Won't You Take Me To . . . Niketown

Thanks to a Stanford connection, I was invited to go to a special event at Niketown San Francisco last weekend.  Being the dedicated sneaker freak that I am, I woke up at 5:30 AM to be at the store at 7:00 AM, a full three hours before store opening.  In exchange for my early rising, the reward was an employee discount of 40-50% off anything in the store.  Needless to say, I did some serious damage to my credit card bill; four pairs of sneakers and over $200 spent.

Aside from being an opportunity to get a great deal on some "kicks," the trip to Niketown was a great barometer for gauging which professional athletes are growing (and shrinking) in popularity.  I was last in a Niketown store in New York over the summer, and a lot has changed in the sports world since then.  Here's what I learned about the last half-year in sports on my most recent Niketown trip.

• LeBron James is DOWN.  Niketown confirmed what I already knew: The King's popularity has seriously dropped since he took his talents to South Beach.  The LJ23 logo has been swapped for an awkward looking lion's head, and LeBron's gear is now buried below tons of purple-and-gold Kobe stuff.  In fact, another Nike hoops stud seems to be quickly gaining groud on LeBron.  Kevin Durant is UP; it's the Durantula's shoes that sit alongside Kobe's on the racks, not LeBron's.

• Soccer is DOWN.  Last time I was in Niketown over the summer, the World Cup was in full swing and soccer gear (team U.S.A., Brazil and the Netherlands in particular) was all over the store.  Now, the soccer gear was relegated to a small area on the top floor, sandwiched in between tennis and golf.  Instead, Skateboarding and Paul Rodriguez, Jr. are UP.  The Mexican-American skateboarder has his green-and-gold, #84 apparel all over the store, much to my surprise.

• Manny Pacquiao is UP.  Pacman has his own line of blue-and-red gear and a weird-looking logo, now (see the back of the left shoe), and Nike seems to be trying to turn him into more than just a boxer.  He's essentially the go-to "workout" athlete right now, replacing some of the void left by Lance Armstrong's departure from cycling glory.  Perhaps not surprisingly, Pacquiao's stuff is taking over the real estate previously occupied by golf; Tiger Woods is WAY DOWN.  He still has a presence in the store, but he's not the Nike star child he once was.

There were other notable trends at Niketown, but those were the major ones.  I'll have to take another trip there before the school year is out to see how the trends change once again as winter turns into spring.  This will be my last post until after Christmas, as I'm headed out of the country for the next two weeks and likely wont have many / any opportunities to write.  Until then, Happy Holidays!

The Super America Conference: A Vision

By now you've surely heard that TCU will be joining the Big East for all sports starting with the 2012-2013 academic year, a move undoubtedly motivated solely by the cash-minting machine that is major college football.  The move gives TCU the BCS conference slot that it covets, while the Big East gains entry into the attractive Texas media and recruiting markets.  The Big East, however, isn't just a football conference.  In fact, it's barely a football conference at all right now.  As any East Coaster can tell you, the Big East is all about college hoops, and is filled with power programs that make it the nation's most dominant college basketball conference.

As competitive as schools like Syracuse, Louisville, Connecticut, Pittsburgh and Georgetown are on a national scale year after year, the conference's undisciplined approach to expansion has significantly diluted the Big East basketball talent pool.  While TCU will be the icing on the cake in this regard, it's far from the start of the problem; in addition to the Big East mainstays with hoops programs that have fallen apart in the 21st century (such as St. John's, Rutgers and Seton Hall), the Big East has acquired a handful of schools that have no business competing in a power basketball conference (including South Florida and DePaul).

Given that the Big East has clearly over-expanded (the conference will have 17 basketball-playing schools once TCU joins), there's only one logical thing to do: blow up the entire Big East system and start over.  Without further ado, I give you: The Super America Conference! (The name change is primarily motivated by the fact that no conference that includes schools from Texas, Wisconsin and Illinois should have the word "East" in it.)

You might be thinking that a Big East-to-Super America conversion would involve some league contraction, but you'd be wrong.  In fact, the proposal (flushed out earlier this evening with the help of one of Stanford's preeminent sports experts) would ideally involve adding three additional teams to get to a total of 20.  While I haven't fully thought out who might make sense to add, let's take three schools with strong basketball programs, relative geographic proximity to the bulk of the current Big East teams, and mediocre to non-existent football programs (to avoid further complications around the BCS system).  The Atlantic-10 seems ripe for pillaging, so let's move Temple, Xavier and Dayton into the Super America conference.

Now that we have 20 teams, let's split them into two divisions of 10.  Let's not do this randomly or geographically, though; let's split them by ability.  The 10 best teams go in to Division A, while the bottom 10 start off in Division B.  For the first Super America season, the split can be based on some sort of historical strength metric (average RPI over the last five years or something similar).  Going forward, though, the divisions will change year-to-year based on an English Premier League-style relegation system.  The bottom two teams from Division A (based on conference record) will drop down to Division B for the following season, while the two top Division B teams will take their place.  Conference games will only include matchups with the other nine teams within the Division, though teams will be permitted to schedule games with teams from the other Division as part of their non-conference schedules (to ensure that we can have a UConn vs. Syracuse game every year regardless of whether one of them is relegated to Division B for a season).

What about the Super America conference tournament, you ask?  Let's make it a 12-team event: the top four teams in Division A get first round byes.  The 5th through 8th best teams in Division A will host the 1st through 4th best teams from Division B in the first round, with the winners advancing to face the top four from A.  The bottom two teams from Division A (already scheduled for relegation down to Division B) and the bottom six teams from Division B don't make the conference tournament (and realistically, don't deserve to).  This way, relegation is based completely on regular season conference record (to emphasize the importance of conference games, even within Division B), but the automatic bid granted to the Super America conference tournament champion could conceivably go to one of the two teams that makes the tournament but isn't scheduled for promotion to Division A (in other words, Division B teams numbers three and four).

Admittedly there are a ton of details that I need to think through more, including the financial ramifications of this proposal.  All I know is this would add a lot more excitement to what we currently know as Big East basketball.  The relegation system allows us to see the cream of the crop of the Super America conference (as determined by current ability, not program reputation) play a home-and-home in a given season, rather than the current system which occasionally replaces a UConn vs. Pitt matchup for a UConn vs. Depaul one.  It provides incentive for Division B teams to compete throughout the season, not only for one of the two promotion slots, but also for one of the four conference tournament berths.  Even the cellar or Division A will be exciting as teams 7-10 battle to avoid being sent down.  Only the bottom of Division B will be boring, but let's be realistic - no system is going to make Rutgers versus TCU particularly exciting.

If the Big East wants to keep expanding, let's encourage it.  Rather than just diluting the best basketball conference in America, though, let's turn it into something that every college basketball fan can get excited about.

Supporting the Yankees

I was recently forwarded an email which contained, as an attachment, a scanned copy of an NFL contract from 1944.  The contract, between the Green Bay Packers and a player named Ed McGroaraty, agreed to pay the athlete $150 per game, plus $35 per week for travel expenses, with the possibility of increasing payment "as soon as you are playing the kind of ball deserving more money."  The timing of this email was perfect; when I received it, I was on ESPN.com reading about Derek Jeter's contract dispute with the New York Yankees.

