Can we leave Tiger Woods alone already?

Since when were professional athletes required to provide every iota of information regarding their personal lives? It's really irritating to me when I see that the mediots are still bothering Tiger Woods, trying to get him to give more information about the car accident he was in a few days ago.

Listen, media morons: he shouldn't have to tell you anything for several reasons.

1. He barely made it out of his driveway when the accident occurred.

2. He wasn't even going fast enough to deploy the airbags¹.

3. According to the police reports, alcohol was not a factor in the accident.

So, based on the information I've gathered on the accident, it appears that Woods just had a brain-fart and fell asleep at the wheel (figuratively, not literally) and ran into a fire hydrant and a tree. It's not that big of a deal. It's not like he pulled a Donte Stallworth and got popped for a DUI after killing a pedestrian.

My advice to all the mediots: leave the man alone. He made a mistake that normal, non-famous people make every single freaking day. So, instead of beating a dead horse, how about going out and finding real news stories to report for a change?

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1 - According to the information I've seen, he had to be traveling faster than 33 MPH to deploy the air bag on contact. Since the airbags didn't deploy, he couldn't have been going faster than 30 MPH -- not exactly a reckless driving case if you ask me.

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Gamecocks take care of business against Clemson

Nobody gave the Gamecocks a chance to win today¹. After all, Clemson is the #18 team in the nation and is preparing to take on Georgia Tech next week in the ACC Championship game, while South Carolina had lost 4 of their previous 5 games² and looked ready to have yet another end of season collapse³.

But, today the Gamecocks wouldn't be denied their chance at victory. Other than Clemson's CJ Spiller returning the opening kickoff for a touchdown, the Gamecocks dominated the Tigers in every aspect of the game en route to a 34-17 victory in front of a sellout crowd at Williams-Brice Stadium in Columbia.

The Gamecocks out-gained the Tigers in offense 388-260⁴ (including a whopping 223-48 margin in rushing yards). The Gamecocks won the time of possession battle 36:31-23:29, forced more turnovers than the Tigers (3-2), and capitalized on the turnovers they forced by scoring 14 points off Clemson's miscues.

Clemson made a valiant effort at a comeback in the 4th quarter⁵, but were unable to get the job done and the Gamecocks came out victorious for the first time since 2006, and for just the 3rd time in the past 10 years.

South Carolina's regular season is over now, but they must wait to find out if they will be invited to a bowl game⁶, and if so, who their opponent will be.

But regardless of which bowl they play in and who they play, and even regardless of whether they win or lose their bowl game, the Gamecocks (and their fans) can enjoy the fact that they won the battle of the Palmetto state and own the bragging rights in this historic rivalry⁷ until next season when it plays out again.

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1 - Nobody = me.

2 - Carolina's previous 5 games: Loss at Alabama, Win vs. Vanderbilt, Loss at Tennessee, Loss at Arkansas, Loss vs. Florida

3 - 2007: lost 5 straight to end season, 2008: lost 3 straight to end season

4 - Total offensive yards.

5 - Carolina had went into the prevent defense at the time.

6 - They are bowl eligible, it's just a matter of which bowl wants them.

7 - A rivalry that has been played continuously since 1909.

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A different perspective on advertising

Author's Note: As you read this blog, please keep in mind that there are footnotes in the text proper. I learned how to create superscript font in HTML, so I am going to start using footnotes instead of using * as my "look, I have more to talk about" symbol.

If you've been to my blog before and are one of those people who pays attention to details when visiting a website, you may notice that I no longer have any advertisements on my blog (save for the "Add Firefox" link, which is different -- and I will explain that later).

For those of you who have known/followed my blog since the beginning, this change to ad-free status may surprise you since I've had advertisements posted here since the genesis of this site. I'm sure you're wondering why I took down my ads and put up the cute little owl (yeah, I said cute little owl -- get over it) that says "Ad Free Blog". Well, there are several reasons why, so sit back and allow me to explain.

* * *

I wasn't making money from the ads anyway.

