When You’re Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop

2 02 2010

A weary traveler checks into a hotel late at night.  He lays on his bed and drops his shoe, banging loudly on the hard floor; realizing how loud and rude he was being, he softly takes off his other shoe and places it on the floor.  A few minutes passed and a man below can be heard shouting, “Drop your other shoe already!  I can’t sleep waiting for it to hit the ground!”  For the man on the floor below the traveler, he was waiting for the other shoe to drop on the floor; the inevitable conclusion of the man’s anticipation of the undesirable thud.  Cowboy fans have witnessed the shoe drop after 1996 and their third Super Bowl of the ’90s.  Bulls fans witnessed it after Jordan-era.  Meg Ryan dropped the shoe after You’ve Got Mail.  Now, the fans in/(of) Boston are witnessing it happen right before their eyes.

These are the years of the last championship seasons for the teams of The Hub – with the Bruins in 1971.  In a decade, no city has enjoyed more championships than Bostonians in the Aughts.  (Please send refuting emails to Dwight Schrute at beeswax@notyours.com).  2007:  Celtics win their league-leading 17th championship, the Red Sox win World Series for the second time in 3 years and the Patriots win their 4th Super Bowl in 7 years; undefeated, no less.  (It happened.  Yes it did!  Just leave me alone!).  Okay, fine:  2004, Patriots win their 3rd Super Bowl in 4 years.

Since then, fans have parachuted in on the Bandwagon of Beantown from all over the country.   Well, I for one don’t mind all the bandwagoners seeing as how in this day of universally on-demand media anyone can follow any team no matter where they are.  I guess what I’m saying is, there’s nothing you can do about them so we should just live with it.  But I do have a message to those that may choose to stay:  ”Things are about to get rough, so buckle up or get off.”

2010:  the Patriots have expired their 5-year grace period for winning Super Bowl XXXIX.  2007 was definitely good year for the Pats but the first-round debacle of this year’s playoffs to the David Tyree Ravens combined with the humiliatingly, flukey loss to the David Tyree Giants in 2007 can swiftly lead to loss of good faith for their prosperity.

The Celtics are old.  The Big Three can’t hold the team together any more.  Leads aren’t preserved down the stretch without the intimidating defense of a truly healthy Kevin Garnett.  The general manager actively tried to get rid of Rajon Rondo on two separate occasions before giving him an extension this year.

The Red Sox.  I’m holding on to hope that last year’s sweep from the ALDS was an aberration, too.

Despite disappointing finishes the Pats did go undefeated during the regular season and won 18 games in a row, the Celtics and Bulls gave NBA fans an unforgettable 7 game series without KG in 2008 and the Red Sox…well the Red Sox added John Lackey to the rotation.  (I can’t honestly think of something I’m excited for about the Red Sox this year or last year).  The Bruins made the playoffs and lost to the Hurricanes in 7 games.  Silver linings are everywhere.  But how long will that hold?

Spoiled, like the cast of Jersey Shore getting paid to drink and fight.  New Englanders just expect good things to come, easily forgetting hardships that came before this decade.  You’re the father of a kid that will inevitably lose a game of basketball in the driveway because you’re getting older, fatter and slower and your kid is getting more agile, stronger and figuring out your weaknesses.

So what can you do?  I can’t say whether or not I’m handling the situation very well.  Every Celtics game I see, I have no reason to believe that they’ll win the game even with a 20-point lead in the 4th quarter.  I didn’t even predict the Patriots to be in the Super Bowl (but there’s no way I predicted the first-round piss-fest) this year.  The Colts have figured the Patriots out.  The Chargers would have beat them too.  (In hindsight, everyone in the playoffs could have beaten the Pats).

If you’re a bandwagoner and want to jump off, be my guest; you are entitled to your decisions and what makes you happy.  If you’re a die-hard, you can join me and prepare yourself to endure the inevitability that the shoe is getting closer and closer to the ground.  Take the insight of the late sportswriter Dave Halberstam, “If you need a victory by your favorite sports team to give you some kind of enduring emotional upgrade, then you are, I suspect, in real trouble.”

