Being the Away Fan
Eric over at Off Wing writes about fan encounters, like when you wear the jersey of the away team to a game and you’re harassed - are you willing to go back for more?
I’ve had the pleasure of having someone start in with me because I was rooting for the Islanders at a Isles-Rangers game at MSG. No problem normally, I’ve had an encounter or two at MSG and the Coliseum for Isles-Rangers games - but this was at the very end of the game (when everyone was standing up watching the last minute of a close game, although he didn’t feel like it) and this guy had his kid with him. His son (or perhaps nephew I guess) was no older than 7. We had some words, but I kept it pretty tame and low-key, but was thinking the whole time “why is this guy starting in with me in front of his kid?” It was pretty disturbing and I don’t need to tell anyone that it sets a bad example.
I’ve worn my Islanders jersey to the old Spectrum in Philly, myself and a friend were told we were going to be thrown off the top level, but it was just a couple of drunk fans looking to draw attention to themselves (we traded barbs, no big deal); same goes for a few other places and jerseys. I’ve witnessed a decent amount of fan scuffles - it just doesn’t make sense to start a fight at a game. You pay how much money to sit there and watch it - why even jeopardize that?
But here’s a flip-side: my girl and I went down to Florida and took a trip up to Tampa for a game. We went with her aunt and uncle, loyal Bolts fans. We didn’t wear jerseys, but had on a couple of t-shirts and she had a hat on. There were a good number of Islanders fans there, and except for one pair of people I didn’t witness anyone yelling back and forth. Pretty calm all around. I sat there and thought “wow, this is nice” - everyone can come and root for their team with no worries about being attacked. However - the crowd was pretty calm about everything. Only on a couple of occasions did they cheer at all and they certainly needed some coaching from the p.a. system to cheer/chant. I wasn’t used to the dullness that sometimes accompanied the game. So I guess kinda tame is good, but too tame wasn’t much fun either. Does an overall tame and a no-threatening-the-away-fans attitude go hand in hand? Well, I’d have to assume it does in general. I’m sure there are a good number of exceptions, but if we were to make a generalization, I think that would be the safe one.
Some random related thoughts: I’ve never been the away fan at a football game; the only pro basketball game I ever went to was up in Toronto against the Knicks, who I was rooting for, no problems there, but we were a large group; and for baseball I’m a Yankees fan, which makes me evil anywhere, but I’ve never really had a problem and I never wore any Yankees stuff to a non-Yankees game (so all National League teams are out). Actually, I’ve never worn the attire of a team that’s not playing the game unless it was a hat or shirt of a defunct team.
I was press covering the Sabres for a season and attended many other games during my college years up in Buffalo, and I’d say it was probably one of the better mixes of cheering for the home team and tameness towards the away fans that you’ll see, but every arena has its moments.
Please Unplug My Former Host
Not so long ago I had shared hosting. I was originally with one company, who was bought by another, and then another. I then switched upon receiving horrible service, landed on my last shared hosting company (who was quite good) before moving to my own servers.
So one of the first companies - all one-in-the-same to me has a server (or more) that is basically a virus relay. I receive numerous emails a day from this one IP - all viruses. They have a few other things in common: they are only to domains and email accounts I had while hosting with this company and all of the spoofed “from” addresses are from other domains hosted at this company (or formerly hosted there).
I did what I hope most responsible people would do: I wrote them a polite email letting them know what’s happening and how and suggested they look into it. No response. So I wrote another email. No response.
At this point I’m pretty disgusted. I know they’re receiving my emails and they’re willingly letting this continue. I’ve gotten messages numbering in the teens (at least) within one day. I safely delete them - but I do wonder just how many other machines they’ve infected by letting this continue. I know the phrase “depraved indifference” is usually reserved for murder charges, but it’s quite fitting here.
I’ll have to simply block their IPs from delivering mail to me as I’m tired of receiving this stuff. If I were lawsuit trigger-happy and had some free time I’d probably have a fun case to attempt to set some precedent too, any hosting company that willingly allows viruses to be spread should have some action taken against them.
This is StarWarsCenter.
