I didn't really see that title as all that titillating, but I suppose there's the possibility that someone will see that and think,"That's ridiculous, there's nothing wrong with the Big 12."
That person is an idiot. If that person is you, then yes, I just called you an idiot. Please keep reading my blog.
5) Kick Iowa State the fuck out.
First of all, this is not without precedent. Six years ago, the Big East kicked Temple out, because Temple wasn't committed to athletics, and this from a conference that is to football what Jay Leno is to comedy. Sure, you have a bigger stage than most, but you still suck at it.
So why is the Big 12 holding on to Iowa State? Is it their long-standing athletic tradition? (impossible). Is it the juggernaut that is the Ames, IA media market? (this seems unlikely). Is it loyalty from the leaner Big 8 years? Granted, ISU has been paired up with the former Big 8 teams for over 100 years, but this being modern college football, we've seen what a premium is placed in loyalty as Nebraska, Utah, Colorado, Miami, Boston College, Boise State and TCU have all jumped conferences at the drop of a hat in the last few years, and head football coaches do it even more than that. Nebraska first joined the Big 8 a year before Iowa State did, and just dumped the Big 12 faster than Mel Gibson's agent dumped Mel Gibson. This is the nature of the sport. Fuck loyalty; let's take the money.
It might be something if ISU won games, and I really can't be bothered to check, maybe they have an outstanding golf team or even soccer team, on the men's or women's side. But what pays the bills is football and basketball, and Iowa State has never excelled at either one. They don't even seem interested in excelling. They just teach their students to be intelligent, educated men and women, while sitting back on the athletic side of things, and collect their checks. No wonder revenue sharing is uneven in the Big 12. If the Big 12 were a band, Iowa State is the drummer. Would YOU pay the drummer the same as the singer/songwriter head of the band? If you do, you're an idiot. Sure, maybe you've known that drummer since you were 13, and maybe he just got out of rehab and really, REALLY needs this gig. But if a member isn't pulling their weight, you're just kidding yourself. It's not like there aren't good bands out there. ISU has been making BCS money since the formation of the Big 12 in 1996, and if they gave a damn about athletics, maybe they could be sharing space in the Big Ten with the Iowa Hawkeyes by this point. Nope. Now they're just the distant cousin up north, spending way too much money to fly football players down to Austin or Norman to lose.
This isn't the pro leagues. You don't get rewarded for losing. Toss 'em.
4) Tell UT to go fuck itself.
Obviously, you want Texas in your conference. The Pac-12 sure did. But being the big fat guy who also has huge muscles and a Humvee does not mean everyone should do what you say; it just means you're an asshole. Major conference draw? Duh. But so is Ohio State in the Big Ten, Florida in the SEC, and Florida State in the ACC, and they all managed to do it without twisting the arm of every other conference member and making them say "Uncle."
The current deal is worth a shitload of money to UT, but I disagree with the assumption that UT couldn't be making a shitload of money in any situation. Sure, traditionalists will point to Notre Dame, but there's a reason UM, OSU, FSU, UF, USC, UCLA and even Air Force are in major collegiate conferences-- because it makes financial sense. All the other conferences share the money, grow the brand, help each other out. They all work to get better and showcase a marketable, appealing product (even Vanderbilt has shown signs of athletic prowess these past few years), and as they grow together, so too can they undertake new opportunities together, as with the new Big Ten network, the SEC network, the Pac-12 network... there are huge amounts of money to be made here. Meanwhile, if I'm an OU alum, how likely am I to watch "The Longhorn Network?" Answer: Not very likely. Because nobody likes a spoiled child.
3) Financially Restructure
Texas is large, but it's not as large as the nine remaining Big 12 universities. Granted, when the last ESPN and FSN contracts were negotiated, it was for X amount of money to be divided among 12 teams... with 2 teams gone, that dollar amount remains the same, except now divided ten ways instead of 12. More money for everyone. BUT... when that contract is up, it's time for the other nine schools to get in UT's face and say they want to share everything equally so they can all grow equally. Yes, taking advantage of the little guy is a very Red State way of doing things, and Texas is among the reddest of the red states. But in every other conference, this system has failed, and the equal-share system has worked for everyone's benefit. If you truly feel a particular institution is not pulling their weight and doesn't deserve an equal share-- make them earn their keep, or kick them out. See previous point.
The result here is the chance to grow the revenue pulled in, in Missouri and Oklahoma and other parts of Texas. The Big Ten and Pac-12 could get this just fine, and nobody got hurt. Hell, Ohio State has surpassed UT as the largest student body in the country... what have you got to lose, UT? Ya chicken?
2) Make Sweet, Sweet Love to the Fox Sports Network
Pop quiz, hotshot: Where are the ESPN offices/studios? If you said Los Angeles or Bristol CT, congratulations, you are correct. They sure to mention it a lot, and that's the largest sports network in the nation.
Now, where are the Fox Sports offices located?
Unless you're from there, you may not know: technicians operate in Houston TX, broadcasters broadcast from Dallas TX. I have a sneaking suspicion this is because Texas is a right-to-work state and FSN therefore doesn't have to worry about those pesky unions and their bathroom breaks, but that's neither here nor there; I know someone who works for FSN and he does very well. The point is, these offices are in Texas and this is a golden opportunity.
