Football 2.0

I awoke last Friday to thunderstorms in Las Vegas. The sky was overcast, the ground wet, and the light artificial. I boarded a plane and emerged in Iowa at the end of a perfect Indian Summer day: the sky was crystal clear and robin-egg blue. The light from the slowly setting sun illuminated the farms and fields with a bright enriching glow. The contrast between the dull, hungover depression of Vegas and the vibrant energy of the heartland could not have been more apparent.



Following my week in Vegas, I was happy to get back home. Besides playing with my daughter, I had two ER shifts to work. I was scheduled to be locked up in a plexiglass cubicle during the most exciting three hours of football Saturday night: Oregon- Stanford, Alabama-Florida, USC-Washington, Iowa- Penn State, and Boston College- Notre Dame. With the Iowa game raging just across the street, we expected to be flooded with patients before and after, but be relatively quiet during the game. In reality, the ER was surprisingly calm the entire time- all our patients were too busy watching football.



Enter the blessing of new football technologies.



First, I must give credit to the amazing website Dent Earl has developed. Wow. I am discovering new, wonderful features of that site on a daily basis. I love the graphical analysis of the results and picks. I love the continuous updates during game time. I even appreciate the rotating languages of salutations on the home page. DEARL, you rock! I kept the site open and watched as my picks went down in flames one by one.



Another amazing advance in football entertainment is ESPN3. When I saw the ads for it, I was highly skeptical. I assumed its was yet another subscription service that may or may not work in your area and was not worth the money. I am thrilled to report that I was wrong- not only was I able to get it on my local carrier, but the service is free. That’s right: free. The quality of streaming picture was perfect. And I was even able to select two games to project simultaneously. Even better, the site works in our hospital, behind the vaunted hospital IT firewall.



So there I was, saving lives, curing disease, teaching students, and I hardly missed a snap of the USC-Washington debacle! Different year, different stadium, same kicker and same result. Why didn’t I pick Washington?

Fight On,

Hans



PS: To all the Nitany Lions out there: I am sorry Iowa beat you again. But at least this time the result was never in doubt. The Hawkeyes came through on my promise to put the game out of reach early. I am sure Penn State is happy they get a break from the Hawks for a few years.