On Monday night, my Stanford Cardinal defeated the Virginia Tech Hokies 40-12 to win the Discover Orange Bowl in Miami, Florida. Some of my classmates took their talents to South Beach to attend the game in person, while others were already back on campus watching in downtown Palo Alto's sports bars. I, unfortunately, had booked a flight from New York to San Jose weeks before I knew that Stanford would be in the Orange Bowl on January 3 (at that time, it seemed like it was New Years Day's Rose Bowl or bust for the Cardinal). Luckily, though, I was scheduled to fly JetBlue, and if all went according to plan I'd be spending the last three hours of the six hour flight watching Stanford dismantle the ACC champions via the airline's DirecTV feed.
After an utterly inexcusable and completely unexplained three hour delay, I boarded my flight just after the opening kickoff. Much like the game itself, my in-flight viewing experience was a tale of two halves. Similar to Stanford's first half performance, JetBlue's DirecTV was extremely inconsistent during the Orange Bowl's first two quarters. Each time the audio cut out, a Stanford lineman would miss a crucial block. Every time the video feed dropped while searching for a satellite signal, the Cardinal would have a defensive meltdown. When the obnoxious European woman sitting next to me decided she needed to get up to use the bathroom ten minutes after takeoff (climbing over me and my aisle seat in the process), Andrew Luck threw an uncharacteristic interception. I watched the first half in a frustrated and uncomfortable trance, knowing that Stanford, and the JetBlue DirecTV broadcast, was severely underperforming.
The second half was an entirely different story for both DirecTV and for the Cardinal. With the plane at cruising altitude, the video and audio feeds went undisturbed from halftime on, and my European neighbor slept quietly throughout the remainer of the flight (perhaps she went to the bathroom to pop an ambien or something, because she was out cold for five consecutive hours folllowing her walk). As the viewing experience settled into a rhythm, so did Stanford. Suddenly, Luck was unstoppable, the defense was impenetrable, and the team cruised to its first BCS bowl victory and an almost-guaranteed Top 5 finish. In the end, the in-flight viewing experience and the on-field performance matched each other quite nicely and, if nothing else, provided me with an interesting response to the "Where were you when Stanford won the Orange Bowl in 2011?" question, in case someone ever asks me.
While watching your team play in a BCS bowl game during a cross-country flight is far from ideal, at least I got to see (most of) the game live. I always try and fly JetBlue because of its superior in-flight entertainment options, and I recently learned that the airline now has NFL Sunday Ticket as well. I'd rather not have to watch a big game that I care about on a flight again any time soon, but I wouldn't mind watching the Broncos battle the Jaguars to pass a few spare travel hours. Thanks, JetBlue, for letting me enjoy Stanford's Orange Bowl victory and for getting me back to campus safe, sound, and three hours late.
BONUS: Once back on campus, I went to Maples Pavilion (Stanford's basketball stadium) to welcome the football team back to campus on Tuesday afternoon. I had seen this on TV dozens of times before - coach buses pulling up to campus in front of thousands of cheering fans - and was excited to finally experience it in person. Not at all surprisingly, though, the Stanford "fans" disappointed; the crowd was extremely sparse and the "press conference" was short and unemotional. I've said it before and I unfortunately think I'll say it again, but Stanford sports fan are shockingly weak. It makes Andrew Luck's decision to return to school for his red-shirt Junior season all the more surprising.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
New Year at the New Meadowlands
While Sunday was a rough day for my Giants, who were bounced from the playoffs by Green Bay's victory over Chicago despite winning at Washington and finishing the season at a respectible 10-6, the "other" New York football team had a big day at home and I was there to witness it in person. Heading to the playoffs for the second consecutive season, the New York Jets dismantled the Buffalo Bills at New Meadowlands Stadium on Sunday, and thanks to a Stanford connection I scored two free tickets to the game, a club parking pass, plus access to the Jets' exclusive Tiffany's Green Room.
Before the game, I wasn't super-excited about driving all the way to New Jersey for an essentially-meaningless Jets-Bills game (the J-E-T-S had clinched a playoff spot the week before and were sure to rest the majority of their offensive starters, including QB Mark Sanchez and RB Ladanian Tomlinson). It was the day after New Years and I figured I'd be more comfortable and just as happy watching the game from the comfort of my parents' living room on Long Island. Little did I know that watching a football game from the Tiffany's Green Room on a 50-degree day in January could combine the excitement of live NFL football with the ammenities of one's own home.
At first blush, a Jets game at the New Meadowlands was 10% football game, 90% carnival. I'm not sure if all Jets games are like this (or just inconsequential Week 17 games versus a Buffalo team starting Brian Brohm at quarterback), but the amount of pregame activity going on outside the stadium was staggering. There was a dixieland band, jugglers, football-themed carnival-style games (throwing a football through a cardboard player cutout with a hole in it, for example) and a host of free giveaways ("Sign your life away to Verizon and get a free hand towel!"). I was already experiencing sensory-overload when I got off the elevator at the Tiffany's Green Room, where the ambiance couldn't have been more different from the zoo surrounding the stadium.
The Green Room is part bar / lounge, part living room, and part restaurant. The area was filled with free food - good stuff, too, not your typical stadium fare - and the open bar was completely free as well. The walls were lined with couches and booths from which you could eat, drink, relax and watch the game from dozens of different HD screens. Other people were saddled up to the bar, talking football (or perhaps stocks?) and drinking cocktails. While I'm normally a "man of the people" when it comes to professional sporting events - I like to sit in the real seats with the real fans - this was the perfect place to be for this particular sleepy Jets contest. It was great - when you wanted to be at a live NFL game you walked a few feet outside to your seats for an awesome, up-close view, and when you wanted the comforts of home you came back inside to the Green Room and grabbed a drink and a seat. I wish I took some pictures inside the club area, but I was an invited guest of a Jets employee and didn't want to make an abnormally-large ass of myself.
