My background:

I grew up in Minnesota – eastern suburbs of the Twin Cities to be specific. Like most Minnesota kids, I played hockey growing up, along with lacrosse in the summers.  I didn’t know it then, but my athletic career would peak in the 5th grade with a roster spot on an A Squirt team destined for a Cleveland Browns circa 2016 – esque season.  From here, I floated from average to below-average to riding pine – thus inspiring the name of my site.

Education:

I wish I could say I attended the University of Minnesota because I thought Carlson School of Management was a great school.  Or maybe I fell in love with the campus.  Heck maybe because I just needed to be close to the hometown.

None of those things.

I grew up on a steady diet of Gopher hockey triumph (thank you for 2002-2003 Mr. Lucia), and football disappointment (still love you Coach Mason).  I tried to fight it – I was as close to attending UW Madison as the Vikings were to beating Seattle in the NFC Wildcard in 2015.  But, apparently a Gopher cannot change his stripes (tail?), and I committed to the U in the spring of my senior year of H.S.

In college, I was involved in a number of activities/internships.  I’ll touch on what might matter to this site:

Gopher Sports Marketing: worked unpaid and unbroken for Gopher Men’s Basketball during my Junior Year.  The internship may not have broken me, but I can assure you the basketball team was in fact broken (8-23, 2-16 Big 10).

Marketing Intern – Sydney Roosters:

Yes I worked abroad. No I still wasn’t paid.

You might think with all of this sports experience I must be working for the Vikings/Twins/Wild by now. As it turns out, there’s far too many people willing to work in sports for anyone to get paid a reasonable amount of money – especially considering that some people are up to their eyeballs in student loan debt. So…

The Day Job:

When I’m not providing the takes you need to win your next bargument, I’m happily employed at Land O’Lakes Inc. as a Category Analyst. The skinny is I sell butter.