Go out and enjoy life.  No lovable losers here.


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Why I Can Never Gamble on Sports

2 10 2009

I’ve grown up from fantasy sports.  (Well, I’m still playing fantasy but I’m more mature.  Stick with me).  I have entered the gateway drug to sportsbetting: a cash NFL pick ‘em league.  Leading the pack by one point heading into the third Monday Night Football game with 5 others tied for second-place kept me stressed all day.  It took a lot for me to not gather polls from work and class to gauge a consensus on what I should do, “What’s the best way to come out a winner this week?”  Answer:  the best way to limit the damage?  “Get the right pick” (yep, that helped a whole lot).  Should I pick underdog Carolina at +9?  Or is that what the rest of the guys are going to do?  Well, it’s at Cowboy Stadium…and the Cowboys got beaten in their opener against the Giants so they definitely need to be out for blood, right?  But Carolina can’t open the season at 0-3.  Or, is that what the rest of the guys are going to do?  “Dallas, be good to me.  Please!”  If I were Catholic, I’d have crossed myself then-and-there.

Hank Williams Jr. asks if we’re ready for football (YES!  For 5 years, yes!).  John Gruden claims how much Jake Delhomme shows true grit.  And how Tony Romo is a great teammate (Gruden was clearly campaigning to Jerry Jones and the owner of the Panthers – sorry, who owns the Panthers? – to be offered the head-coaching position after Wade Phillips or the coach of the Panthers – umm…who’s the head coach for the Panthers? – lost this game).  After the volley of punts were building a scoreless halftime, the two-team shutout was broken up by a gut-wrenching Jake Delhomme TD with a minute left in the 1st half and I started coming up with my runner-up speech.  You know, the thing that you say to the guys at work when the topic comes up as to why you were dumb enough to pick Dallas at minus-9 over Carolina.  Half-time was spent texting my Cowboy-fan friends (three of which were at the game) and begging them to run the field and tackle Jake Delhomme.  And reviewing the tie-breaker rules.  Surely, there’s some hope!

I was under a ridiculous amount of stress.  For a Cowboy/Panthers game.  I haven’t cared for anything as meaningless than FOX News caring about Miley Cyrus using a stripper pole as a prop during the Teen Choice Awards.  Yet, there I was in the fourth quarter and hoping for a miracle because the Cowboys were only leading by 6 points with less than 6 minutes left to play (come on, 6 points is not greater than 9 points.  Get the picture, yet?  Why, oh why did I think they’d go over the spread?).  To top it off, Wade Phillips thought it was a great idea to try and score inside the 10-yard line with two passes and a run for no-gain.  They all failed and my heart sank; it was already over.

And it happened.  No, not the miracle – Jake Delhomme.  Delhomme gave up his sixth interception in 3 games; 11 in 4 games going back to last year’s playoff game (at this rate, Jake is on pace for 2.75 interceptions per game).  He’s become such a staple of bad things happening in life (sorry, Carolina fans), when I see someone trip and fall, I immediately think, ‘That guy’s just been Delhommed!’  Spilled milk?  Don’t cry.  You’ve just been Delhommed!  Run into a parked car?  You AND that guy’s car has just been Delhommed!  I saw the play develop before it happened.  Less than 5 minutes to go in the game and Carolina has to march down the field to score.  Of course they’re going to go have to try and reach the endzone – a field goal is only worth 3 points, for those scoring at home (these were the thoughts going through my head at the time.  Carolina will have to try and get a TD and that means Jake will have to throw the ball. When that happens there’s ALWAYS the opportunity for a turnover!).