I know, I know -- it's not like I had planned on retiring to Hawaii or some other tropical environment from the advertising revenue made on this blog, but I wasn't making any money at all. Seriously, I have had this blog for 13 months now, and I haven't even made $20 from advertising. (I am not making this up or trying to be modest -- I have honestly made less than $20 from advertising on this blog.)

I don't know if the ads were in the wrong place on my page, if they were the wrong ads for my readership, or if I really made thousands of dollars and I have been screwed out of revenue. I really don't know -- but it doesn't matter. I'm a smart enough person to know that if something isn't working properly (or at all), then a change has to be made, so I'm making a change by removing ads from my blog.

As for the "Add Firefox" button: I don't get paid to have the link on my blog. I truly believe that everyone should use Firefox as their web browser, and I have no problems promoting it because in my humble opinion it is the best web browser available. I'm a part of a small community known as Spread Firefox, and the main goal of the community is to -- you guessed it -- spread Firefox. I think if I get enough people to download Firefox I get a t-shirt or something, but I don't get any monetary compensation for having the link on my page (no pay-per-click or anything of that nature), so in my book it's not an ad¹.

I've read some convincing arguments for the ad-free movement.

There are several bloggers on my reading list who have ad-free blogs, and they make very good cases for not using advertisements. While their individual reasons are different, they share the same belief that advertisements detract from the art-form and the individuality of a blog. Also, there are ad companies that request advertising on blogs that have nothing to do with the products they are trying to advertise. (For example, a Red Sox blog I read frequently mentions getting ad requests from a company selling Yankees tickets. Why in the hell would a Red Sox blog advertise for the Yankees?)

I get emails all the time from people who "love my blog -- TCP Chronicles, and notice that my blog fits perfectly with what they're trying to sell" and want to advertise on my site. Well, that's great, but if you loved my blog as you claim you do, you would (a) know that it's The Couch Potato Chronicles, not TCP Chronicles², and (b) know that my sports blog has nothing to do with mountain-climbing equipment.

It devalues my writing.

This is expanding on the "convincing arguments" section. I blog for me³. I don't blog for anything else -- for money, fame, prestige, or any other good sounding word that you can come up with. Me. That's it. I blog simply because I like to blog, and having advertisements on my site has made me feel like I'm blogging for money, and I don't like that feeling -- it makes me feel pressured to write on a certain day or a certain number of times per week, and it starts feeling like a job. (Not that I wouldn't mind having a job where I'm a writer -- but that would be different than having a personal blog. I hope you get the point I'm trying to make here.)

I feel like I have to keep updating my content so [insert web search-engine mogul here]⁴ will like me and keep giving me good ad revenue. I don't like feeling that way. I like blogging about something, and then saying "hey, I wrote something that's important, that makes me feel good about myself". Blogging is supposed to be fun, and doing it for anything other than the enjoyment of communicating with others devalues the entire process of blogging and makes me not want to do it anymore.

The ads made my blog feel cluttered.

I never said anything about it, and I tried to avoid thinking about it, but the ads made my blog feel cluttered to me. (Especially the banner at the top of the page, it just made the blog look weird to me -- I really can't explain it.)

* * *

Please note that I'm not trying to be preachy or condescending with this blog. If you are a blogger and you feel that you want/need to have ads on your page, you have just as much right to display ads as I have to not display them. I'm not going to boycott anyone's blog because they choose to have advertisements on their site -- I visit blogs to read the content that is posted anyway, not to be wowed by the ads.

I will say this though -- think about why you have ads on your blog⁵. If you feel that you have them on there for good reason, then by all means, keep them up and rake in the money as it comes to you. But, if you think that going ad-free may be something you would be interested in, you can find links to the ad-free banners here.

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1 - It's my blog, so my book is the one that counts here.

2 - I chose the URL tcpchronicles.com for my blog because thecouchpotatochronicles.com, couchpotatochronicles.com, and couchpotato.com were either (a) already taken, or (b) way too freaking long to type out. Besides, it should be pretty self-explanatory that when you visit tcpchronicles.com and immediately see a banner that says "The Couch Potato Chronicles" at the top of the page, tcp is an abbreviation for The Couch Potato. Please tell me that it's easy to figure out, and that advertisers don't know because they're not truly reading my blog -- I really hope I'm right about this, because if not I worry about the society my children will grow up in.

