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-David Kramer | Monday, November 2, 2020
People love to complain about anything and everything, anytime and everywhere. The rise of sports statistics’ influence on management decisions is certainly no exception. Anti-analytical sentiment reached its apex on Tuesday night when Tampa Bay Rays manager Kevin Cash took the ball out of elite pitcher Blake Snell’s hand in the sixth inning. Amid a
David Kramer | Monday, October 26, 2020
Sports champions fashion their success through sheer chaos. After centuries of what we endearingly call “organized” American sports, we find a refined sense of order on the field. Professional coaching staffs rarely offer insight that even the youngest players have never heard; their role — an increasingly compensated one across the industry, I might add
David Kramer | Friday, October 16, 2020
Classic. Time and again, the cultural richness of Notre Dame’s riveting football landscape has flirted with recognition under this bold title. In a city otherwise subdued and uninspired, the sheer cultural richness of Notre Dame Stadium has made South Bend a “classic” destination for avid fans and tourists alike. An A-list pipeline of electric players
David Kramer | Monday, October 5, 2020
Among our nation’s great state stereotypes, perhaps “Minnesota Nice” proves the most questionable. The torrential weather that sweeps over the fields of the North Star State forces publicly kind Minnesotans to endure abysmal temperatures in belligerent privacy. Outsiders never see the passive aggression and mass hysteria that pervades the state in five months of bone-chilling
David Kramer | Friday, September 25, 2020
“We are living on the wrong side of history.” Go ahead, throw your trusted copy of The Observer at a lucky nearby wall for me. With such a painfully cliched opener, I deserve no less. The sheer breadth of this phrase in American rhetoric truly appalls me. Journalists, reporters and public figures almost thoughtlessly append
David Kramer | Friday, September 18, 2020
Unrelenting belief marks one of the extraordinary paradoxes of human psychology. History’s strangest narratives arguably revolve around overzealous faith in the most implausible phenomena. Cults, astrology, fake news and pseudoscience withstand the tests of time, devouring the credulity of society through ever-changing media and informational sources. Such a tendency now looms so largely that brilliant
Hayden Adams, David Kramer, Nate Moller, Liam Coolican, Patrick Gallagher, Aidan Thomas and Dominic Gibson | Friday, September 4, 2020
With every day we get closer to a college football season, we grow ever more hopeful that we will see it through to fruition. In that spirit, we continue our Observer Roundtable 2020 season preview with picks for the New Year’s Six bowl games. In this rendition of our season preview, we will take the
David Kramer | Thursday, September 3, 2020
True friendship propagates a certain sense of power among companions. Power to evoke an unparalleled share of our attention as we edify, incite and validate each other. Power to craft us into the best version of ourselves. Power to sculpt each other’s ideology and viewpoints with a degree of passion that we would never dare
Hayden Adams, David Kramer, Nate Moller, Liam Coolican, Patrick Gallagher, Aidan Thomas and Dominic Gibson | Wednesday, September 2, 2020
After a brief hiatus, the Observer Roundtable will be continuing our coverage of the presumptive 2020 college football season with Power 5 conference championship picks. Much as we did with our top-25 teams and top-10 quarterbacks, we are including the Big Ten and Pac-12 in our selections, regardless of whether Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields’
David Kramer | Friday, August 28, 2020
Brimming with vibrance, the local church houses a resounding clamor of teary-eyed visitors hell-bent on raising a brother to heaven. As the sanctuary doors creak open, myriad stories, everlasting memories and life-altering ideas pour into the sacred space for a beautiful moment of remembrance…or so you’d think. After self-selecting the opening hymn, the minister seats