Blog Introduction

Hello everyone, welcome to my blog. I know a lot of you are more than likely close personal friends or family of mine that are reading this, so Ill make this as sweet and short as I can. My name is Gerrard Rayford and I am a Sports fan. Now words like that shouldn't make you follow my blog, hell in fact it should make you report it. But the reason I created this blog was so that I, a sports fan, could express to you my thoughts on any and every sports topic that is out there. But let me first explain my love of sports.

I grew up in Detroit, Michigan (where I still live) and since I was a kid, I have always watched sports. From watching  classic NBA playoff games with my grandmother, to watching college football every saturday like it was church sports has been something I love to watch. Short of maybe two sports, tennis and golf, there isn't a major sport I am not a fan of. I remember as a kid playing just about everything my mother and father could get me into, from baseball to PAL football( anybody from Detroit will remember this), to karate, swimming, basketball and even soccer. While I am much older now, I realize that I'm not going to be an athlete and I know that my game isn't as good as the people I idolize. But that didn't stop my love for sports. I love watching a basketball team hit a last second shot to win the game or to keep their season alive. I love hearing the crack behind a baseball bat knock a ball into right-center field and see a man transform into a superhero trying to catch it. I love the passion of seeing 17 thousand people cheering on a soccer team as they try to win it all in extra time. I love all that stuff. If you know me, you know that the only 2 sounds you will hear from my phone is the SportsCenter ringtone or a boxing bell going off for a Bleacher Report notification. I genuinely love this stuff.

So, I said I was going to keep this short and sweet, and I will keep to that promise. First, my favorite teams are the four sports teams of my hometown, Detroit (Lions, Tigers, Red Wings, and Pistons). I will not apologize for being home biased sometimes, but I also will be the bearer of bad news if something is afoul with ANY of the teams regarding anything that may or may not happen. I also root for many other teams in different leagues and sports and they will become apparent in the future with posts that are made here. With every blog post I create, I promise to be professional as possible, but still talk to you like you were surrounded by your friends at a barbershop, coworkers around the water cooler, or family at a barbecue. I promise that I will post something at least once a week, and I will begin to work on different avenues to bring you a weekly dose of sports opinion, but the core platform and the one thing that will stick around is the blog. I aptly named this blog the Sports Pantheon because in the same vein that people used this as a place to talk about things around Rome in that century, I feel as though I have a opinion that could be like yours. You know the one you have when your watching a sports debate and no one is saying the one thing you know needs to be said? This is what this is for. I challenge you to respond to everything I say, to open the conversation and make me better while I attempt to do the same.

So with that being said, I welcome you to The Sports Pantheon.