A Blast from the Past

While it might be hard to believe based on the relative lack of coverage it receives on Caught Looking, while growing up I went to more hockey games than baseball or basketball games. Last season, I only went to two hockey games - one at HP Pavilion in San Jose and one at the RBC Center in Raleigh - but as kids my friends and I went to Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, New York to see the Islanders play multiple times each hockey season.  On Friday, I made my return to the Coliseum after a multiple-season absence to watch the Islanders play host to the New Jersey Devils.
   

Even back in the late 1990s the Nassau Coliseum was considered one of the worst venues in professional sports, and it doesn't seem like any real capital improvements have been made on the arena in the last decade.  As always, from the outside the Coliseum looked like a drab ball of concrete, although now most of the signage for the now-defunct New York Dragons of the Arena Football League has been replaced with cheesy ads for Optimum cable internet and television.  The concourses were still simultaneously barren and crowded (there was a surprisingly respectable crowd at the game, probably because a lot of people were in town for Thanksgiving).  The sponsors whose ads lined the boards of the hockey rink were far from the marquee national advertisers that you'd find at a New York Rangers or San Jose Sharks game - companies like New York Community Bank and CompressionStockings.com (whatever that is) even had their logos embedded into the ice itself (see below).

 NYCB and CompressionStockings.com are low budget on-ice sponsors.

I was, however, pretty impressed with the fans who came out for the game.  Even though the team gave the crowd absolutely nothing to cheer about (and a whole lot to boo about), the fans were relatively energetic and loud.  There was the usual suite of anti-Rangers chants, which happen during every Islanders game regardless of opponent, which always puts a smile on my face.  It was great to see the Islanders only "super fan" - an overweight Long Islander who sits in the first row behind one of the nets and wears a gold wig under an Isles hat - retaining his usual seat and working tirelessly to pump up the crowd.  The game proved that, despite what you might read in the local papers, there will be plenty of angry people if the team does ever move to Kansas City or Canada as is constantly rumored. 

Despite the extreme crappiness of the Nassau Coliseum (it rivals the Oakland Coliseum and Candlestick Park as the worst venues that I've visited in recent memory) and the even worse performance of the team itself (the Isles lost 1-0 to a weak New Jersey team and blew a golden opportunity to tie the game with a penalty shot in the third period), I still had a great time.  Isles games take me back to a time in my youth when the Nassau Coliseum was the only venue that my friends and I were allowed to visit without our parents, since Uniondale was a lot closer and less intimidating for a group of young teenagers than the Bronx or midtown Manhattan.  For that reason, the Coliseum and the Islanders will always hold a special place in my heart, no matter how incredibly dilapidated the Islanders or their home arena get. 

NBA, I Wish I Knew How To Quit You

With the 2011-12 NBA season potentially over, I've been trying to block everything related to professional basketball out of my mind.  As much as I'd love to see the NBA and NBPA come to an agreement over the Thanksgiving break and get the season started by Christmas, it seems less and less likely to happen every day.  Rather than get myself worked up over the loss of what could have been an exciting Knicks season, I've been telling myself to forget about the NBA and focus on bigger and better things - college football bowls, the second half of the NFL season, college hoops and maybe even a little NHL hockey.

It's been harder than I expected to stay away from NBA-related conversation over the last few weeks, however.  For one, perhaps not surprisingly, every person I come across wants to talk about the NBA lockout.  People are constantly asking me for my thoughts or trying to draw some inside information out of me (which I honestly don't have); it's happened so often over the past month that I pretty much have a scripted response memorized ("I haven't heard anything specific, but based on what I've been reading from public sources I don't feel optimistic.  It's really a shame, especially after the fantastic finish to last season and considering all of the great young talent in the league blah blah blah").

There are other little reminders of the NBA's absense that I'm also forced to deal with everyday, though.  ESPN's Scorecenter app for Android phones still lists basketball games among the upcoming events; on the "My Teams" tab, I have each previously-scheduled Knicks game staring me in the face, with a giant "CANCELLED" written where the start time would normally be.  The other day I was watching a college basketball game being played at Madison Square Garden (and I'll be watching more from there this week when Stanford heads to the Big Apple to take part in the pre-season NIT semifinals starting on Wednesday) and noticed that the NBA three point line is still prominently painted on the hardwood.  Every channel I turn to is either running a T-Mobile ad starring Dwyane Wade, an Adidas spot featuring Derrick Rose or the new (and amusing) Call of Duty commercial with the Dwight Howard cameo at the end.

