Speaking of Sports…

April 1, 2007 — Just in time for the end of basketball season and nowhere near the beginning of summer football, SD Times will debut a new sports column called, cleverly enough, “Speaking of Sports,” wrapping up all the action of your favorite college and professional teams.

Written in a purely gonzo journalistic style by new columnist Thompson S. Hunter, this won’t be your father’s sports column.

You’ll feel like you have a courtside seat as the Mildcats from MIT determine the angle of elevation required for a successful free throw when a 6-11 center is shooting 15 feet from a 10-foot high basket—and then write an algorithm to automate the process and remove the human drama! Then, Hunter will make you feel the agony of defeat when MIT’s potential game-winning basket is nullified by an improper procedure call.

“Speaking of Sports” will make you thrill to the action when the No. 3.14159 car from Cal-Poly wins the Indianapolis 500 by an amazing 350 laps, using a jet engine customized to get a 1966 Chevy Impala moving at Mach 1! Only “Speaking of Sports” can catch you up in the winner’s circle, and make sense of an interview given by a driver whose face has been subjected to 7gs of force.

In his debut column, to perhaps appear someday in these pages, Hunter rips the covers off the scandalous practice of blood-doping among programmers. He writes: “With the finish line still nowhere in sight, Sanjay hoisted another Red Bull and drained the can in one gulp, then smashed it into his forehead and began an eardrum-busting diatribe about the shortcomings of his teammates, who by this time were on the down side of peaking from their own stimulants, heads nodding into their keyboards and writing ]]]]]]]]]]]]]]], their self-imposed sleep deprivation getting them no closer to reaching their goal than they had been before they started drinking.”

The clarity, the pacing, the stream of consciousness babbling…you won’t get writing like that anywhere else. Why would you want to? So look out for “Speaking of Sports”…it’s addicting!