Conference Camaraderie

Although I no longer live on a university campus, I'm still very excited for the NCAA football season to get started tonight with South Carolina at Vanderbilt.  In honor of college pigskin's opening weekend, I spent some time this afternoon reading through ESPN's weekly blog coverage for my conference of choice, the Pac-12.  The weekly post on "What to watch in the Pac-12"  featured this curious line:

"The Pac-12 is favored in 11 of 12 games in Week 1, with Washington State being the only underdog. That means -- at worst -- the conference should go 11-1 . . .Wouldn't be a bad announcement to the rest of college football if the conference runs the table."

If this was a blog post about an NFL division - say, the NFC East - this note would come across as very odd.  Why should a Stanford fan like myself really care about how the other eleven Pac-12 schools are doing in their opening games?  The obvious answer, of course, is that having Pac-12 schools win non-conference games boosts the strength of the conference for BCS purposes, and thus helps the league's schools compete at the national level.  Whereas in the NFL is doesn't help the Giants at all if the Eagles, Cowboys or Redskins win their out-of-division games (if fact, it directly hurts them), one of the quirks of college football is that a quality win by Washington State at BYU this weekend, for example, would indirectly benefit the Cardinal.

But if you think about it, there are a number of other reasons why college football fans should be rooting for their most hated of rivals in non-conference games.  One is conference reputation.  In the NFL, every team gets plenty of media coverage on Sportscenter, NFL Live and pretty much every other highlights show.  In the NCAA, air time is heavily skewed towards the conferences with the stronger reputations, like the SEC and the Big Ten.  If the Pac-12 can win a few notable non-conference games over the next two weeks, then conference games featuring teams other than Oregon and USC might become more nationally noteworthy.  Also remember that, unlike the NFL, the NCAA's national TV schedule isn't completely set, so the more non-conference games that the Pac-12 wins the higher the odds that their games get picked up by ESPN or ABC later in the season.

Another reason for me to root for the Pac-12 to run the table this weekend is pure economics.  With the launch of new conference-specific television channels like the Pac-12 Network, schools have their financial outcomes more closely tied to their conference-mates than ever before.  As the conference gets stronger and interest in Pac-12 football continues to grow, the Pac-12 Network will get more subscribers which means more money for the conference and each of its teams.  If Washington or Arizona State get off to a hot start and become teams that, like Oregon and USC, even out-of-market college football fans want to see regularly, that can translate into more dollars for Stanford's pockets.  With college football becoming more and more about money, sweeping the Pac-12 Network's first ever football weekend would be a very good thing.

It goes without saying that, of this weekend's college gridiron action, I primarily care about Friday night's Stanford game versus San Jose State.  At the same time, though, I'll be pulling for the rest of the teams in the conference to head into Labor Day with 1-0 records.  In particular, Washington State, Arizona (against surprisingly dangerous Toledo) and Colorado (against in-state rival Colorado State) can put the conference on the map with significant victories this weekend.  For the next two weeks, the other eleven Pac-12 schools are tied for my second-favorite FBS college football team.   

The Fall of Rick Reilly

I don't have a subscription to Sports Illustrated anymore, but I used to read it religiously.  When each issue came in the mail, I used to immediately flip to the inside back cover and blow through the latest Rick Reilly column.  Reilly was my favorite sports writer in the business, and his ability to mix legitimate sports journalism with humor and a colloquial tone was something I admired and looked forward to.  When Reilly left SI and eventually made his way over to ESPN, I stopped renewing my Sports Illustrated subscription and began to read ESPN The Magazine instead.  I recently renewed my subscription to The Mag for another year, but this time it wasn't because of Rick Reilly.  Actually, it was in spite of him.

Somehow, Reilly went from bring one of my favorite sports writers to arguably my least favorite "journalist" in a matter of a few short years.  After ditching SI and starting to cash in what I assume are massive paychecks from ESPN, Reilly's writing has become increasingly lazy and decreasingly insightful.  Instead of digging deep into the sports world for the unique and original material that used to distinguish him from other sports media personalities, Reilly now seems to tackle whatever subject requires the least amount of research time and allows for the largest number of cheap jokes and uninspired random analogies.  Instead of a quality piece of writing, every recent Reilly article reads like a bad Family Guy script.