Before the game, I wasn't super-excited about driving all the way to New Jersey for an essentially-meaningless Jets-Bills game (the J-E-T-S had clinched a playoff spot the week before and were sure to rest the majority of their offensive starters, including QB Mark Sanchez and RB Ladanian Tomlinson). It was the day after New Years and I figured I'd be more comfortable and just as happy watching the game from the comfort of my parents' living room on Long Island. Little did I know that watching a football game from the Tiffany's Green Room on a 50-degree day in January could combine the excitement of live NFL football with the ammenities of one's own home.
At first blush, a Jets game at the New Meadowlands was 10% football game, 90% carnival. I'm not sure if all Jets games are like this (or just inconsequential Week 17 games versus a Buffalo team starting Brian Brohm at quarterback), but the amount of pregame activity going on outside the stadium was staggering. There was a dixieland band, jugglers, football-themed carnival-style games (throwing a football through a cardboard player cutout with a hole in it, for example) and a host of free giveaways ("Sign your life away to Verizon and get a free hand towel!"). I was already experiencing sensory-overload when I got off the elevator at the Tiffany's Green Room, where the ambiance couldn't have been more different from the zoo surrounding the stadium.
The Green Room is part bar / lounge, part living room, and part restaurant. The area was filled with free food - good stuff, too, not your typical stadium fare - and the open bar was completely free as well. The walls were lined with couches and booths from which you could eat, drink, relax and watch the game from dozens of different HD screens. Other people were saddled up to the bar, talking football (or perhaps stocks?) and drinking cocktails. While I'm normally a "man of the people" when it comes to professional sporting events - I like to sit in the real seats with the real fans - this was the perfect place to be for this particular sleepy Jets contest. It was great - when you wanted to be at a live NFL game you walked a few feet outside to your seats for an awesome, up-close view, and when you wanted the comforts of home you came back inside to the Green Room and grabbed a drink and a seat. I wish I took some pictures inside the club area, but I was an invited guest of a Jets employee and didn't want to make an abnormally-large ass of myself.
View from our seats just outside the Tiffany's Green Room.
We did venture outside of the comfy confines of the Green Room to check out the rest of the place, of course, and overall I was impressed. While the stadium is fairly utilitarian and doesn't have a ton of character, there's a reason for that; the builders did a great job of constructing a stadium that can be completely Jets one afternoon, and completely Giants the next. Every sign can be flipped from green to blue automatically, so every player poster and team flag is rotated before each weekend, depending on whether the Jets or Giants are home. Even the permanent signage (denoting section numbers and the like) are surrounded by soft lighting than can be flipped from green to blue, a nice touch.
As you might remember from my recap of opening day at Citi Field in April, I don't like when stadiums (especially new ones) clutter themselves with a million visual advertisements. In this regard, New Meadowlands Stadium is awesome. There are basically only four large permanent ads visible from the inside, one above each of the giant video boards in the corners of the stadium. Not only are these ads relatively classy and extremely unintrusive, they're helpful to fans; each corner of the stadium, inside and out, is completely branded by those four sponsors. So, fans looking to meet up at the game can tell each ther that they're "right outside the Bud Light gate" or "sitting under the MetLife video board," which is helpful in an 80,000+ person stadium. The concourses in the corners behind the video boards are branded, too, and are complete with interactive displays that are part-advertisement, part-entertainment. I took a picture of the Verizon concourse (my favorite), which featured a series of TVs showing live NFL and other sports action, as well as a scrolling ticker with scores and news from around the sports world.
MetLife, Verizon, Pepsi and Bud Light (shown here) are the four big New Meadowlands sponsors.
The Verizon Studio can be found in the concourse between the Verizon entry gate and video board.
I can't wait to get back to the New Meadowlands for a Giants game next season and experience the place like a "true" football fan. For this particular post-New Years afternoon, however, hanging out in the Green Room was the perfect way to watch "Brohm! Brunell! It's the Bills and the Jets at the New Meadowlands Stadium!"
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Blogging Resolutions
After an almost-four week hiatus covering a twelve-day trip to Cambodia, Thailand and Hong Kong, a post-Christmas blizzard and New Years Eve, I'm back for the 2011 edition of Caught Looking. While I've never been one to make concrete New Years Resolutions for myself, I'm hoping to make this blog's second calendar year even stronger than the first. Here are my New Years Blogging Resolutions for 2011; hopefully you'll all push me to make sure I stick to the plan, and continue reading throughout the year.
- In 2010, I posted 83 times, propped up by a number of posts I made from the World Cup in South Africa in June. As a realistic goal given my other obligations to school, family and friends, I'm shooting for 100+ posts in 2011. That's an average of 8.3 per month, or one every 3-4 days. Hopefully I can blow through the century mark, though.
- Since moving back to California in September, I've hit up games at Oracle Arena and the HP Pavilion. In 2011, I want to visit the remaining Bay Area sports teams. Left on my list: the Oakland Athletics, Oakland Raiders, San Francisco 49ers, San Francisco Giants and San Jose Earthquakes. I plan to get to the two baseball stadiums this spring after the season starts in April, make it to the football games after the summer when I return to school, and check out the MLS at some point in between. While easier to achieve, I'm also committed to numerous Stanford basketball games this winter, and at least one Stanford baseball game this spring.
- In honor of Caught Looking's one-year anniversary this April, I'm planning a site redesign complete with new content, a new look-and-feel and, most significantly, a new custom-designed logo. I'm currently soliciting ideas / proposals, so let me know if you want to "apply" to be the unofficial blog architect come this spring.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
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.
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.
Sunday, December 5, 2010
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.
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.
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