There's two things I like about Independence Day:

DISCLAIMER: Honestly, just be disclaimed.

We almost had to call the spring edition of the “Tribe Top 10” the “Tribe Top 20.”

Three years ago, the Indians got a girls' lacrosse team. Two years ago, they got a coach.

Call me Jack Flash, because I've been Jumpin' from one school to the next, one game to the next, one Ruby Tuesday to the next, all spring, trying to keep up with all the new records set and milestones surpassed on the local sports scene.

We had this super-secret-type play during my days on the middle-school lacrosse fields at St. James Academy.

You know that guy with the hair and the glasses that's always on ESPN, talking about which teams should take what players in the NFL Draft, even when it's like, half a calendar year or so off from actually going down? Well that guy's name is Mel Kiper Jr., and I met him one time.

I was standing on the sidelines, trying to keep potential line drives coming off the bat of Indian River High School sophomore 1B Samantha Mayfield from eliminating my own personal map, when IR senior shortstop Makenzie Collins' glove… kind of died.

It's a very Ripley's type of a thing because, believe it or not, Pepsi Co. seems to think that only the exact thing wrong with the world can save the world, from all the things that are exactly wrong with it (it being the world).

The following is based on a true story… loosely. [Editor's note: When Tripp says “loosely,” he means “very loosely,” as in “not at all relating the reality of the actual situation.”]

I'm not going to stand here and present some egghead scientific argument based on fact. I'm just a regular dude. I like to watch football, quote Chevy Chase movies and crank the radio when Motley Crüe comes on. Rock, flag and eagle, if you know what I mean.

It's a phrase I never imagined I'd be able to use with a straight face: “Man — I could really use the help of R. Chris Clark right about now.”

Emilio Estevez. You either love him, hate him, are completely indifferent to him, are somewhat indifferent to him, have another unspecified opinion of varying nature about him, or have no idea who he is. He's just one of those classic '80s movies stars where there is no in-between.

With the Indian River High School boys' basketball team set to make their first state tournament appearance since 2014, winter sports certainly aren't over yet.

Calling all tennis players. Calling all golfers ready for shotgun starts. Calling all shuffle-board players, 5K runners, jazzercise jazzers, yoga'ed-out yogis, grayed-out barrel-riders, cast-out fish-finders, and even calling all 65-year-old hockey players still carving rink with the best of…

For basketball fans, or even for fans of just, like, general humanity, it was very exciting. It was very, very exciting.

I guess I don't really have to offer an apology to Tom Brady. That's not to say he doesn't deserve one. I just don't think he needs it.

Disclaimer: The following transcript has been derived from a secret-impromptu-Ocean's 11-conspiracy-type meeting called by four-time respective Super Bowl champions Joe Montana and Terry Bradshaw that involves several other former NFL signal-callers typically mentioned in the “greatest quart…

There's no question that Tom Brady is one of the greatest NFL quarterbacks of all time. First-ballot Hall of Fame? You bet.

It's Schrödinger's cat. Nobody going to a restaurant because it's too crowded. Pretty much every major plot point in the 1985 American science-fiction adventure-comedy “Back to the Future.”

I remember the last week of school: Getting to use your “senior privileges” to go off-campus for lunch instead of having to stomach whatever Miss Debbie was serving up in the cafeteria that day. Getting to watch the movie “Boiler Room” in economics class instead of having to learn about, lik…

You know the guy in all those “Friday” movies? And those “Next Friday” movies? And also those “The Next Friday after the Friday after the last Next Friday following the following Next Friday” movies?

In the sort-of-famous words of the Seattle-based 1990's alt-rock/grunge band and obvious Kurt Cobain wannabes “Alice In Chains”: “Yeah, here comes the rooster, yeah.”

As the old saying goes, “You've gotta spend monkeys to make monkeys.”

Jeff Fisher made the move from a city sort of near the “Big Easy” to a city sometimes referred to as the “Big Orange” with only one thing on the agenda: make the Los Angeles Rams great again.