Rick Reilly's columns used to get well-deserved billing on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

Take last week's "column" (if you can call it that) on regulars at the gym, entitled "Where everybody knows your name" and posted on ESPN.com on Friday, August 24th.  Devoid of any real content, the column buckets gym-goers into twelve different stereotyped charicatures, none of which are particularly funny, original or, frankly, even that accurate.  In typical modern Reilly fashion, his last line refers back to himself - a cheap, self-deprecating joke that does nothing for the reader other than remind him that, yes, Rick Reilly still exists and he's getting paid a lof of money to do very little.  I don't even know why I keep reading what Reilly writes anymore, given that I haven't enjoyed one of his columns in longer than I can remember.  I guess I keep hoping that, one day, the old Reilly will miraculously return to form, even though I know it's never going to happen.

I'll confess that, months ago, I was caught in the middle of a serious case of blogger's block and thought about writing a similar post about the types of people you see at the gym.  But after I thought about it for about 45 seconds, I realized that the content wouldn't be strong enough for Caught Looking - it wasn't really related to sports, it wouldn't be that funny and it would come off as nothing more than a cheap excuse to get something posted.  So if I decided that a similar post wasn't good enough for my blog, how could ESPN let Reilly post this column on its website?  Have his prior accolades and track record gotten him to the point where he can throw any garbage onto a page and his readers and editors alike will accept it?

After posting on Caught Looking every three or four days for the past two-plus years, I recognize that it's difficult to generate compelling content on a regular basis.  I also recognize the irony in me dedicating an entire post to blasting an extremely accomplished guy for obviously struggling with the same issues that I deal with while trying to maintain this blog.  But given how much I used to enjoy Rick Reilly's writing and how much I now dislike it, I felt like I had to capture my disappointment with his evolution the way the old Reilly himself might have done it - in writing.  Perhaps my expectations were just way to high, but I was hoping for much better when Reilly made the jump from SI to ESPN - and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Sometimes You See It Coming: A Review

Since finishing graduate school, I've made it a priority to get back into the habit of reading regularly.  While (unlike the rest of my life) my book choices don't completely revolve around sports, I have recently read two baseball-centric books that I really enjoyed.  The first was Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding, which has dominated Best Seller and Best Books of the Year lists since it came out in September 2011.  While I could go on and gush about how much I enjoyed Harbach's book, you can easy go online and find dozens of glowing reviews about this work that, according to Sports Illustrated, "will knock out baseball and literature fans alike."  Instead, I'd like to offer some praise for a much less heralded, but almost as enjoyable, book - Kevin Baker's Sometimes You See it Coming.

Take a few days to read through Kevin Baker's debut novel, published in 1993.

Baker's book, loosely based on the life of MLB legend Ty Cobb, follows the life and career of fictional right fielder John Barr, "the kind of player who isn't supposed to exist anymore. An all-around superstar, he plays the game with a single-minded ferocity that makes his New York Mets team all but invincible. Yet Barr himself is a mystery with no past, no friends, no women, and no interests outside hitting a baseball as hard and as far as he can."  The book follows Barr's life through the eyes of a number of different, well-developed and seemingly realistic characters - teammate "Rapid" Ricky Falls, manager Charli Stanzi, and Mets beat writer Ellie Jay.  Rather than focusing on the dominant superstar himself, Sometimes You See It Coming is unique in the way it concentrates on what it's like to play alongside, coach and cover an unparalleled talent.

Having only experienced MLB players and coaches through the eyes of the media, it's hard for me to say with confidence what these people should truly sound like.  Baker does such an incredible job of creating a number of unique and believable voices, however, that I imagine that he has an excellent grasp on how people involved in professional baseball really speak and act.  As he moves his readers through the book's chapters, he bounces back and forth between narrators - sometimes we hear from Falls, other times from Stanzi, Jay or other more minor characters - and you actually feel like you're hearing from completely different people.  As with any complicated personality, real or fictional, John Barr is best understood through the eyes of the people closest to him.  Only through the differing but complementary opinions of Falls, Stanzi and Jay does Baker show us what mysterious athletes like Barr (and Cobb) are really about.

I won't go into the plot in detail (it's not really what makes the book so special, anyway, as it's somewhat predictable), in hopes that you'll read it and find it out for yourself.  At just over 300 pages in paperback (yes, I still read non-electronic books), I ran through Sometimes You See It Coming in just a few days.  If you like baseball, I'd highly recommend Baker's only sports-related novel (but I still think that you should read The Art of Fielding first).  Even if you don't, though, Baker's character development and wit make this one worth reading.  And after you make your way through this book, you can move on to Baker's other (albeit non-sports-related) novels, all of which I'd also highly recommend.