September 28 is history: Terence Newman steps in front of a botched Steve Smith in-route and strolls into the endzone (after a two-point conversion, the score is 21-7.  “Yes!”  14 points > 9 points).  Pan to camera 5:  Albie’s Living Room, and focus on the idiot standing on his couch, phone-in-hand texting ‘Yessssss!!!’ to everyone he knew.  Game ends, Carolina doesn’t score.  14 is greater than 9.  Fourteen is greater than nine.  The Cowboys covered the spread on a pick-six from Terence Newman in the final 5 minutes of the fourth quarter.  That’s what it came down to.  And that’s when I realized that I should never gamble on sports.  The fate of the day-after experience relied on an interception returned for a touchdown.  With less than five minutes in the game to go.   They had to have a pick-six.  There’s no other way.  A fumble not recovered in the end-zone meant Romo would just kneel and run the clock.  Or kick a field goal.  (9 points = 9 points.  I wouldn’t get points for that since 9 is not greater than 9 – still with me?).

Afterwards, I received my congratulations from co-workers and proceeded the consolation process of stating how worried I really was.  So aside from the fact that I don’t have the money for REAL sportsbetting ($2 per week is nothing compared to thousands) and how unhealthy it was for me until that clock reached 00:00, I can never gamble on sports.


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Why Naming Dogs after Sports Athletes is a BAD Idea

9 09 2009

If you’re a twenty-year old kid that wants a dog, do NOT name it after a young sports athlete. Especially if they’re only in their second year and had a great rookie year.  Because three years later, after the sophomore slump and after two World Baseball Classics, you’re going to wish Dice the German Shepherd was named because of your craps gambling addiction instead of the $50 million pitcher that can’t go more than 5 innings without 10 walks.

Over Labor Day weekend, I went back down to my parents’ house to pick up my dog that they were holding on to for a year because of roommate and small-living space issues.  Now that I live alone, I find myself bored late in the evenings during the week and am too worried I’d become crazy if I talk to myself (so I’d rather talk to a dog.  Better?).  As I haven’t lived with him for a year, I look back at him and remember our time together and of the day I went to pick him up at the shelter.  With two friends, we looked at all the animals that needed to be adopted.  I did two loops; I don’t know how I missed him the first time.  He was perfect.  Just sat there in the cage and looked at me instead of acting like…well, a dog in an animal shelter.  Probably more importantly, there wasn’t a stream of his marked territory running out of the cage and into the hallway’s drainage hole (honestly, why put it there so people have two choices:  step in it and let it trace your footprints every time you step, or cautiously step over it so you can get the look that says, “I hope you’re ready to step in it ’cause you’re going to have to if you take one of these home”?).  Another tip for adoption:  they make you give the animal a name.  That’s an understatement.  They don’t let you out the door until you pick a name.

We sat at the counter for about 15 minutes while the workers were getting ready to close for the day.  You just think of words and say whatever comes to your mind, like:  Yawkey.  Fen.  Or…Way, Papi? Eh, I’d rather it be a pitcher. So, Pedro?  Knuckles, Knuckl–er, Knuckleball, knuckleball.  Gyro?  What’s a Gyro?  Dice-K throws it.  Dice!  Dice?  Yeah, Dice…that’s it.  How do you spell it?  Hmm….Daisuke or Dice-K?  Well 5 minutes later, I brought Dice home and he became my little mascot.  Fast forward two years and your awesome, cool pet that has attached so close to you (and vice versa) has the name of a three-year washout that will probably be a fireballer in the National League a la John Smoltz and Brad Penny.  Yes, Brad Penny (after he asked and was granted release from the Red Sox and signed with the San Francisco Giants, then pitched 8 shutout innings in Philly led me the most used but most passionate text message from Sox fan to Sox fan, “Brad Penny! WTF! Really?!”).

