Columnists - The Daily Cardinal

COLUMNS

Bielema, Andersen never realized how nice they had it at UW

By Dawn Schueller and Rushad Macchi | Sep. 22, 2015

Sometimes the grass is actually browner on the other side. This may be the case for the new lawns of former Wisconsin head football coaches Gary Andersen and Bret Bielema. Bielema and his gut left for Arkansas in 2012, while Andersen bolted for Oregon State just two years later. Both moves seemed puzzling at the time, so allow me to explain why staying at Wisconsin would have been the wiser choice.

COLUMNS

Ranking the NFL Draft’s recent 1-2 quarterback combos

By Rushad Machhi | Sep. 15, 2015

If you took a bunch of aliens and showed them a NFL game and asked who the most important player on the field is, odds are that the aliens would point to the quarterback. Heck, even Roger Goodell might be able to figure that one out. This importance has typically led to many of them being drafted with the first pick, and sometimes even both of the first two picks.

COLUMNS

Matt Harvey debacle ugly for everyone involved

By Zach Rastall | Sep. 8, 2015

It’s September and the New York Mets stand alone atop the NL East standings. It should be a time of excitement for fans as their team seeks its first postseason berth since 2006, but instead the Mets have become the talk of baseball for all the wrong reasons.

COLUMNS

Bo Ryan is Wisconsin basketball's Barry Alvarez

By Zach Rastall and Laura-Claire Corson | Jul. 2, 2015

Early Monday afternoon, Badgers fans received news that they had long feared—the Bo Ryan era in Madison is coming to an end.

COLUMNS

We are First Wave: collaborating to create socially conscious art

By Denzel Taylor | Jun. 11, 2015

On the fifth floor of Lathrop Hall, every new cohort is taught the pride of the phrase that heads this article. Each student shouts in boisterous unison the phrase that welcomed them from across the country. Students proudly hail from cities like Phoenix, Ariz., Brooklyn, N.Y., the Bay Area in California, Chicago, Ill., and, of course, Madison, Wis. They hold dear the cultures they carry together in this room. They are the movement of the hip-hop and urban arts scholarship program First Wave, who speak with poetry, rap, beat, vocal, dance and visual art, and I am blessed to use my talents for this program.

COLUMNS

Athletes, fans and social media hang in delicate balance

By Bobby Ehrlich | May. 1, 2015

In today’s digital society, the relationship between the fan and the athlete has become closer than ever. Social media allows fans to have a more personal relationship with players than ever before. While it’s great to be immersed in the off-the-field lives of our favorite athletes, this increasing connection often does more harm than good.

COLUMNS

Big MLB contracts are not automatically disastrous

By Jack Baer | Apr. 30, 2015

Obvious statement: the Angels regret giving Josh Hamilton $125 million. They paid a king’s ransom for three mediocre, injury-plagued seasons and a whole lot of (semi-deserved) bad press. Pro tip to Arte Moreno: Don’t “Mean Girls” a recovering drug addict while trying to use a contract clause that doesn’t exist to recoup money you freely gave to him knowing the risk associated. You’d think they’d teach that in billionaire class.

COLUMNS

With TV in Limbo, it’s time to present some mid-year awards

By Jake Smasal | Apr. 29, 2015

The school year is almost over, and spring TV is just heating up. In the limited amount of time we have left together, I figured I would write a totally arbitrary awards column, partly because there’s not really any new TV happening this week. What follows is a number of awards I’ve given to shows throughout the year: Awards named after my favorite examples from other shows. Look, the point of this exercise is not to reinvent the wheel—or the awards column—just to bestow awards to those I deem deserving.

COLUMNS

Release your animal instincts with music

By Jake Witz | Apr. 28, 2015

It’s not discussed too often, but musical composition is wedded to mathematics. The way certain frequencies and tones sound good together is an artistic extension of physical laws that govern our universe. We currently live in an era of human technology where a computer program can make a piano composition so genuine that humans can’t distinguish its creation from a fellow human’s. Slowly, every part of our society that we used to accredit to mysticism and luck can now be explained by modern mathematical algorithms. Perhaps not in our lifetimes, but soon enough maybe even the human brain will be seen as nothing more than a series of biological wires and programming.

COLUMNS

Parallels between the NBA Playoffs, college life run deep

By Grey Satterfield | Apr. 28, 2015

The first round of the NBA playoffs has a little bit of everything: the wonderful play of the Warriors, the crap pile that was Toronto, the wonderful Spurs-Clippers series, the Rondo disaster and everything in between. The ups and downs as well as constant swings in momentum are what makes it so appealing and what makes it so similar to life.