Banding Together

First off, I want to start this post by apologizing for being a tad delinquent on my blogging responsibilities lately - between work and travel, it's been hard to find time to write something sophisticated and thoughtful enough for my loyal reader base.  I feel especially bad about this in light of all of the positive feedback I've received recently - within the past couple of weeks, many of you have contacted me to say how much you enjoy Caught Looking - many of whom I had no idea had ever read a post.  As always, I very much appreciate your readership, and vow to be better about posting now that things have slowed down a bit.  Keep the suggestions (and praise) coming!

Speaking of work and travel, I finally made my first trip to Portland this week for a workshop.  While I didn't get to go to any sporting events while I was there - the Trail Blazers are obviously in the middle of the off-season and the MLS's Timbers didn't have any home games - I was still impressed by the sports-related atmosphere of Oregon's largest city.  Despite the city's extremely notable hippie vibe, the city showed a strong passion for the local sports teams wherever you looked.  I saw University of Oregon and Oregon State gear everywhere, and everyone from the area is quick to gush about their love for the Blazers.  Even the Timbers have gotten a ton of love - the team has a 6,000 person supporter group that shows up for every home game, and their battle with the Seattle Sounders is quickly emerging as one of the country's most underrated professional sports rivalries.

I think a lot of the surprisingly passionate team sports atmosphere in the Pacific Northwest can be attributed to the fact that the region has been largely neglected by the rest of the sports-loving country.  Portland has just one team in the Big Four leagues despite periodically expressing interest in an MLB franchise.  Seattle has two teams (the Seahawks and the Mariners), but is most often associated with losing the Sonics to Oklahoma City a few years ago.  People forget that Vancouver, too, lost its NBA franchise to Memphis, and now hosts only an NHL team.  The neglect by the pro sports leagues seems to fuel the area's passion for the teams it does have, however; Portland understand how lucky it is to have an NBA franchise after having watched two neighboring cities lose theirs within a decade.  This is particularly surprising in light of the fact that the team has given its fans every reason to jump ship over the past decade (bad player behavior, on-court underachievement, etc.).  Still, the fans continue to pack the Rose Garden virtually every night and season ticket holders continue to renew.

As a result, the Pacific Northwest has also truly embraced a league that the rest of the nation has been slow to adopt - the MLS.  Last year I helped write a Sports Marketing paper on the popularity of Major League Soccer in Portland, Seattle and Vancouver (available upon request), but going to Portland and seeing the love for the green-and-yellow-clad Timbers first-hand helped me understand the positive impact that soccer has had on the area.  Cities like New York, Houston and Chicago take their MLS teams for granted, despite the league's efforts to built beautiful, new, soccer-specific stadiums to improve the fan experience.  In Portland, though, the locals are honored to have teams that are proud to call the Pacific Northwest home.  Throw in the fact that the MLS is now the only league that has teams in Portland, Seattle and Vancouver, and you've got the recipe for a surprisingly strong three-team rivalry.

Portland certainly loves the Timbers.

Continental Divide

Today is the launch date for the Pac-12 Network, a brand new TV channel dedicated to Pac-12 sports.  As a Stanford / Pac-12 fan who recently moved to the East Coast, the timing couldn't be better - all of a sudden, I went from Googling "Stanford football bars New York City" to trying to figure out how and if I could get the Pac-12 Network at home.  I signed on to Facebook just minutes ago and found that the Pac-12 was one step ahead of me - they had just posted a link to their Channel Finder, and I immediately filled out my information to see how I could get the channel.  While this should be a pretty easy process, I almost forgot that I'd be forced once again to deal with Time Warner Cable on this.

As you might recall, I despise TWC - I was hoping the Pac-12 Network website would provide me with all of the information that I needed without having to navigate Time Warner's predictably horrible site.  All the Pac-12 site would tell me, though, was that "Pac-12 Networks will be available in August 2012 on Time Warner Cable."  But where?  Would it be a part of the basic cable package?  Would it be a part of the provider's digital sports tier that includes a few regional sports networks and a few of the lower tier ESPN channels?  Or would it be available On Demand?  And how much would it cost?  Neither the Pac-12 Network or Time Warner Cable websites provided any explanation of how to sign up for the channel, and a search for "Pac-12" on the Time Warner Cable website somehow yielded zero relevant results.

I understand that the main purpose of the Pac-12 Network is to televise every conference football and basketball game to viewers in the core Pac-12 markets.  By keeping their media rights, the twelve Pac-12 schools believe that they can extract more value than if they sold those rights to Fox Sports, Comcast or ESPN, and they're probably right.  But given the fact that many of these schools have diverse alumni bases that span the entire country (especially Stanford, Cal, USC and UCLA), there seems to be a great opportunity to get some subscribers from outside of the core Pac-12 markets.  Isn't one of the advantages of signing a deal with a quasi-national TV provider like Time Warner the opportunity to get national distribution?  Assuming so, why do they make it so difficult to find the channel?

