Out of the blue

One of my goals in life has always been to appear on Jeopardy. Years of reading anything I could get my hands on by the light of my tiny red LED alarm clock long after lights out while a youngster contributed to this. (No wonder I had to get those awful glasses in the third grade, and small wonder I‘m still a night owl. And yes, now you know mom.) Also giving breath to this dream were the myriad hours of Trivial Pursuit my brothers and I battled over. To this day, all of us still claim to be the champ. And of course, there were the hundreds of times my mom and I watched the classic trivia show together.

But as I enter my twilight years, I’m beginning to feel I might be better suited to appear on Are You Smarter Than A Fifth-Grader? I’m not even so sure about that anymore. Sigh. The show is hosted by the bestselling comedian of all-time, Jeff Foxworthy, famous for such oneliners as “You might be a redneck if you’ve got more than one brother named Darryl” and “You might be a redneck if you’ve ever named a kid after a dog” and this classic, “You might be a redneck if you refer to the fifth grade as ‘the best six years of my life.’ ”

Yeah. I know I’m digressing again. You’re wondering what in the world do rednecks have to do with sports, besides the fact that they invented NASCAR and possibly cow-tipping? I honestly don’t know. I guess I thought it just might be fun to right a column of “You might be’s”. (A word of warning: no one is off limits here. Don’t take it personally. It‘s in good fun.) So without further ado…

You might be a Canadian if your name is Wayne, your grandpa is Gordie, your uncles are Jacques and Guy, your brother is Mario and you named your kids Sid and The Kid. And your wife insists on being called Lady Bing.

You might be Canadian if you curled into the fetal position around your favorite curling rock and rocked yourself to sleep between bouts of sobbing after Team Canada lost to Team USA 5-3 Sunday.

You might be an American if your hockey team defeated the heavily-favored Canucks for the first time in 50 years in the Olympics on Sunday. And just a day before the 30th anniversary of the Miracle on Ice. How fitting.

You might be a Swede if you bring sandpaper when traveling through a desert because you don’t want to go there without a map. Easy now. I could have went with a worse one like, oh, never mind. Had to get that in after Sweden shut out Finland 3-0 in Olympic hockey Sunday. Any Finn, as is my heritage, despises losing to a Swede. On the plus side, it’s very early Thursday morning as I write this, and Sweden just lost to Slovakia. They’re out of the tournament. Finland is in the medal round. Couldn’t have scripted it any better.

You might be a Finn if when someone smiles at you on the street you assume they’re either insane, drunk, an American or all of the above. Did I mention that the U.S. and Finland play in the Olympic semifinals Friday. That means one of them will go to the gold medal game in hockey. Defi- nitely a win-win situation for this guy. Can I say this is the most entertaining hockey tournament I’ve ever seen? Other than maybe the Minnesota state high school hockey tournament?

(Enough with the ethnic jokes already!) Fine. OK…

You might be a Miller if you win a bronze, silver and gold medal at the Olympics. I’m referring, of course, to my long-lost cousin Bode, who cemented his status as the best American alpine skier ever this past week or so.

You might be a Miller if you’re playing like the best goaltender in the world right now. I’m referring, of course to my other long-lost cousin Ryan, the sensational American goalie, who just might lead the Americans to their first hockey gold in three decades.

(Enough about the Millers already!) Hoosh! How about…

You might be a Minnesotan if you win your first gold medal skiing on one leg. Yup, that Lindsey Vonn gal is pretty good. And tough.

You might be a Minnesotan if you score the only two goals in the Olympic hockey quarterfinals to get your team to the medal rounds. Yup, that would be Zach Parise, former North Star J.P.’s kid, against Switzerland.

You might be a Minnesotan if you got your butt whupped at the Olympics in curling. Yup, tough round-robin for the U.S. men, five Minnesotans, who had a bit of bad luck in an 0-4 start and flamed out of the Games with a 2-7 record. But give them credit for getting there and be sure they’ll bust they’re butts to get back there four years from now.

(You got any more themes in your bag?) No, not really. If you can’t tell, I’ve been Olympicized the last couple of weeks. Not paying attention to much else out there. Just a couple left…

You might be a getting too big for your own britches when you micromanage the entire state. The Minnesota State High School League decided not to allow any boys hockey section games to be aired live online or even tapedelayed on television while any games in the girls state hockey tournament are going on this weekend. Because that’s really going to hurt the gate at the girls tournament. I’m pretty sure that if you’re going to go to the girls tournament, you’re going to go. If not, you might try to find other entertainment. It’s just another case of a big bureaucracy screwing over the little guy to try to pad their own pockets. It smacks of arrogance. In the words of Ricky Ricardo, “It’s just so ree-deeculous!”

You might be obsessed with the Twins when you start thinking about renaming your pet Mauer or Joe even though she’s a girl. Yup, baseball is just around the corner!

Brian Miller is a longtime local sports writer and the co-founder of iSportsNorth. He currently resides in Eveleth and can be reached at miller24bri@gmail.