The lesson is, if you have to name your pet after an athlete, don’t name it after one that is virtually untested.  Now give me some credit, Daisuke has pitched in his relative big-leagues before.  And constantly threw 150 pitches per game in Japan, so why would I have thought that he would have had a tired arm after last year’s WBC?  Probably because I didn’t know the WBC would still exist by now.  Be smart and name your pet after a Hall of Famer, or a washed-out retiree (purely for comedy, not patheticness.  No Bledsoes, please).  You could go with Yaz, or Pudge.  Madden, or Csanka and Butkus.  Me? I’ll stick it out to the bitter end.  And it will be a bitter end.  However, if Real Life Daisuke ends up on the Yankees…I’ll have to reevaluate the origin of the name.  Like how it’s ironic that his name is Dice and he has no dice?  (Thanks to Bob Barker for controlling the pet population).  Or maybe I should just call him Buddy.


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Why I’m Already Waiting Until Next Year

23 07 2009

I miss football season but what do I have to be excited for the upcoming college football season?  Arkansas is predicted – cue drum roll and fireworks – 4th in the SEC West.  Wait, you mean that didn’t surprise you?

The normal Quarterback Carousel of Mediocrity is still in running order in Arkansas (although Ryan Mallett gives the RazorNation hope).    The only reason why we are hinging on Mallett helping us make The Leap is because he played for Michigan.  As a back up for Chad Henne.  Maybe we’ll have a Tom Brady Jr. for a year.  These were his stats for 2007:

11 games, 892 yards, 7 TDs and 5 INTs.

Sounds like vintage Razorback quality with Casey’s stats in ’08:

11 games, 2586 yards (357 attempts), 23 TDs and 14 INTs (according to ArkansasRazorbacks.com).

Coupled with the Big-Ten experience and 2nd-year, pass-happy Bobby Petrino, welcome to the Rebel Alliance, Luke and Obi-Wan. This is our new hope.

Hey, at least we have a new turf field to play on!  Hopefully that’ll help out our secondary (which gave a league-high 22 passing TDs last year).  I know Casey Dick would have like to have that turf field for his pick-sixes running back at him; two of which he got juked out of his shoes diving for.  I saw it personally.  Sept. 9 vs. Alabama:  Casey Dick threw two interceptions (out of 4.  FOUR!) that left him the last passenger on Oceanic Flight 815 lost on the island and he definitely didn’t protect Frank Broyle’s house by whiffing twice and watching ‘Bama defense celebrate in the endzone while picking the grass out his helmet and mouth.  My friends and I were thoroughly surprised by his ability to go horizontal, however; it was probably the most passionate attempt to save face for the dreadful season.

You’ll think I’m crazy, but I can’t get excited about our football season unless we beef up our non-conference schedule.  Aren’t we tired of playing teams from the Football Championship Scrubs (formerly known as Division I-AA), and struggle to run up the score?  If  that’s how we gain our pride, let me tell you: I’ve seen the bars of Dickson after victories and after losses; it’s pretty much the same atmosphere.  For once, I’d like the Hogs to lose a game like the end of Bad News Bears (Billy Bob Thornton version) where our players spray  O’douls all over Florida after they proclaim their new respect for us even in a loss.  And then constantly make fun of them and their mothers, then suggest what they can do with both of those statements together.  Honestly, how can we get better when we don’t play those that are better than us outside of conference?  I really don’t mind if we get our asses handed to us all season long because we’ll always win the Hardest Schedule Award.

The warden in The Longest Yard (Adam Sandler version) said it best when he got the prisoners to make a team to play against instead of push-over city teams to make the guards better before the Prison Guard season started.


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A Long, Long Time Ago in a World of Sports Far Away

15 07 2009

Alpha-male instincts are at its highest with sports.  My-team-is-better-than-your-team countered back and forth between friends (and the occassional not-so-friends) shared over a drink in your favorite bar.  You had your team and you defended it ’till the end.  The reason your team was superior was justified by anything you belted out at an increasingly higher volume and an occasional sharper tone.  No matter how heated the argument got you felt like Mel Gibson avenging his freedom in Braveheart/The Patriot until someone was dead, covered in his own pool of blood.  Even if it was false  – but that was ten years ago.  A lot has changed since then.

