This Sunday, New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning will become the dorkiest athlete to ever appear in a major sports championship game. The whole Southern drawl, shoulder shrug, marry-your-college-sweetheart thing - it's geekier than David Eckstein. In honor of the Little Bro, we count down the dorkiest things about sports:
10. NFL kickers: In the sport that has come to embody our nation's love of competition and raw physicality, kickers are the delicate flower of America's sport. They're on the field for a maximum of 12 plays per game, and there's actually a rule against touching them. Remember that time Bill Gramatica tore his ACL celebrating a field goal? In the first quarter of a game? For more information, see No. 7.
9. The office stat rat: You know the guy. The water-cooler talker who pulls out rebounds statistics from the previous night's Murray State-Southeast Missouri game. He's also often the guy who wears short-sleeved dress shirts with a tie that comes down to his navel. It's actually like that ESPN 360 commercial where the one guy says "Are you challenging my fanhood?" and the other guy says "Does your fanhood need to be challenged?" Just like that.
8. Male cheerleaders: They try to throw around excuses about "scholarships" and "being able to look up girls' skirts," but real men are in only one of three places during any sporting event: on the court/field, drunk and screaming in the stands or drunk and screaming on the couch/at the bar.
7. Unnecessary facial protection: This includes Richard Hamilton's facemask, the lone bar for NFL kickers and punters (Is it just so they don't feel left out? Or so they have a way to carry their helmet as they walk off the field?), and anyone who wears sunglasses when there's no sun. Which brings us to...
6. Poker players: They're geeky because they violated the above sunglasses rule, but that's just the start. These are people who can tell you the odds of pulling a red seven at any given point. They have literally memorized the percentages of every number divided by 52. You know the only way they got that good was a lot of late-night online poker.
5. NESCAC mascots: Yes, this has been covered in nearly every Daily matriculation issue, but seriously. The Lord Jeffs: named after a stuffy British general who was most famous for being linked to the Indian-blanket-smallpox scandal (Don't believe us? Wikipedia it); The Bantams: a fancy word for "fighting cocks," which is both geeky and juvenilishly delightful. The Ephs: that's not even a thing! It's a nickname! That would be like us being called the Charlies (Charles Tufts. Look it up). And the Camels: forget that camels are not, as far as we know, native to coastal Connecticut, but if you're going to break from history and basic environmental logic, at least go with something cool.
4. Bringing your glove to a baseball game: We won't take credit for this one. Instead, we'll put the props where they're due, to ESPN wonderboy Bill Simmons: "If you're older than 18 and you still bring your glove to games, you're a loser." Be a man and barehand it.
3. Caddies: Knowing already that golf isn't exactly a taxing physical activity, how geeky do you have to be to follow a golfer around for 18 holes carrying his clubs?
2. Ballboys older than age 16 at tennis matches: Let's be honest here: if you're old enough to drive yourself to the tennis tournament, you really ought to just move 15 feet back and be in the stands as a spectator, like a normal person. Put another way, Kramer from "Seinfeld" thought being a "ball man" was a good idea, and who's geekier than him?
1. College marching bands: We would like to point out that the greatest band highlight of all time involves a band's premature celebration of victory ultimately contributing to its team's own downfall. And a trombone player got leveled at the end of it all to boot.
-By Sapna Bansil, Thomas Eagerand Liz Hoffman