East and West coast bias exists, to the point we don't even notice it. Sure, the sports media still jumped all over Lebron's junk when we has in Cleveland, but the ACC and Big East still regularly get more coverage in the sports world than the Big 12, despite the Big East being terrible at football, and the ACC finishing the 2011 football season with zero ranked teams, in addition to underwhelming in basketball, or at least the majority of the teams anyway. If Fox Sports can get into the homes of the big media markets in Los Angeles, Boston, Miami, Philadelphia, why not inform their viewers what they've been missing in the Central Time Zone? ... And maybe they have. But sharing the 2nd-most populous state in the nation with the HIGHEST number of FBS schools in the country (ten since 2001, it goes up to 12 in 2012) must create some pretty great opportunities. Take them. Because nobody else is gonna notice it's only LA and NY talking, if it's only LA and NY talking.
1) For the Love of my Ass, Go Back to 12 teams
There's a reason the Big 12 is ten teams in 2011... see #3 on the list. The FSN contract was just resigned, the ESPN contract goes through 2013 or 2014. That's 12 teams worth of money being split only ten ways, and everybody wants to cash that check. Perhaps it's even enough to offset not having a conference title game.
But not forever.
Say you've booted Iowa State, and you're down to nine. This has its upsides (4 conferences home games, 4 away games a season), but convenience isn't the same as increasing your revenue stream. And so you look to expand and build rivalries.
The problem is, unlike every other major conference, you're not on a coast. And I do use that term loosely (yes, I know, nobody refers to "The Great Lake Coasts"), but you see what I'm saying. The Pac-10 for years owned the west coast, it's only in the last 12 months they took possession of the equally-thinly populated Mountan Time Zone. The Big East and Big Ten have teams in the EST and CST. The ACC owns the 12 best teams on the eastern seaboard. And of course there's the SEC, that hotbed of recruitment, making more money than anyone, with a strangehold on the deep south.
Well, sirs, I submit to you that much like the old Big 12 North, the SEC West is weak. Granted, it's still the SEC, so even their weak arm could kick the ass of your entire family, but the heart of the conference is in the east, in Florida and Georgia and their annual rivalry. Yes, Auburn and Alabama have had a nice run, but it's hardly typical for a conference that prides itself on tradition and history. And if the Big 12 could offer LSU or Arkansas as much money as they make in the SEC, those schools might consider moving. Which the Big 12 COULD do, if they followed suggestions 5-2 on my list.
Even without that move, there are still major media markets that better get their asses in gear if they want to be considered around the middle of the decade. Currently, Memphis has an adequate basketball program, but their football is terrible. You could almost say the same thing about Louisiana Tech, and while granted their women's hoops team far outshines their men's team, the same can be said for Tennessee, and that school has been doing pretty okay.
You want to show people you're not weak, you have to push back. If not a team in Tennessee or Louisiana (or Arkansas), why not a unversity in Ohio or Michigan? The MAC has its share sleeping giants, often ranked but with their coaches getting hired away by bigger temptations as soon as they taste any success. Why WOULDN'T the Big 12 want to recruit in Ohio, or Michigan, or Missouri, or even Colorado or Tennessee? That's where the money is. You're sure not going to make any extra by adding TCU or Tulsa, no matter how good they are.
Every conference-moving team (except Temple) has moved up into a geographically-sensible conference that is nearly on the same level as the conference they left. A Sun Belt team, for example, would never make the jump directly to the Big 12 or SEC, but when the ACC expanded, they went to the Big East. The Big East went to Conference USA, and C-USA went to the WAC. The Mountain West drew from the WAC and C-USA, and now the Pac-12 has snapped up a Mountain West team. There are not 2-tiers in college football... there are three, and the Big East, Mountain West and Conference USA are right in the middle.
The Big 12 has a decision to make and they have half of a decade to make it. And they MUST make it, because in 2012 the Mountain West will have the same number of members they do, and will begin honing in on its territory (if they don't take TCU back, UTEP and Tulsa are right there, and UNT's athletics budget will surpass TCU's by 2013). That is how you stay at the top of your game and relevant, and Texas cannot do it by itself. If they could, they would, but when you're culturally obligated to play Oklahoma, Texas A&M, Texas Tech and Oklahoma State every year, you might as well make it official and keep the conference. But new rivalries are okay, too.
In the meantime, 2011 and 2012 will be boring in Texas. UT or OU will win the conference every year, there will be no championship game, and whether or not they win their BCS bowl game, they'll be unable to prove anything late in the season. Competition is good... and the Big 12 needs to find some.
Or else that crisis we nearly averted a year ago... the Big 12 might not be so lucky next time.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Friday, June 24, 2011
July 1st is Almost Upon Us
July 1st is the day any D-I university must declare its intention to leave its conference, if it wishes to join a new one for the 2012-13 season. That date is 7 days away and apparently it's not like the trade deadline. Nobody is trying to sneak in under the wire.
Previously, we had Nebraska and Colorado and Utah bolt for other BCS conferences, Boise State move up to the MWC, BYU bolt for no conference at all. For 2011-12, that was it.
Boise State was late to that game, but I'm sure the invite took them by surprise, but a welcome one at that. Other dominoes (nay, Jenga pieces) began to fall shortly thereafter, these for the 2012-13 season: Fresno State and Nevada joining the MWC in all sports. Hawaii joining the MWC in football only. TCU leaving the MWC for the Big East. Denver leaving the Sun Belt for the WAC, just as Texas State and UT-San Antonio leave the FCS Southland for the lights of the WAC as well.