McGroaraty's 1944 contract with the Green Bay Packers.

As one Caught Looking reader accurately noted on Facebook yesterday, Jeter's stats clearly don't justify the kind of pay increase he's asking for.  It's hard not to agree with the following:

It's really fairly difficult to make the Yankees look like the reasonable party in a negotiation but Derek Jeter is apparently giving it his all. Players with a higher WAR* last year than Jeter's (2.5) last year: Omar Infante (2.7), Mike Napoli (2.7), Kevin Kouzmanoff (2.9), Luke Scott (3.1), and about 80 others.

But, as usual, I'm not here to debate Jeter's statistics or monetary value.  What I can't stop thinking about, though, is the notion that, according to a supposedly credible source, "the Jeter side [doesn't want] Jeter's value to be judged against that of other shortstops, preferring to base his worth on his legacy as an all-time great Yankee."

I realize that it's within every professional athlete's right to fight for the best contract he can.  MLB stars like Jeter generate a ton of revenue for their teams, and Jeter is certainly allowed to negotiate as large a contract as possible.  The question here, though, is if there's a difference between what Jeter is "allowed" to do as a star baseball player and what he "should" do as part of his self-professed efforts to be remembered as an "all-time great Yankee."  For years now, Jeter has been the gold standard of baseball players, from his cordial relationship with the media to his lack of (speculated) performance enhancing drug use.  If there was one MLB star who I would have thought would have quietly and smoothly agreed to a reasonable deal to return to his team, it would have been Derek Jeter.  These surprising developments in the Jeter vs. the Yankees contract saga show that I was wrong.

Derek Jeter is not Ed McGroaraty, and this is not 1944.  Jeter plays in a professional sports landscape full of multi-million dollar player contracts, television agreements and stadium construction proposals, and has the right to carve out the biggest piece of that pie that he can.  At the same time, though, the Yankees have the right to play hardball and stick to their original (and seemingly more than fair) three year, $45 million offer.  I hope that for once the Yankees stay true to their word about refusing to overspend, and until they budge from their current position they have my support (for once) in their battle against Derek Jeter. 

*WAR = Wins Above Replacement

No Respect on Senior Day

Earlier today, for the first time ever, I watched the BCS Selection Show that ESPN airs on Sunday evenings.  It's a completely absurd show where ESPN milks what should be a ten-minute event into a 45 minute show, and the BCS top 25 is leaked out bit by bit in between mindless commentary.  Normally I'd avoid the BCS Selection Show like the plague, but with Stanford's hopes for a BCS bowl bid almost entirely dependent on this week's rankings, I was hooked.  After a surprisingly (and embarassingly) dramatic 30 minutes of waiting, we learned that Stanford is now #4 in the current BCS rankings, meaning that, much to college football's disappointment, the Cardinal are almost definitely heading to the Sugar, Orange or perhaps even the Rose Bowl (if Auburn loses to South Carolina this weekend and TCU goes to the national championship game).

Why is this so disappointing to the BCS bowl system and the NCAA?  The underwhelming home crowds at Stanford games this season, despite the team's on-field prowess, illustrates why the BCS bowls should be concerned - there just aren't many fans of Stanford football even in Palo Alto, let alone across the country.  Stanford's inability to convince fans to come to a critical home game against Arizona earlier this season suggests that premier football matchups don't matter much to Cardinal fans. Even more disappointing to me, though, was the pathetic turnout for Senior Day against Oregon State yesterday afternoon.

A dominant team and a great Stadium apparently aren't enough to sell out Stanford home games.

Yes, there were possible explanations for why some people might not have come to the Oregon State game yesterday.  It had rained earlier in the day.  It was the Saturday following Thanksgiving, so some people might have been out of town.  Oregon State isn't a high profile opponent (Stanford's only sellout this year came against USC).  Despite these facts, though, I was personally really excited for Senior Day and would have thought more people would have been, too.  The fifth-year seniors were freshmen when Stanford went 1-11 five seasons ago, and this home finale should have been a celebration of the turnaround that the program has made since 2005.  Instead, it was just another dominant on-field performance that was only seen live by 38,775 people.

One of the coolest parts of most Senior Days is when the senior class is recognized one-by-one on the field prior to the game, but Stanford didn't even do that because, as I was told by a credible source,not enough fans show up prior to kickoff to justify the ceremony.  Instead, the team videotaped a "ceremony" that was held earlier in the day, and showed it on the video boards during halftime.  Rather than receiving a standing ovation from 65,000+ fans like he would have had he attended Penn State, Texas or Alabama, two-way starter Owen Marecic was featured for about five seconds as part of a cheaply-made video that barely anyone was paying attention to.  Not cool.

It was pretty sad and very disappointing, and I can't blame the BCS for not wanting Stanford in one of their bowls.  As much as I've enjoyed watching the Stanford football team play this year (I don't think anyone in the country is playing better right now, Oregon, Auburn and Wisconsin included), I've found the support for such a dominant team thoroughly underwhelming.  If Cardinal fans won't come out to home games to watch the #4 team in the nation, why should we believe that they will travel to support their team in a BCS bowl played in New Orleans, Miami or even Los Angeles?  My guess is they won't, and what should be a neautral-site game will turn into a tough road contest for the Cardinal.

Congrats to the Stanford Cardinal 2010 football team.  They're the only team in the country going BCS bowling in spite of their fans. 

BCS Bitterness

Since its inception, I've always made it a point to call Caught Looking a blog about the sports fan experience, not a blog about sports.  I've gone out of my way to avoid covering the topics that are constantly beat to death by traditional sports media: game recaps, scenario analysis, second guessing, etc.  At the same time, I try to write about topics that actually matter to true sports fans: what it's like to attend live games, tools that improve the fan experience, etc.  So, where does the BCS debate fit in?  While I've avoided writing anything BCS-related to date because it's so overly-covered by ESPN and Sports Illustrated, few things matter more to sports fans right now than how college football's national champion is decided.  So I've decided to cave and put down a few personal thoughts on college football's championship process.

First, let's get some things out of the way.  I'm not going to leave you on any cliffhangers here; I'm definitely a fan of a playoff system.  I'm also not going to pretend that I'm not biased.  As the 2010 season nears its conclusion and it appears increasingly likely that Stanford, despite a possible 11-1 record and a top-six BCS ranking, won't go to a BCS bowl game, I'm growing increasingly bitter.  But anger over the BCS isn't very productive unless you can identify what aspect of the current system annoys you.  Today, while watching Auburn pull off an impressive comeback at Alabama, I think I figured out precisely why I despise the BCS.

