While I'm not leaving the beloved “Meatballs In The Morning” to start some stupid knockoff called “Bratwurst In The Afternoon” or something, I am going to be pulling back quite a bit and wanted to tell everyone why; I'll be a teaching assistant for Kent State University's Department of Anthropology (Editor's note: Ken't Read Ken't Write, Kent State). This means grading papers, holding office hours, and writing my thesis (on the impact of war in Palestine on children, in case you're interested) in order to get my master's degree. It's an incredible honor for me to represent Kent State and the State of Ohio in this way. The problem is, in order to truly focus on the task at hand I have to scale back some of the fun stuff. Now for some behind the scenes stuff that I couldn't get to.
The article that was the overwhelming favorite of readers was the response to Troy Polamalu's brother-in-law, Alex Holmes. I wrote one article saying that Troy wasn't the best safety in the NFL, based on an analysis I had done (I didn't know until later that Peter King posted an article that same day saying Troy isn't a top level NFL player). I came to the conclusion that Ed Reed was the best. As many of you know, Alex absolutely flipped. I mention this because there was a funny after-story that never quite made it onto MITM.
Not only did Alex flip out to me, he also told a few of his buddies to do the same. Travis Johnson (of the San Diego Chargers at the time) tweeted “Jackass... you don't know what ur talking about”. He also chimed in by calling me “stupid” and said “Play the game not on the wii and we might let you say hi.” He would later backtrack after I notified him that I defended the NFL players regarding the lockout in previous articles.
After my response was posted, Alex took some flak and deleted all of his tweets about me (the phrase “bottom feeder” was my favorite). Then, the NFL players chimed in with their Top 100 players, and sure enough they voted Ed Reed above Troy Polamalu. To this day, Alex and Travis have never responded to my request for comment.
Looking to the future, I still have no idea what my less frequent articles will be like, because I've had so much fun writing in different styles. Live blogging the NBA Finals game was just as fun as writing about the Kentucky Derby. If you have any ideas, hit me up. If you want to follow me on my path to political and social writing, find me on twitter. Either way, thanks for reading and reacting.
-Gus Rafeedie
-Gus Rafeedie
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