Only after some serious Googling did I find a USA Today article that suggests that the channel will be available in New York "on a premium sports tier."  Later I found that the Pac-12 Network now has a channel number on Time Warner Cable in New York City (lucky 414), but it's still not clear how to get access to the network.  I'm excited that the Pac-12 is launching its network tonight and I'm looking forward to potentially having the opportunity to watch non-nationally televised football and basketball games from here in New York.  Unfortunately, the conference made the mistake of choosing to partner with Time Warner Cable, so the chances of anyone on the East Coast being able to order the channel are slim.

Movin' On Up

As you know if you read Caught Looking, I'm very blue collar when it comes to attending professional sporting events.  With rare exceptions, I like to sit up in the upper deck and watch live games with the "real fans."  With the Braves coming to New York this weekend for a three game set against the Mets at Citi Field, I did what I always do - went on to StubHub on found some cheap, below-face-value tickets on the secondary market.  When Friday afternoon rolled around, I was all ready to watch Atlanta beat up on New York from Section 514 - in the upper deck right beyond home plate, exactly where I love to sit.

As luck would have it, though, a friend of a friend was able to get us upgraded to Section 111 in the main level, just beyond the first base bag and only six rows from the field.  While I wasn't initially that excited about the new seats - I knew the up-close view would be great, but I find that I can see the game a lot better from behind home plate - I quickly realized what a luxury sitting in the fancy seats can be.  The best perk by far?  The ability to order food directly to your seat.  In the third inning on the game, we ordered some food and drinks from the in-stadium waiter service.  Less than an inning later, our food arrived and we didn't miss a pitch.  Contrast this with the seventh inning, when I spent 20 minutes trying to buy two Italian Ices from the normal concession stands.  Although the line wasn't long (the game wasn't very crowded to begin with), the incompetence of the Citi Field "hospitality attendants" made the transaction a painful ordeal.

View from our upgraded seats in Section 111 on Friday night. 

I also went to Saturday night's game courtesy of a friend and his work connection, again in the lower level.  This time we had seats in Section 11, where you enter your section through the Delta 360 club and also have access to separate concessions and bathrooms than the rest of the stadium.  Once again, we ordered some food from the waiters, and once again it arrived pretty quickly and painlessly.  Later in the game I went to the Delta 360 club concessions area to buy some more food, mainly to see how it compared to the regular stadium concessions experience.  Perhaps not surprisingly, this transaction was much quicker, smoother and more pleasant.  Clearly, Citi Field has made sure to take care of its most valuable and highest paying fans.

Even better view from Saturday night's game in Section 11.

I think what's happening here is that each professional sports stadium or arena has a limited supply of competent labor.  In a stadium without a ton of premium seating the good workers are spread throughout the stadium, giving an average fan at least a chance to having a pleasant food-buying experience,  At Citi Field, which offers a ton of premium seating options and ammenities, an average fan is basically guaranteed to deal exclusively with employees that have no idea what they're doing.  As a result, if you go to a Mets game with good tickets you're in great shape.  If you're planning to go and sit in the cheap seats, however, you might want to think about bringing food from home.

Too Much Bling?

While thinking about the Summer Olympics earlier today, I pulled up this Wikipedia list of Olympians who have won multiple medals.  The thing that I find most striking about the list is that the majority of multiple medal winners are Summer competitors, especially at the top of the list where the top nine and 17 of the top 18 compete in the Summer games.  A huge reason for this is that the Summer games include a bunch of "sports" where athletes can pile up a number of medals in a single Olympics.  Swimming, gymnastics and "athletics" (track and field) are each made up of numerous events, many of which are so similar that an athlete can be world class in virtually all of them. 

When Michael Phelps swam to eight gold medals in 2008 in Beijing and collected his 22nd career Olympic medal this year in London, it was certainly an exciting story to follow.  But while Phelps is an incredible athlete and unquestionably the best swimmer of all time, his quest to break the record for most individual medals was greatly helped by the fact that he competes in a sport where he can compete in seven or eight events every four years.  Perhaps in the mind of a competitive swimmer the 100m and 200m butterfly are drastically different events, but on the grand scheme of things they're essentially the same exact competition.  It makes sense that the fastest guy in the 100m is probably pretty good at the 200m, too, and thus Phelps gets rewarded twice for the same basic skill.