As the Auburn-Alabama game was in its final minutes, the announcers proclaimed that the close games played by SEC teams were the reason a team like Auburn should play for the national championship and a team like Boise State or TCU shouldn't.  The ESPN crew insisted that because Boise State (now irrelevant because of their loss to Nevada last night) and TCU don't have to go play at Alabama as part of their conference schedules, Auburn must be a better team.  It doesn't take a genius to realize that this logic makes absolutely no sense.  Assuming the goal of any college post-season system is to find the best team in the country, it shouldn't matter how many games you've played against teams that are close to your ability.  Instead, all that should matter is which teams are better than others on an absolute basis.  While it's true that TCU plays weaker conference opponents than Auburn, we have no idea how well the Horned Frogs would do on the road at Alabama.  Many assume that because TCU hasn't had the opportunity to play a team like Alabama on the road, that must mean that they couldn't win in Tuscaloosa.

This reasoning just isn't sound.  The reason this argument doesn't make sense, however, is because it's not really the argument that these announcers were trying to make.  Their real point was that, when two teams are close in ability, the team with a tougher schedule should get priority when it comes to the national championship.  And you know what?  That probably makes sense.  I have no idea how Auburn would do against TCU (only a playoff could tell us that), but if I had to pick one I guess I'd pick Auburn as the best of the lot.  Nevermind the fact that we shouldn't have to choose.  If we're stuck with the BCS, we'll have to resolve discrepancies by giving preferential treatment to teams from better conferences.  Fine.

So if "better conference equals better team" is the BCS's mantra, then tell me this: why will Stanford be sent to the Alamo Bowl when inferior teams from the Big East and ACC play in BCS bowl games?  If tougher schedules count more, then shouldn't #6 Stanford, who has only lost one game (on the road to the number-one ranked team in the country) in a competitive Pac-10 conference, play in a BCS bowl before an unranked Big East team like UConn or West Virginia?  Why isn't the same logic that's keeping TCU out of the national championship picture keeping UConn and West Virginia out of the BCS bowl picture?

Like many others, I think a playoff system would resolve 99% of the BCS's issues, but I realize that it's not likely to happen any time soon.  So if we're stuck with the BCS bowls, shouldn't the NCAA at least be able to implement its policies consistently?  In my opinion, the NCAA and BCS need to state their stance on these issues clearly, once and for all.  If conference strength is king, then explain to me why UConn and Virginia Tech can go BCS bowling and Stanford can't?  And if conference strength isn't the determining factor, then the NCAA needs to come up with a new rationale for keeping TCU out of the national championship game.  Either way, the NCAA has some explaining to do to its fans.

Smooth Skating

This fall alone, I've been stuck in the Oracle Arena parking lot for 45 minutes following a Warriors game against the Knicks and avoided going to the bathroom at Stanford Stadium for hours because of long lines during Stanford versus Arizona.  When I pay big money (or even when I pay nothing at all) to go to a sporting event, I expect the stadiums and arenas to add to, rather than take away from, the live game experience.  The RBC Center in Raleigh, North Carolina is the perfect type of facility - a modern, clean and efficient arena that is refreshingly well-run.

After an easy ride to the RBC Center parking lot (thanks to parking lot attendants who were actually directing traffic), I entered the arena and immediately noticed a huge selection of food options.  Not only did RBC have numerous fixed concession stands, but the concourse was filled with wheel-able carts selling Carolina BBQ, four different types of sausages, ice cream, healthy options and more.  As I walked around the stadium to our seats, I saw that each of the stands and carts could be found in multiple places, meaning that fans don't have to walk more than a few sections over to find their favorite snacks.  Prices as a whole were between reasonable and typical, and because it was "Family Night" all hot dogs, regularly priced at an already-fair $3, were only $1.

I was impressed with the inside of the RBC Center, too.  Built in 1997 when the Hurricanes moved to Raleigh, the arena had new-looking red seats, tons of nice video boards and a great-looking Jumbotron (similar to the one I saw at HP Pavilion last week).  It's an above-average looking NHL arena - seemingly well-suited to host the NHL All Star game this coming January - and runs as smootly as any I've been to in recent memory.  The people working there are knowledgable, attentive and nice, which coming from New York and having become used to Yankee Stadium, Madison Square Garden and Nassau Coliseum, I wasn't used to.

 Despite the open seats, energy was high for Hurricanes vs. Capitals at the RBC Center.

The game itself - a battle between the Hurricanes and the Washington Capitals - was fine.  The crowd was somewhat sparce, but perhaps that was to be expected for the night before Thanksgiving.  Despite being only about two-thirds full, the arena was loud during key moments and following the Canes' two goals.  I'm not sure how often RBC is full for either Canes or NC State Wolfpack basketball games (it's a pretty amazing venue for a college basketball team, and I had no idea that NC State played there until I saw their banners hanging from the rafters), but when it is I'm sure it's a great place to watch a game.  If you're in the Raleigh-Durham area, take a trip to the RBC Center for an NHL hockey or ACC basketball game if you want to see how a sports facility should be run.

Dribbling Down the Tobacco Road

I've always said that any true sports fan needs to make pilgrimages to the important landmarks in sports during his lifetime: Fenway Park, the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, Lambeau Field, the Rose Bowl, etc.  Yesterday I not only crossed two sports to-do's off of my list - Duke's Cameron Indoor Stadium and UNC's Dean Dome - but I had the rare opportunity to visit both on the same day.

First up was an up-close-and-personal tour of Cameron, which exceeded even my wildest expectations.  Thanks to some special connections, I had the chance to walk right onto the fabled "Coach K Court" and take a look around the facility with no one else around.  As I'd heard, the gym is very small and cozy, and has a wonderfully classic feel to it.  Even though I unfortunately wasn't there for a game, I could understand what makes Cameron such a special place; from the blue seats to the classic scoreboard, everything had a very "Duke-cool" feel to it.  While it lacked the bells and whistles of some of college hoops' more elaborate arenas, the only college basketball facility that I've been to that might rival it is the Palestra in Philadelphia.  In addition to Cameron, we also toured the nearby Duke sports museum, which had awesome displays of Duke sports accomplishments (mainly basketball, but other sports too) over the years.  Duke has a gorgeous campus overall, and the basketball facilities truly are the icing on the cake.

On the floor of Duke's Cameron Indoor Stadium.

Yesterday evening, it was off to the Dean Dome to watch North Carolina take on UNC Asheville.  The Dean Dome couldn't have been more different from Cameron Indoor Stadium; other than the trademark Tar Heel blue covering all of the seats, railings and rafters, nothing about the Dean Dome was very collegiate.  At more than double the size of Cameron, the Dome is probably awesome when filled with screaming UNC fans, but was a little underwhelming at basically half capacity.  The fans matched their team for most of the game, as they appeared to take the win for granted (and barely cheered) until it got close in the second half.  At that point, both the team and the fans released nervous blasts of energy, which gave me a glimpse of what a game at the Dean Dome could be like.  This particular pre-Thanksgiving non-conference matchup, however, reminded me more of an Indiana Pacers game than it did a home contest for one of college basketball's top all-time programs.

There were plenty of open seats at the Dean Dome for UNC's game against UNC-Asheville.

For this trip down Tobacco Road, the score reads Duke 1, UNC 0.  I hope to have the opportunity to attend big-time battles at both Cameron Indoor and the Dean Dome in the future, though, to see how the two compare on more equal playing fields.

