Scoreboard Watching

It's late September, and that means we're close to playoff baseball.  Now, the last thing I want to do is jinx my Atlanta Braves, so this entry comes with a disclaimer: everything written here is purely hypothetical.  This isn't what I think will happen, but instead is merely something that could happen.  In case Chipper Jones, Martin Prado or any of the other chronically injured Braves with lots of time on their hands are reading this, please don't let your teammates crumble under the pressure of receiving extensive coverage on this blog.  Just stay the course, get the job done against a nothing-to-play-for Philly team this weekend, and punch your ticket to the postseason.  Thanks.

Anyway, check the MLB standings as of today, September 29, 2010.  If the season ended now, Philadelphia would capture home field advantage throughout the post season, by virtue of having the best record in the All-Star-Game-winning National League (somehow Brian McCann ended up helping the Phillies almost as much as the Braves this season . . .).  San Francisco has a slightly better record than Cincy (by 1.0 game), so if the Braves were to capture the Wild Card (they're currently 1.5 games up on San Diego), Atlanta would travel to SF and the Reds would head to Philadelphia.  There's a lot of regular season baseball left, but if the Giants beat up on a fading Padres club this weekend and the Braves hold on, there will be a Braves vs. Giants playoff game at AT&T Park next week.  Now . . .

Is this too good to be true?  Could I be granted the gift of Braves playoff baseball within 30 minutes of my new home a mere month after moving out to the Bay Area?  How much money am I willing to spend to secure a couple of tickets on StubHub, knowing full well that Giants playoff ticket prices will be through the roof?  There are too many questions to process at one time, so for now, I'm just pulling for Giants and Braves sweeps this weekend.  While getting Atlanta into the playoffs, regardless of opponent (SF, SD and CIN look like the only options left), is my top priority, I'll admit that I'm more than a little bit excited about potentially seeing Braves playoff baseball next week.   

Atoning for My Sins

Last Saturday, lost in the shuffle of Stanford football, was Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year for Jews.  According to Wikipedia (the definitive authority on religious matters, of course), Yom Kippur's "central themes are atonement and repentance" and is the day when "a Jew tries to amend his or her behavior and seek forgiveness for wrongs done."  Wikipedia goes on to state that "the evening and day of Yom Kippur are set aside for public and private petitions and confessions of guilt."  Well, I'm not going to use this space to make any public confessions of wrongdoing over the past year; that would require thoughtful introspection and a mature attitude, neither of which I have any time or tolerance for.  I do, however, want to take account of my confessions of guilt as a sports fan, with hopes that I can indeed amend my behavior between now and next October.

• I was a terrible New York Islanders, and NHL hockey in general, fan this year.  Not only did I not make it to one NHL game - the previous season I went to both an Islanders home game and a Rangers home game (free tickets to the latter, of course) - but I also did a bad job following the league via TV or Internet.  The Isles' repeated awfulness is no excuse to giving up on a great game, perhaps the most extertaining one to see live (hopefully more on this later this year when I get a chance to make it to a Sharks game down in San Jose).
• I almost gave up on the Braves in April of this season when they suffered a nine-game losing streak right off the bat.  While I never completely counted them out of it, I did start looking towards next year and was willing to sacrifice the present for the future.  There were a lot of statements that sounded like "well, when we have Freddie Freeman starting at first base in 2011, then . . ." coming out of my mouth this past April, as certain friends and loyal Caught Looking readers are unwilling to let me forget it.
• I screwed up the setting of my DVR and failed to record a crucial ACC basketball matchup during this past college hoops season.  While this might not sound like much to some, I know how frustrating it is when you don't get to watch your team play a game you've been really excited about, so I apologize to the relevant parties (you know who you are) and promise to be more careful with my DVR technology going forward.
• Once again, I didn't find a way to get access to DirecTV's NFL Sunday Ticket this year.  While it's not really my fault - my only TV options in New York and here at Stanford didn't offer it - but I still feel wrong about not having access to arguably the greatest sports media offering on the market.  Some day, I promise you that I will live in a place that can get DirecTV just so I can order the NFL package.  When that happens, don't expect much from me on Sundays.

I'm sure there are more, but "legitimate" writing calls.  What sports fan sins did you commit this past year?