So far, that's it. Any big move at the top has ripple effects all the way to the bottom, and UTSA (no football until 2011) and Denver (no football at all) are pretty much as far down as you're gonna get. Sure, UMass has plans to join the MAC in football, and Charlotte, Georgia State, UTSA and South Alabama are all starting football programs (or in the case of Lamar, re-starting), but as far as major-conference realignment, Nebraska was the highest-profile move, and Denver was the lowest-profile. Citizens of Colorado might disagree, but... again. they don't play football, and even their basketball team wasn't very good. TxST and UTSA at least have that one extra sport they might get lucky in.
My point: with UMass' recent announcment and schools like Villanova undecided about an FBS move, that leaves the Big East with eight football teams in 2011, nine teams in 2012 (and 853 in basketball). Nine is plenty for a major conference; that's four conference home games and four away per season.
The Mountain West, with BYU and TCU out and Utah State turning them down, will have ten teams going into 2012. Ten teams if they do nothing in the next seven days-- had Utah State said yes, the MWC would have eleven teams, and would seem a lock to be adding another, and soon, to qualify for a conference championship game in December 2012. But USU said no, TCU ran off in search of instant gratification, leaving the MWC with ten. Is ten enough? Could they stop here and be content for a number of years? Most likely, it would seem... the signs all point to "most likely."
The WAC will have 8 in 2011, and as of right now, 7 in 2012. Sure, they'll be stocked up on basketball, but 7 football programs in a major conference? This could be a problem. Montana: turned you town. North Texas: turned you down. How WAC commissioner could have so much go wrong and yet still keep his job is something of a mystery. And yet there he still sits, seven days until a confirmed, locked-on SEVEN teams for the 2012 football season. Well done, Mr. Benson. I do not envy you the headache you shall have to endure for the next year, at least.
At the top of things, it seems unlikely the Big 12 will add anyone soon (which we base mostly on the fact that they told the media "we won't be adding anyone anytime soon"), and besides, their current contract with ESPN was signed for 12 teams, and they are currently spreading 12-teams worth of money over ten teams, meaning a bigger check for everyone, from Texas down to Iowa State. Good for them. Play hard to get; the neighbors will shape up.
On the other end, though, in 2012, South Alabama will join the Sun Belt in football. Okay, they'll be ineligiable to win a championship that first year, but they'll be FBS, bringing the Sun Belt to ten teams. Meanwhile, the SB loses Denver in basketball in 2012, bringing them DOWN to eleven teams in that sport, and out of divisional play. The divisional format would work better for such an unwieldy conference, you would think, but something tells me the Southland won't be in a very giving mood, after having just lost two Texas schools to an entirely difference division. Will 11 and 10 leave the Sun Belt content? They claim yes, I'm not so sure.
But if no one makes a move between today (Friday) and July 1st (next Friday)... all these numbers hold from now until July 1st, 2012... and nothing new will happen until the 2013 season.
Saturday, March 26, 2011
NFL Alternatives
This week "The Stranger" had its own sports column, for the first time. "Green Sports." The gag was that some dude was writing 2000 words on the Sounders while baked off his ass. I can see how that would help.
I'm not opposed to soccer, it's just sort of like getting into minor-league baseball, to me: I don't know who the players are, I have no team loyalty. And while Major League Baseball moves similarly slowly, I just can't get excited just because the ball comes within thirty feet of the goal. I shall have to attend a game.
Because, y'know, I attended a WNBA game one time, and while the arena tried way too hard (a timeout is called! let's have ten-year-olds shoot free throws for movie tickets!), the game itself was pretty entertaining. Yes, it does take skill to hit a 3-pointer. You sexist bastard.
I'm not opposed to soccer, it's just sort of like getting into minor-league baseball, to me: I don't know who the players are, I have no team loyalty. And while Major League Baseball moves similarly slowly, I just can't get excited just because the ball comes within thirty feet of the goal. I shall have to attend a game.
Because, y'know, I attended a WNBA game one time, and while the arena tried way too hard (a timeout is called! let's have ten-year-olds shoot free throws for movie tickets!), the game itself was pretty entertaining. Yes, it does take skill to hit a 3-pointer. You sexist bastard.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
College Sports are People, Too
I didn't start following college sports until 2001.
Not the movie, no, that wouldn't make any sense. There were no sports in that movie, except perhaps jousting in its most rudimentary form. No, the year was 2001, and it was my final year of college. I have told this story to people I know, enough times that they are sick of it. However, in theory, only people who follow sports would be reading these words at all, and of the people I know, not a one of them like sports. Not even the one guy who works for Fox Sports.
The year was 2001, and the Southwest Conference was already dead. I was vaguely aware of the shenanigans SMU had gotten up to; point of fact, I was only vaguely aware of SMU, at all, despite attending school in the Dallas area, only 30 miles from its campus. I hated college sports and I hated college football, if for no other reasons than (a) I knew no one who followed them, save for my brother, who was a bandwagoner, and (b) I had never attended a college with a good team.
