Sports
Red Sox are Sportsmen of the Year
Thanks to Eric at Off Wing I found out the Red Sox won Sports Illustrated’s Sportsmen of the Year award. Oh, and their fans too, I guess.
I’m never a fan of the “team” win in awards like these. I’d rather see David Ortiz win than the Red Sox. This is similar to the Time Person of the Year last year, when it was “The American Soldier”. I respect the soldiers, but I’m looking for an individual to win these types of awards. The team win or the generalization just seems like a committee couldn’t make up their minds and took an easy out to try and appeal to the biggest amount of people possible.
It doesn’t make the Sox a bad pick - if you’re going to pick any team from this past year, I’d put them on the top of the list.
I can only assume now that if the White Sox or Cubs win the World Series they will win the award (along with their fans).
The Sox are the third team to win. The 1980 US Olympic hockey team wsa the first, and the other was the 1999 US women’s soccer team. Not that any of these were as big a cop-out as the “Athletes Who Care” of 1987.
Gambling Hedge Fund
Mark Cuban’s got an idea to start a gambling hedge fund. He makes a good number of comparisons between gambling and the stock market and points out how the two aren’t really all that different.
More importantly he’s reminded me to start putting up my hockey picks somewhere public and keep that record public. I do pretty well hockey-wise and hockey gambling information isn’t really as plentiful as other sports.
The reason I haven’t yet is two-fold: One, I wanted to script out a page with live odds. I’ve got that ready now, but of course, there’s no season. Two, I never wanted to “endorse” gambling. I think it’s fun, and I know there are plenty who do it, so I don’t shy away from putting up some ads or integrating the fake betting game I have into the forums on hockeyfights.com or KO Corner; but when you start posting your own picks, it brings it to another level, one I’ve never been sure I wanted to go to.
Still, it would be interesting to see how I do - and maybe pit myself against a couple of other fellow knowledgable hockey people and maybe a power ranking and prediction formula.
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.
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).
Fox Sports NY Done?
The Mets have announced they’re looking to start their own television network, similar to the Yankees YES network.
The Yankees left MSG and the Nets left FSNY to go to YES. YES is also scheduled to have the Devils soon, who are currently on FSNY. Cablevision, who owns both MSG and FSNY kept the Mets on FSNY primarily, but also had them on MSG to keep the channel’s worth up for other cable systems to keep carrying it. After the Mets leave Cablevision will be left with three teams: the Knicks and Rangers, mostly shown on MSG, and the Islanders mostly on FSNY. I say “mostly” because Cablevision also puts some games on their Metro channels when games coincide, and a few other random times, once again, to make the channels more valuable for other systems.
However, after the Mets leave Cablevision should stop spreading themselves so thin and just pack it in on Fox Sports. It’s been written in the press that Rupert Murdoch (who owns part of FSNY) hasn’t been happy with their management, and when Cablevision was going to move a lot of Mets games to MSG, something they own wholely, Fox Sports was not thrilled, and that’s why the amount of games were limited. So now what? The NY Islanders certainly don’t have enough of a following to support their own channel (as much as I’d like it personally), and they’d be able to sell MSG much better with the Knicks, Rangers and Islanders. Of course, the three have overlapping schedules, so who knows how well only one channel would work, but they routinely bump games to the Metro channels all the time (to the dismay of local with satellite tv who have no way of watching the game at home). Certainly it’s not the ideal situation. Then again, it wouldn’t surprise me to see the Islanders follow the Mets to their new channel whenever their contract expires, which I don’t think is for quite some time.
Note: I read this Newsday article about the Mets new network and the most interesting part to me was this:
The Mets channel also could seek to add the New Jersey Devils once the hockey team’s contract with Fox Sports New York ends after 2006-07.
I guess things aren’t set with the Devils going to YES. Despite the Devils being the more successful teams, I’d think geographically and fan-crossover-wise, a Mets-Islanders pairing makes more sense.
Introducing: Newslinks
I have a big announcement for anyone looking to easily follow the CBA and all other hockey-related matters (mostly NHL-related). On The Ice Block, Newslinks has been unveiled.
The concept is simple - it’s just a list of links. To make it easier to manage, there’s a small form so anyone can submit a link. As the site grows, stories from all markets will appear, and as soon as they’re made live.
The process is semi-moderated. Guests are allowed to post links, and all of those are moderated, fairly quickly. If you sign up and are logged in and are a reliable link poster, we can mark you as such and your links will appear immediately.
I’ve also made it so that the domain being linked to is posted below each link. It’s easier when looking at a big list like that instead of mousing over each one to see where you might be going.
After the site takes off, I’m considering adding the ability for comments about each, but I figure I’ll hold off on that until it’s bigger.
Any suggestions welcome.
Cheerleader Boots Protect Denney
ESPN is carrying this story: Did cheerleader boots help protect rookie?
It’s a nice addition to the “you can’t make that up” file. Soon to be “ripped from the headlines” and put into a Law & Order episode I’m sure.
Center Field Not Found
Apparently there’s a big Yahoo ad in center field at SBC Park in San Fran and right next to it is a 404 marker. As a geek this made me laugh. The rest of you can just shake your head and go about your day.
Getting the Hockey Blogs Together
After patiently waiting for a way to improve the way I can produce a feed, I’m finally able to starting pushing the blog feed on The Ice Block. Blogger only produces an atom feed by default and I couldn’t read those for a while. Unfortunately many sites use Blogger. No problem anymore, atom is all good now. I did have to write a few to ask them to change the encoding, but no one outside of Jes GÅ‘lbez (who does need to use Eastern European accents) will see any difference in their site by doing so, and probably allows more to use their feed besides myself. Jes did change his encoding to an ISO format and hopefully I can tweak my script to include it soon.
Until then, have a look at some of the best blogs around and follow the feed to easily get a nice group update. If you think I’ve missed any major hockey blog, or even a small one that’s just really good and regularly updated, please let me know.
Yankees Clinch 10th Consecutive Playoff Berth
Yup, let’s say it again:
Yankees clinch 10th consecutive playoff berth
Everytime I get heat for being a Yankees fan, well… I don’t really care; but anytime people start spouting off crap about people being fair-weather fans I remind them that I watched Andy Hawkins lose a no-hitter, so you can have fun with that new Yankees fan from from Iowa, but leave me be.
The last 10 years have certainly been great compared to the 10 years prior. I do wish this year’s team was filled with the character of about 5 years ago, but they still pulled it together despite a disappointing start and some mediocre numbers from star players (and some injuries/illness).