No Contest, No Problem.

Though I've been a Stanford University graduate student for more than a week now, my introduction to the school would never be complete until I attended a home sporting event.  I was officially welcomed into the community of Cardinal sports fans last night after attending Stanford's blowout 68-24 victory over Wake Forest.  I wanted to make the experience as "BCS-ish" as I could; while I've attended a bunch of big college football games before (including Pac-10 games at both the Rose Bowl and the L.A. Coliseum), this was my first opportunity to go to one with a true rooting interest.

In short, it was a great first Stanford sports experience.  I showed up to a tailgate dressed in a cardinal red shirt, but was careful not to wear any official Stanford merchandise just yet; I wanted to feel satisfied with the team's performance before giving them the honor of having me wear their name, logo or insignia to a game.  The tailgate was great - lots of energy not only for the upcoming game, but for the environment itself.  Between the great weather, beautiful scenery and competitive team, Stanford is a fantastic tailgating venue.  Though many of my classmates elected to skip the bulk of the game to stay outside and continue the party (and how could you blame them, really?), I decided to head into Stanford Stadium before kickoff and enjoy some Pac-10 vs. ACC football.  I'm very glad I did.

The crowd at Stanford Stadium was weak, but the home team's strength made up for it.

I was pleased with Stanford Stadium, but not blown away.  It's new, it's clean and it's sizeable - a perfectly suitable venue for a team like Stanford.  It is completely devoid of character, but that's not uncommon for relatively new stadiums (see my various pieces of scathing commentary on the corporate blandness of Citi Field, for example), and it gets the job done.  The seats were particularly well thought out - while the upper deck has bleachers, they are partitioned into individual seats that make sitting up top relatively comfortable.  It has a very steep facade where all of the seats feel right on top of the field, which I thought was fantastic.  The crowd wasn't great, but I'll give the Cardinal faithful some slack because it was the day before the official start of classes and the game was against a non-conference opponent who was unlikely to put up much of a fight.  Which brings me to . . .

The game itself was a laugher - after being tied 7-7 in the first quarter, the Stanford offense exploded for touchdown after touchdown while Wake Forest failed to find any rhythym.  Star QB Andrew Luck torched the Demon Deacons in the air and with his legs (his 52-year TD run was particularly impressive), and the defense shut down an attack that had scored 54 points against Duke the week before.  While normally I find blowouts boring, this was a perfect introduction to what Stanford football can be at it's peak - an exciting and explosive passing game, a solid running attack and a better-than-expected defense that can not only stop offenses, but also create turnovers.  I saw everything I came to see, from Luck's incredible arm and touch passes to the swarming defense that shut out UCLA in the Rose Bowl last weekend.  And, while I normally hate leaving games early, I left after the third quarter (well after the starters were pulled and with the score 55-24) to get some work done, and didn't feel like I missed a thing.

While I hope to have the chance to attend some more competive Stanford football games later this year (I'm very excited for the USC game later this season; unfortunately Stanford plays Oregon and Cal on the road . . .), the blowout was a perfect jumping off point for my in-person Stanford sports career.  Next time I make it to a game in a few weeks I'll be sure to bust out the Cardinal red again - and this time, I'll top it all off with a big "S" and a tree.

Friday Night Lights: A Review

I can't think of a better book to recommend to my loyal readers than Buzz Bissinger's Friday Night Lights.  Not only is Bissinger's work an excellent piece of journalism - part research paper, part interview, part cultural commentary piece - but it's a perfect book for those interested in learning more about the varying experiences of sports fans across the globe (I presume that's why you're here, unless you're a relative of mine.  If that's the case: Hi Mom!).  Though Friday Night Lights isn't mentioned alongside other excellent works of sports journalism (such as The Blind Side by Michael Lewis, for example)- likely because it's been a bit over-exposed by the presence of the film based on the book, and in turn the TV series based on the film based on the book - it's truly worth the read.

Buzz Bissinger's Friday Night Lights is the best sports book I've read in some time.

