In less than a month, I’ll be on the field of Goodman Stadium, ready to accept my diploma and officially put a cap on my time at Lehigh. It’s been an amazing four years, filled with priceless moments, formative experiences and friendships that will last a lifetime.
A huge part of this experience has been my time at The Brown and White. This is my fourth semester as a sports columnist and my seventh and final on the newspaper overall. Writing about sports has allowed me to break up my normal academic load, especially as I’ve gained creative freedom serving as a columnist over the past two years.
It may be a small community, but I’m grateful for every single reader who has tuned in to my columns from September 2023 to now. It has given me a real voice in what I’m passionate about, and I look forward to writing every column — knowing that I can publish my thoughts on whatever topic in sports was on my mind.
That’s especially gratifying for me as a sports fanatic who has had thoughts about sports since I was a kid in elementary school. Since then, I’ve looked up to sports media talking heads, like Colin Cowherd and Bill Simmons — guys who get to talk about whatever is on their minds to a large audience, day in and day out.
I hoped my column could be a micro-scale version of the shows and columns run by these sorts of personalities. That’s what I always wanted this to be, and I feel like it has achieved just that.
My tight-knit community of dedicated readers, headlined by my parents, girlfriend and close friends, as well as other readers who happen to stumble across my columns from time to time, have given me an audience to postulate what’s at the front of my mind in the sports world. I want to thank each and every one of these readers, however small the number may be.
I’m proud of what I’ve built with “Parker’s Sports Corner.” I wrote an article about which months are the best for sports that has gotten popular enough that it now appears when you Google the question. I’ve tackled topics across the MLB, NFL, NBA and college sports.
I’ve written evergreen columns such as the tiresome nature of NBA discourse, the prevalence of gambling in sports and how money is taking over sports, as well as more topical columns like baseball’s playoff format, NBA and MLB season previews and NFL week one overreactions.
To finish off “Parker’s Sports Corner,” I thought it’d be interesting to take a look back at some of my takes in these columns. Some of these columns have aged like fine wine.
The month following my column about NBA discourse, the prevalence of this topic was only strengthened when analyst Stephen A Smith stole NBA headlines for roughly a week when he said he would have “swung” on Lebron James if Lebron put his hands on Smith.
In the year since I wrote my column about the sports gambling “bubble,” another NBA player — this time Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier — has been accused of manipulating his stats for gambling purposes. Meanwhile, the prevalence of sports gambling content and advertisements has grown exponentially over the past year, especially as many NBA, MLB and NHL teams broadcast their local games on Fanduel Sports Network, which is backed by Fanduel Sportsbook.
Regarding my insistence on giving the new MLB playoff format some time before declaring it a disaster, this has also aged well. This is given that the 2024 MLB playoffs saw three of the four higher seeds in the divisional round advance, with the one seed from each league meeting in the 2024 World Series. This should dispel many outlandish calls that the playoff format actually puts division winners at a “disadvantage.”
Before I move on to my takes that haven’t aged quite as well, I have to pat myself on the back for predicting this year’s Super Bowl correctly in my Super Bowl LIX Preview. I predicted the Philadelphia Eagles to win by a score of 27-21. The Eagles ended up beating the Kansas City Chiefs 40-22, making for much more destruction than I initially expected as a massive Eagles fan. Still, at least I predicted the result correctly, even if I may be just a little biased.
As for my takes that haven’t aged as well, there are certainly a few of them. I’m only human, after all. In some of my more predictive style columns, like separating 2024 NBA contenders into tiers and overreacting to week one of the 2024 NFL season, I have missed the mark on a few predictions.
In 2024, I placed the Dallas Mavericks in Tier 3 of my contenders, with the Los Angeles Clippers in Tier 1. When these two teams met in the first round of the 2024 NBA playoffs, the Mavericks took care of the Clippers in six games. Of course, Clippers star Kawhi Leonard was hurt, but I can admit that I overvalued the Clippers while undervaluing a Mavericks team that made it all the way to the NBA Finals.
In that same article, I didn’t even include the Indiana Pacers team that ended up making the Eastern Conference Finals on the ranking, and I ranked the Western Conference Finals-bound Minnesota Timberwolves in Tier 3.
These results had a lot to do with unforeseen injuries and circumstances, but it’s safe to say I misread a lot of this playoff field — that is, except the eventual NBA champion Boston Celtics, who I did have in Tier 1.
In my 2024 NFL week one overreaction column, I called the lackluster week one performances of star rookies Caleb Williams and Marvin Harrison Jr. overreactions and claimed they’d be in Offensive Rookie of the Year conversations by the end of the year.
Instead, they were a sign of things to come for relatively disappointing rookie campaigns for the two of them, although I believe bounce-back sophomore campaigns could be in play for both of them.
This column has come with a lot of well-timed, relevant commentary that has aged extremely well since its publication. However, it has also come with some not-so-well-timed commentary that, unfortunately, is on the internet under my name for the rest of time.
This is part of the beauty of writing a sports column — sometimes you’re right, sometimes you’re wrong, and that’s okay. Regardless of how often I’m right, I still cherished the opportunity to share my unchecked commentary on the sports world a few times each semester.
So, one more time — if you’re reading this, thank you. Whether you’ve read every column or just one, I hope you enjoyed it.
English (US) ·