First thoughts on the Freshman Album Theory

Actual (yet fleeting) sports content alert! I wonder how Tom Izzo's conditioning program compares to Bruce Weber's. I also wonder why Bruce Weber doesn't take advantage of his team's potentially superior conditioning by running teams out of the gym in the second half when playing with a lead. Last year's Penn State game was the college basketball equivalent of Martyball.

Brief follow-up on last week's note -- I accidentally clicked a link that took me to Big Ten Wonk's March 2, 2006, entry, in which Wonk used Hegelian to describe the existence, or perhaps the perpetuation, of extreme home field advantage in the Big Ten. Unfortunately, I now have even less of a clue about the word means. At least as Wonk uses it.

This week Wonk broke out quite the arsenal of big words, although I attribute this in large part to my Freshman Album Theory. The sophomore album of many bands fails to match the quality of the first (i.e., freshman) album. I believe this is because most bands spend at least five years writing and performing their music before they get to release an album with a major record label. Over these years a band has ample opportunity to write for quantity and choose for quality -- the band learns what songs are objectively good and has enough to choose from to put together a solid album. After the album's release, the band goes on tour to support the album, and then may take time off to celebrate newfound popularity. Suddenly the band realizes the label wants to release another album in six months, giving the band just four to six weeks to write new material for the album. The band faces an uphill battle to capture in such a short time the same creativity and quality that went into the first album.

Wonk undoubtedly spent much of September and October putting together his alphabetically-sensitive preseason walk-arounds, meaning he had ample time to include references to all sorts of philosophers unknown to those of us with conservative arts degrees. [Grammar doesn't accommodate that type of NOT statement. Besides, it's election week. Anyway, you understand me.] I doubt that similar references will be as frequent when Wonk has to generate a new post daily over the next five months. Although perhaps that entry from
March should make me think again.

Of course, I expect the references to indefatigable columnists and oracular bloggers to remain consistent throughout.

The two winners for this week, along with what I think they Wonk is using them to say:

• epistemological = challenging the accepted explanation for what something means (used mockingly)
• Manichaeism = a philosophy that explicitly divides the world into good and evil (used to emphasize the extremes-with-no-middle-ground nature of the beliefs concerning prospects for Michigan's season)

Wonk's inspired use of the word adverbial deserves special mention: "describing stylistic inclinations, not level of performance."