Before the All-Star break, ESPN re-aired the 1999 Home Run Derby in Boston, clearly telling at how different the times are.  The hit-tracker that drew lines from home plate to the outfield was the highlight of production value during that derby.  Ten years from then, the State Farm 2009 MLB Home Run Derby glowed the ball flying through the air much like Fox’s attempt to glow the hockey puck blue so the audience can follow it.  And was able to track the amount of feet the ball traveled on contact – emasculating Bradon Inge trickling the ball 20 feet from home-plate.

Dave Halberstam wrote multiple times, compiled in Everything They Had, about his time reporting in the Vietnam War and befriended a man from Boston (Halberstam himself, a Yankee fan since a little boy) and both would watch the ticker scroll with box scores of Red Sox games and be in awe of the consistency of Carl Yastrzemski’s batting line.   That was the media in the sporting world in those days.  You read it off print and sporting magazines or electronic marquees.  This is how men became accustomed to reading their newspapers, from back to front starting with the sports section – a method I practiced even though I’m in my twenties and a dying newspaper industry.

That’s not how you get your stats now: your cellphone – not merely limited to the iPhone – is the gateway that allows you to look up stats, past and present, mobile applications brought us the ability to look up stats to fire back at your drunken friends in seconds (guys  – drunk and sober – only have an attention span of a couple of seconds).  Twitter gives you updates on trade rumors and firings – a la Kevin Love breaking news on Kevin McHale’s firing from Memphis; more ammo to mercilessly beat down your opponent until they’re in their own pool of blood like Brock Lesnar standing over Frank Mir in UFC 100.  Mobile blogging beat reporters give us instantaneous information of real-time events.  Photographers directly update their pictures online.  Those of us that are lucky enough to subscribe to baseball packages were able to watch Jonathan Sanchez pitch the first no-hitter of 2009 out-of-market from the San Francisco area.   MLB has given Blackberry and iPhone users the ability to watch videos of LIVE games.  LIVE!  (I watched a baseball game during a summer lecture.)  New media has dominated the sporting world in the past ten years.

If Sports had teeth, Media punched it all over the octagon.


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Arkansas Razorbacks: Property of the SEC (except Mississippi)

22 06 2009

It’s the College World Series Finals Round – LSU vs. Texas – in the bottom of the ninth tied 6-6 (LSU scored two runs in the top of the ninth to tie the game) and I’m still a little bitter that Arkansas didn’t put up a better effort against LSU in the second game after it’s enormous rally against Virginia to beat them in the 12th.

The game took 4 hours and 56 minutes – so let’s just call it an even 5, shall we? Dallas Keuchel on the mound to stop the bleeding pitching staff in the ninth inning and for the next 3 innings he masterfully tugged the strings of every  Razorback Nation member’s hearts; pushing all fresh quitters of a smoking addiction off the wagon with every thrown ball (one of which was really close – no, probably – no….absolutely, POSITIVELY a Base on Balls to walk in the walk-off run from third, you know which one I’m talking about). The jams in the ninth, tenth, eleventh, and the final twelve innings made you laugh, cry, throw your remote at the T.V. and Keuchel was able to come out a winner in the end. The 2nd of 3 games. And he didn’t let a run cross homeplate with runners in scoring position in every last half inning.  This has to canonize Keuchel in the Razorbacks Pantheon of Heroes.  Along with Matt Jones for the Miracle on Markham.  And Scotty Thurman’s three-pointer with 50.7 seconds left in the 1994 National Championship game.

Arkansas fans wanted this to be a sign. A sign that we weren’t going away easily and that we want this championship. That we belong in the national spotlight and we know what to do with it. No longer are the Hogs going to be the clean door mat of the SEC! A SIGN that there was a different road ahead. But two days later the Razorbacks went to their formula that has been a staple of Razorback Athletics for as long as I can remember: play your heart out to win a meaningless game (in retrospect) only to make your fans THINK that you have what it takes to take down an opponent like LSU or Texas. That passion of a team and a state riding behind you can overcome an, on paper, more talented team. After a couple of days and the chaos and excitement simmered we still forgot that Virginia just gave us too many opportunities to win that game; plus the home-plate umpire. And look at the Finals round.