What do you like better, Christmas or wedding season? The correct answer would be: banquet season.

What… a… season.

While it may be a little early for our “Tribe Top Five” and all the best sports moments from fall 2016, with the Indian River High School soccer team still keeping IR fall sports alive and playing for a shot at the state title, it's never too early for our ‘Not Top 10” and all the best worst…

As a journalist, you're not allowed to have a rooting interest, specific team-wise, when you're covering games or writing features or enduring presidential elections, or whatever else.

Theoretical physics. Rubik's cubes. Where exactly “the Cloud” is. Whether Cobb's totem stopped spinning or no at the end of the movie “Inception” featuring Jason Gordon-Levitz (“Snowden,” “Third Rock from the Sun”) and Leonardo DiCaprio (“What's Eating Gilbert Grape?,” pretty much every Mart…

America: The land of the free. The home of the brave. The birthplace of the word “supersize” and adult-onset diabetes.

If you know one thing about me, it's that I'm scared of birds. But also, after catching a few episodes of the show “Stranger Things” on Netflix, and since, apparently, I'm, like, 6, I'm also pretty scared of the dark (ghosts, aliens, demogorgons messing with my soul, Democrats messing with v…

There were a lot of shrugs and “I don't know”s and “Do you only own, like, one shirt, or what's the deal?”s in my own personal discussions about the Indian River High School and Sussex Central High School soccer teams before they faced off on Tuesday.

Call it what you (and, by “you,” I pretty much mean “I”) will.

To quote the famous and fictitious Michael Scott, “I'm not superstitious, but I am, a little stiticious.”

It seems to be kind of a trend this year. I'm getting sort of Belichick'ed, in a way.

I don't really get it, how my friends don't really get it, how I most definitely do not want to get in on their fantasy football draft.

Throughout American history, the sports world and world in general have seen their fair share of lies and liars.

For as much time as he spends in the water, it seems somewhat strange that Michael Phelps does not like fish.

There are, as a general law of the universe, only a handful of chances that life allows us to look really unequivocally cool.

This week's “Tripple Overtime” column title translates loosely to “Only the one who does not fear the dragon's breathe will walk the trail of fire,” or something else like that that you're probably very likely hear Matt Damon say in “The Great Wall” whenever it's, for whatever reason, suppos…

As a general disclaimer, this headline, or at least some form of it, was suggested to me by my good friend Jim Brannon at barbecue last Friday night.

Before you read, make sure you check out Part 1 of the Pickleball saga: http://www.coastalpoint.com/content/pickle-overtime-so-uh-i-guess-i-play...

After watching Blake Lively get just absolutely Amity-Island-style terrorized by a Gigantic White Shark (GWS) in the movie “The Shallows” for roughly 1 hour, 27 minutes, one of two things can be assumed:

The Beginning of the not-so-existential The End came when my friend The Mantis sent me an SMS text message last Thursday.

It's fairly hanging low fruit… or figs… or whatever it is that they eat over in England (not sure… basing all knowledge of the U.K. off Austin Powers), to say that London Bridge is falling down.

Not to be confused with “Tripple Overtime Takeover,” in which Indian River High School head soccer coach Steve Kilby often enjoys questioning Tripp's abilities as an actor while at the same time masterfully clearing up weeks' worth of discrepancies regarding Patriots' QB Tom Brady and HC Bil…

I had been putting it off for, let's say, like, exactly a year or so, give or take.

Revenge is a dish best served… Well, that's it, really. Revenge is a dish best served, regardless of what I can only assume would be its metaphorical temperature (hot, cold, etc. — never really understood the idiom and its apparent ties to Quiznos sandwich chefs, if I'm being honest).

“I haven't seen the sun in so long that I can hardly remember what it looks like anymore…” would be a grossly exaggerated statement and, also completely inaccurate, if I were to make it.