Winning Weekend

Before I head back to the East Coast for Thanksgiving week, I had the chance to attend two great Bay Area sporting events this weekend.  First, I saw the Knicks grab an impressive road win at Golden State on Friday night, and earlier today I headed up to Berkeley to see Stanford football dismantle Cal in the 2010 edition of the Big Game.  Not only did both matchups result in favorable outcomes for my teams, but I was really impressed with the crowds at both.

First, I've already mentioned that Oracle Arena is a fun place to watch a basketball game.  On Friday night, it was a particularly exciting atmosphere.  The game was high scoring, and the crowd fed off of the energy that the Knicks and Warriors provided via an array of dunks, fast breaks and three pointers.  Though the Knicks jumped out to a big lead, Golden State made a feverish push late in the fourth quarter (blowing fourth quarter leads have become a New York specialty under Mike D'Antoni, after all).  As the Warriors began to climb back into the game, the home crowd got passionate and loud.  On top of it all, the fans were all super-nice and positive; though I was wearing my Knicks t-shirt and some fans playfully trash-talked at me, the home crowd was really courteous.  It really is a great environment for families and kids, since it's loud and fun but not at all threatening.  A very different place from Madison Square Garden for sure.

Basketballs were flying everywhere at Friday's Warriors game, including on top of the shot clock.

I didn't know what to expect from the Big Game today, but I certainly wasn't disappointed.  The Stanford fans travelled well and were out in full force at Berkeley.  From the opening kickoff to the storming of the field after the game (pictures below), the Cardinal faithful were fantastic.  While security guards and cops lined up on the field near the Stanford section to prevent a storming, the men in red were not to be denied.  After the final whistle, students started pouring onto the field and I, of course, joined in.  The players seemed to really appreciate and enjoy the fan reaction, and the band played "All Right Now" as the players and fans danced in the South endzone.  It was definitely an amazing moment, and was sort of an unofficial welcoming as a true Stanford sports fan for me.

At the same time, the Bears fans impressed me, too.  Despite being down 31-0 at the half, the Cal students stayed until the end of the game and rooted for their team until the end.  Though a shutout would have been great for Stanford, I was almost happy that Cal scored two touchdowns once the game was well out of reach.  The blue-and-gold-clad Berkeley kids deserved at least a little something the cheer about.

Stanford fans (including yours truly) rushed the field after defeating Cal 48-14.

 Cardinal fans came out in droves to Berkeley's Memorial Stadium.



Overall, this weekend was a fantastic start to Thanksgiving break.  Next up: a trip to Durham, North Carolina until Friday.  Stay tuned for a Durham-area sports post or two later this week.  Until then, Happy Thanksgiving!

The Not-So-Great Outdoors

There were two interesting news stories this week about college sporting events being played in non-traditional venues that I wanted to weigh in on.  First, it was announced today that Saturday's college football game between Northwestern and Illinois, to be played at Wrigley Field, will only use one end zone for offense because the other end zone is too close to the outfield wall, prompting safety concerns from NCAA and Big Ten officials.  Earlier this week, Michigan State announced intentions to play a basketball game, preferably against North Carolina, on a docked aircraft carrier on Veterans Day, 2011.

The east (right) endzone is way too close to Wrigley's famous ivy-covered wall.

In general, I think outside-the-box thinking like this is great for sports.  Taking sporting events out of their natural environments is a great way to generate news coverage, capture the interest of fringe sports fans and break up sometimes-monotonous regular seasons.  We've seen the NHL have phenomenal success with their Winter Classic outdoor game, now a New Years Day sports staple, and both the NBA (preseason) and the WNBA (regular season) have had positive experiences with games played outside.  In each of these instances, the non-traditional venues were well suited to host their respective events and the games went off without incident.

This week's newsworthy events, however, are potentially troubling.  While Big Ten officials were put in the difficult position of choosing between safety and conformity for Saturday's game at Wrigley, NCAA officials are concerned about how a basketball game on an aircraft carrier would work logistically.  It's one thing to stage a uniquely-located sporting event; it's quite another to have that event interfere with how the games are supposed to be played.  As somewhat of a traditionalist (don't even get me started on Major League Baseball's playoff expansion plan), I can't support either of these events until I'm confident that, regardless of where the games are played, they're still played the right way.  I value coaching strategy enough to maintain that having the offense always move west can alter the outcome of a football game, and imagine that unforeseen conditions might wreak having on what would otherwise be a fantastic hoops matchup between the Spartans and Tar Heels.

Sports need to think differently in order to continue to grow and attract new fans.  When the sanctity of the game is at stake, though, I think leagues and teams need to take a stand and err on the side of game standardization.  The purity of both football and basketball is a large part of what makes those games so great, and it would be a shame (and a shortsighted business move, in my opinion) to continue to throw that all away to earn a few extra dollars.

Rivalry Week

Restarting the sports job search process has been simultaneously thrilling and frustrating.  As excited as I am to learn about new potential opportunities working in and around sports, the difficulties involved in finding available positions and contacts are a constant reminder of the fact that, for most people, sports are just a tiny aspect of life.  Though I have made sports the focal point of my professional, academic and social life, most people see things differently.  Did you know there are people out there who don't consider Kiroki Kuroda's one-year extension with the Los Angeles Dodgers to be critical news?  Sad, but true.

Just when a lack of sports-love was starting to get me down, rivalry week blew into town (rhyme unintentional).  This Saturday, Stanford will travel to Berkeley to battle Cal in the 2010 edition of "The Big Game," and I'll be there in person (and will, of course, blog about it afterward).  Almost as exciting as the game itself, though, is the fact that a sports-related buzz is blanketing the entire Stanford campus right now.  The Stanford-Cal game is always a big deal, but with a potential BCS Bowl berth on the line for the Cardinal the stakes and energy are particularly high.  Our Palo Alto campus is filled with fun reminders of Saturday's significance, from the red-water (well, sort of pink-water . . .) fountain that I pass by every day on my walk to the Business School, which signifies the week of The Big Game (see right), to the giant "Beat Cal" banner than hangs on the front of the Stanford library (see below).

Despite the frustrations associated with a sports job search, I refuse to give up on my goals.  It's things like the fountain and the banner that remind me how powerful sports can be in encouraging healthy competition, connecting people, and making an otherwise-slow, pre-Thanksgiving week much more exciting.  I feel lucky to be living on a campus where people are excited about a football game a week in advance, and I can't wait for the game at Cal on Saturday afternoon.

Beat Cal.  Fear the Tree.  Go Stanford.

Swimming with Sharks

Have you ever been in a room of people, looked around and realized every single person there was different from you in some obvious way?  It's a very uncomfortable eperience.  Now, imagine if that room contained 17,000 people, and you'll get some idea of what it was like to be an Islanders fan at the Sharks game in San Jose last night.  While most people don't think of San Jose as being much of a sports hot spot (let alone a hockey one), the atmosphere at HP Pavilion was pretty electric and intense.  To pull a near sellout crowd against the Islanders on a Thursday night is solid; for those 17,000 fans to be vocal, knowledgable and confident is impressive.