Now, some qualifications, matching the letters in the previous paragraph:
(a) My brother is a younger brother, he never attended a four-year university, only an art school. He graduated from it and is working in the industry, but as a youth he would hang out with his friends in the 1980s and early 1990s, and they would watch sports, and if you were watching college sports in those decades, you were watching the basketball programs at Duke and North Carolina absolutely obliterate anyone who would stand in their way. For reasons not altogether clear to me, my kid brother selected Duke as "his team," and (to his credit) has kept up that loyalty, unwavering, for nearly two decades. He has not ever, to my knowledge, been within twenty miles of their campus (we've driven through North Carolina as part of a family trip; I have family on both coasts).
(b) My first school was tiny little liberal arts bastion for rich Dallas kids, Austin College. I use the word "liberal" lightly. The kids were, the majority of them, a wonderfully liberal bunch, and so were a fair amount of the professors, but the people who actually ran the school, as with most institutions of learning... no, they were not liberal at all. Great school if you wanted to be a doctor or lawyer (as I did not). Terrible school, at the time, if you wished to do anything in the arts... or, bringing it back to the subject, at sports. The "stadium" for football consisted of one set of bleachers on one side of the field only. I think it sat 500 or so, I can't remember exactly and can't be bothered to check. Stadium donors specifically stated lights were not allowed to be built at the stadium, because "evenings should be spent studying, not attending sporting events." The basketball gym was similarly set up, doubling as a convocation arena for class registration, fundraisers, and other events. There was no permanent seating, only folding chairs. I'm sure there were other sports going on at the school, I don't remember anyone mentioning them; I did not care about college sports, less so NAIA sports. I had never heard the term "Division I" in my life, having heard Division 5 or I-AAAA or some damn thing in high school, and I cared even less, then. I followed the Houston Astros and the Houston Rockets, and I loved the Houston Oilers until a selfish business man stole them from my city in 1997. That was my first lesson in politics. My point, and do I have one:
Sports were indeed a part of my life, but college sports were irrelevant because I had no investment in any of them. I was a theatre major when I transferred to the University of North Texas, I was enraged from day one that the university seemed disinterested in the program at all, not wishing to help improve it, recruit people, or advertise what it was creating. And while the building WAS renovated during my time there, money continued to be poured into sports at an alarming rate: This was North Texas, for crying out loud, not UT, not A&M. We were not a football school. Students would wear UT hats and Texas Tech jerseys openly, there was no school pride at all. These people were bandwagoning a team that they'd seen do well, just like my little brother. The school was a joke.
And so at my desk, in the fall of 2000, I stuck a piece of paper on the storage cabinet over it, with a running tally of our football teams record. I had been to one college game at this point; homecoming 1997, North Texas played a tiny unknown team called Boise State. The stadium was packed. We watched as the opposing team scored two touchdowns in the first quarter; a third touchdown to open the second. My friends and I bailed. I didn't pay the team any additional attention for three years.
In that third year, as my graduation loomed, I'd had enough: I told the people in the office around me, at my on-campus job, "I'm rooting for a perfect season. We will go 0-12, the university will see this is a waste of time, and put that money into something worthwhile." We didn't do that badly (though we had come close, every year I was there), and finished something like 3-9 or 4-8. "There's always next year," I thought, as so many sports fans often do, but with a different result in their minds.
In the fall of 2001, we lost our first six games. 0-6, just like that. Bam. "This is it!" I told my uncaring, if bemused, coworkers. "This is OUR YEAR."
Especially because it was my last chance. I was graduating in December, and that would be that. Let's show the world that OUR football is the WORST football.
Then we won our final five games in a row, all against conference opponents. That left our overall record at 5-6, but our conference record at 5-1 (we had lost our first conference game, but one the final five). We had won our conference. We were going to a bowl game.
The bowl game was on Tuesday, December 18th, 2001.
My graduation day was Friday, December 14th, 2001.
My birthday was Wednesday, December 12, 2001.
That was a week, alright. "SCREW THIS," I said, telling any friends who would listen. "Let's go to that thing and see how much alcohol we can consume. We're gonna be on TELEVISION."
Only one friend went. We drank and ate excellent seafood, for four days straight. Our team lost, 45-20. It was one of the best weekends I'd ever had, and certainly THE best that wasn't related to live music, or sex, or a combination.
After I graduated, North Texas won the conference again in 2002, and went back to the same bowl game. We won. Then we kept winning the conference again, in 2003 and 2004, and I went to all four games. I had a wonderful time each time, always dragging along a coalition of both the willing and unwilling. In 2002 I was living in Los Angeles, but still made it back. In 2003-04 I was in Dallas, but went down to New Orleans anyway. North Texas, the school, got no press, but my TEAM was on television. "Look world," said the low ratings, which still numbered in the (very low) millions. "North Texas is not to be trifled with. We exist, we're not going away. And certainly not going back to I-AA, you crazy kooks."
And so I learned about UNT's place in the overall scheme. What was the Sun Belt Conference? How long had it been around? What conferences were better, worse? What WERE the other conferences, who played in them, and who had we scheduled? Who could we BEAT? I devoured the information as voraciously as I used to memorize baseball statistics in elementary school, as hungrily as I pored over movie credits in my adult years. The verdict was in: We were at the very bottom of the conference-respect-o-meter, but tops in our conference. And our basketball team was awful.
