Regarding the Name of this Blog

My first post! Very exciting!

I thought it would be appropriate to start by talking about the title I chose, Momentum Swing. I've been inexorably drawn to sports for as long as I can remember. Often I've tried to put my finger on exactly why. So have my parents, my lovely fiancé Melissa (MANY times!!), my friends...what is it about this stuff that keeps bringing me back?

Ultimately it's the human element. In these days of number crunching, stats for everything, and big money contracts we all tend to lose sight of the fact that these are human beings competing against one another, that there is emotion and will and courage involved.

To me, momentum is the perfect expression of this. If sports were strictly about who was more talented or who executed better you wouldn’t have momentum. (As an aside, this is why I can't get in to fantasy sports)

And yet momentum is very real. You know when it has shifted. Announcers talk about it, but even before they do savvy sports fans know. Uncle Mo just moved from one team to the other.

If it weren't for the human element - for emotion - there would be no such thing. The game would proceed and perhaps a team would make a big play or start performing better suddenly due to a match up or well executed plan, but would it affect the next several minutes, and perhaps the entire rest of the game, for both sides? I think not.

Momentum swings in sports remind us the games are organic, that anything can happen on any given day - that courage and fearlessness are as important as skill and practice. And that is what keeps me coming back.

Hopefully you'll enjoy Momentum Swing as much as I will enjoy writing it. Long live the games!!