The arena itself is utilitarian, but elegant in an unfinished-yet-modern sort of way.  It fits well in Silicon Valley, and looks like many of the technology company offices that fill the area (exposed ceilings, unpolished metal fixtures, etc.)  It's plain, but an arena doesn't have to be flashy when it's filled with white, black and teal jersey-clad fans every night.  The food choices were adequate, and while the place didn't blow me away, it was a perfectly serviceable and functional new-ish hockey arena (unlike Nassau Coliseum, which is neither serviceable, functional nor new-ish).

When the Islanders took a surprising (even to me) 1-0 lead in the second period, I stood to cheer.  I looked around the arena and saw about 10 other people standing.  For a sellout crowd, you'd expect at least 5% of the fans to be rooting for the opposition.  The combination of passionate Sharks fans and pathetically weak Islanders fan base, however, made this game extremely one-sided.  With their Sharks down 1-0, the fans didn't panic.  Like actual sharks, the team and its fans calmly kept circling their prey and waited for the right time to strike.  That time came on a 5-on-3 power play later in the second period, and again in the OT shootout where San Jose grabbed the win.

Fans celebrate after the Sharks tied the game in the second period.

Overall, it was a good experience.  It had been some time since I saw live hockey, and I wasn't disappointed with my second exposure to NHL, California-style (I had been to a Los Angeles Kings game once before).  My Isles grabbed a point and pushed the two-time defending Western Conference Regular Season Champions (as denoted by lame, "feel good" banners hanging from the rafters) to a shootout, while the home team got the win they expected and, quite frankly, deserved.  I would absolutely go back to a Sharks game later this season - the game made me realize how much I love hockey live, and the arena and crowd are well worth the price and the half-hour drive from Stanford.

Mr. Movember

As most of you already know, I'm currently sporting an absolutely-awful-looking moustache in support of Movember, a month-long crusade to raise money and awareness for men's health (prostate cancer in particular) by growing a funky 'stache.  From the Movember website:

Movember challenges men to change their appearance and the face of men’s health by growing a moustache. The rules are simple, start Movember 1st clean-shaven and then grow a moustache for the entire month.  The moustache becomes the ribbon for men’s health, the means by which awareness and funds are raised for cancers that affect men. 

Before I head to the Shark Tank tonight to see the Islanders visit the San Jose Sharks, I wanted to praise the NHL for taking the lead in promoting Movember in the world of professional sports.  Movember has reported that over 150 NHL players across 14 teams are growing 'staches to raise money for the cause, lead by Anaheim Ducks enforcer and Princeton alum George Parros.  Since the month started, I've wondered why more athletes aren't participating in Movember and using their status to do some good.

Anaheim's George Parros is leading the NHL's support of Movember.

Normally, I'm not one to argue that athletes "owe it to their fans" to do good for society; at the end of the day, sports is a business and the employees (the athletes) have no more responsibility to donate time or money to charitable causes that you or I do.  But Movember is simultanously so easy and so amusing that I would have thought tons of athletes would be doing it.  Why isn't a fun-loving guy like Dwight Howard comically stroking his handlebar moustache after one of his monster blocked shots?  Couldn't LeBron James, a guy who was beloved last year for acting like a kid and having fun on the court, gain some good PR and show the world that he's the "same ole' LeBron" by growing a fu-man-chu for charity?  Could Eli Manning be the creepiest looking guy ever if he grew a hilarious pencil-thin 'stache?  These questions need to be addressed.

In the meantime, kudos to NHL players for not taking themselves too seriously and doing something good for their fellow man in the process.  While I can't force Superman, LeBron or Eli to grow a 'stache, I can and will keep mine growing strong (at least until Thanksgiving break).  If you'd like to donate to my Movember campaign, please feel free to do so here.  Thanks in advance for your support, and Happy Movember.

Week in Review

One of my favorite parts of the ESPN Scorecenter application (available for both iPhone and Android) is the "My Teams" menu.  Here, you can track the most recent results from all of your favorite professional and college teams, as well as take a look at their upcoming contests.  I was playing around with my phone earlier today, when I realized that starting this Thursday I have an absolutely amazing week (plus a few days) of sports ahead.  It's a beautiful and diverse combination of games that I hope to cover extensively here at Caught Looking, but I wanted to give you a little preview first.  While each event is individually exciting, collectively they make up a monumental week in my life as a sports fan.  In fact, I can't remember a ten-day span I've been this excited about sports-wise.  Without further ado, here's what I have between now and the start of Thanksgiving week:

• Thursday, 11/11: New York Islanders @ San Jose Sharks, HP Pavilion at San Jose.  I already have my tickets and will be there in person.
• Friday, 11/12: Rutgers @ Princeton, Jadwin Gymnasium.  Princeton hoops kicks off their season with a home game against their in-state rival.  Wish I could be there in person, but instead I'll be following online.
• Saturday, 11/13: Stanford @ Arizona State.  When your team is ranked #6 in the BCS, every game is huge.  Must-see-TV for Saturday late afternoon (evening on the East Coast).
• Sunday, 11/14: Dallas Cowboys @ New York Giants.  I'm heading up to a big Giants bar in San Francisco to watch the game with friends and fellow Bay Area Giants fans.  Cowboys games are always entertaining, but this experience should be particularly awesome.
• Sunday, 11/14: Princeton @ Duke.  While watching the Cowboys and Giants, I'll also try and find a TV showing ESPNU to catch some of Princeton basketball's nationally televised game against the defending national champions at Cameron Indoor Stadium.
• Monday, 11/15: San Diego @ Stanford, Maples Pavilion.  Stanford hoops kicks off the season with a home game, and I'll be there in person.  Maples is literally a two-minute walk from my room, so I hope to be there often this season.
• Friday, 11/19: New York Knicks @ Golden State Warriors, Oracle Arena.  I don't have tickets yet, but I'm hoping to grab some to see my new-look Knicks make their only trip to Oakland this season.
• Saturday, 11/20: Stanford @ Cal.  I've always wanted to experience "The Big Game," and I'm currently in the process of getting tickets with other Stanford fans.  Assuming Stanford wins this weekend, Cal will be extra-eager to burst Stanford's BCS bowl hopes.

Pretty good, huh?  I'll be sure to keep you all posted as I make my way through this crazy ten-day stretch.  Wish me luck!

Where's the Love?

Since I started passionately following Stanford University football last season, I've always felt the team is continually underappreciated and underecognized.  While I admit I'm somewhat biased, I still think there's a lot of truth here; I look around the country and size up the SEC or Big Ten or Big XII schools that are considered among the best in the nation, and can't help but think that the Cardinal could defeat the majority of them.  This season, where 8-1 (5-1 in the PAC-10) Stanford is currently ranked #13 in the BCS (and likely to rise when the new rankings come out tonight), will the Cardinal go to a BCS bowl game?  If not, the Stanford fans can blame themselves.

