College Football and the Heisman Trophy

Today is a big day for college football.  The regular season is winding down and bowl season is coming up.  The bowl games are important season-ending games for some of the best college teams in the country.  Because there are so many colleges they have to use a special system for deciding which teams will play for the championship and in the various bowl games.  It is called the BCS or Bowl Championship Series.  It uses a complicated system of computer analysis, votes from writers and experts, and college coaches' input.

Today they will be annoucing the college football player who won this year's Heisman Trophy award.  This award is presented to the single most impressive football player in the whole country.  This is a very famous and prestigous award.  Look at the picture above.  The statue is famous for its pose as well as what it represents.

Only the top players from the top teams are looked at for the Heisman because of the level of competition they face.  One very exciting rivalry game in college football is when Westpoint (Army officers' training academy) plays against the Naval Academy located in Annapolis, MD.  It is referred to as the Army-Navy game and all of the students at both schools want their team to win.  I am a fan of Navy because I like their style of play and their current quarterback, Ricky Dobbs.



Vocabulary:
1. winding down (expression): close to finishing, almost done
2. system (noun)- a method or series of steps and procedures to do something
3. championship (noun) - the final game of a sports competition
4. various (adj.) - referring to a number of different things
5. prestigous (adj.) - known to be of great value and/or importance

Exercise:
Write a few sentences about a sport you like, or one you don't like.  What do you think about American football?  Do you think snowboarding is a sport?  What about golf? 

Grammar Point:
 When a dash (also called a hyphen) is used between two words it connects them.  It is used to show that the two words go together, or together create one meaning.  In the post above you see Army-Navy which is the name of the game that the two teams play against each other and season-ending.  When the two words 'season' and 'ending' are combined with a dash they become one adjective to describe an event that ends a season.  It is often heard in regards to sports, but many words can be connected in this manner.