Category Archives: Sports

One Minute There, Then He Was Gone

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By now, some of you have already heard about the Texas Rangers fan who died Thursday night. He fell over a railing while trying to catch a ball, probably for his son, and died at the hospital shortly thereafter. He was at the game with his son. Still conscious for a time afterward, he asked the people helping him to look after the boy since he was still in the stands by himself.

This sad story got me thinking. The same thing could happen to me. As a husband and father, I try to be more careful these days than I might have been as an invincible youth. But weird stuff happens, like falling over a railing trying to catch a ball at a baseball game. What would happen to my family? I’ve made arrangements so they’ll be fine financially, but what about all the other facets of life? Will Jenny feel free to remarry if she meets someone special? Who will take Brenden to play tennis? Who will teach Jonathan how to charm the ladies? (okay, he already has that one down, but you get the point)

But I don’t want to dwell on unpleasant thoughts like those. Instead, I’d rather treat this as an important reminder to treasure the time I do have with the people I love. Maybe to spend less time screwing around on my phone and more time building soon-destroyed block towers with the boys or talking with Jenny about subjects beyond pottytraining and dentist appointments. More time really living and less time just getting by.

NBA Finals Game 5

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Thursday night my dad, brother-in-law, and I got to scream our heads off watching the Mavs beat the Heat in Game 5 of the NBA finals. I hadn’t been to a Mavs game since December 2001, when Jenny and I went on our first unofficial date. What a way to get back into live basketball! We took the TRE to the American Airlines Center.

I like how the NBA writes the series name in script. Very classy.

We grabbed a quick bite and found our seats. Dad and Phillip had seats together. I was scheduled to work Thursday night and begged my coworkers to pick up my shift. Finally one friend took pity on me. I didn’t find out I would be able to go until Wednesday night, so my ticket was in a different section.

The empty court before the game. Even after the game started, I was surprised to find several open seats, including three next to me. Phillip also had one next to him, so I joined them after the first quarter.

Every seat received a blue THE TIME IS NOW t-shirt to wear. Before the game, the cameramen focused on people who hadn’t put theirs on yet. The announcer harassed each person until they complied. Peer pressure works on sports fans, too. I loved seeing nearly 20,000 people all wearing the same royal blue shirt. We also got inflatable clappers to make noise.

The game was fantastic. There’s nothing like the energy of a huge crowd during a finals game. It felt very similar to the NHL Western Conference Final game that Jenny and I attended a few years ago. The crowd is loud, rowdy, thrilled to be there, and expecting to see greatness. I’m certainly not a basketball expert, but I can appreciate two great teams playing a great game. The lead changed hands just enough times to keep the game comfortably dramatic. Then as the end approached, and it looked like the Mavs would probably keep the lead, we blew off the roof. It’s weird but strangely cool to have an excuse to high-five the tipsy strangers next to you.

VICTORY! The final home game of the season goes to the Mavs, putting us up 3-2 as we head back to Miami to close it out.

Leaving College for the Pros

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Imagine you’re a junior in college with a year left until graduation. You’ve met lots of friends, studied hard, and excelled in your major. School has been great, and the end is in sight. You also happen to be a college athlete. But not just any athlete – the kind that NFL analysts and scouts praise as one of the best prospects ever, the kind that get offered ten-figure contracts. What are you going to do next year?

This was the question for Stanford quarterback and 2010 Heisman Trophy runner-up Andrew Luck after winning the final game of his junior year: spend his senior year at Stanford and graduate, or drop out and enter the NFL. The NFL team that will have the number one pick in the 2011 draft, Carolina, had already said they would pick him. His contract would have give him more than enough money to sustain him and his family for a lifetime, as high as $80 million by some estimates.

But Luck said no. He chose to return to Stanford this fall and finish his degree in architectural design, presumably entering the NFL draft next spring.

As some critics have pointed out, Luck is taking a big chance by postponing the NFL to finish his degree:

  1. Luck risks getting injured during his final year at Stanford, potentially reducing his draft position or even ending his career. (sure, things have worked out OK for former Oklahoma quarterback Sam Bradford after his season-ending shoulder injury in 2009, but still…)
  2. Luck risks having a less successful season next year, which could also reduce his draft position and potential income.
  3. Luck risks losing millions of dollars due to the proposed rookie salary cap that could be in effect by the 2012-2013 season.

Obviously, all three of those arguments ride on money. Luck apparently values other things more highly. Surely he understands that one day his football career will end and the rest of his life will begin. Perhaps he really enjoys his major or the college atmosphere. Perhaps he wants to work in architecture someday and understands how difficult it could be to return to Stanford later to finish his degree if he takes a break now. Sure, the extra millions Luck would make by going pro this year would eliminate the need to work ever again, but he decided it was worth it to stay in school. Or perhaps he simply wants the satisfaction of completing his degree and thinks a Stanford diploma would look good on his wall.

Hall of Famer Emmitt Smith, who left the University of Florida for the NFL in 1990 after his junior year, returned to Florida during the offseasons to finish. It took him six years. One of the main reasons he even went back was a promise he made to his mother that he wouldn’t buy a house until he finished his degree.

Do you agree with Luck’s choice? Is finishing college that important, even for someone who could make tens of millions guaranteed in the NFL? Or is Luck making a bad decision? What would you do in his situation?

Although I definitely respect Luck’s decision and dedication, I would probably take the money and run to the pros, promising my parents that I would go back and finish like Emmitt did. Sorry, Mom!

How to Improve Pro Hockey

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We had a blast at the Stars game. It reminded me of some ideas I’ve had simmering for a while about how to make a great sport even better.