The Cardinal resume is pretty solid -- they've defeated #15 Arizona and USC at home (the former quite convincingly last night), beat Notre Dame badly on the road (the Irish haven't been good this year, but you always get some style points for beating up on Notre Dame in South Bend), and have two road shutouts in the conference (at UCLA and at Washington).  They're among the highest scoring teams in the country (they've topped 35 points in every game but one), their defense has been strong and their only loss came on the road against the #1 team in the country, Oregon (and that game was close, despite the fairly-lopsided final score).  Despite the impressive credentials, Stanford may be on the outside looking in when BCS bowl bids are awarded.

At the game versus Arizona last night, I was very disappointed by the crowd.  While there was a lot of buzz about the game floating around campus and while the tailgating atmosphere before the contest was, as usual, lively and fun, the stadium was at least 40% empty when I found my seat just prior to kickoff.  As the first quarter started the fans did continue to file in from their tailgates, but there were still parts of entire sections in the upper deck that were completely empty the entire game.  Not only was the crowd somewhat sparse, but the fans who were there weren't very loud; at times, the small Arizona fan section in the quarter of the stadium overpowered the Stanford fans with their passionate chants.  And this isn't exactly a national football powerhouse we're talking about - the Cardinal fans were outclassed by a bunch of laid-back retirees from Tucson.  I expected a lot more from the home crowd -- it was a nationally televised night game matching the #13 and #15 ranked teams in the nation, after all -- and came away disappointed by the fans, despite being ecstatic about the 42-17 final score.

Undoubtedly, a lot of NCAA polsters who don't get to see PAC-10 football every week were watching the Stanford-Arizona game on ABC last night.  When they look back on the game this week in filling out their rankings, what will they remember more: the dominating Stanford victory or the underwhelming Stanford crowd?  While the big win will earn Stanford some respect, concerns about their fans and their ability to "travel well" could drastically hurt their BCS hopes.  Let's just hope that Stanford plays well in their next two games at Arizona State and at Cal, and then urge the fans to come out in droves for the last home game of the year versus Oregon State.  Assuming Stanford wins their last three games, the performance of the fans may impact the odds of a BCS bid more than the performance of the team.

NOTE: Found some interesting commentary on the underwhelming turnout here, via ESPN's PAC-10 blog.

A Quirkier NBA Experience

I've been to a bunch of NBA games over the past few seasons.  Most of them have been Knicks contests at Madison Square Garden, but I've also sprinkled in some New Jersey Nets games and Los Angeles Lakers and Clippers games in there.  This Wednesday I made my first ever trip to Oakland's Oracle Arena to see the Golden State Warriors take on the Memphis Grizzlies, and the one word I'd use to sum up the experience is "quirky."  Maybe I shouldn't have been surprised; this is Northern California after all.

The oddities started before I even got into the arena.  Parking cost a relatively steep $18; when I paid with a $20 bill, I got a $2 bill as change.  While I''ve seen $2 bills before, this was the first time I had even given or received one as part of a legitimate business transaction.  More efficient than giving everyone two $1 bills?  Yes.  Extremely weird?  Also yes.

The game was fun -- the Warriors are an exciting, high-scoring team and are playing extremely well right now -- but something about the experience was a tad "off."  It's tough to put my finger on it, but I think the fact that a company called "The Solar Company" was prominently featured on the courtside rotational signage at numerous points throughout a game (only in the Bay Area . . .) had something to do with it.  I literally laughed out loud when, with over 11 minutes left in the second quarter, Golden State forward Vladimir Radmonovic was awarded the "Bug Zappers Pest Control Swat of the Game" after a block on Memphis center Hasheem Thabeet.  The whole thing was so absurd that I took a picutre of it (see below).  Even the Warriors new uniforms are pretty quirky.  In particular, it's weird that the numbers on the front of the Golden State jerseys are contained inside the logo, as opposed to below it (to be fair, the old Warriors jerseys also shared this unique feature).  Weird stuff.

See?  I couldn't make this stuff up.

The Warriors fans are a very passionate bunch, I must admit.  I know the Warriors' faithful has a good reputation and, although the stadium wasn't completely full, I did find the crowd to be enthusiastic, knowledgable and entertaining.  I loved the "M-V-P!" chants that echoed throughout the arena every time Monta Ellis shot free throws - that's serious dedication to your local candidate for the fourth game of the season.  The fans love their players, and the players seem to feed off of the energy and produce some highly entertaining basketball.  Anyone who complains about the chippy, drawn-out nature of NBA games certainly isn't watching the Warriors play very often.

The Golden State basketball experience was odd.  But, sometimes odd can be good.  Overall the game was well worth the ~45 minute drive from Palo Alto to Oakland, and I'm looking forward to getting another $2 bill some time later this season.

Rooting for the Little Guy

Halloween went extremely well this year.  My Little Mac costume was met with largely favorable results; as predicted, a lot of people (all of them men) got the Punch Out! reference and everyone else just figured I was a boxer, which was fine with me.  One guy asked me "which Klitschko brother are you supposed to be?" and someone else told me he loved "the De La Hoya costume," but overall it was a good night.  Much better than a few years ago when I went as Marty McFly from Back to the Future and everyone thought I was Tony Hawk (because of my skateboard prop).

Little Mac is one of my favorite childhood characters not only because he was the star of my favorite Nintendo game, but also because it was fun to root for the little guy.  I was always one of the smallest guys in my grade (and, height-wise, I still am), so I could always relate to the undersized athletes trying to do battle with opponents twice their size.  This got me thinking: who are my favorite little guys in sports?

Football: I'm a huge Wes Welker (5'9", 185 lbs.) fan, and respect the hell out of the guy.  The way he can run a route across the middle, take a hit from a linebacker that outweighs him by 60 pounds and manage to hold on to the ball is impressive.  The fact that he does it week in and week out and teams have yet to figure out a way to stop him is fascinating.  I'm not normally a big fan of anything even remotely Boston-related, but Welker gets a lot of respect for me.  The fact that he sports my number 83 is just icing on the cake.

Hockey: Richard Park is a fascinating NHL player not only because he's pretty small, but also because he's one of the few Asian-born hockey players ever to reach the NHL (he moved to Southern California from Korea when he was three).  As a member of the Islanders from 2006-2010, I saw Park take his share of hits, slashes and blocked shots.  While he was never the most talented player on the ice, he hustled as much as anyone else on the team and consistently produced despite his relatively-small size (5'10, 190 lbs.).  Unfortunately Park left the NHL this offseason to sign a contract with a team in Switzerland.  He'll be missed.

Basketball: Though he's moved on to the Boston Celtics, no one lit up Madison Square Garden in recent memory like Nate Robinson.  While he's best known for his show-stopping slams at the NBA All Star Weekend's Slam Dunk Contest (and in particular his dunks over Dwight Howard), Robinson is actually a very talented basketball player when his head's on straight.  He has the potential to be one of the better scoring guards in the league, and his athleticism gives him the potential to be a solid defender and rebounding guard, too.  Though it's been in a drawer for a while now, I'll never get rid of my green number 4 "KRYPTO-NATE" t-shirt.

Long live the little guys!

Bring on Soda Popinski!

