Mailbag 2/3

Which technological breakthrough would most benefit humankind in the long run? - DressHerInWhiteAndGold

Ben: Mass expansion and acceptance of more clean, renewable energy.

Jake: Theranos Hyperlink Ummmm I’m not sure off the top of my head. I love what advanced composites have done for our ability to build better, stronger, and lighter.

Jake P.: I’ll agree with Ben here. We need clean, renewable, and reliable energy yesterday. It’s crucial that we invest more in this critical infrastructure.

Do any of y’all do mock drafts? - Notwima13

Ben: We did a site-wide mock draft last year that was a lot of fun, so we will probably try to do something similar this year.

Jake: Am I good at them? Heck nah.

Jake P.: I need to go back and see how many picks I got right. Probably not many.

Nishant: I’m way prouder than I should be about correctly predicting the Dolphins’ and Chargers’ first picks in our 2020 mock. (Teams that needed QBs ended up taking QBs in the top 10. Who knew?)

Who will be at opening day? - Bill Brockman

Jake: Me! I walk by every day and wish I was in the stadium, even just to watch practice. Today, after I got out of lab, it was almost cruel how beautiful of a day it was. Perfect for a game.

With UNC as the Benz game, are you happy with that? Would you have preferred a different team? If so which one? - CTJacket

Ben: I don’t like it, personally. I think North Carolina is going to be really good, so Tech has a good chance of getting stomped in this game. I would have preferred to see a bigger rival, like Virginia Tech.

Jake: Not a fan of it being UNC. They’re pretty good. I also don’t like moving rivalry games out of Bobby Dodd (so that’s a nope on VPISU or Athens) and we would never move NIU or KSU there, so what does that even leave? Pitt? BC? The other options are probably even more meh.

Jake P.: UNC probably brings the biggest attendance. VPISU would probably be the pick in a year that they’re supposed to be good. The GTAA has a lot of debt they need to get situated with.

Nishant: The Benz series has always been about carving out as much revenue as possible without pissing off too much of the fanbase. If attendance restrictions are loosened a bit, then as Jake II said, UNC will bring in the most attendance.

Hello Guys,

Hope you are doing well today. I’m doing alright, thanks for asking. had a nice relaxing weekend. Played some disc golf, donated some blood, Ate some Girl Scout cookies. I also tried those knock off cookies at the store to see if I could save some money, but they’re just not the same.

Anyway, one of my best friends and I were talking this week; we realized neither of us had been to the state of Nebraska. This wasn’t much of a realization, I can’t think of too many people I know who have been to Nebraska in general who weren’t corn farmers. But said friend did bring up that if GT got to the college baseball world series then we would have to go to Omaha Nebraska to attend.

This got me thinking, where is the weirdest place that you might end up going because of a sporting event. Obviously there is a North American tinge to this, because most of us are into sports in the U.S., but feel free to diversify if you can think of a unique one. I did go to Ireland to see GT take on BC, although I’m not sure I would consider that “strange” per se since I would’ve probably gone to Ireland anyway. Has to be some place you otherwise wouldn’t even consider visiting, if not for the sporting event. For example I have never had a personal desire to go to watch Pakistan v India in cricket, but I could see some people being into that (no idea where that is held either, so maybe that’s a bad example if its held someplace interesting).

I guess the strangest one I might be willing to go see is the Ice golfing tournament in greenland (I’m not even gonna try to spell the name, just google it). If I’m being realistic I’d say Cincinnati Ohio to watch the Braves play the Reds. I have nothing against Cincinnati, I just cannot think of a single reason why I would want to go there if not for a sporting event being held there.

Sincerely,

Definitely not Andy Dalton (submitted via email)

Ben: I don’t know how realistic it is, but I would love to go to some country on the other side of the world to watch any Olympic sport.

Jake: Wow I have so many ways I could go with this. In fact, I, notably not a fan of the Pittsburgh Steelers nor the Cincinnati Bengals, did, in fact, get dragged to the Monday Night Football game in Cincinnati this past December. It was random. And both times I’ve been to Cincinnati have been for sports. Huh. I have, in fact, been to Omaha, Nebraska, to see the College World Series as a freshman in high school despite this both being back in the “Jake doesn’t know jack about college baseball” days and neither of my parents’ alma maters having been in it. I think the most obscure sporting event I’ve been to was the World Championships of Snowmobiling (not sure what the exact name was though) in Eagle River, Wisconsin, in several feet of snow in the middle of January of some winter years back. I mean, I shill for the Northwoods as much as any guy, because it’s an awesome place to visit, but this was pretty off the beaten path. That and my family’s annual trips to watch quarter mile dirt track stock car racing in LaSalle, Illinois every Fourth of July weekend probably take the cake, but that’s only a hop, skip, and a jump from my family who live down there. Now that I think of it, I’ve got some pretty esoteric entries in my sports history. In terms of new ones, I think it would be really awesome to see a college hockey game at one of the schools that are really good and it’s literally their only D1 sport, like somewhere in North Dakota or the UP of Michigan or something. That’s definitely on my bucket list.

Nishant: Long story time first. The day after the GT-BC game in Dublin was the day of the All-Ireland Hurling Final, which was one of Ireland’s biggest sporting events of the year. (For the unaware, this is hurling summed up in one truly glorious gif.) After we watched it, I dragged my friends to a nearby sporting goods store to pick out my new favorite team and buy their jersey. Two sales guys asked what I was looking for and then—in a moment I will forever appreciate—each promptly started trying to recruit me to be a fan of their own favorite clubs, which respectively were Mayo and Dublin. The Mayo fan’s pitch was that his club was famous for doing really well all the way up to the very end and then finding a way to choke it all away... and it was at that moment that I knew I had found my Irish sporting home. (He wasn’t kidding either. Mayo hasn’t won the senior Gaelic football championship since 1951 and has a curse story to rival the Cubs’ old billy goat curse. And in the last nine years alone, they’ve lost in the finals four times and lost in the semifinals twice.) So in summary, the most off-the-wall event on my sports bucket list is a hurling or Gaelic football match in a sparsely populated farming county in northwest Ireland. I hope I get the chance to do it someday.