Yes, there's a lot of sports to watch right now, even with the NBA on hiatus.  But that doesn't mean it's been easy to forget about the NBA altogether.  Whether it's the constant questioning from family and friends, the ESPN app, college basketball at MSG or seemingly every ad on TV, reminders of all the great professional basketball that we're missing right now are everywhere.  Here's hoping that the two sides come to an agreement soon, before the 2011-12 season is lost forever and all we're left with is the (fitting) image of Dwight Howard firing a machine gun.

Crumbling Candlestick Park

Note: Based on reader input, some additional detail has been added (in italics) to the third paragraph.

Despite having lived in the Bay Area for over a year now, I didn't know much about Candlestick Park - home of the San Francisco 49ers - until this weekend.  I had heard that the stadium was known for being shockingly windy and cold, and that the team has been trying to build a new facility either in Santa Clara or near AT&T Park for years.  I also recently attended a panel featuring some 49ers executives during which one of the team's senior marketing executives claimed that her job was to make sure the team was associated with the word "class."  It was with this limited information that I made my way up to South San Francisco on Sunday to see the New York Giants battle the Niners at Candlestick Park.

While San Francisco isn't New York, it's still a large city where a lot of people regularly use public transportation.  The city has both Caltrain, a commuter rail network, and BART, a metro system, but shockingly neither have a station anywhere near Candlestick.  The Caltrain website recommends taking the Caltrain, BART and a bus to get to the stadium from Palo Alto, but after some research I discovered that the stadium is a fifteen minute walk through a quasi-shady San Francisco neighborhood from the nearest Caltrain stop.  We took the 50 minute Caltrain ride from Stanford and then walked down streets, through parking lots and up unpaved hills to get to the field - hardly convenient.  And we were far from the only ones doing it - we followed hundreds of other 49er jersey-clad fans who showed us the way.  How the city of San Francisco hasn't developed a better public transportation alternative for reaching the stadium from the South Bay is beyond me.

Can you see the video board?  Neither could we from our seats in Section 61.

Things didn't get much better once we reached the stadium, either.  Once we got inside the Candlestick grounds, it was immediately obvious why the team is trying so desperately trying to construct a new facility.  The stadium, like many other 1960s-era football stadiums (such as RFK Stadium in Washington, DC), is generic, concrete and ugly.  The concourses are drab, narrow and empty, with extremely limited concessions and bathroom facilities.  Also, because Candlestick was once a mixed-use venue (it housed the San Francisco Giants until AT&T Park opened), there is a section of temporary seating (removable for baseball games) which is improperly angled towards the sideline, so the rows and the yard lines aren't perpendicular and some views are obstructed - you can even sort of see it in the photo below.  Perhaps most surprising, though, was the terrible quality of Candlestick's in-stadium technology.  There were two tiny video boards that were nearly impossible to see, and the PA announcer was barely audible through the stadium's dilapidated stereo system.  Ironically, Silicon Valley's team might have the least technologically sophisticated venue in the NFL.

The 49ers fans were passionate, in a sloppy sort of way.

As for the team's mission of "staying classy," as Ron Burgundy would say, I would say the 49ers are coming up short.  While the team's fans were passionate and relatively loud (it's hard not to be when your team is 8-1), they were far from "professional."  Overall, I would rate my first Candlestick Park experience as mediocre at best.  At least the weather was fantastic - we were all way overdressed, having prepared for a freezing, windy afternoon.  It's definitely time for the team to break ground on a new Santa Clara-based facility ASAP.

Gameday at the Oval

For years, I've flipped the TV to ESPN on Saturday mornings and caught parts of College Gameday, the network's premiere weekly college football preview show.  Given that Gameday is filmed each week on location at the site of the big, nationally-televised Saturday night game and is typically hosted at one of college football's iconic locales, I always figured that the odds of me ever attending a broadcast were almost negligible; not only would I have to be living near a Gameday location, but I'd also have to care enough about the game to get up early enough to attend the taping.  As luck would have it, though, everything came together yesterday when Gameday made its first ever visit to Palo Alto for the Stanford game versus Oregon.

