yo

...so I saw every other person in the world besides myself got into this blogging thing, so I decided it was my time to do so. And I needed a place to put all my college basketball brackets/thoughts in, and a blog seemed like the best place to get that stuff out to a mass audience. But anyway, some info about me:

My name is Matt Platek. I'm a chemical engineering student at Purdue University, meaning I don't actually have enough time to keep this blog going consistently, but I'll try my best. Plus, it's not like I don't have other things to distract me. I'm originally from the Northwest suburbs of Chicago, which explains the incredibly lame blog title. The best ways to describe me are through my passions: sports, school, friends, and my faith. The last one will inevitably come up in future posts, as well as the middle two (although I hope for the sake of my sanity school does not come up in this blog, I'm sure it will), but none of those are the focus of this blog. The focus is, first and foremost, sports.

I'm a sports nut. Seriously. I spend free time looking up vintage jerseys, stats, throwback logos, etc. I talk sports with any random person I overhear discussing sports. My roommates and I get into arguments, sometimes very heated, over sports. I talk about sports on internet message boards. I'm not sure of what else I have to do to be more of a sports nut short of wearing face paint to class.

Sports has a way of uniting people. Obviously, people are divided based on what team or school they root for, but for the majority of rational sports fans, we're brought together by classic moments. Guys like Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Michael Phelps, etc... no matter how much we dislike the team, player, or sport, we can all find a way to appreciate what they've done in their respective sports. But above all else, sports brings us into another reality. When I was a kid, I'd have my own imaginery sports leagues. I'd run around with my jerseys to the sound of Monday Night Football in the background. I'd go out across the street to the basketball court and pretend I was M. J. making one of those 17 foot fadeaways or Shaq in the paint. Now at that age I didn't have a lot to worry about, but nowadays I have school, relationships, job searches, family, etc. to worry about, as well as this world in general. There are plenty of times where I just need that separation from reality, and sports gives you that. It gives you people to root for. It gives you great stories and people in a world where we get less and less of that. It gives you memories that will last a lifetime. That's why I enjoy talking about it so much.

Okay, the future: in the next day or so I will post my opening Preseason Bracket. Yes, people, that's right. I made a bracket. I told you I was nuts. After that, it's just kind of whatever, I guess. I'll try to come up with some sort of schedule as to what I plan on posting soon, but I figured I'd just start with the bracket and build off of that. So take a look at what's on here, let me know if I'm a genius or an idiot, and come back. Whether or not you love my opinions, I always enjoy hearing different perspectives on things. Enjoy!