Our coach had a terrible year in 2005, and was fired not long after. They hired a new guy, who was a genius in high school but a terrible college coach (not really a surprise; that's like saying someone is a genius at checkers but terrible at chess). Our basketball team was improving. Now I was following March Madness, particularly when our team won the conference and went to the big dance. Twice.
And so is the story with most ANY major university, outside the ones that have always been household names: Texas, Michigan, Ohio State, Oklahoma, USC, Florida, Georgia, etc, etc. These and the Ivy League schools, now I-AA, began what we have today, but as the population of the U.S. has grown, so have other schools grown and risen to meet them.
What the Southwest Conference was a part of, lives on... from their remnants came the Big 12, which joined with the SEC, ACC, Big East, Big Ten, and Pac-10 to form what would be the BCS, each conference winner guaranteed a national game against an equally-matched opponent. And hot on their heels were conferences made up of schools which, in the 20th century, were often just as lowly as my alma mater had been: the MAC, the WAC, Conference USA, the Mountain West, and my own Sun Belt. Sure, schools like BYU and Tulane and UTEP and Houston had made national waves in years past, but mostly it was schools that were hardly household names, outside of their own geographic areas: Boise State, New Mexico State, Central Michigan, UAB. "Who cares about them, anyway?" people thought, and often wrote, on message boards and in conversation. "Things don't change. A champion is a champion."
Well, maybe they were spoiled by pro sports, or maybe just by ignorance, but then Boise State, TCU, and Hawaii happened.
Division I-A became the FBS, and the division between they, and I-AA (now FCS) was getting wider every year. North Texas moved to the higher of the two, and immediately won 5 games its first year as a full member. By comparison, Western Kentucky won the FCS championship in 2002... their first year of FBS was 2009. They went 0-12.
Are North Texas students still frustrated by all the money going to sports? Probably. It took the student body two separate votes to approve funding for a new stadium. But, as much as I still love theatre and want to see it get support, I can't watch their productions on television from Seattle. I can, however, dial up ESPN (or ESPN360, if my ISP would get on board), and watch my old team, at my old stadium, do their best... and try and make a name for themselves. So, too, will the alums of Boise State, TCU, and Hawaii, and now SMU, Houston, UCF and Nevada. A return to glory, or glory for the first time, there are 120 FBS teams, and over twice that many in college basketball.
So if Eastern Washington gets the call... I hope they'll take it. But I love having options, and knowing that even if all ESPN is airing today is a Western Michigan vs. Toledo match-up... somewhere there's a student who went what I went through, and is hoping that maybe, just maybe, this year might be the year.
Because once you get to the FBS level, your team isn't going anywhere. They're not moving, and they're not holding anyone hostage for a new stadium.
I love football, and basketball, and baseball, but individual owners frustrate me. We all have opinions about the NCAA, but the individual universities... though money is a factor, a LOT of people are responsible for that money, and a lot of people get a vote. Passions run high enough that it's never JUST about the money, saving this from being a fascist enterprise.
It's a democratic one, or as close as we can manage.
Until kick-off. Then it's anarchy.
Or as close as we can manage.
Not the movie, no, that wouldn't make any sense. There were no sports in that movie, except perhaps jousting in its most rudimentary form. No, the year was 2001, and it was my final year of college. I have told this story to people I know, enough times that they are sick of it. However, in theory, only people who follow sports would be reading these words at all, and of the people I know, not a one of them like sports. Not even the one guy who works for Fox Sports.
The year was 2001, and the Southwest Conference was already dead. I was vaguely aware of the shenanigans SMU had gotten up to; point of fact, I was only vaguely aware of SMU, at all, despite attending school in the Dallas area, only 30 miles from its campus. I hated college sports and I hated college football, if for no other reasons than (a) I knew no one who followed them, save for my brother, who was a bandwagoner, and (b) I had never attended a college with a good team.
Now, some qualifications, matching the letters in the previous paragraph:
(a) My brother is a younger brother, he never attended a four-year university, only an art school. He graduated from it and is working in the industry, but as a youth he would hang out with his friends in the 1980s and early 1990s, and they would watch sports, and if you were watching college sports in those decades, you were watching the basketball programs at Duke and North Carolina absolutely obliterate anyone who would stand in their way. For reasons not altogether clear to me, my kid brother selected Duke as "his team," and (to his credit) has kept up that loyalty, unwavering, for nearly two decades. He has not ever, to my knowledge, been within twenty miles of their campus (we've driven through North Carolina as part of a family trip; I have family on both coasts).