As children my brother and I were never allowed to be sports players for Halloween.  When you walked around the neighborhoods going Trick or Treating, you always saw tons of kids dressed as Yankees or Giants or Rangers, but my Mom would have nothing of it.  I think she had some good points, too.  First off, kids wore sports jerseys all the time, anyway (and that's basically all dressing like an athlete entails), so wearing a hockey sweater wasn't "special" enough of be called a Halloween costume.  I also think she didn't like it because it wasn't unique, and I can respect that - Halloween is all about standing out, and you can't do that if 47 other kids in your community are wearing the same thing as you.

Now that I'm older, I pick my own Halloween costumes (though I still always consult Mom . . .).  While I'm now "free" to go as an athlete, I've never done so.  It always feels like a bit of a cop out and, unless done really well, seems a bit weak.  That being said, it's always in the back of my mind - as a huge sports fan whose life revolves around my fvorite teams, why shouldn't I go as Chipper Jones or John Tavares or Danilo Gallinari?  All of this got me thinking - maybe there's an in-between option.  Maybe there's a way I can go as something peripherally sports related, but which also brings in some of my other interests.

This year, I have a costume I'm pretty excited about.  In addition to sports, I've always been a fan of video games, particularly early 1990's era Nintendo Entertainment System games.  On top of that, I love obscure cultural references.  Is there an obscure costume that combines 20 year-old video game characters and sports, you ask?  You bet there is!  I give you a sneak preview of my 2010 Halloween costume concept: Little Mac from Mike Tyson's Punch Out!

Though he's advanced some, Little Mac's classic look remains relatively unchanged.

It's a relatively easy costume to execute, since it basically only involves black shoes, green shorts, a black tank top and boxing gloves.  It's also a good costume, in my opinion, because even if people don't get the specific cultural reference, they'll just assume I'm dressed as a generic boxer, which as a backup interpretation works pretty well.  All in all, I'm pretty excited about this idea and think I can pull it off reasonably well (and I pretty much already own all of the necessary ingredients).  Unless someone has an alternate great last-minute idea, I'm going as Little Mac this year.  I'm looking forward to seeing what other interesting sports-themes costumes are out this Saturday night.

A Walk to Remember

As a kid living on Long Island, I drove to every sporting event I went to.  I'd meet my Dad at his office in Long Island City and we'd drive to Yankee Stadium, or my parents would drive me and my friends to Uniondale and drop us off at Nassau Coliseum; we'd meet them at the Long Island Marriot after the game and they'd pick us up.  Occasionally we'd take the Long Island Railroad to Shea Stadium, though a car ride was always preferred.  The driving trend continued when I moved to L.A., where I'd drive down to Dodger Stadium or the Staples Center or struggle to find parking within a mile of the Los Angeles Coliseum.  When I moved back to Manhattan I used public transportation to get to games; Madison Square Garden, Citi Field and the Meadowlands were all a short subway or train ride away from my apartment or office.

One thing I've never really done, though, is walk to a game.  In college we'd walk from our dorms to Princeton Stadium or Jadwin Gym, and here at Stanford I walk to Stanford Stadium and soon will be walking to Maples Pavillion, but that's expected when you live on a college campus.  What about people who live in cities where they can walk to see their favorite pro teams play?  This weekend I spent a great weekend in Chicago for a friend's wedding, and had Sunday afternoon free to explore the Windy City.  When I left my hotel room on Sunday morning to explore Millenium Park and walk to brunch, I saw droves of navy-and-orange-clad Bears fans walking across the city toward Soldier Field.  As I got closer to the stadium, I saw more and more people sporting Brian Urlacher,  Johnny Knox and Robbie Gould jerseys (in white, navy and orange) heading towards the stadium.

Located close to downtown Chicago, Soldier Field is perfect for fans who like to walk.

While I guess having tons of fans walking to the game might hurt the tailgating culture, I thought the fan walk was awesome.  People would round a street corner and join the line of fellow fans heading toward the game, immediately starting conversations about the team's chances against the Redskins that afternoon.  It gave the city and the team a very unique identity which, while foreign to me, I became immediately jealous of.  I walked to a bunch of World Cup games in South Africa this summer, and bantering with fellow USA fans on the way to games was one of the best parts of the experience.  To think that Bears fans living in Chicago can have that before every home game is pretty awesome, and is something I wish I saw more of growing up in New York, Los Angeles and now outside San Francisco.

My next scheduled sporting event is an Islanders game at HP Pavillion in San Jose, which again I'll be driving to.  Some time soon, though, I vow to find a game to which I can walk.  Any suggestions for walking-distance professional sporting venues that I can go visit?

A Morning at Old Pro

I've never been a huge fan of watching NFL games at sports bars.  Sure, there are some advantages.  You usually get a nice set of screens showing all of the games in HD, and there's plenty of food and drinks around (assuming you can get a waitress's attention).  Then there are the negatives.  The fact that, no matter where you sit, you get a stiff neck from staring at awklwardly-located monitors.  The annoying Bears / Packers / Cowboys / [insert other hated team(s) here] fans who obnoxiously cheer every time their running back carries for more than a yard.  Having to pretend to be friends with a guy just because he, too, is wearing a New York Giants jersey in Northern California, even though if you bumped into the same guy in New York you wouldn't think twice about it.  In general, I'd rather watch at home with a few friends then go out to the bars, and I consistently maintained that stance while living in Manhattan over the past few years.

While living in the Bay Area has been great, one of the downsides has been limited local access to Giants football.  While we've already established that I enjoy the early Sunday start times that the west coast provides, it's an entirely different story when the Giants game is only available on Sunday Ticket.  Now, instead of rolling out of bed shortly after 9 and flipping on FOX, I have to drive into downtown Palo Alto to watch the game at one of the local watering holes - on California Sundays, non-alcoholics go to bars in the morning, too.  Watching football in the morning isn't quite as relaxing when you're doing it alongside questionable characters at a place called "Old Pro."

It's almost sensory overload, in fact - while Sunday mornings are supposed to be "chill," as the kids say (or at least as they used to say in the early 2000s . . .), a morning at a sports bar is anything but.  The air smells of stale beer from the night before, and of fresh beer from the breath of the guy next to you who inexplicably started drinking at 9:30 AM.  People are cheering at different points from all over the bar as you frantically swivel your head around to try and figure out which team did something good, if that affects the Giants in some way, and whether or not there might be fantasy football implications.  The chairs, tables and floors are always sticky, and the coffee served from a thermos in the corner is among the worst you'll ever drink in your life.  If you were there to do anything else but watch some NFL football, you'd be miserable.

But that's the beauty of it - you are watching NFL football, and that makes everything more than tolerable.  When the games are going well and your team's playing well (like the Giants did in defeating the Lions at home on Sunday), you really get into the sports bar experience.  Suddenly the smell's not so bad; instead, it's a reminder of sports and masculinity and fits perfectly with the plethora of beer commercials popping up on screens all over the bar.  The sticky chairs and floors remind you of the seats and concourses at Giants Stadium, and the annoying fans make you feel like you're watching your team play live in a hostile road environment.  In short, it's actually pretty fun.

