Alan Cole
@alan-cole
Former sports writer now freelancing after a layoff. AP and a few other places. Used to cover South Carolina athletics, among other things. Be kind to others. Take care of your people.
I’m ending this thread with Scotland and Brazil fans dancing together to bagpipes in the streets of Miami because sometimes — sometimes — the world is good and cool. (Probably gonna write about it too)
They lost their biggest game of the 21st century 3-0 and just started immediately started singing about Diego Maradona, because he knocked England out of a World Cup 40 years ago. It’s a level of hate I don’t think even the most ardent college football fans can reach.
Life is really short and if you get a chance to crash on a friend’s couch and party with the Tartan Army on South Beach the night before a Brazil game...do it. (Watching England drop points with them was a bonus)
Making the locals on my timeline aware that barring something extremely bizarre England is coming to Atlanta for its first knockout game.
If you will indulge me, I wrote about the afternoon in Atlanta. Drumming Cabo Verde fans, a nice family from Uruguay, my new friends from Glasgow and everyone rooting for the same thing: An unthinkable 0-0 draw. medium.com/@alancolejou...
The goal this morning is to convince one person from Spain or Cape Verde to try Waffle House.
If you live anywhere in the vicinity of a World Cup venue, just buy the cheapest parking pass you can find and walk around the area. I promise you don’t need to spend a month’s rent on a ticket to see a bunch of cool stuff you’ve never seen and meet some great total strangers.
For the first time I can ever remember (excluding anti-Tom Brady or post-9/11 circumstances), the country is mostly rooting for a New York team. Why? Wrote about an extremely likeable cast of players everyone can find someone in and a perfect foil for this series. medium.com/@alancolejou...
Watching this game around a bunch of die hards and also one guy with a Hurricanes tattoo
I’m in the triangle this weekend for prior scheduled reasons completely unrelated to hockey…but of course I had to check this out. Gotta say, it’s a really cool scene! There’s a general air of fun and fan culture that basically doesn’t exist in pro sports.
Crowd has been really good for both games and the weather is perfect. Hope it continues through the weekend.
Southout South Dakota softball's Autumn Iverson, who shows up in box scores exactly how you'd hope:
College baseball is the best because sometimes Vandy and Mizzou are playing in pure fog after midnight and legitimately nobody can tell if a go-ahead homer with two outs in the ninth happened or not.
Any box lacrosse people on BlueSky? Straight off the golf course (story coming) into a win or go home game in the quarterfinals of the NLL Playoffs as the Georgia Swarm host the three-time defending champion Buffalo Bandits. 7:30 start.
My final charity bowl for the single funniest sporting event I have ever covered, via being on the South Carolina beat in 2022 as Spencer Rattler threw for 438 and 6 TDs against No. 5 Tennessee one week after they got crunched by a Billy Napier team. @newap-georgia.bsky.social @edsbs.bsky.social
For the Braves inclined on the timeline, I’ll have some updates + a story later on Spencer Strider and Sean Murphy’s rehab assignment tonight at Triple-A. Underway in half an hour.
Late charity bowl add for CJ McCollum's 32 points at MSG tonight (Lehigh is not an option, PTKU gets it) @edsbs.bsky.social @newap-georgia.bsky.social
Charity bowl free agent dropping donations on behalf of schools friends/family went to, starting with an important reminder of what happens when oil money runs into a bunch of beefy dudes from the mountains (plus fees). @newap-georgia.bsky.social @edsbs.bsky.social @hollyanderson.bsky.social