It’s the top of the 10th, still tied with three bases occupied by Tiger runners and Texas looks calm. As if they know they’ll be starting the last half-inning with the score maintained. So I ask myself if Arkansas was in this position, would we have been able to climb out of the two-run deficit to tie the game in the ninth? And I know, you’re yelling through your screen to me that, ‘Hello! We did it against Virginia! You just wrote it!’ True. But we ARE the doormat of LSU and Texas. You can add a colon after Arkansas Razorbacks followed by “Property of Every SEC Team Except if You’re from Mississippi” and Texas (plus, USC). So we can’t have swagger against anyone that owns us.  Andy Dufresne never looked looked like he wasn’t going to get taken to an isolated room somewhere in Shawshank when the Sisters came looking to work him over.  No, the Hogs will do what they have always done.  Get romped.  Routed.  Reamed.  From a purely sports fan perspective, these two teams deserve to be playing this game because Arkansas wouldn’t hold up.  Not make it as interesting and exciting as it is now at the bottom of the 1oth, still tied.

I just hate these teams.

Top of the 11th, 7-6 LSU.

Can we just crawl through the 500 yards of excrement now?


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Why I Knock on Wood

3 04 2009

No amount of Friday-the-13ths or full-moon Halloween nights can get me nervous about superstitions as much as the baseball season. I’ll admit it, I’m superstitious. Especially when it comes to baseball’s bizarre eccentricity. As hard as I try to detach myself from the slippery slope to crazyville by deciding to not knock on wood at the slightest possible jinx or to consciously decide to not wear the lucky t-shirt with a massive hole down the left side of my armpit underneath my work clothes on a clinching game of an important series, I can’t seem to shake the self-destructive addiction that is baseball fandom. Is there a 12-step program out there so I don’t have to stop cold turkey?

Last post-season’s ALCS had probably solidified my fate even more than Harrison Ford in Empire Strikes Back (yup, Star Wars). While in Fayetteville with the Sox down 3 to 1 against the Rays preparing to head to Philadelphia for my sister’s wedding without giving any thought to baseball, I was to land in Philadelphia during Game 5 and would fortunately miss the Rays pop champagne in Boston’s visiting locker rooms and prepare for the World Series. Yet, that was not to be. The effects of air-travel/sickness that night and with the game on mute because my parents were sleeping in the other bed (I honestly didn’t plan on revealing I shared a hotel room with my parents in the same paragraph as a Star Wars reference) became way too much, I managed to stay awake until the top of the 7th inning but then decided to call it a night. Blame me? (Well, you will). Sox hadn’t scored a run yet and showed no signs of life in the post-season whatsoever. At least my sister’s wedding would be a nice distraction. Hey, the Phillies clinched the NLCS so there would be no chance Manny, D-Lowe, and Nomah would be able to play the Red Sox for a shot at redemption no matter what happens. Maybe I can just immerse myself into the local talk of Philadelphia and be exposed to the Phillies hype.

Dozing in-and-out of consciousness I had to ignore the constant vibrations of my cell phone as to not wake the aforementioned parents in the room. Surely it was from all my friends consoling me. But more probable, all my friends sending me their virtual jeers. After the 5th buzz stirred me awake I finally opened my eyes to see a text I never prepared to receive, “OMG! JD DREW!” And wouldn’t ya know it? Sox won and I missed it. It was happening. I was having the Jimmy Fallon complex in Fever Pitch when the Red Sox came from behind to beat the Yankees but Jimmy and Drew Barrymore were at a Great Gatsby birthday party. Then Jimmy finally said what I’d been wanting to say to someone for a long time, “Clearly it’s not JUST a game!” At least he was saying it to his future ex-girlfriend [spoiler alert!]. The only person I’d get to say it to would have to be my sister, ’cause it was her fault I missed it, right? Had I not had to drive two hours to get to Tulsa airport, fly 6 hours all the way to Philadelphia and then stuff myself with food because I hadn’t eaten all day I probably would have watched it in the comfort of my own 3 year old futon. She was the reason I was in Philly. Maybe. Just maybe, Fayetteville was just bad-luck.