(b) My first school was tiny little liberal arts bastion for rich Dallas kids, Austin College. I use the word "liberal" lightly. The kids were, the majority of them, a wonderfully liberal bunch, and so were a fair amount of the professors, but the people who actually ran the school, as with most institutions of learning... no, they were not liberal at all. Great school if you wanted to be a doctor or lawyer (as I did not). Terrible school, at the time, if you wished to do anything in the arts... or, bringing it back to the subject, at sports. The "stadium" for football consisted of one set of bleachers on one side of the field only. I think it sat 500 or so, I can't remember exactly and can't be bothered to check. Stadium donors specifically stated lights were not allowed to be built at the stadium, because "evenings should be spent studying, not attending sporting events." The basketball gym was similarly set up, doubling as a convocation arena for class registration, fundraisers, and other events. There was no permanent seating, only folding chairs. I'm sure there were other sports going on at the school, I don't remember anyone mentioning them; I did not care about college sports, less so NAIA sports. I had never heard the term "Division I" in my life, having heard Division 5 or I-AAAA or some damn thing in high school, and I cared even less, then. I followed the Houston Astros and the Houston Rockets, and I loved the Houston Oilers until a selfish business man stole them from my city in 1997. That was my first lesson in politics. My point, and do I have one:
Sports were indeed a part of my life, but college sports were irrelevant because I had no investment in any of them. I was a theatre major when I transferred to the University of North Texas, I was enraged from day one that the university seemed disinterested in the program at all, not wishing to help improve it, recruit people, or advertise what it was creating. And while the building WAS renovated during my time there, money continued to be poured into sports at an alarming rate: This was North Texas, for crying out loud, not UT, not A&M. We were not a football school. Students would wear UT hats and Texas Tech jerseys openly, there was no school pride at all. These people were bandwagoning a team that they'd seen do well, just like my little brother. The school was a joke.
And so at my desk, in the fall of 2000, I stuck a piece of paper on the storage cabinet over it, with a running tally of our football teams record. I had been to one college game at this point; homecoming 1997, North Texas played a tiny unknown team called Boise State. The stadium was packed. We watched as the opposing team scored two touchdowns in the first quarter; a third touchdown to open the second. My friends and I bailed. I didn't pay the team any additional attention for three years.
In that third year, as my graduation loomed, I'd had enough: I told the people in the office around me, at my on-campus job, "I'm rooting for a perfect season. We will go 0-12, the university will see this is a waste of time, and put that money into something worthwhile." We didn't do that badly (though we had come close, every year I was there), and finished something like 3-9 or 4-8. "There's always next year," I thought, as so many sports fans often do, but with a different result in their minds.
In the fall of 2001, we lost our first six games. 0-6, just like that. Bam. "This is it!" I told my uncaring, if bemused, coworkers. "This is OUR YEAR."
Especially because it was my last chance. I was graduating in December, and that would be that. Let's show the world that OUR football is the WORST football.
Then we won our final five games in a row, all against conference opponents. That left our overall record at 5-6, but our conference record at 5-1 (we had lost our first conference game, but one the final five). We had won our conference. We were going to a bowl game.
The bowl game was on Tuesday, December 18th, 2001.
My graduation day was Friday, December 14th, 2001.
My birthday was Wednesday, December 12, 2001.
That was a week, alright. "SCREW THIS," I said, telling any friends who would listen. "Let's go to that thing and see how much alcohol we can consume. We're gonna be on TELEVISION."
Only one friend went. We drank and ate excellent seafood, for four days straight. Our team lost, 45-20. It was one of the best weekends I'd ever had, and certainly THE best that wasn't related to live music, or sex, or a combination.
After I graduated, North Texas won the conference again in 2002, and went back to the same bowl game. We won. Then we kept winning the conference again, in 2003 and 2004, and I went to all four games. I had a wonderful time each time, always dragging along a coalition of both the willing and unwilling. In 2002 I was living in Los Angeles, but still made it back. In 2003-04 I was in Dallas, but went down to New Orleans anyway. North Texas, the school, got no press, but my TEAM was on television. "Look world," said the low ratings, which still numbered in the (very low) millions. "North Texas is not to be trifled with. We exist, we're not going away. And certainly not going back to I-AA, you crazy kooks."
And so I learned about UNT's place in the overall scheme. What was the Sun Belt Conference? How long had it been around? What conferences were better, worse? What WERE the other conferences, who played in them, and who had we scheduled? Who could we BEAT? I devoured the information as voraciously as I used to memorize baseball statistics in elementary school, as hungrily as I pored over movie credits in my adult years. The verdict was in: We were at the very bottom of the conference-respect-o-meter, but tops in our conference. And our basketball team was awful.
Our coach had a terrible year in 2005, and was fired not long after. They hired a new guy, who was a genius in high school but a terrible college coach (not really a surprise; that's like saying someone is a genius at checkers but terrible at chess). Our basketball team was improving. Now I was following March Madness, particularly when our team won the conference and went to the big dance. Twice.
And so is the story with most ANY major university, outside the ones that have always been household names: Texas, Michigan, Ohio State, Oklahoma, USC, Florida, Georgia, etc, etc. These and the Ivy League schools, now I-AA, began what we have today, but as the population of the U.S. has grown, so have other schools grown and risen to meet them.
What the Southwest Conference was a part of, lives on... from their remnants came the Big 12, which joined with the SEC, ACC, Big East, Big Ten, and Pac-10 to form what would be the BCS, each conference winner guaranteed a national game against an equally-matched opponent. And hot on their heels were conferences made up of schools which, in the 20th century, were often just as lowly as my alma mater had been: the MAC, the WAC, Conference USA, the Mountain West, and my own Sun Belt. Sure, schools like BYU and Tulane and UTEP and Houston had made national waves in years past, but mostly it was schools that were hardly household names, outside of their own geographic areas: Boise State, New Mexico State, Central Michigan, UAB. "Who cares about them, anyway?" people thought, and often wrote, on message boards and in conversation. "Things don't change. A champion is a champion."
Well, maybe they were spoiled by pro sports, or maybe just by ignorance, but then Boise State, TCU, and Hawaii happened.
