot-6 and somewhere between 270 and 290 pounds it isn’t hard to hold the attention of high school football guys. After addressing the team Mike worked with the defensive linemen showing them how to elevate chicken fighting to a martial art.

TOO MUCH FOOTBALL - I don’t think there is any doubt that as Labor Day weekend marked the beginning of the college football season there was already too much football on television which is why the bonus room of your dreams should resemble mission control of NASA.

The one-television sports guy is just kidding himself. And if your spouse or live-in sou mate has already left because you’re living vicariously through the lives of others just ride down Route 1 and pick up a couple of Russian girls - they are all over the place. You can start your own fantasy league and I wish I knew what I was talking about.

FRESHMAN WATCH - You know the expression, “I’ll drop you like a bad habit!” Well, college freshman away home for the first time that doesn’t include a resort town police station will wake up every day this first semester steadily getting fatter but also for some ramping up their pattern of bad to no study habits.

Athletic coaches vow to keep track of these high risk recruits, but sometimes they have their own bad habits to overcome like sleeping late or entertaining their spouse with shadow animals on the bedroom wall. I wish everyone the best of luck - especially those of you coming home to Delaware Tech. You know why that’s not funny? I think you do!

OTHER SPORTS - I know scholastic soccer, volleyball and field hockey have begun their practice seasons so what’s your point? When games begin this weekend I will be there especially if they are home. Field hockey opens at home Saturday, Sept. 6 versus Middletown while the volleyball team is at St. Thomas More. Boys soccer is set to begin the season on Monday, Sept. 8 hosting Wilmington Christian.

Legends Stadium is now professionally and permanently lined for field hockey and the first under the lights game is scheduled for Tuesday, Sept. 9 with the junior varsity game slated to beginning at 5:30 followed by the varsity game.

SNIPPETS - The Phillies are still in the NL East race and a spot in the playoffs just a game behind the New York Mets going into a three-game series at the Washington Nationals, followed by a three game set in New York against the Mets. The Mets are in Milwaukee for three games which is not good for them before hosting Philadelphia.
Troy Cannatelli, former Cape lineman, is listed as a 6-foot-2, 255-pound sophomore offensive lineman for the Wesley College Wolverines. I saw Troy this summer and he looks a lot bigger than that and I expect he may see some action. I had forgotten he was homecoming king.