Don't play like you practice! Play better on game day!

The adrenaline bounce - All players think they are show up/step up, game day tough, but many are not. Adrenaline is a real and legal hormone that enhances athletic performance. It is brain-triggered, summoned by a cocky confidence. Some players just show up and snap in big games; others wilt and fade. And others look the same as they do in practice. Play like you practice is not what to look for. Save the best effort for game day; the real winners know the difference.

Peek-a-boo - You know you are firmly rooted inside the losers' circle of sports when you follow successful people about, snapping photos of them for the purpose of tattling for breaking some rule. There is a lot of this going on right now, as if losing on the field isn’t enough for some people. The rules themselves are so totally confusing and antiquated, and with all the off-season opportunities for leagues, tournaments and conditioning, all restrictive rules do is protect lazy people. “You can’t outwork me; it’s against the rules!" Look at all the sports that no longer have JV programs. That’s because no one inside the school is working hard enough to build and maintain a top-tier program.

Fanatically focused - Grand Mom Rose: “Never enter into a diet contest with an anorexic" (or person with anorexia, to be politically correct). Comedian Martin Mull: “I’d like to be a fanatic, but frankly I haven’t got the time.” I spend lots of time in gyms, but I’m not committed to perfection; rather, wavering is more my personality type. I don’t drink or use drugs, so the joke “How I feel when I wake up is as good as I’m going to feel all day” applies to me. It caught my attention that only one male under 19 ran the Rehoboth Marathon, and that was Pete Chappell, 17, a senior at Avon Grove High School. Teenagers as a rule aren’t attracted to endurance feats, for obvious reasons. I only wish I understood what they were. Perhaps it’s not worth the T-shirt and trophy; they are afraid of dying, and not particularly worried about weight or aspiring to look gaunt.

Flat screen - No one says "television" anymore; everyone says "flat screen." And 32 inches is the new small with 52 in the moderate range. You can’t get away from The Hopper commercials, but I’m thinking we are all going to have a room with an entire wall that looks like a Windows 8 screen with 14 games going on at the same time. The best TV I own is a 400-pound Sony CRT 3-inch full aspect high definition that is in the garage and I occasionally clean it with a leaf blower and shop vac and wipe it down with a wet sock. It’s a guy thing.

Snippets - Cape's 2014 football schedule is now complete: Milford, Archbishop Spalding, Indian River, Caesar Rodney, Bullis School, Dover, Polytech, Sussex Tech, Sussex Central and Smyrna.

Josh Hamilton of the Texas Rangers is a free agent, but free radical is more like it. The Phillies reportedly offered him a three-year, $80 million deal, but Josh is looking for more long term. What? This is an always-recovering cross-addicted guy who missed time last year because his eyelids wouldn't stop blinking because of too much caffeine. That’s like 50-ounce tankards of coffee all day long, man.

Heard a new one that many modern-day scholastic wrestlers go up in weight class rather than down, taking more of a football lineman approach to competition.

The Cape football banquet is 5 p.m., Sunday, Dec. 16, at the Rusty Rudder. Coach Bill Collick asked me if I was stopping by and if so, maybe I’d like to talk to the players about the commitment it takes to be a champion. Hard not to say “Just look at the girls' teams - eight state titles since spring 2009 - because back-to-back 8-2 football seasons is championship-caliber play, especially when you can look back and say, ”We could have won those four games we lost.”

David Zajic, 50, from Alabama, ran the Rehoboth Marathon in 3:42, his 43rd state conquered. Zajic’s wife was most impressed to discover that former Huntsville, Ala., meteorologist Dan Satterfield has surfaced at WBOC, saying he was the best weatherman like ever. “Pass on compliments,” Grand Mom Rose said. "It creates the illusion that you are personally comfortable in your own skin.”

Go on now, git!