Division I-A became the FBS, and the division between they, and I-AA (now FCS) was getting wider every year. North Texas moved to the higher of the two, and immediately won 5 games its first year as a full member. By comparison, Western Kentucky won the FCS championship in 2002... their first year of FBS was 2009. They went 0-12.
Are North Texas students still frustrated by all the money going to sports? Probably. It took the student body two separate votes to approve funding for a new stadium. But, as much as I still love theatre and want to see it get support, I can't watch their productions on television from Seattle. I can, however, dial up ESPN (or ESPN360, if my ISP would get on board), and watch my old team, at my old stadium, do their best... and try and make a name for themselves. So, too, will the alums of Boise State, TCU, and Hawaii, and now SMU, Houston, UCF and Nevada. A return to glory, or glory for the first time, there are 120 FBS teams, and over twice that many in college basketball.
So if Eastern Washington gets the call... I hope they'll take it. But I love having options, and knowing that even if all ESPN is airing today is a Western Michigan vs. Toledo match-up... somewhere there's a student who went what I went through, and is hoping that maybe, just maybe, this year might be the year.
Because once you get to the FBS level, your team isn't going anywhere. They're not moving, and they're not holding anyone hostage for a new stadium.
I love football, and basketball, and baseball, but individual owners frustrate me. We all have opinions about the NCAA, but the individual universities... though money is a factor, a LOT of people are responsible for that money, and a lot of people get a vote. Passions run high enough that it's never JUST about the money, saving this from being a fascist enterprise.
It's a democratic one, or as close as we can manage.
Until kick-off. Then it's anarchy.
Or as close as we can manage.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Loving Sports in a City That Doesn't
In 2008 I moved to Seattle. It seemed like the thing to do, and I haven't regretted it for an instant. Okay, maybe a half-instant when I think of all the hot women in Texas (where I'm from), but the superior geography, lack of humidity, better public transport, abundance of art, better food, friendlier people, and more readily accessible (and plentiful) libraries more than makes up for it. That and so many other things. Seattle has its problems, sure-- any city will-- but of the 4 metopolitan areas I have lived in, in my thirty-five years of life, Seattle is easily and hands-down the best.
And they don't hate sports.
Sports is just sort of folded in to the greater cultural experience... on game day for the Seattle Sounders (soccer), fans are seen wandering downtown in droves, all wearing their team colors and Seattle Sounders scarves. The team plays in the same venue as the local NFL team, and sells it out regularly. This in stark contrast to the Dallas soccer team, which plays in a northerly suburb and can't bring in many more people than a high school football game. Seattle-ites love their teams. And then the next day they go back to work, because it's not an OBSESSION. It's just one more option in a well-rounded daily life where Whole Foods isn't seen as odd, and no one has to explain the difference between a Vegan and a Vegetarian.
Having said all that, I haven't actually met any sports fans in this town. I SEE them, sure, but only in passing... most everyone I've met through employment or friends' employment are into video games and don't really follow sports. Even the people who AREN'T into video games don't really follow sports. ... Even the people I've SEEN PLAY VIDEO GAMES ABOUT SPORTS aren't in sports.
Could it be that I'M the geek here? Something is definitely wrong with me.
But no, I don't press. I know my friends aren't obsessed with these things, so when I see that an NFL team has made a trade, or that a college team has hired a new coach, I suffer in silence, wanting to comment on the news of the day but already knowing that nobody gives a fuck. And that's fine. I'm a relatively well-rounded person, I have other things to talk about. But on a day like today when Carmelo Anthony got traded to the perennial losers, the New York Knicks? ARGH. Dude. I don't even LIKE any teams from New York, and that's frustrating.
So I go on internet message boards to read the opinions of others, or share my own:
ESPN.com is not set up for it; you can only reply to articles individually, and if it's a popular story, there are 800 replies before you got there (not an exaggeration). Your comment gets lost in the shuffle. Even if you catch a reply to what you said, and reply back, it's now 10-30 replies further down the line, and no one else is following the exchange except you and the person you're responding to.
CBSSportsline.com has a slightly better system, but has some of the singular worst sports writing I have ever had the displeasure of slogging through. Some sections are better than others (college basketball, for example), but as a whole it's not worth my time to read; the writers are uninformed and biased about what facts they do know; calling them on it will only get you banned from the forums. I have been banned three times. The most recent was over a year ago, and I haven't been back. Compared to ESPN, the writing is laughable.
Individual teams have websites, but they're usually of the educated, entirely too intellectual realm of conversation, with such introspective thoughts as, "NEW YORK JEST RULZ!! WE R #1!!!!!!!!!111 FUCK THE HATERZ!!"
Does that make your eyes bleed? Cuz it does mine.
So, I'll just rant here in silence, and if I'm wrong, no one will know. God knows I'm not perfect; Doc Rivers had a losing record as a head coach when the Boston Celtics hired him, and once he was on board, he continued to lose, because he's not a very good coach. And then the monster trade happened... Kevin Garnett came to Boston from Minnesota. "He'll never go as far with that talent as it deserves," I told a friend of mine who actually works in sports. "I bet you a case of beer Rivers will be fired by next season."