Wedding Day was Saturday, also known as Game 6. Sox still in it. Beckett slated for the start. During the reception I have my iPhone turned to ESPN’s Gamecast while trying to continually give the perception I was mingling. Through all the festivities I kept a rather good track on the situation. Close game and Beckett’s still on the mound through 5 innings. Tie-game no less. Holy crap. (I hope Karen isn’t reading this, but during the first dance – I glanced at the box score. Continually.) But yup, the good ‘ol boys win and I’m on the dance floor doing the Worm. Then run to watch the highlights from the hotel room. It was as if moving to the East Coast was my calling. Being there, closer to my team I was giving them support to win, support they didn’t have before. I felt narcissistically controlling and magically I was the key to success. Well, as much as controlling I could be without going “Celtic Pride” and kidnapping David Price or Evan Longoria.

Fayetteville’s charm that has deprived the Razorbacks with years of average mediocracy has been transferred to the Red Sox. My hometown was punishing me for spending time elsewhere, wishing I lived there instead of here. Arrived Sunday night just in time for deciding Game 7. Loss. Pack it up fellas! What would have I given to jump on a Concorde to get back in Philly post-seventh inning stretch? I still kick myself because I should have just left Fayetteville; drove to Missouri or Oklahoma. Hell, it’s only an hour away and surely there’s a sports bar somewhere and since I’ve already angered Fayette-nam’s wrath, that’s where you can find me in October 2009.

Knock-on-wood.


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The End of Sports

22 03 2009

I can’t stand the advertisements strategically placed on my favorite websites:  ESPN and Facebook.  Why do I care what Eli Manning and George W.’s IQs are?  Do I even think to ask why they’re magically the same?  Even though I’ve yet to click on the link, I know that it’s going to send me to page-after-page of  flashy advertisements that have the Close button blended in to the background which if you were to miss it by as much as a pixel, you’ve just clicked on the ad itself – and then get sent to yet another page that will try to get money out of you!  (breathe, 1…2…3 – way to go, pop-up blocker!).

Sad thing is that you can’t go to a baseball/basketball/football/[other sporting venue] game anymore and not be hounded by advertisements and messages from sponsors.  Even Bud Walton Arena has a brand new border-marquee that wraps around the entire arena which occasionally has its sponsor displayed, which undoubtedly helped the University pay for the new high-tech addition: Game On Promotions; the Arvest Bank banner, and even the Bank of America banner.  Two different banks.  Can you even do that?  I guess in the end BofA doesn’t really care about Arvest, seeing as how Arvest is pretty much the Pittsburgh Pirates to them – a year ago I would have compared Arvest to the Rays in this analogy.

The killer of sports’ purity:  business.  The very thing that drives a franchise and the sport will inevitably kill it.  When John Henry and Tom Warner bought the Sox in ’02 they dumped millions of dollars in to Fenway; building new seats and then filling them, promoting new…promotions to keep the fans giving money back to the franchise.  But you look at them and you see two championships, so who can complain?  And seeing as how the Sox were in a 86-year drought before they came into Boston, Nobel Prize for Championship-making could definitely be in the conversation with the ownership (no, I’m not THIS much in love with the Warner/Henry duo).  But now it’s gone too far, guys.  All new uniforms for this season?  Why?  So fans can rebuy their favorite player’s jersey in a different color-scheme?