3 - Please don't stop reading my blog because you think I'm being a selfish prick. I'm really not trying to be one, and I hope it doesn't come across that way.

4 - Google, for those of you who didn't know.

5 - Again, not trying to sound preachy. And, I just felt like putting another footnote in here since I figured out how to create superscript font with HTML -- it really doesn't take much to keep me entertained, as you can tell.

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Are NASCAR drivers really athletes?

I used to follow NASCAR pretty regularly (being in the south, it's hard not to). But, I have veered away from the racing scene over the past two years, but from time to time I like to catch a few laps of a race, and sometimes if I have nothing else to do, I will still waste a few hours on Sunday watching cars go in circles.

For those of you who don't watch NASCAR, you probably don't know much about how the championship system works, or who any of the non-famous drivers are. But, if you have ever watched ESPN, I'm sure you've at least heard the name Jimmie Johnson spoken at least once in the last four years.

In case you haven't, Jimmie Johnson has won 4 consecutive NASCAR Sprint Cup Championships (no one has ever done that before in NASCAR, and only one other driver has even won 3 straight, and that was in the 1970s).

The fact that Johnson has been so dominant over the past 4 years and has done something that no one before him has ever accomplished brings up an interesting topic of debate for sports fans: Should NASCAR (and auto racing altogether) really be considered a sport, and are NASCAR drivers really athletes?

An article by Yahoo! Sports blogger Jay Busbee gives a pretty solid argument that NASCAR drivers are not only athletes, but some of the best athletes in the world today.

Busbee's argument:

On Sunday night, Jimmie Johnson clinched his fourth straight Sprint Cup championship, and in so doing cemented his place among the greats of the sport. But he's done more than that; he's now propelled himself above and beyond NASCAR. He's the most successful athlete currently competing right now, and it's not even close.

Were this Tiger Woods snagging his fourth straight Masters, or Kobe Bryant clinching his fourth straight ring, or Tom Brady capturing his fourth straight Super Bowl, you'd be getting their greatness rammed down your throat 24/7. But this is NASCAR; the sports fan public knows they can't throw a pass 50 yards or hit a golf ball 300, but they figure they know how to drive fast and turn left. How hard could it be for Johnson to win some of those little races, huh?

Answer: plenty. Put aside the physical demands -- the intense heat of the car's interior, the physical strength needed to wheel a car for 500 miles. Even running a race -- to say nothing of winning one, or winning an entire season -- requires the mental discipline, ultrafast-twitch reflexes and utter, stone-cold fearlessness that only the best athletes possess. (And don't even start the whole "the car's the star, not the driver" nonsense. Equipment is a key element of every sport. When's the last time you saw a baseball player succeed without a bat, or a football player succeed without pads?)

So, with the playing field leveled, let's break down why Johnson is the top athlete at work today. For starters, you could argue that the level of competition in every single sport right now is the highest it's ever been. Kids train practically from birth to play one sport; sophisticated training techniques make today's marginal athletes the equivalent of yesterday's All-Stars.

Even so, Johnson has established a four-year gap between himself and his nearest competitors that's greater than any other athlete in any other sport. Nobody in any league is a prohibitive favorite; even Tiger is vulnerable these days.

Plenty of people both inside and outside NASCAR are dismissing Johnson's accomplishments, and that's too bad. They're missing out on history here. Nobody else is riding as high these days, in any sport, anywhere. And anybody who thinks it's certain to end in 2010 ... well, didn't we think that coming into 2007, 2008 and 2009?

Bandwagoners, here's a heads-up: push aside your Yankees caps, Patriots jerseys and Cowboys jackets and make room for some of Jimmie Johnson's gear. (He's the 48.) If you're the type of person who wants to jump on board a proven winning train, you've got one right here waiting for you, ready to roll.

For everyone else, take a moment -- just a moment, that's all -- to applaud what Johnson's doing here. You're not going to see anything like this again anytime soon.

I personally agree with the article. I think NASCAR is a sport, and its drivers are some of the best athletes in the world -- but I want to know what you think. Are NASCAR drivers athletes? Feel free to discuss in the comments section below.

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