From now on, I'm going to try and give the morning sports bar experience a fair shot to earn my admiration.  Since I'm going to be living in California for at least another NFL season-and-a-half and can't get DirecTV, I don't really have much of a choice.

The End of Summer

As you might imagine, I was pretty bummed when the Braves' season ended with a 3-2 defeat to San Francisco last night. Of course, it's always a little sad when any of your teams end their seasons, whether it be a loss in the Super Bowl or, in the case of the Islanders, elimination from NHL playoff contention that normally occurs some time in late January. For me, though, the end of the Braves season is the most painful. I'm not exactly sure why, though I think it must have something to do with baseball being the lone summer sport.

Growing up, winter sports were easy to follow. I was always home, with daily access to TV, the newspaper, and later the internet. Because I spent all of my summers at a rustic sleepaway camp in upstate NY, following America's pastime was always more of a challenge. Sometimes we'd travel off campus for an afternoon to go to the movies or go bowling, and I could sneak off to find a newspaper and take a look at the current standings. My grandfather used to clip Braves boxscores, press clippings and other baseball-related materials from his South Florida newspaper to help keep ne informed; they were always outdated by the time I received them, but I always gobbled them up anyway. Once each summer we got to watch the All Star Game on the TV in the dining hall, and I used to keep score and diligently note how each player was performing through the first half of the season.

After putting in so much work for years if my life, it's always hard for me to say goodbye to the Braves at the end of each campaign. While I'm enjoying the NFL so far, just starting to watch the NHL and looking forward to the NBA, the sports world is never the same without the Tomahawk Chop. R.I.P. 2010 Atlanta Braves. As with each of the previous 26 iterations that I have been alive to see, you will be missed.

NOTE: I typed this post from my Droid Incredible while waiting for my pupils to dilate in a Stanford Health Center exam room, so please excuse me if there are more typos than usual.

Behind Enemy Lines

When I moved to Northern California exactly a month ago, I wasn't expecting any backlash over my sports rooting preferences.  After all, Stanford is a very diverse place; there are kids here from countless countries, not to mention states and cities.  I've met Toronto Raptors fans, Houston Texans fans, a Phoenix Coyote fan (yes, really), and my love of the New York Giants, Islanders and Knicks has been met with (mostly) open arms.  While there are a lot of Bay Area natives here, the Sharks, Warriors, 49ers, Raiders and A's don't compete with my teams much.  The San Francisco Giants however, have been a different story.

Just my luck that the Atlanta Braves would get into the playoffs only to face off against the hometown Giants in the first round.  Giants fans are surprisingly passionate right now; it seems the fans want to make a name for themselves in the post-Bonds era, and locals have fallen for the laid-back attitude portrayed by by Tim Lincecum, Pablo "Kung Fu Panda" Sandoval and the rest of the club.  All of a sudden, me and my circa-1974 Braves cap are the enemy, earning dirty looks from strangers and playful heckling from friends.

This isn't my first time rooting for a hated team, of course.  I survived two Braves World Series against the Yankees and several late season battles and playoff showdowns with the Mets, but these were easy to deal with; as a native New Yorker, I know everything there is to know about Yankees and Mets fans and how to deal with them.  For a Yankees fan, just ask him an ever-so-moderately difficult question about his team, wait until he realizes he doesn't know the answer, and walk away.  For a Mets fan, say nothing, wait for the Mets to crumble on their own, and smile.  It's not that difficult.

While living in Southern California, I never ran into any sports rivalries.  The Knicks were too bad to compete with the Lakers and I don't think I met one Clippers fan in three years in L.A.  There's no L.A. football team to compete with Big Blue, and the Islanders-Kings rivalry hasn't really gotten off the ground yet.  My three years in L.A. were easy, and I returned to New York in 2008 to see tons of Knicks, Giants and even Islanders fans everywhere.  Maybe I got a little soft.

Now, while living just a half-four drive from San Francisco, it's time to get nasty once again.  I'll be sporting my Braves gear with pride this week, planning to show these orange-and-black clad fans what real baseball is all about.  Though I wasn't able to hit up either of the first two games of the series at AT&T Park (ticket prices climbed way out of my price range), it's been surprisingly fun to be behind enemy lines once again.     

Praise for FX's "The League"

Brace yourself; I'm devoting a blog entry to a sitcom on FX that's not It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.  Before we get started: If you're asking yourself, "FX airs something other than Always Sunny?" then click here.  If you're asking yourself, "What's FX?" then try this one.  If you're asking yourself, "What's It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia?" then I'm going to have to ask you to leave this site immediately.  Now that we've taken care of some housekeeping, let's talk about The League.

The League isn't really a show about sports.  It's actually a traditional sitcom about a bunch of guys, their wives / girlfriends / relationships, their jobs, etc.  Sounds pretty awful, not to mention fairly predictable, no?  Well, to some extent it's both of those things.  The show is extremely juvenile (even compared to Always Sunny . . .), and several of the plot lines are cliche and repetitive.  So, why do I watch The League and why am I encouraging you to do the same?  Because, in an underserved market, even a pretty crappy product can survive if demand is sufficiently high and competition is sufficiently low (see, I'm learning something in business school after all).  In this case, the underserved market is "television dedicated to fantasy football," a market that The League attacks aggressively and somewhat successfully.

Before you start to attack me with talk of Matthew Berry and DirecTV's Fantasy Tracker, I'm talking about TV content that talks about what it's like to play fantasy football, not content that tells you who to start each week (we actually have too much of that, if anything).  Anyone who has a league (or leagues) that they're loyal to and take seriously knows what I'm talking about; fantasy football takes up more time than we'd like to admit, and at times we'll do anything to secure a win.  That's what The League is all about - overly-extreme examples of how far guys will go to win their fantasy football leagues.  In one episode, one guy convinces his buddy that a random drunk black guy in a bar is Bears star Matt Forte in order to get him to trade the running back to a competing team.  In another episode, the gang races through airport security, with the first man through the checkpoint earning the first pick in their draft.  While admittedly stupid, these plotlines are a pretty clever way at poking fun at how obsessed American men (and sometimes women) are with fantasy football.

Check out The League on Thursdays at 10:30 PM on FX Network.

The show also features cameos from NFL players, so it you ever wanted to know who was a better actor between Browns WR Josh Cribbs and Ravens LB Terrell Suggs, watch last week's episode (spoiler alert: they both sucked).  Ochocinco guest-starred in the Season Two premiere, and other stars are slated to appear in future episodes.  The show also has the luxury of airing at 10:30 PM on FX, so they get away with a lot.  Not only is there some cursing, but last week there was a scene were the characters comically (and accurately) discussed racially-based diction in sports (how black NFL coaches are always referred to as "class acts" and how latino baseball players are "firecrackers" or "spark plugs," for example) that would never fly on NBC or even FOX.

The League's not the best show on TV, but it's definitely worth watching if you enjoy stupid comedies (any fan of The Hangover shouldn't consider himself too good for this show . . .) and/or play fantasy football.  I'm hoping the show gains a little more traction, because between it and Always Sunny FX has developed a surprisingly solid hour of television on Thursday nights.

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?