Follow me on Twitter: @the_serbster
You can also read my Golden State Warriors analysis on Blue Man Hoop.
I’ll keep the bits about my personal life short. I was raised in the middle (not south, middle) of Illinois. As a kid, I sucked at math, was average at science, paid too little attention to class, and read a lot. Luckily, the last one led to some actual skills. I graduated from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (Go Illini) in 2015 with a degree in sleeping in Communication. I played tennis and soccer in high school and a little bit of everything for fun in college. I’m a sports junkie, and spent irresponsibly on team gear and NBA League pass all four years. You can pry my out-of-market hoops and my jerseys from my cold, dead hands.
It follows logically that a lifelong bookworm, writer, and opinionated sports fan would end up with a blog, so I won’t explain that phenomenon. Here are my teams, and how they ended up so near and dear to my heart:
- The Chicago Cubs. This team’s done so much to damage me emotionally over my lifetime I could justify several sessions with a shrink. My longest uninterrupted fandom, my earliest memories concerning sports revolve around walking into my grandparents’ house, rounding a corner, and spotting my gandfather, Bud Light in hand, bitching about the ol’ Cubbies. They’re like heroin: it’s really more likely that I end up dead in a gutter somewhere than something actually good coming of this relationship, but I do love them. And always will.
- The Chicago Bears. The Monsters of the Midway were a fixture in the house when I was a kid, and my favorite thing about the games back then was that it was the only thing my mother ever consistently skipped church for. I have an Anthony Thomas jersey hanging in my closet that I bought way too late, a Brandon Marshall jersey that taunts me every day since the Bears traded him for a half-eaten sack lunch, and plenty of memories of Devin Hester being awesome (including one Superbowl highlight). I’m also a charter member of the Jay Cutler Apologists, and a strong believer in “well, we can’t do better right now.”
- The Golden State Warriors. This is the weird one. “You grew up in Illinois in the 90’s! What about Jordan? Pippen? Bandwagoner!” Does that cover it? Of course it does. Here’s the rationale: no one in my family really gave a shit about basketball other the ones who are also White Sox fans, so how good could their judgement really be? As a result, I went to college with no real allegiance. At some point, I decided that Davidson’s skinny little shooting specialist Stephen Curry was my favorite player, and decided to find out who he was playing for when starting up a game of NBA 2k on my friend’s Xbox 360. There it is, Warriors. I asked for his jersey that Christmas, bought into the team as a whole, and never looked back. Life’s pretty sweet right now for a fan, but I never forget: the first year I watched, Steph broke his ankle, Klay Thompson tried to lead the team, and did. To 23 wins. Basically, I invested in Apple at the right time. I don’t have quite the history that the lifers do, but I like to think I understand them because of the Cubbies. And I dearly love the team now. That’s never going away.
- The Chicago Blackhawks. Straight up, this is a bandwagon pick. My love affair with hockey began after the 2010 Stanley Cup win, and the Hawks were close. There we go. I don’t watch nearly enough of the sport, but it’s a damn blast every minute I do. I severely need to invest more time here. At the end of the day, I hate Raffi Torres and Roberto Luongo, and resent Jonathan Quick. Isn’t that enough?
And that’s it. This is, first and foremost, as sports blog, and an outlet for my thoughts, opinions, and armchair analysis. I’ll do everything I can to be entertaining and produce at quality levels for everyone’s sake. Thanks for reading, and I hope you come back. There’ll be more content when you do.
-Andy
Double Drivel 