The poem and essay are both similar in a sense that they are both in the past and now we are just reflecting on them. The juco basketball game was un-noticed for so many years until we realized how significant the victory was, and how the UT team had to overcome numerous disadvantages to come away with a win, the game didn't affect the surrounding culture too much because no one knew about the game in the first place. The poem on the other hand was just a general summarization of high school football season in the fall and how the game itself influences the surrounding environment and culture. Personally I think the poem is more universal to culture in the United States because the majority of the country has the same general feelings toward football in the fall, what i dont understand is the reference to "Polacks nursing long beers in Tiltonsville" because honestly I don't even know if they play football in Poland. The basketball game isn't as universal because in this particular instance, the surrounding culture could care less about the game of basketball and didn't even realize the significant victory that the UT jack's had and it was in their hometown! Most small towns would at least care enough to know if their hometown team won or not.
The great thing about sports in general are the memories that it leaves in our head. If you're a die hard seminoles fan you know that they were National Champions in football during the 1993 and 1999 seasons, and you can always say that. For example, i guarantee people who stopped paying attention to college football for the past couple years would still say that Miami is still a dominant football team just because of how good they were in the 80's and that sticks into the mind of many football fans that paid attention in that era. Memory is very important to sports.
If i was going to use one of these pieces in my first essay I would use the essay about the basketball game because I think its an interesting story and i can relate to it more since i grew up playing basketball. Honestly the poem was more confusing to me also.
I agree with pretty much all of the points in this response because when I read these pieces I interpretted them similarly. It was obvious how much the simple high school football game affected the community and culture because it talked about how, no matter what problems they were going through, football was a common escape. I also like how you described the importance of memory in sports. I agree that memory is one of the most important things to define a person's relationship with their sport and teams.
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