Even when one’s interest in ESPN and SportsCenter is in the decline, you still have to point them to the good stuff. The “This is SportsCenter.” campaign is one of my favorites. String those together and you have more of an entertaining show than some of the other highlight reels we see.
Sent to me by the almighty Fitz, we have the latest spot, from starwars.com (video on page).
Enough Madden
Not the video game, of course, you can always get more of that; but this is in regards to John Madden himself.
Brian Baldinger, on Fox Sports, writes Madden ‘stifled’ by Michaels.
Brian reminded me of just how lucky we are to have Al Michaels there. His piece was almost a thank you note in my eyes to ABC. Madden seems like a great guy, no doubt. I also don’t doubt he knows his football better than almost anyone. But that doesn’t mean I like to hear him ramble on and on like Madden can do. If you don’t contain him you wind up feeling like you do after playing a few games of EA’s Madden-titled video game - very, very irritated. The words repitition and forced come to mind, and it’s two things we just don’t need more of on MNF.
Take a Nap
Working? Tired? Falling asleep in that meeting? Go take a nap. Seriously.
The Wired story.
I’m not the kind of person who could fall asleep anywhere other than my bed unless I’m completely exhausted, but I guess that’s the point, isn’t it?
FireFox 1.0 Released
Jeremy’s put together a collection of links to make it easier to pick it up as well (as of right now, mozilla.org has a good chance of timing out on you).
Happy browsing.
Pirated Album Released on Internet - No Kidding
CNN is reporting U2’s “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb” has been pirated and released on the internet before the official release date. Wow, what a shocker. This puts them right up there with almost every other album released over the past 5-10 years. This happens with everything, you just have to know where to look. Obviously this is on some major download spots for it to gain the interest of CNN (along with being U2).
Not really a big deal since most people are probably sick of Vertigo already, the song in the overplayed iPod commercial.
The music industry will pretend this negatively affects sales, which it doesn’t according to most non-RIAA funded studies. Mark Cuban wonders “when will the music industry will get it right?”
Beats me.
Keep That Blog Lowkey
The blogging world has garnered a good amount of attention over the past year, much of it related to politics and journalism. Blogging doesn’t always get you somewhere though, Jeremy’s written about bloggers being fired, and now a probable first in blogging: Mark Cuban was fined by the NBA for comments he made in his blog.
I do wonder exactly when his entry was brought to the league’s attention. Was it passed on from person to person before it finally hit someone in the league office, or do they actually have someone monitoring Cuban’s blog?
His big criticism of the NBA was opening its season on the same night as the election - makes sense to anyone, unless you’re the NBA it seems.
Thinking Ahead
I decided to check out the headlines on most major portals and news sites. On the front of MSN is an ad for Halo 2 and the soundtrack for it. Looks cool so I click it (hey, ads aren’t always evil). It takes me to a press release like page for some information about the Halo 2 soundtrack. There’s a button there that says “hear the first song”, even better. So I click again. What a good little sheep I am. I wind up back on MSN, in their movies section on a page about Halo 2’s soundtrack. On there is a link to listen to ‘Blow Me Away’ by Breaking Benjamin, looks good, let’s click again. Windows Media Player pops up and lets me know there’s a problem with my sound/video device. Odd, I’m not doing anything else on the machine, what could it be? I think, I click again to make sure it wasn’t Outlook receiving new mail and setting off the new mail sound alert. Nope, still an error. So I stare - and there it is. Right on that same web page is an ad for The Polar Express. There’s a small video going within the ad. The sound’s not on by default, which I’m usually very happy about as I don’t care for ads with sound; but because this was playing on a page which really has little purpose other than to listen to this song, I received my error. I have no tricky setup on this machine, I would imagine most people who visit are going to run into this conflict. These types of problems should really be found during some sort of QA process. I mean, if you’re going to have sound/video on a page, don’t have a multimedia ad there that can load first and conflict with it.
MLB Relies on Big Spenders
Here’s a good article from the the Chicago Sun-Times, Big spenders pump life into game, found via Skip from The Sports Economist.
It recognizes that while the Yankees and Red Sox spend a fortune, they bring money to the entire league and that the league is strengthened by big market success. It seems like an easy concept, but it seems to be one that few understand or recognize, go figure.