(Written originally for Inside the Camp...See photos from training camp here)

You know when you feel like you really understand something completely? The context, perspective, experiences...? Well, I thought I knew what it was like to be on the other side of the fence (press row at the Elite 8, UNC Tar Heels locker room, the Stephen Curry circus, etc).

Today I realized that I still have a lot to learn.

I was able to be much closer to the action this afternoon with solo field duty. While our other interns were manning the Panthers Experience and the media tent, I got to mingle with writers and photographers and watch the players go at it from the sidelines.

As Kristen duly noted, "the players don't look as big as I thought they would." That is true...even with pads and a helmet, Steve Smith is still not appreciably taller than myself.

But then there were the fans. When you walk through the gauntlet behind Julius Peppers and Jake Delhomme, the roar just envelops you and gives you chills. And then the roar breaks up and it becomes a zillion little voices and you can understand all of them at the same time. It's incredibly disconcerting to have so many people yelling in your direction, even if it's at the person behind you.

When practice was over, I was given the task of providing players with sharpies in case they wanted to sign autographs. Ryne Robinson came by first and asked me to hold his helmet and gloves while he went down the line. As I followed him at a distance, surely making it into the background of tons of fan pictures, I saw a scene that I was shocked I'd never "witnessed" before, even though I had "seen" it plenty of times from the other side of the fence.

When you are a fan just hoping to get an autograph, you start zeroing in on your target and you really block everything out. All you want is that written name on your hat and then you're golden. It's a very simple and easy request with a great outcome for you, and so you go for it with great gusto.

I realized it's like a busy intersection at rush hour traffic. Everyone wants to just get through that light so they can get out of there. If that means pushing out into the intersection on yellowish-red light, then that's what you have to do. It becomes a problem when everyone from every direction think they're entitled to make that light.

As Robinson made his way down the line after a long, hot practice, every fan just wanted a simple thing from him. All they could see was how simple it was for him to do that task for them and how great the outcome for them would be. But as Robinson kept trying to walk forward with fans three rows back screaming at him, things got tougher.

"I drove three hours just to see you," yelled a 40-year old man that Robinson passed. Robinson went back to sign his hat.

"You too good to sign a kid's hat?" screamed a passed-over mother of two. Robinson went back to sign both of their hats.

Eventually, he just turned to me, grabbed his stuff and ran off to the locker room. The escalation of screams heightened with each step that took him away from them. Robinson eventually stopped again near the end and went back at it for another ten minutes.

As fans behind the fence, sometimes all we want is that little piece. We have to get through that light so we'll act out to get it. But sometimes, we all need to see the bigger picture. Look at the world from Ryne Robinson's eyes. Look at the intersection from the traffic control guy just trying to prevent a wreck. See what's it like from the other side of the fence.

Despite all of the internet hate and the logistical nightmares of last week's release, on Friday I landed an iPhone as an early birthday present from myself to me.

This past season Davidson College Men's Basketball saw the rise of many young stars - Stephen Curry, Jason Richards, and Andrew Lovedale to name a few.

However, there was one more star who, while following the rise of the team, had to deal with his own meteoric ascension - Will Bryan.

Three years ago Will was simply happy to get a job at a bakery.

Now Will works in the Communications department of the Carolina Panthers.

Although best known for his coverage of Davidson basketball by "live blogging" at basketball games, Will loved and covered all sports at Davidson from football to women's club soccer.

The word "covered" does not do justice to Will's reporting style.

He was able to apply in his writing what one hopes to get from a liberal arts education - the ability to think creatively and logically about important issues that - at it's best - transcended sports and delved into deeper issues such as loyalty, community, and celebrity.

Here are some of my favorite posts from Will Bryan's former blog - Will's World:

The Humble Beginnings

Some Memories Can't Have Asterisks

Taking Representation Too Far

Still Having Fun?

It's Been A Great Four Years To Be A Wildcat

Best of 2007

Davidson Grows Up Tonight

Good Times

We are so happy that Will has joined our talented group of bloggers at Art Star, and we wish him the happiest of birthdays.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY WILL BRYAN!!!

love,

Art Star

Redemption has a new face in the sports world, and Monday night was the climactic chapter in the Josh Hamilton story. The first-time All Star from the Texas Rangers set a new record by blasting 28 home runs in the first round of the Home Run Derby, nearly hitting several shots out of historic Yankee Stadium. Fatigue finally caught up to him and his designated pitcher and Hamilton fell in the championship round to Justin Morneau, but the damage had already been done. Hamilton had gone from the dregs of living on the edge of death to having his name chanted over and over in the condemned cathedral of all of baseball.

And while his story has been told countless times by reporters whose job it is to write about this every day of the week, I am here to tell you that this event was not inevitable. Sports writers often like to paint fascinating stories in a tinge of fatalism that implies that the events were preordained.

Davidson's amazing run through the Final Four was the destiny of the dedication of McKillop and the hunger of the underappreciated Stephen Curry. The Elite 8 in 08...it had to happen.

