That One Time Blake Talked About the Cleveland Browns:

This week, the Cleveland Browns unveiled their updated logos, and it was a completely underwhelming display. The new 2015 logo essentially looks exactly the same as the previous logo except it features a brighter orange and a brown facemask to replace the former grey one.

The Cleveland Browns have been a punchline to many football jokes over the years, but this time the franchise pulled one on their fans and the entire sports-watching community. The dwindling population of Browns fans had marked their calendars and eagerly anticipated the release what had been teasingly reported as a "new logo" only to have their team disappoint them... yet again.

The entire sports world had a collective laugh this afternoon when the Browns unveiled the highly-anticipated, exceptionally minor changes to their brand that will inevitably send fans out to the store to buy new hats and jerseys.

I'll cut the Browns' promotional directors some slack because it's clearly quite difficult to brand a team that is named after a person who himself had a very bland last name. However, this failed attempt at recreating the team's image only makes the organization as a whole look worse. Their updated Dawg Pound logo doesn't even have a freaking outline, and the helmet logo looks no more unique now than it did in 1970.

I don't know what I was expecting from the Browns. I suppose I set my hopes too high hoping to see the return of Brownie the Elf:

It's their loss...

The Start of Spring Training and the End of the Sports Drought

Two weeks earlier when I said that we had entered the sports drought, it meant by association that I was going to fall behind on my blog posts. Now that we have finally reached that magical date which marks the start of spring training, I can finally stop watching sports that only serve to hold my attention until baseball's return!

Here are some select headlines in Major League Baseball after the first weekend of spring training:

New York Yankees' starting pitcher CC Sabathia gained 30 lbs. this offseason, and is now weighing in at over 300 lbs... dethroning the game's most prominent obese starter, Bartolo Colon of the New York Mets.

CC's weight gain comes off of the heals of a 2014 campaign where the plus-sized pitcher had his season shortened by knee surgery. Entering 2013, Sabathia came into spring training weighing around 275 lbs., looking astoundingly gaunt. Sabathia and the Yankees believe that the pitcher's throwing velocity went down in the last two seasons because of the weight loss. We will wait to see if putting back on the pounds will allow the slob to pitch five or more innings without giving up five runs.

The San Diego Padres' first-year general manager A.J. Preller signed just about every big name free agent that hit the market in the past offseason, effectively turning one of the least-entertaining teams in the sport into one of the top squads to watch entering play.

The Padres signed All Star catcher Derek Norris from the Oakland Athletics, former Boston Red Sox third baseman Will Middlebrooks, and "Big Game" James Shields from the Kansas City Royals. All of these signings come in addition to three major outfield acquisitions including the offensive phenom, former Tampa Bay Rays outfielder, Wil Myers, the speedy Justin Upton formerly of the Atlanta Braves, and of course, Matt Kemp, the fallen star of the Los Angeles Dodgers outfield.

On paper, San Diego looks to make outstanding strides in 2015, and hopefully the team will be a contender as the season approaches September. With plenty of other talented outfielders remaining on the roster, there are plenty of potential trades to be made. If A.J. Preller can make a few additional moves to bring in another stud pitcher or some extra production at first base, the Padres could have a legitimate chance to win the National League West pennant.

Obviously there's more to baseball than just two teams, but for now I'm going to cut it off here. The sports drought has officially ended! Next time on Blake's Bellyaching, expect to hear more about the Yankees, and if there's time, one other team.

To quote Bart Simpson, "Goodnight everybody. Peace, man."

The Sports Drought

It happens once a year every year. Football season is over, and baseball season is still more than a month away.

The real shame about the New England Patriots winning Super Bowl XLIX on Sunday night is not that they won or how they won. The biggest shame of all is that Sunday evening marked the beginning of what I call the “sports drought,” a lull in the world of professional sports that encompasses the entire month of February.

For the next four weeks, men across the country will be forced to find new hobbies and to spend Sunday afternoons wrapping their emotions around real matters outside of football; paying attention to friends and loved ones in favor of watching three-hour-long regular season games in sports whose playoff series will last well into June (NBA and NHL). Tragically, the only legitimate viewing options that remain at this point are basketball and hockey, and by the end of the month, I’ll be so sick of both of them that I’ll never want to see ice or hardwood floors again.

I guess this marks the point when my sports talk blog turns to one centered on music and movies. I’ll be back with more of Blake’s sports-related bellyaching come February 20 when most of the clubs in Major League Baseball will have pitchers and catchers report for spring training.

Blake’s Bellyaching’s Obligatory About Me Blog

After looking at other blogs around the internet, I found that a number of people take the time to mention stuff that lets the reader know about them. I thought it was kind of a good idea, and considering the fact that I’m trying to capture and hold an audience here, I’m going to do a similar post of my own:

Hey there, I’m Blake Carpiniello. I’m a senior at Champlain College pursuing a Bachelor of Science degree in Communication and if I make all my necessary blog posts this semester, they’re probably going to let me graduate outta this joint.

I spend a good deal of my time playing the guitar or watching sports on my computer, so expect a lot of posts that relate back to sports or music. My first two posts there were about football, but I probably won’t write on that topic for a while now; the NFL Draft is stupid.

I thought that my chosen title was pretty self-explanatory, but in case you had yet to figure it out, this is “Blake’s Bellyaching” and it’s a hodgepodge of miniature essay-style posts that explore the details of my gripe of the week. Most people have blogs that are about their interests or things they spend a lot of their time talking about, and my blog is no different. This is Blake’s Bellyaching, where everything is a complaint.