The Riker Scale is one of my favorite features of Riker’s Block. I love debating, ranking, and exploring movies every year, and it's awesome to point friends to the list whenever they are in need of recommendations. I also love reading, and I figured that there is no better time than a quarantine to develop … Continue reading The Pantheon
In his 2007 book Fantasyland, Wall Street Journal sportswriter Sam Walker sets out to join and win the most prestigious fantasy baseball league in the world. While he is up against the foremost fantasy baseball experts, Walker believes he has an edge — his access to players and managers as a journalist. Though his quest … Continue reading Fantasy Godfather: The Ascension of The Morey The Merrier
One of the core characteristics of the New England Patriots dynasty was their inevitability. You knew that when they lost a great player, another would step in. You knew that when your team had a superstar talent, they would have a sobering answer. You knew that when you stepped on the field, you were the … Continue reading Brady and the Bucs: Tom Terrific sets sail with Tampa
The first college basketball game I attended was a pretty epic one. The battle between the George Washington Colonels and the Charlotte 49ers on March 4, 2006, had tournament implications, culminated in a GW buzzer beater, and was celebrated by a court storm of rabid fans. Then a five-year-old preschooler, I recall a couple things: … Continue reading A Season Inside: A Winter with Northwestern Basketball
The following is my final paper for my 398 Video Game Studies class, which explores the extent that mainstream sports-themed video games such as NBA 2K employ realism. “If it’s in the game, it’s in the game!” For years this phrase was the slogan of EA Sports’ video game franchises, an assurance that everything that … Continue reading Missing the Mark: Realism and the Modern Sports Video Game
Every year, I update my list of my top 100 movies, the Riker Scale. On the list, I rate each movie from 1-100 (79 is the cutoff as of the 2020 edition) and include information such as rating, year and director. Maintaining the Riker Scale has been extremely fun over the years, and it serves … Continue reading The Riker Scale, Four Years Later
About an hour after the ultra-exciting Super Bowl LIV between the Chiefs and 49ers, I had the pleasure of joining my good friend Harrison Larner on his Slice of Sports podcast to recap the game and discuss some of the major storylines from the game. Harrison did a great job, and I'd highly recommend taking … Continue reading Slice of Sports: Super Bowl LIV Recap
Last year, the New England Patriots and Los Angeles Rams battled in one of the most riveting Super Bowls I can remember. No team had been able to stop Tom Brady and the Patriots’ juggernaut offense all year until the Rams did… and they still lost. The match pitted elite coaches and came down … Continue reading Super Bowl LIV Primer: Get your popcorn ready
I wasn’t a Kobe Bryant fan. Not at all. In the first-ever NBA game I watched in 2008, he was the villain leading the Lakers against my Boston Celtics in the NBA Finals, and the Celtics won. The next year, he handily defeated my new favorite team (and the one I have called my team … Continue reading Kobe: Loss of a Legend
In sports, the athlete is always moving: running, shooting, passing, swimming, catching. The same could be said about my own history as an athlete moving between different sports. Over a span of 19 years, I’ve participated in an organized league over 40 times, with no sport exceeding 12 of those seasons. Those sports represented an … Continue reading Nostalgia Blast: The Athlete
