I think it’s time to phase out bowl games. With opt outs, the transfer portal and and the playoff, they are an unnecessary relic. Switch to a 16-team playoff. Let everyone practice through December.
Sports
Gamecocks. Cubs. F1. WNBA. NFL.
I started watching F1 this season with the Canadian Grand Prix and adopted McLaren as my team. So cool to see them win the Constructors’ Championship. And overall, such a great season for me to start with… so much fun to watch.
I think professional wrestling might have more consistent rules than Formula 1.
Hey Siri. Play Sandstorm.
Down goes Clemson. South Carolina’s offense isn’t always pretty, but they fight to the end. LaNorris Sellers is a winner. 🐓🏈
As a McLaren fan, it was a fun F1 Sprint Race this morning. I imagine it was boring for everyone else though.
Just saw a headline that SMU is going be in the ACC Championship. I’ll be honest. I completely forgot SMU was in the ACC.
South Carolina’s offense isn’t always pretty, but they’ve got heart. Go Gamecocks! 🏈
SEC football this season is incredible.
The NY Times on the White Sox’ historically bad season:
Baseball is a cruel game. Other sports cap your suffering at a reasonable number. In the N.F.L., the most games you could ever lose in a season is 17. In the N.B.A., you could theoretically lose 82. (The record is 73.) But baseball’s season is relentless: 162 games long… If you lose your grip, as the White Sox did immediately… you can fall through an eternal void of losing. And every day, in the middle of that falling, reporters will stick microphones in your face to ask you how it feels to be plunging through the eternal void.
Today was my 10th race watching F1. I started with the Canadian Grand Prix. Since then, we’ve had 7 winners from 4 different teams. I think I picked the right time to start watching. What a fun sport. I’m hooked.
ESPN is bringing Gameday to Columbia next weekend for South Carolina and LSU. Campus is going to be busy this week.
Great win for my Gamecocks today against Kentucky. The defense looks stout, even if the offense is a work in progress.
Papaya ≠ Orange?
8/25/24 • 1 min read
My daughter has gotten us all into F1. Jill’s become a hard core McLaren fan. My wife seems to have settled into cheering for George Russell and Mercedes. Ryan is a Max Verstappen fan.
As for me, I tend to be pulling for McLaren. Which causes a problem. Their color is papaya… which is orange.
I don’t do orange. As a South Carolina Gamecocks fan, orange is the color of all of our rivals… from in-state Clemson to SEC foes Florida and Tennessee. (And I’m not just a SC fan, I’m also manage the schools visual branding.)
Jill’s convinced herself that papaya and Clemson orange are different colors. She’s decked out in papaya right now celebrating Lando’s Dutch Grand Prix victory. She’s right – the colors are different – but it’s still tough for me. We’ll see if I come around to McLaren papaya, or if I continue my orange ban.
Looking forward to seeing how Lando and Oscar do in the Italy Grand Prix next weekend.
Bob Wertz is a creative director, type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina. He’s been blogging since 2008.
Yesterday, Liverpool and Manchester United played in Williams-Brice Stadium in Columbia. It was fun to see a football stadium packed for soccer. We didn’t go — tickets were more than I paid to see Taylor Swift and sold out in minutes — but I met people from all over who came to SC to see the match.
I’m really enjoying watching the Olympics this year, and I think part of the reason is how good the streaming experience is on Peacock.
Peacock promoting Paris-themed Hallmark movies alongside the Paris Olympics is an inspired bit of marketing. (And my wife is very happy…)
Dawn Staley is having the time of her life at the Olympics, going from event to event and meeting athletes. Her Instagram feed right now is a blast.
Watching the women’s Olympic cycling time trial this morning and the competitors all have aerodynamic handlebars, helmets and wheel covers. It reminded me of Greg LeMond’s time trial in Paris to win the 1989 Tour de France.
Just noticed that the Mercedes F1 team is sponsored by Crowdstrike. Funny that a racing team is sponsored by a company that’s now known for the biggest crash of all time.
The ACC and Florida State/Clemson are going to settle, right? These cases will be in the courts for years, probably heading all the way to the Supreme Court. The uncertainty will hurt the ACC and Florida State and Clemson will end up in the Big 12, where neither of them want to be.
The South Carolina Women’s Basketball team deserved the ESPY for Best Team. Undefeated national champs. Glad they won. 🏀
What an exciting British Grand Prix. As a new F1 fan, I never got to see Hamilton when he was dominant. So cool to see him win this one at Silverstone.
Watched the Austrian Grand Prix. Quite a race. Feel bad for Norris.
Watching F1 with my daughter, who keeps surprising me with her race knowledge.
Today, I was surprised to learn that my 16-year-old daughter is a secret F1 fan.
So even though I don’t work on the athletics side of things at the University of South Carolina, it’s going to be a fun couple of weeks celebrating Dawn Staley and these amazing Gamecocks.
National champs! Great game, Gamecocks!
New women’s basketball fans who’ve been following Caitlin Clark are about to discover that undefeated, #1 South Carolina has flown under the radar this season because they don’t have one star player, they have nine. Will be a great game on Sunday. Looking forward to it. 🏀
Our local minor league team, the Columbia Fireflies announced an alternate identity… the Carolina Grits. This is in addition to their La Copa de la Diversión look, the Chicharrones de Columbia. One alternate is fun… two might be overkill. Minor league teams will do anything to sell merch, though.
Home run
4/7/19 • 2 min read
This post was originally posted on April 8, 2019 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
Minor league baseball having fun with logos.
I’m a big fan of minor league baseball. Our home team, the Columbia Fireflies, play in a great park and we typically go to a few games each season. We took the whole family to a game this past weekend and had a blast. I stopped by the team store to see the new Chicharrones de Columbia branding for the Copa de la Diversión, a program where 72 minor league baseball teams rebrand themselves for a few games as a visual reflection of the hispanic culture that’s an important part of baseball today. You can take a look at all the rebrandings, but here are a few of my favorites:
Obviously, this is minor league baseball’s attempt to sell more merchandise. (They are always trying to sell more merchandise.) Minor league designers often have fun with logos and I love how playful these redesigns are. Some are better than others, but they look really great on hats and shirts and if you see a logo you like, you can order some merch online.
As for me, I left the game this weekend with a Chicharrones de Columbia hat. Yes, it’s a pig.
Bob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, grad student, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He recently finished a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.