Stormwatch912

First, the basics. If you haven't heard (and odds are if you're reading this, you likely already know), USL League One expanded their playoffs to eight teams, up from six teams previously. Is that too many teams? Not enough? Just right?  I don't know. It seems like too many for my taste, but I'm much more of a regular season guy than an postseason guy. The playoffs are fun, a reward for a great regular season. But no one asked me if they should expand, nor should they.  So we've got the top eight teams seeded 1-8 and they'll play a typical tournament. Gone are the first round byes for the top two seeds. Your reward for finishing first is home field throughout the postseason. Is that enough of a reward? Maybe. Probably. The powers that be seem to think so.  But what if we wanted to make things a little more interesting in the playoffs? I've got a couple of proposals that are fun to think about, even if there's little chance of them actually happening.. 1....

This is not an original idea. I have to give full credit to Craig Calcaterra, who used to write for NBC before they shut down their baseball coverage and he now writes a subscription newsletter. I'm completely stealing this from him and going with the approach that it's easier to ask for forgiveness from him than permission.  For the past decade he's posted his handsomeness rankings of all 30 Major League Baseball managers. It seems enjoyable enough and so I thought I'd do the same for the League One managers heading in to the 2024 season. You can get preseason predictions and rankings from those other sites with their research and their data and experience. Heck, even the league's website publishes power rankings based on things like team performance.  All that is to say if you're looking for preseason rankings based on players and expected performance, there are plenty of places to go get that. If you're looking for who the league's most handsome mana...

I posted on Twitter and Bluesky a link to my Tormenta article in the Statesboro Herald. If, for some reason, you missed those and came here hoping for something, well, can I interest you in a link for that story?  https://www.statesboroherald.com/sports/re-tooled-tormenta-gears-new-season/ They pay me s I'm not going to repost the article here. But don't worry. I'm working on something for here for early next week. 

I initially thought the photos in this post were of the new kits. It turns out they're the training tops and the jerseys will be revealed later. This post has been updated to correct that. The ancient Greeks didn't always compete naked. (Wait, come back, It's a soccer blog, I promise.) I mean, eventually they did and if your understanding of the ancient Greeks is they were the birthplace of the Olympics and democracy and that's about it, then you probably remember learning the competed naked in the Olympics to honor Zeus.  The Olympic games didn't start out this way. In fact, during the first 50 years, the athletes wore tunics or loincloths or something to cover themselves. They would wear the colors or symbols of their city-state as they represented their locales in the competition. Essentially, these were the first athletes to wear team jerseys to signify to others who the represented as they wrestled or ran or threw the discus of whatever else they did. It took a...

A blog?  In 2024? In this economy? Really? We're doing this? Yeah, we are doing this. Let's go. So what are we doing here? Well, first and foremost, this is a blog will be focused on South Georgia Tormenta FC.  Ok, great, but who are you and why should we care? Wait, who are you? I'm the figment of your imagination that you're using to ask questions to drive the plot of this post? Alright, fair enough... what did you ask again? Who are you and why should we care? You're blunt and to the point, aren't you? I'm Luke Martin and 2024 will be my third season covering Tormenta. I majored in journalism and... Ohhh, big mistake there. You think I don't know that? I've looked around at the media landscape. A journalism degree in 2024 is, well, it's not great. But Stupid Me in college thought journalism would be fun. Anyway, as you were saying? As I was saying, I majored in journalism and worked in newspapers for about six years as a fulltime journalist be...