Determine the standings by win-loss record rather than points. Except for some soccer matches, every pro sporting event ends with one winner and one loser. That’s the main goal of the event, to pit two players or teams against each other and see which one emerges victorious that day. The team with the most wins is ranked first, the team with the second-most is ranked second, and so on.

But hockey is different, using a point system instead to determine the standings and the playoff seeds. Any victory nets the team two points. A loss in regulation nets the team zero points. The weird thing is a loss in overtime, which nets the team one point. It’s like a consolation prize. Say two teams each have 20 wins and 20 losses, but Team A’s losses came in regulation while Team B’s came in overtime. Team B’s 60 points would be way ahead of Team A’s 40 points. Put another way, a win is just as valuable as two overtime losses. Such foolishness should not be. This isn’t Little League where we want everyone to feel like a winner. Don’t reward professional athletes for losing just because they took more than 60 minutes to do it.

Bonus trivia: the current system, believe it or not, is actually an improvement. Until a few years ago, the league allowed ties, which netted each team one point. A team could have a record of 5-1-4-3. Two more and you would’ve had a set of lottery numbers.

End a power play after any goal, power-play or shorthanded. When a player receives a penalty, his team generally plays one man short for the duration of the penalty, usually two minutes. This time is known as a power play for the other team. The power-play team focuses on offense, the shorthanded team on defense. If the power-play team scores, the power play ends, and the penalized player gets to return to the ice.

On rare occasions, the shorthanded team manages to score anyway. That’s such a middle-finger achievement that it should end the power play immediately and get their guy out of the penalty box. This change would make power plays even more interesting by giving both sides incentive to work on offense where possible and also increasing the odds that a goal will occur.

Free the goalie to play anywhere. Current rules restrict the goalie from playing the puck outside the crease or the trapezoid behind the net. The trapezoid appeared a few years ago, partly to restrict the style of play used by one of my favorite goalies, former Dallas Star Marty Turco. He loved to play the puck and did so whenever practical until they fenced him in. He was effectively a third defensemen as well as a goalie. You never knew what he was going to do, and Jenny and I loved watching him play.

One of the best plays I’ve ever seen got Turco a rare assist. He left the crease to play an errant puck in his own zone right at the end of the opponent’s power play. He saw his teammate step out of the penalty box, had an open lane to him, and passed it. All the other team’s players were elsewhere, so the newly freed Star had a one-on-one shot and made it. The arena went nuts.

I say let the goalie play the puck wherever he wants. When he’s outside the crease, treat him like any other player, with full puck privileges and no special protection.

What do you think? Any other ideas?

Haiku Tuesday 14 – Hockey

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We have tickets to the Stars game tonight, so today’s haiku theme is HOCKEY. This will be our first Stars game since 2008 and our first since we lost Turco and Modano, two of our favorites. But the Stars still have plenty of talent, and I can still yell myself hoarse just like in the old days.

Trivia item: I am now older than every player on the roster except for Robidas and Skrastins. One forward was born in 1989. Hmm.

Enough rambling – on with the haiku!

Blood and sweat on ice
Waiting for the red light’s glow
Go nuts at the horn

Your turn.

Things that Suck

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My renewed interest in college football, thanks to the surprising success of my Baylor Bears, inspired this post. What are some of the most worthless institutions or practices in America? Here are a few in my book:

  • Bowl Championship Series (BCS) – Every sport I know of, from Little League to the pros, offers some type of competition system that produces a legitimate champion. Many use a traditional playoff system. Some use a hybrid of round-robin and traditional playoff or a double-elimination playoff. However, there is one exception: college football. Instead of the playoff system that everyone wants except the BCS commissioner and a few businessmen, college football uses an incomprehensible computer ranking system to determine which two teams get to play for the national championship. Only the schools from certain high-profile conferences have any realistic chance at being ranked in the top two. Every year, it seems, at least one undefeated school is left out by the BCS. Why does the BCS exist? Supposedly it’s about money, but I fail to see how an eight-team playoff system couldn’t help but bring in more TV and ticket revenue than the existing system.
  • Transportation Security Administration (TSA) – OK, is the TSA truly worthless? No. We must have some sort of security for our airlines. However, the TSA doesn’t make me feel much safer. It spends billions of dollars creating the illusion of safety – adding fancy machines, employing tens of thousands of people, enforcing ridiculous rules – to make the public feel safer about flying. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to make flying or anything else completely safe. Undercover agents routinely pass contraband through TSA checkpoints. Anyone who really wants to get around the TSA’s rules (or any other security) will find a way to do so. In the meantime, both airline pilots and 70-year-old grandmothers have to take their shoes off and put all their liquids in bottles of a certain size and store them in a plastic baggie for scanning to satisfy the rules. But Grandma can take her huge, pointy knitting needles onboard because they aren’t considered a weapon.
  • Electoral College – We think we elect our President, but all we really do is vote to decide which other people get to elect our President. Margin of victory is meaningless. If the presidential candidate wins a majority within a state, he/she wins ALL of the electoral votes cast by some mysterious group of people for that state. As a result, it is possible to get more votes than one’s opponent and yet still lose the election. It happened in 2000. Like him or hate him, Al Gore won the election but didn’t get the job.
  • Filibuster in the US Senate – Legislating is hard work. It’s even harder when yahoos from one party have the power to prevent new legislation from even coming to a vote. Both parties have been guilty of this act numerous times. It’s a wonder the Senate gets ANYTHING done.
  • Telemarketing – Need I say more? On the plus side, ditching our landline has almost eliminated telemarketing calls.

Sorry for the negative post, but I’m going to be very upset if TCU doesn’t get to play for the national championship because of a stupid computer. What else can you think of?