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Vignesh Venkataraman
Vignesh Venkataraman (or Viggy, if you prefer) writes weekly columns for the Daily, unless he forgets. He is a computer science and mechanical engineering double major, with an unofficial minor in watching sports. Born in Boston but raised in Cupertino, CA, Vignesh is a diehard New England Patriots fan and has adopted the Golden State Warriors as his favorite basketball team. He was the backup quarterback for his high school football team and called Stanford football games on KZSU in 2014.

Venkataraman: Sharks poised for playoff breakthrough

The San Jose Sharks are no stranger to postseason heartbreak. As a Bay Area transplant, having moved to Cupertino in 2004, my first interaction with the franchise was through my dad’s work — he managed to score some tickets for cheap from a coworker and took us to the HP Pavilion, where we ate some…
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Venkataraman: Take Gronk off Madden cover

The fact that Rob Gronkowski is this year’s Madden cover athlete is … wait for it … maddening. Now that we have gotten this tailor-made pun out of the way, I can now rant and rave against the idiocy of such a decision. And not because Gronk is undeserving – I happen to think he…
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Sports Columns

Venkataraman: Leicester who?

Like Worcestershire sauce or Gloucester, Massachusetts, the apparent birthplace of the pink lawn flamingo, the “ces” in Leicester is silent. Located in the East Midlands of England, in the ceremonial county of Leicestershire (pronounced similarly), Leicester is a city of roughly 340,000 residents. And Leicester City, the hometown football club for the city, are apparently…
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Sports Columns

Venkataraman: Quick hits on the NFL Draft

There is a huge advantage to turning in columns late – you occasionally get the opportunity to react on events that most others have no chance to write about. Take today, for instance. The Daily is running a huge NFL Draft special, and I am uniquely positioned to offer my thoughts on the festivities, basically as they occur! Lucky me.
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Venkataraman: QB gamble too risky

The quarterback position has always been the most glamorous in football. From the days of Namath and Unitas to the present, the quarterback has always been the erstwhile face of the franchise, the leader of the team, the guy who takes credit when the team does well and also the guy who suffers the majority…
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Venkataraman: 73, 60

Folks more capable than I will analyze, comment on and wax poetic about the Golden State Warriors and their mind-melding 73rd win of the season, about Stephen Curry’s induction into the hallowed 50-45-90 club and his 402 three-point baskets and his 30.0 PPG scoring average and his ridonkulous PER. I will say this: I watched much…
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Venkataraman: The pressure of history

I’ve seen many a team spring a leak due to unmanageable expectations. I’ve watched with my own eyes as passes that would otherwise be caught uncharacteristically bounce off the hands, as simple throws that a QB makes in his sleep find themselves sailing over receivers’ heads, as shots that barely even touch the rim in…
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Venkataraman: The many faces of LeBron James

Few players in the NBA command as much attention as LeBron James has over the course of his storied career. From making the jump to the NBA straight from high school at the tender age of 19, through his first stint with the Cleveland Cavaliers, his ill-fated “Decision” to take his talents to South Beach,…
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Venkataraman: Three things I think

Apologies for the uninspired column topic — it has been a long week, I’m a bit under the weather and there is just so much going on in the world of sports! No. 1: I think Roger Goodell is somehow going to win his (sorry, the NFL’s) appeal of the DeflateGate court case, if only…
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Venkataraman: Long live King Steph Curry

When Kyle Korver nailed a three in 127 straight games over the course of two NBA seasons, I honestly thought that record would stand forever. Korver is a useful player, no question, but he has basically one singular skill (shooting threes) and his entire subsistence in the NBA is predicated around that fact. Very few…
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Venkataraman: Djokovic’s ascension

Yesterday night, I dozed off during the Warriors game, which is really quite embarrassing if you think about it — I was lulled to sleep by the ho-hum excellence of a team that can play poorly and still blow the doors off a savvy Mavericks squad by 20+ points. In my defense, I was tired…
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Venkataraman: Overruling the NFL’s overtime rules

Having lived on the West (best) Coast for 12 years now, I had forgotten what it was like to have to stay up late to catch key sporting events as they happen live. The typical 10 a.m. PST–1:15 p.m. PST–5:20 p.m. PST kickoffs for football have been ingrained in me over a decade’s worth of…
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Sports

Venkataraman: Welcome to the NFL’s silly season

It is a silly season in the NFL, that strange time of year when some teams are making runs at the Super Bowl, some are spending all their time in the training room trying desperately to get healthy and some are having fun trying to hire new coaches, having fired their own for various reasons.…
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Venkataraman: Ten things I think I think

In the absence of any bright column ideas, here are 10 things I think I think about the state of the world of sports, a gimmick ripped directly from the Peter King Monday Morning Quarterback playbook: I think that the attacks last week on Paris, Beirut and countless other places that didn’t receive nearly as…
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Venkataraman: The homer double standard

Wednesday night, the Dallas Mavericks hosted the Los Angeles Clippers in what would normally be a run-of-the-mill regular season game in the cluster-mess that is the Western Conference. I say “normally” because after the events of this offseason, this game was anything but normal for a variety of reasons. For those who missed the fireworks,…
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Venkataraman: Remembering Grantland

Talk to any of the writers on The Stanford Daily’s staff and they will tell you that one of their great inspirations is Bill Simmons, the self-proclaimed “Sports Guy” who went from being a bartender in Boston to one of the most powerful people in sportswriting. His eloquence, comedic flair, ready wit, acerbic tongue and ability…
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Venkataraman: Can Klinsmann elevate U.S. soccer?

America’s national pastime is baseball, and America’s Game (as branded by NFL Network) is football. America’s youth enjoy playing basketball, and in the Northeast and Midwest, where the weather outside is often frightful (but the fire is so delightful!), hockey has a huge following. Unfortunately for our national pride, some of these sports aren’t played…
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Venkataraman: Deflategate mismanaged by hypocritical NFL

Greetings, loyal readers. Those of you with long memories and short tempers may recall that the last time I wrote about DeflateGate, I promised to never speak of it again. As you may have surmised, I am reneging on that commitment owing to a most curious summer, filled with intrigue, deception, sneakiness and, oh yeah,…
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Venkataraman: The treble beckons

It is easy to forget in the midst of all the hoopla surrounding this current Barcelona team that an almost identical squad capitulated on its home pitch about a year ago. Absolutely needing a victory over an exhausted and depth-shorn Atlético Madrid squad on the final match day in La Liga, Barcelona suffered the ignominy…
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