Even on the East Coast, Gameday involves getting up very early.  The broadcast begins at 9 AM eastern, and fans begin jockeying for position behind the stage hours in advance.  In California everything is of course three hours earlier, so fans were arriving at Stanford's Oval - a grassy area in front of the main campus - at 4 AM.  While I wasn't quite that dedicated, I did drag myself out of my room in time to arrive at the Oval by 7, and by that time, hundreds of fans were sprawled across the grass in the dark of early morning, many carrying Gameday's traditional clever signs.  I took a picture of some of my favorites (see below), and also particularly enjoyed other signs that read:

• Tebow - God + Talent = Andrew Luck
• Erin Andrews, will you be my non-technical co-founder?
• I hate LeBron

As predicted, Stanford fans came up with some clever Gameday signs.

After getting over the initial shock of how many (mostly) Stanford fans showed up before 7 AM to watch Gameday, I realized that seeing the show live isn't all that exciting.  While it's kind of cool while the ESPN crew is talking - and especially while they're talking about Oregon and Stanford - there's a ton of down time while the show is either airing other pre-taped segments or, worse yet, in a commercial break where people are just standing around, somewhat tired and cold, waiting for a camera to pass by and give them a reason to cheer.  While it's really not super-exciting, I'm certainly glad I got to see it once and can now cross it off my sports fan bucket list.

The Red Zone - the Stanford student section - was loud, energetic and surprisingly supportive.

The Gameday turnout was impressive - especially by Stanford standards - and was a reflection of the day as a whole.  The Cardinal faithful (and, admittedly, a ton of Ducks fans) showed up for some excellent tailgating, entered the stadium early and were loud and supportive throughout.  After time ran out on Stanford in their 53-30 loss, I honestly wasn't even that disappointed.  On the field, Oregon was a vastly superior team that deserved the big victory.  Off the field, I was proud of the Stanford fan support and hope that it continues even though the team's National Championship dreams are over - starting with Saturday's Big Game.

The Power of Football

I went to the Stanford men's basketball game tonight against Central Arkansas, and there were less than 1,000 people in the stands.  Every section was flooded with tons of empty red seats, and the bleacher seats up top were almost completely vacant.  There was, however, one section that was moderately full, moderately loud and moderately energetic - amazingly, it was the 6th Man section, home of the Stanford students.  You may recall that, last year, I criticized Stanford basketball fans for being apathetic and weak.  At first blush, it seemed as if a new crop of students brought some life to Maples in time for the start of the 2011-2012 college hoops season.

This, however, wasn't true.  In fact, the only reason students showed up to watch Stanford basketball was because of Stanford football.  Tonight's obscure hoops match against Central Arkansas, you see, is worth one Red Zone (loyalty) point to next weekend's Big Game showdown with rival Cal, which is always a big game and this year is shaping up to be especially so.  If Stanford can hold off Oregon tomorrow (plenty of coverage and pictures from that game and the festivities surrounding it - including ESPN's College Gameday broadcast live from the Oval tomorrow morning - to come), next Saturday's Cal game will be for a lot more than pride; it'll be to clinch the Pac-12 North division and a spot in the first Pac-12 Championship game, as well as a potential berth to the National Championship.  If anything can get Stanford students to a non-conference basketball game, that'll do it.

The fact that the 6th Man section was somewhat crowded for tonight's game shows the power of a dominant football program.  While a great basketball team can't drive success on the gridiron (as Duke painfully discovers year after year), big time football can generate enthusiasm for basketball.  The question will be can Stanford build on the buzz around the football program, use it (and the loyalty points program) to push fans to basketball games, and maintain excitement in Maples after Andrew Luck is gone and the the days of National Championship contention are over?  Even if not, it's smart for the Stanford athletic department to do anything they can to leverage the football team's success for other sports while it lasts.

But why stop at offering one loyalty point for this season's Big Game?  Why not have a number of this season's basketball games earn Red Zone points for games next season?  While such a program wouldn't appeal to people graduating (myself included), and even though next year's football team won't be nearly as good as the 2011 version, it couldn't hurt to try to use the allure of tickets to next season's USC game, for example, to get people to show up to big basketball games against UCLA or Arizona (which last year were empty).  Tonight proved that football can drive traffic to other sports.  It would be wise for Stanford athetics to ride the football team's tidal wave for as long as possible.