The Giants won an incredible Super Bowl because the Patriots simply had to lose...fate and the prayers of the '72 Dolphins were somehow more important than Coughlin's gameplan or Manning's determination.

But I will tell you this, Josh Hamilton did not have to be where he is now.


I first encountered Hamilton just a few weeks after being signed as the next huge star by the Tampa Devil Rays in the college draft. He came to single-A Charleston and underimpressed. He was swinging for the fences and popping the ball up. He missed routine fly balls by trying to make routine plays look difficult. And all of his tattoos seemed to betray a cocky punk.

Hamilton later had to leave baseball because of a hazardous addiction to drugs and alcohol. He was the oh-so-talented specimen who threw his life away with bad decisions. It should have been over for Hamilton because he only needed to make one more tiny decision: quit.

But he didn't.

One difficult decision led to another and Hamilton was in rehab. After going sober for several years, he broke back in with the Cincinnati Reds. That's when I saw him again.

This time Hamilton was playing for the Reds' AAA franchise against the Charlotte Knights. In his first three at-bats, he had three home runs. To center and opposite field. This was a player who had so much power that he didn't even need to get out and pull the ball to get it out of the park. He had lost his damaging ego and replaced it with determined confidence.

I knew on that night that Josh Hamilton was going to be one of the most remarkable comeback stories in Major League Baseball.

On Monday night, Hamilton capped off a league-leading first half of the baseball season by putting on a Home Run show unlike anything ever seen in the history of the Home Run derby. Hamilton did what sluggers like Aaron, McGwire, Bonds and Sosa have never done and he did it with a remarkable humility.

I usually don't have much taste for Awards Shows...especially those that choose their winners through popular vote on the internet and phone lines. "Rock the vote" campaigns become the main powers behind the winners of qualitative awards that no one really cares about anyway.

But I'm going to ask you, my humble reader, to put yours and my cynicism aside for a second and go to this website to vote for a very special person who is very deserving of a big award on an upcoming award show.

The kid's name is Stephen Curry and he is nominated for an ESPY for the Best Breakthrough Performance in 2008.

His competition is Adrian Peterson (a guy who rocked the RB position while in college, rendering his outstanding NFL season hardly worthy of "Breakthrough" status), Kyle Busch (a NASCAR driver and thus hardly worthy of "Athlete" status), and Ana Ivanovic (who is actually REALLY HOT and pretty good at tennis, but c'mon, let her win something in her own country).

So head over to ESPN.com and vote Curry. This young man deserves the award and Davidson has certainly waited long enough for this type of recognition.

I don’t usually like to write about music. I feel that it is comparable to dancing about love. It can be done, but only the skilled and experienced should attempt it. But after listening through the new Viva la Vida album from Coldplay, I was compelled to attempt to translate my feelings a little bit (and you can say what you want about my sexual orientation, but I do like Coldplay).

The context of this review is sticky because this album strikes you at obtuse angles, and thus you feel like you must be the only person to have heard this and you want to tell everyone. And then you realize that everyone else already knows. So, OK. I know that Coldplay was introduced by the artistic philistines over at the NBC morning show on Friday at Rockefeller Center, but I am going to try to ignore that.

My other caveat is that music and its consequential reviews are always conversations between close friends. It can be difficult to understand if you don’t know where the participants have been. I don’t pretend to know all the ways that this music relates to everything else outside of my own limited listening.

So what is this Viva La Vida album all about? There are moments that seem like musical brilliance then you suddenly realize that you can’t understand what Chris Martin is saying. Then the key and tempo switches and the song ends and a new song begins on the same track. At its clearest moments, this album fundamentally describes a lack of clarity, while the unclear moments become artistic metaphors for the same lyrical message. It’s like writing about how you have nothing to write about. And it’s brilliant.

To put this album in an historical perspective, I believe that it achieves and is commercially successful in ways that U2 always attempted to be in the 1990’s. Both groups went through periods where their music exemplified the art of process, irony and inaccessible metaphor. Yet U2’s period didn’t go so well for their fans. The group spent so much time mocking the rock star lifestyle and hiding their beating pulses over processed sound that people recoiled.

Somehow, I think that Coldplay does similar musical things in this album (they did work with U2 producer Brian Eno), but the circumstances are a little bit different and they pull it off. Firstly, Coldplay’s new sound does not follow a smash-hit album (X&Y) in the same way that U2’s did (The Joshua Tree). Secondly, I think that we are in a place where we appreciate a little musical self-doubt here or there, and I think that this is the biggest difference between the present Chris Martin and the Bono of the 90’s. Bono always came off as an arrogant prick even when he tried saying that he had no idea who he really was, while Chris Martin continues to sound like that little small voice inside your head.

Overall, I come away from this album with a renewed confidence to pass judgment on things I disagree with (exemplified in “Viva la Vida” and “Violet Hill”), day dream about perfect days (“Strawberry Swing”), and question everything while still maintaining some sort of belief in…myself, others, God? (“Lost?”).