As I've discussed before, I grew up without much of a non-professional sports influence.  There's only one thing Long Island lacks more than decent college football, and that's decent high school football; I graduated from a school whose football team, while I was there, went an entire season without scoring a point.  I know nothing about the Friday Night Lights culture that dominates Texas and other parts of the south and midwest, and before reading this book completely lacked the ability to fathom a town or community completely consumed by a high school football program.  Bissinger's Friday Night Lights is the closest I'll ever get to experiencing a football season in a place like Odessa, Texas.  Not only does the book do an excellent job of documenting the pandemonium that is Permian High School football from the perspective of an outsider, but it also allows the reader to empathize with the characters on a personal level.

This book is not really about football; it's about what football can do to a community.  Sure, the chapters that talk about the results of particular games are interesting, but when you get down to it these games happened over 20 years ago (the work follows Permian High's 1988 campaign) and have long since been deemed as historically irrelevant.  What's far more compelling, and far more timeless, is Bissinger's ability to describe in detail the ways Permiam football changes - and dictates - the everyday lives of virtually every resident of Odessa.  From the Uncle who agrees to adopt his broken-home-fleeing nephew because he sees the opporunity to mold him into a Permian star, to the boosters who support the program even though their children and grandchildren have long since graduated high school, to the coach who comes home to "For Sale" signs stuck in his front lawn following every loss, almost every member of the town is engulfed by high school football.  Bissinger mixes in a bit of history here and there, too, helping the reader understand the origins of Permiam's on-field dominance and off-the-field obsessiveness.  The school district's committment to preserving the strength of the football program - often at the expense of academics, demographic heterogeneity, and safety of the players - is simultaneously terrifying and riveting.

If you like sports, read Friday Night Lights.  Even if you don't, though, anyone who has interest in the social sciences and leaning more about how communities of people interract will get a lot out of this book.  Bissinger's work is far more than the traditional non-fiction sports work.  Often that can be a recipe for disaster (read my review of Rhoden's Forty Million Dollar Slaves), but Friday Night Lights is the near-perfect mixture of sports, history and psychology.

Good Morning, NFL

Though tomorrow is my first day of graduate school classes and I've been assigned more work than I anticipated (assigned reading and homework before the first classes of the program?), I'm going to do my best to try and update Caught Looking at least once or twice a week while in school.  Living in the Bay Area should give me tons of new and (somewhat) interesting sports-related topics to write about.  With today being the first real day of the NFL season (the Thursday night season opening game doesn't really count, after all . . .), there's no better time to write about my return to morning NFL football.

When I first moved to Los Angeles in 2005, I quickly discovered the beauty of the Pacific time zone when it comes to following the NFL, and following East Coast teams (like my New York Giants) in particular.  At first pass, most East Coast sports fans are against the idea of watching the early games starting at 10 AM local time; they complain that that's too early to watch games, that it's awkward to go to a sports bar that early in the morning, and that the Sunday night game is actually more of a Sunday "late afternoon" game, since it starts at 5 PM here on the West Coast.

Trust me on this: following football is better when you're three hours behind.  The key considerations:

• 10 AM is a great start time for games.  It gives you the ability to go out on a Saturday night, sleep to a respectable (but not too early or too late) time - let's say 9:30 AM - on Sunday morning, roll out of bed and immediately start watching NFL games.  What better way to start a Sunday?
• I've never been a big fan of football at sports bars - too noisy, too many distractions, too much emphasis on beer and food and not enough on football.  I especially dislike going to the bars when the Giants are playing - all I want to do is focus on Big Blue, and can do without hearing what the fat guy behind me (wearing the Jake Delhomme jersey, most likely) thinks about the Browns chances this year.  Having the East Coast games start at 10 AM makes it a bit less likely that people will want to mobilize to a bar for the early games, and lets you focus on the action with your fellow true fans at home.
• The late games end at 4 PM here, so the NFL doesn't kill your entire day.  Even if you watch through the Sunday night game, you're done by 9 PM and still have a few quality hours left in your Sunday night to do work, laundry (which I'm doing as I type), or whatever.  Anyone who responds to this with a "Yeah, but on the East Coast you can get stuff done before the start of the early games" is delusional; no one I know is even mildly productive before noon on a Sunday.