While I would argue that there's more differentiation between the 100m freestyle and the 100m butterfly than there is between two races of the same stroke but different distances, even those events are fairly similar.  The fact is that someone who is great at swimming is just plan great at swimming, regardless of the stroke they're using.  We see this not only in swimming but in sprinting, too, where athletes regularly collect numerous medals in a single Olympics.  As I watch the 2012 games, I find myself wondering if all of these various swimming, gymnastics and track and field events are "different enough" that we should be allowing the same athletes to compete in all of them.

I understand that there's a lot of tradition behind having a 100m, a 200m and a 400m sprint, but I personally don't really enjoy watching the same runners compete is virtually all of them.  Wouldn't it be more interesting if athletes were restricted to selecting one or two events per Olympics?  In my mind, this would accomplish a few things to benefit of the Summer Olympics.  One, it would open the games up to more athletes, giving the world more interesting backstories and personalities.  Two, it would force athletes to really focus of one or two specific competitions, encouraging them to perfect their craft in these events rather than trying to spread themselves over an entire sport.  Third, it would really raise the bar for the quality of competition - with each athlete giving their all in every race without being worried about saving something in the tank, we'd be sure to see even more incredible record-breaking performances.

I have a lot of respect for Phelps, Carl Lewis and all of the other famous Olympians known for competing in a wide range of events.  But it doesn't make sense to me why Michael Phelps can earn eight medals in one Olympics for a few minutes of swimming while Andy Murray can only earn one medal for playing hours of tennis.  In order to put all of our athletes on more equal footing, I'd like to see athletes restricted to competing in their best one or two events.  We might lose the next Michael Phelps, but we'd gain a bunch of new awe-inspiring performances and add a host of new, talented athletes to the mix.

Vouching for Volleyball

Over the past week or so I've taken a break from my regularly scheduled MLB obsession to watch as much Summer Olympics content as possible. While I'm still following the Braves closely, the time I'd normally reserve for MLB Tonight on MLB Network has been replaced with whatever NBC and NBC Sports Network choose to air in prime time.  And while I love to watch the Olympics staples such as gymnastics, swimming and track and field, the sport that I've enjoyed the most so far has - surprisingly - been indoor volleyball.  The more I watch both the men and the women compete, the more I wonder why volleyball hasn't caught on as a professional sport in the United States.

This isn't to say that volleyball has so place in the American sports landscape.  Beach volleyball and the AVP Tour are reasonably popular and some of the athletes (like Olympians Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh Jennings) are relatively well known, but I'd argue that the sport's popularity is more about seeing good looking shirtless men and bikini-clad women run around on the beach than it is about the competition itself.  There's no professional indoor volleyball league, however - according to Wikipedia, the last attempt at an indoor volleyball league went under in the mid 2000s.  The Americn Pro Volleyball League (APVL) is trying to get men's indoor volleyball off the ground again in the U.S., but with a website that looks like this I doubt they're going to be very successful.

But try watching some Olympic indoor volleyball and you'll see many of the same elements that have made basketball so popular in the United States.  Volleyball players display the same types of athleticism that have fans cheering at NBA games - the diving digs and soaring spikes are volleyball's versions of bsaketball's perfect passes and big blocks.  Like basketball, volleyball creates room and roles for players of all sizes - smaller guys are the setters and floor generals (like point guards) and the biggest guys are mainly responsible for blocking (like centers).  The best athletes get the biggest cheers when they spike the ball at speeds in excess of 100 mph, just like basketball's forwards are often known for their ability to dunk.  Add on the fact that volleyball also lends itself well to statistics - spikes, blocks and digs are kept just like points, assists and rebounds - and I'm surprised that indoor volleyball seemingly has no U.S. market.

Earlier this week, ESPN's Bill Simmons wrote an article about handball and compared that sport to basketball.  In it, he writes "we didn't even make it to halftime before we started wondering things like, 'Why isn't handball more popular?' and 'Why isn't America better at handball?'"  I have very similar thoughts about indoor volleyball.  Unlike handball, however, volleyball is a well known sport in the U.S.  Many kids grow up playing volleyball recreationally and the game is a fairly popular competitive sport for male and female high school and college athletes.  While bringing handball to the U.S. would require teaching thousands of people a new game, most young athletes know at least the basics of volleyball.  So why isn't the line from big time college volleyball player to professional athlete more established?  Watch some Olympic volleyball this week and I bet you'll be asking yourself the same question.