COLUMNS

Stop studying and put in a good movie before finals

By Austin Wellens | Apr. 28, 2015

So as finals dawn on us once again, many of you will be looking for ways to less productively divert your time and eradicate stress (while preserving brain cells). And while, as a film student, watching films “technically” counts as studying for me, it remains the absolute perfect way to kill a couple of hours. So without further ado, I humbly present a list of films, from old favorites to new friends, with which to amuse, thrill, reflect on and altogether distract yourself this, or any, exam’s eve (and for bonus points, most of them are on Netflix).

CAMPUS NEWS

Video games is a medium worth studying as an art

By Matt Fox and Alex Lovendahl | Apr. 28, 2015

I find myself often stymied when considering how to write about games. Not truly permeated into the mainstream (though advocates will herald the “Call of Duty” series’ gross as “larger than Hollywood”) I find myself often simply justifying the thought I put into the medium. Yet the games themselves and the subtexts they contain is enough to merit study as a form of literature, akin to the study of cinema and television.

COLUMNS

Love’s shoulder injury changes scope of Eastern playoffs

By Rushad Machhi | Apr. 28, 2015

This past Sunday, a violent tug of the shoulder may have changed the landscape of the entire Eastern Conference playoffs. Kevin Love’s dislocated shoulder in Cleveland’s Game 4 victory over Boston could be a season-altering play for many other teams besides the Cavs.

COLUMNS

Bruce Jenner’s interview shows necesity for greater visibility of transgender individuals in the media

By Conor Murphy and Will Hoverman | Apr. 27, 2015

I remember the first time I was asked to state my personal gender pronouns. Sitting in a forum at “Engaged and Empowered: the Lieutenant Governor’s Conference on LGBT Youth” at UW-Oshkosh in March 2010, I had to ask for clarification what “PGPs” are. At that time, I was an ignorant, 16-year-old queer teenager who had never been asked to state his gender.

COLUMNS

Brewers must break out of recent mediocrity and rebuild for future

By Jim Dayton | Apr. 27, 2015

Bone Thugs-n-Harmony once famously rapped in 1995, “See you at the crossroads (crossroads).” It referred to the conjunction between life and death, the place where Bone Thugs paid tribute to their recently deceased mentor, Eazy-E.

COLUMNS

Predicting the rest of the NBA first round

By Molly Reppen and Rushad Machhi | Apr. 21, 2015

The first round of last year’s NBA playoffs was addiction for many fans, as an unprecedented five out of the eight series went to Game 7s. So far, the first hit of the playoff drug has been less potent, as six out of the eight top seeds won their first game.

COLUMNS

Kaminsky, Dekker both face uncertainty at the next level

By Rushad Machhi | Apr. 15, 2015

The 2014-’15 Wisconsin men’s basketball team produced a lot of things, including great memories, cut-down nets and two potential first-round NBA draft picks. After drying away the tears, we heard that Sam Dekker is truly gone, and he will join his co-star and Wooden Award winner Frank Kaminsky at the next level.

COLUMNS

Fire and dragons permeate ‘Game of Thrones’ fifth season opener

By Jake Smasal | Apr. 15, 2015

We’re back, baby. Last Sunday night, the great television experiment known to us mere mortals as “Game of Thrones” continued its meteoric ascent into our hearts and minds. Viewers have all been waiting for it, and when the first four episodes leaked online yesterday, thousands of our weaker brethren downloaded it. It’s easily the biggest thing to happen on television this year. As such, it is only fitting that I use the space provided to sing its praises (as well as make some make some minor complaints). Warning—spoilers from Sunday’s episode, and some mild book-reader nit-picking follows.

COLUMNS

Rap Genius threatens the art of music

By Abbie Ruckdashel | Apr. 15, 2015

This week I have a question for you guys: Have you ever noticed the number of people with headphones in on your way to class? I am one of those people, and I always find myself wondering what other people are listening to and why they are listening to it. After much consideration and wondering I think I’ve come to a conclusion: People listen to the songs they do based on how it makes them feel and what it means to them.

COLUMNS

Finding originality in franchised repeats

By Alex Lovendahl and Jon Spike | Apr. 14, 2015

The sensation that everything has been done is common and overwhelming in art. Games currently are experiencing a massive and overwhelming version of this issue; with a lack of successful non-sequel games on our brick-and-mortar marketplaces, we find ourselves lauding iterative improvements, such as the blue-shell-stopping horn in “Mario Kart 8” or the Sky-Hook in “BioShock Infinite.” This is neither an abnormal nor a bad thing; artistic evolution comes slowly and less focus on innovation allows for expression and execution to come to the fore. It’s also a generalization ignoring those games with drastically new gameplay styles like the independent games “Sportsfriends” or “Mini Metro.”