All over the country – admission prices are rising at a geometric rate.  Then even if you can get into the game – you can’t afford more than two beers and a hot dog.  The only souvenir you can get is a foul-ball.  Because it’s free and that’s if the big burly dad in front of you mishandles the ball while trying to catch the ball with his bare hands because he couldn’t get the kid’s glove on in time.  Then who goes to sporting events anymore?  

If fans can’t afford to enter the game and buy their kids (or the kids in them) a t-shirt/jersey/hat of their favorite player where will the revenue come from? Who will support a franchise that pulls every cent possible?

Where’s our bailout?


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What the Boot Means to Me

12 12 2008

Arkansas versus LSU; it means more than Arkansas versus Texas.  That’s right, I said it.  

Why do I care if we beat a team outside of our conference?  Who cares if we were one of the great rivalries of the past, in a conference that doesn’t exist anymore.  The times have changed.  The sport has changed.  Traditions are all good and fun, but we have a tradition in progress.  

I used to have this t-shirt (I still do, I found it in one of my drawers during my last trip home for Thanksgiving) that said, “Undefeated in the Rock.”  For 15-straight games, Houston Nutt had never lost at War Memorial Stadium.  At two games in the Rock per season, a 7 year streak that guaranteed at least 2 wins per season means something in itself.  And you believe in it.  We believed in it.  We asked the boys in crimson red that played in Northwest Arkansas to play more games in Little Rock.  And why not?  Three words:  Miracle on Markham.   It was like religion.  We had faith that we would win no matter the score.  Could be down by 50 points with 2:00 minutes left and we’d still believe we could win because Matt Jones could throw for a TD at least once in a game played in Little Rock.

Every sports fan has at least one I-Will-Always-Remember-Where-I-Was-When-I-Saw-That-Game Story (wait, I need to bask in the celebrations of breaking the record for the most hyphen uses in one sentence) and that’s mine.  That is until we got BLeauxWN OUT (by 29 points) in 2004 by the boys that wore purple from the bayous.  Still wore the t-shirt theaux (just for the rest of the day, then I put it deep in my drawer where it stayed).  To make it worse, my then-girlfriend tried to console me by saying, “it’s just a game” – which by the way – I know it’s a game, okay?  But obviously it’s not JUST a game.  This was a tradition.  And more importantly, it was a tradition of winning.   Well, more importantly than that, it was a foreshadowing.  We were entering a time of losing.  That game would be our last of the season and 2005 would be the same, our last game a loss to LSU.  It was a time of despair.  Embarassement (2006: we lost to LSU, again).  

But 2007 and 2008 have renewed my faith: that the rivalry means something to others, too.  Winning in a third overtime (to a #1 ranked team) and then again with 2:00 minutes left proves that it means something: that no matter what the records are at the end of the year, the boys in red aren’t going to lose to the boys in purple.


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Tests + Finals = 2003 Red Sox

9 12 2008

This past week I had two tests on Friday, less than a week that finals officially start at the University of Arkansas.  Not a night went by when the last thought of the day wasn’t, “Albert, tomorrow is going to be fine.  You can get through it.”  Not a morning started when the first thought of the day was, “How am I going to get through it today?!”  I could just feel the insurmountable stress piling up on top of me.   I couldn’t breathe because everywhere I went, my nemesis was laughing in my face; telling me I couldn’t beat it.   Berating, condescending, in a word – dominating.  It was as if I was cursed and the same way I yell, “F— the Yankees!” I was yelling, “F— School!”  

Wait a second.  Beratement?  Curses?  F— the Yankees?

I texted my friend as soon as I had this epiphany.  Like a vocab question on the SAT, “School is to me as Yankees to the Sox” (well you know, pre-2004 Red Sox World Championship era).  

What I love about sports:  it’s symbolism to life.  Like the light at the end of the tunnel finally opening up, I remember:  the underdog will overcome.  Maybe not glamorously and with all limbs in-tact but eventually the tides will turn.  Not one thing in this world dominates forever.  The dinosaurs died.  The Ice Age melted.  

I will graduate.


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