If You Can't Play Sports, Write About Them Instead

First off I want to send a sincere thank you to Chris Gates and Ted Glover for the invite to contribute as a front-page writer for the Daily Norsemen.  Please allow myself to introduce...myself.  Like many of you here I stumbled upon the DN sometime in 2007 when it was still connected to Yahoo! Sports and I was a lurker for many years.  I finally found the courage to setup an account and just started commenting in 2011...that led to fanposting...and when my first fanpost got enough "recs" to be moved to the front of the line it was like an addiction!  And I was overjoyed to have some of my stuff moved to the front page over the years.  I've been writing ever since and I have no intention of stopping now.  So thank-you to everyone who has read and rec'd my stuff, and thanks again to Chris and Ted for the invite.  I couldn't be more excited to contribute to what I genuinely believe is the best damn Vikings website on the internet.  You all make this community what it is, and I'm just happy to be a part of it.

So what can you expect from me in the future?  Well, hopefully more of the same passionate banter, questionable- yet-thought-provoking analysis...and Star Wars references.   Anyway, I've got a few ideas already brewing and we could always use more fantasy football content.  I know not everyone is a fan of fantasy football, but many of you are and we should have a dedicated outlet to discuss it every week!  Frigga's Fantasy Football may be reborn in some newer form.  I'll be continuing the Longshot Vikings Series every off-season as that was a big hit this past off-season, and you can also expect to get my statistical analysis throughout the regular season on various topics of all-things Vikings. I'm very passionate about the Minnesota Vikings, and I hope to share that passion with all of you here.

I would feel remiss if I didn't share a bit about my background as an athlete and writer, since this is a sports blog after all.  First off, I come from Irish heritage.  Therefore, I am short...and small.  I was not good at "sports".  I enjoyed playing most sports as a kid, but I just wasn't any good at them.  In Junior High I went out for basketball and we had so many kids we had four teams (A, B, C and D).  I was on the D team...benched.  I did play football one year in 8^th grade and I was a "wingback" on offense, which I always assumed was a made-up position for an 8^th grade kid that was 4'10", and 90 pounds.  My duties were essentially to run the play in from the sidelines, and then just shadow the ball-carrier.  As it turns out, a Wingback is actually a thing!  On defense I was a safety, which also meant that I rarely saw any action since pretty much every play was a running play, and almost no one ran for more than about 2-5 yards per play.  I do still remember one play in particular though.  We were playing a team that had an adult sized running back (who had clearly hit his growth spurt early) and he was just mauling our defensive line all afternoon.  On one play he actually broke through the entire defense and no one could bring him down.  It came down to him versus just me.  I was the last line of defense.  He didn't really have any moves other than just "run straight ahead and you're-so-big-no-one-can-tackle-you", but I positioned myself as best as I could to make the tackle...and dammit if I didn't make that tackle to save the touchdown.  I also got the wind knocked out of me, and twisted my ankle in the process and had to sit out the rest of the game.  Later in high school I was the quintessential band geek, and I actually hated football.  I think I was resentful of all the attention the football team got, and the fact that I was forced to participate in the marching band as a result.  I hated marching band.  But as I got older I started to follow it a little more, and when I moved to the Twin Cities I started following the Vikings.  The rest is history as they say.  So that pretty much sums up my experience with football.  In other words, I'm sure that I'll be very wrong about stuff from time to time, to feel free to educate me!

These days, I'm a musician and college professor.  I'm not a professional statistician, but I feel comfortable breaking down a spreadsheet of numbers, and I teach music theory to undergraduates during the day (and sneak in page views of the DN between classes!).  So, mathematical and analytical thinking are second nature to me and I like to think I can logic my way out of a paper-bag.  Yes, I have a doctorate...no, I cannot save your life if you have a threatening illness or injury.  I have one of those pesky "academic" doctorates which are mostly useless in real world situations.  But if you want to argue about whether a Haydn Minuett and Trio is in Rounded Binary Form or Ternary Form, and if that middle section is really a stand-alone B section or a smaller "digression", or if you want to talk shop about all things trumpet then I'm your guy.  Otherwise...you're on your own in figuring out how to mend that broken leg or cure that foodborn illness you picked up.  But as a writer, I've been published in a few academic journals and I've been blogging about different stuff since the early aughts (Diaryland, Yahoo! 360, MySpace, Facebook, Wordpress, etc).  I'd like to think I have a bizarre mix of internet slang and sophistication, so take that Mr. Hoity-Toity Internet Commenter Guy!

Anyway, since I was never really any good at playing sports, I'm more than happy to be writing about them instead.  I'm just a huge fan of the Vikings like all of you here and proud to be a part of this awesome community.  Oh, and if there is anything in particular you all would like to see me write about, feel free to let me know.  I'll get write on that.