I almost forgot how great Pacific Standard Time football was until this weekend, when I took advantage of it for both NCAA (some games start at 9 AM!) and NFL games.  Throughout this season and next, I'll continue to embrace all of the 10 AM Giants games.  I encourage you all to come out to the Bay Area for a weekend during the NFL season; I'll be sure to show you how much fun being a West Coast football fan can be.

Dear Nike: Enough is Enough

Tonight I write to you from outside Park City, Utah, a town filled with BYU football fans.  Everywhere I look I've seen BYU shirts, car flags and license plate frames, with a few Utah Utes items sprinkled in.  Motivated by the college football spirit, I made sure to tune into ESPN tonight to check out the Labor Day battle between Boise State and Virginia Tech.  While I was hoping for some good football and an exciting, close game (the teams delivered on both), all I could focus on were how awful the uniforms were.

With the new Boise State uniforms, Nike definitely crossed the line.

Earlier this week, a loyal Caught Looking reader pointed me to this article about Nike's new Combat football line and uniforms, being worn this season by a number of schools including the Broncos and the Hokies.  As usual, Nike used a New York City-based fashion show to launch it's new duds and, also as usual, they're extremely ugly.  For a while, Nike only conducted their hideous experiments on the Phil Knight-dominated University of Oregon Ducks, but recently the Nike laboratory's reach has expanded across college football (and basketball, for that matter). 

The Boise State vs. Virginia Tech game displayed just how much damage Nike can inflict on college football uniforms.  The Rivals.com article does a good job of pointing out some of the true lowlights: namely the "ludicrously oversized Bronco logo on Boise State's alternative helmet and pants and the Tron-inspired design on Virginia Tech's numbers."  The one blue sleeve on the Broncos jerseys was also absurd, and I really disliked how Nike took the Hokies' classic maroon jerseys and turned them black.

I'm usually a big Nike fan; I often find myself buying their products, and think they've done a lot of good work in college sports.  But when Nike starts using college teams as vehicles to promote their new, "alternative" products, I say enough is enough.  Why can't we have more jerseys that look like those of the Oakland Raiders or New York Giants, and not something inspired by the inner components of a computer?

Notes from the Road

Greetings from Kearney, Nebraska, the third-night stopover on my five-day drive across the country.  The trip is going well so far, and I'm hoping to be approaching the Wyoming / Utah border by tomorrow night.  While this hasn't been a very sports-intensive weekend for me so far, I did have a few relevant notes I wanted to pass along.

• I recently got a new HTC Incredible for school and, while I primarily intend to use it to access email and make phone calls, it makes following sports incredibly convenient, too.  Getting up to speed on MLB and college football scores this weekend was super easy.  This likely warrants a post of its own sometime in the near future, but I have a feeling that the Incredible may have a profound impact on my ability to follow my favorite teams.
• The first half of this trip has been filled with college gridiron landmarks.  We had to pay a higher-than-expected nightly rate at a Holiday Inn Express in Howe, Indiana after our first day because we were within a short drive of South Bend on the Friday night before Notre Dame's opening contest against Purdue.  I also drove through or passed some other excellent college football towns that I might never visit again, including Iowa City (University of Iowa), Lincoln (University of Nebraska), State College (Penn State) and others. 
• I was especially excited to pass by Grinnell, Iowa and see signs for Grinnell College.  For those of you that don't know, Grinnell is somewhat famous in the college basketball world, mainly for their run-and-gun, high-scoring style.  Sometimes called the "Anti-Princeton Offense," the scheme known in Grinnell as "The System" has produced a number of highly competitive teams at the D-III level.  As a big Princeton hoops fan, it was interesting to pass by the school that's basically bizarro-Princeton from a basketball standpoint.
• Lots of NASCAR gear out here.  At a gas station near the Iowa / Nebraska border, there was a life-sized cardboard cut-out of Dale Earnhart, Jr. just outside the entrance to the restroom.  Probably not something you'd see at a Mobil station on Long Island.

Tomorrow's it's on through the rest of Nebraska (yes, it's as flat as they say) and on into Wyoming.  I'm targeting a Tuesday evening arrival into California, and I'll try to post this week either from the road again or from my new digs in Palo Alto.  Until then, there'll be plenty of scores to check on the HTC Incredible.