The Hoddle of Coffee: Tottenham Hotspur news and links for Wednesday, December 4

Hello, everyone!

It’s my two year Hoddle-versary! Before I get started on rambling, though, I’d like to thank everyone coming to the Hoddle, whether you read the ramble or skip straight to the comments, every day and entertaining me. It’s been an enjoyable time, and I look forward to more of it.

Ramble of the Day

What would I do without Wikipedia? Still searching for inspiration, I bet, because Wikipedia answered several questions for me as I began the process of coming up with a ramble. I first needed to find one of those lists aligning anniversaries with certain types of gifts — Wikipedia had me covered, and provided me with a lot of options. American tradition has the second anniversary as paper, but I covered that last year. British tradition has it as cotton; a modern list created by the Chicago Public Library picks china. I definitely don’t have opinions on china.

Cottom reminds me of the phrase “the fabric of our lives,” and my younger sister told me that I’d probably track down an advertisement with Zooey Deschanel singing the phrase. Cotton, Inc. doesn’t have that much of a YouTube presence, so I didn’t find it, and I also didn’t want to dedicate the space to an ad campaign, no matter how well it worked.

I clicked on Cotton, Inc.’s website regardless, which presents itself as a sort of Department of Cotton website. In addition to shopping the actual clothing brand that it is, you can also take a peek at the different types of cotton. They consider corduroy a type of cotton, and I didn’t get a great explanation as to why that’s the case, but I moved on and saw one called French Terry. I made a quip about hoping it wasn’t related to John Terry, and then my older sister said, “like terry cotton?” I said that sounds like a name of an NFL player.

I opened another tab, and a quick Google search later meant that tab was open to another Wikipedia page: “Cotton (surname).” I planned on reading through the whole list of famous people with the last name Cotton, but the athlete section was the first; it turns out there are a few NFL players with the last name Cotton, but not one named Terry Cotton. There is a footballer/soccer player born in 1946 named Terry Cotton, though!

He has a very short Wikipedia page. He was an amateur footballer, born in England but represented Wales. He was a center half and a forward, and his claim to fame was making more than 410 appearances for Yeovil Town, twice named the team’s player of the year. There isn’t much else to track down on the internet, as is expected of an amateur footballer who played in the 1970s.

Still, I’m pretty impressed that I accidentally found a football connection to cotton. My cotton ramble is suddenly an ode to Wikipedia, both in its ability to teach anyone anything (random or otherwise), but its organization of these obscure details. It becomes so easy to find meaningful or meaningless information, and I appreciate it greatly.

tl;dr: The cleanest free write I’ve managed in a while, inspired by the cotton anniversary and Wikipedia.

Links of the Day

Bordeaux ultras invaded the pitch calling for the resignation of the club president Tuesday, halting the match for 25 minutes.

Liga MX will limit the number of foreigners beginning in the 2020-21 season.

Arsenal interim Freddie Ljungberg wants to consult Arsène Wenger before his home debut.

David Squires checks up on Arsenal in his latest cartoon.

Today’s longer read: Jacob Steinberg interviews West Brom’s Grady Diangana on his ambitions of playing for England, combating homesickness, and his passion for art for The Guardian