This is Mo Purify's new Mohawk. It's the haircut that's sweeping the nation in fall camps across the country, but that's not what interests me. Look a little closer at Purify's right arm and you'll notice that he has the requisite area code tattoo, 707 for Eureka, CA.I'm not sure if this is a new addition or not. He may not have had it last season but I am sure he'll have it next season...and the season after that...and the season after that, etc. which is too bad because I'm officially declaring this whole area code trend dead.
Yes, for 2007 ZIP codes are the new area codes. As best I can tell, nobody is on board with this yet but they'll come. Once we get Darren McFadden on board the rest of college football should follow like Felix Jones on the speed option out of the Wildcat set.
Now, one of my ultimate pet peeves is people who are ashamed of where they're from and the Reggie Bush-led trend of using your area code to represent regional pride is basically the antithesis of that. The problem, however, is that when you get right down to it, area codes just aren't that specific.
For example, the entire state of Nebraska, all 77,358 square miles of it, has only two area codes. Back when Bush was shredding defenses and shoving quarterbacks over goal lines, I was quite fond of writing 308 in dry erase marker on my glasses each day before work. Problem was that all of my Boston co-workers, most of whom are intimately aware of western Nebraska geography, would frequently ask me if I was from Kearney.
I am not. I grew up over 300 miles away from Kearney. All we shared were those three little digits. Since I've adopted the ZIP Method all of those questions have gone away. Five digits, highly specific. Every town with a post office has their own special number and cities are meticulously divided as well. If you're an urban dweller you can't quite get to the exact street you live on but you can get a lot closer than you can with the officially passe area code.
And if five-digits aren't specific enough there's still hope. While the NCAA will likely argue over the +1 format for years to come, the USPS has been utilizing the +4 format since 1983 and if the Postal Service can be more more progressive than the sport's governing body, don't you think you can be a bit more visionary than your average blue-chipper?
2 comments:
Interesting topic...Though what I'm about to mention wouldn't work for out-of-staters, we do have a more localized way of representing ourselves out here in God's country. Since Nebraska license plates have included county designation numbers (since the Twenties, I believe) those of us from one county in particular have taken to this for well over a decade now. Scotts Bluff county is designated 21 on state-issued license plates...so back in my salad days of mid-90's UNL attendance, several of us from Scottsbluff/Gering put aside our bitter cross-river rivalries of high school and formed a bond which resulted in a conscious effort to represent the west side (think "Compton & Long Beach together, now you know you're in trouble.") We even developed a hand signal, forming the "two-one" with one's right hand over their heart, with the thumb and ring fingers recessed. In the years since, I've amassed quite a catalog of photos of folks from far and wide reppin' the 2-1.
Now I don't know how I'd suggest you'd pull off a Box Butte county (65 county for the uninitiated) hand sign without the use of a foot...but this all dovetails nicely with my theory that the Nebraska state unicameral legislature should be filled with Husker players whose jersey numbers represent a given county in any given year. To that end, I'm excited about the prospects of Scottsbluff county's latest representative: Prince Amukamara...we're long overdue, as the Robin Miller/Titus Brothers years were quite the departure from the excellent representation we received during the Mike Brown era. (Ten minutes of Amukamara highlights can be found here):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qo6t70x4f2E
But I've digressed enough already.
DT,
Genius. I like that idea quite a bit. I don't see them every day now or, you know, ever, but I still feel pretty confident in my ability to give you a cars home county based on those numbers.
The Northeast gets a little sketchy, but I've still got Hastings and west on lockdown.
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