Well, Rivers did not make the Finals that season, but for some reason the Celtics kept him anyway, probably because they didn't know who else they'd hire, or more likely because Rivers is a really nice guy, so who cares if he's not good at his job? ... Then Rivers won the NBA championship. Though, to be fair, with that line-up... it'd be pretty hard not to. Rivers kept his job. I still owe my friend a case of beer, but can't figure out how to ship it safely from Seattle to Houston.
That aside, I've been reading sports columnists and criticism for the better part of twenty years. Even before I'd ever left Houston, I recognized excuse-making and homerism when I saw it. "Oh, it's okay that the Astros are 30-87," the writers would write. "Coach (x) has a great team and is on the verge of turning the team around." Excuses. Excuses, excuses. In New York or Boston or Chicago they'd never put up with that shit. And here I was living in the supposed 4th-largest city in the country, and the media and fans were giving the local teams the kid-gloves treatment.
And then I discovered the newsweekly.
Growing up, your parents only ever read the daily. The Houston Chronicle exists to this day; the Houston Post folded sometime in the early 1990s. When I started going to see local music, I saw the two newsweeklies; I never knew such things existed before: the Houston Press, and Public News. The former was corporate owned and seemed disinterested in covering local music. The latter was in black and white and all it CARED about was local music. I wrote a letter to the editor about the show I'd seen that week, one band was good and the other one was shit. They ran it. First time I'd ever seen my name in print, beyond my junior high school newspaper. The headline they'd put on it was something like, "Amateur Music Critic."
Also in that issue was a one-page sports column, from a writer I had never met; a year or two later when I interned there, and a year or two after that was was paid for my work, that writer had already moved on. He wasn't a big-city writer, but just a friend of the editor who had something to say, and was entertaining enough to have a following. The column was called "Sports for Heretics."
And the writer loved the local sports teams, and called them on their bullshit. He wasn't friends with the owners or players, he was just a fan with a family who didn't understand why a day at the ballpark for him and his kids would cost over $200. And so every trade, every win, every loss, every business decision, every bullshit plea from the local "real" sports columnists, he was on it, fighting for the little guy, and saying so in a comedic way. Then one day his column wasn't in the paper anymore. Then one day, in 1998, the paper wasn't on the stands anymore.
Such is the way of the privately-owned newspaper. The Houston Press, Dallas Observer, and Seattle Weekly are all owned by the same company: the letterhead is the same, oftentimes they'll share stories with each other if they have national relevance, like with movie reviews or a band coming to town. Meanwhile local writers have to resort to blogs, and crude bathroom graffiti. I'd like to think I'm a Shakespeare of the latter. The former? Remains to be seen.
And so when the message boards bore me, I have this little corner, knowingly spewing it forth with the knowledge that it will not be read by anyone, and one day it, too, shall disappear from the internet, like so many deleted MySpace pages.
But it's a fitting tribute for the man I never met, who inspired me and let me know I could make a difference, by speaking truth to power... even if power was too busy to listen.
Houston, you raised me up and spit me out. It's far beyond time to go out into the world and make my fortune. I don't know if Seattle will be it, but....
Goddamn, the Mariners are fucking awful. Get it together, people.
And so it begins.................
And they don't hate sports.
Sports is just sort of folded in to the greater cultural experience... on game day for the Seattle Sounders (soccer), fans are seen wandering downtown in droves, all wearing their team colors and Seattle Sounders scarves. The team plays in the same venue as the local NFL team, and sells it out regularly. This in stark contrast to the Dallas soccer team, which plays in a northerly suburb and can't bring in many more people than a high school football game. Seattle-ites love their teams. And then the next day they go back to work, because it's not an OBSESSION. It's just one more option in a well-rounded daily life where Whole Foods isn't seen as odd, and no one has to explain the difference between a Vegan and a Vegetarian.
Having said all that, I haven't actually met any sports fans in this town. I SEE them, sure, but only in passing... most everyone I've met through employment or friends' employment are into video games and don't really follow sports. Even the people who AREN'T into video games don't really follow sports. ... Even the people I've SEEN PLAY VIDEO GAMES ABOUT SPORTS aren't in sports.
Could it be that I'M the geek here? Something is definitely wrong with me.
But no, I don't press. I know my friends aren't obsessed with these things, so when I see that an NFL team has made a trade, or that a college team has hired a new coach, I suffer in silence, wanting to comment on the news of the day but already knowing that nobody gives a fuck. And that's fine. I'm a relatively well-rounded person, I have other things to talk about. But on a day like today when Carmelo Anthony got traded to the perennial losers, the New York Knicks? ARGH. Dude. I don't even LIKE any teams from New York, and that's frustrating.
So I go on internet message boards to read the opinions of others, or share my own:
ESPN.com is not set up for it; you can only reply to articles individually, and if it's a popular story, there are 800 replies before you got there (not an exaggeration). Your comment gets lost in the shuffle. Even if you catch a reply to what you said, and reply back, it's now 10-30 replies further down the line, and no one else is following the exchange except you and the person you're responding to.
CBSSportsline.com has a slightly better system, but has some of the singular worst sports writing I have ever had the displeasure of slogging through. Some sections are better than others (college basketball, for example), but as a whole it's not worth my time to read; the writers are uninformed and biased about what facts they do know; calling them on it will only get you banned from the forums. I have been banned three times. The most recent was over a year ago, and I haven't been back. Compared to ESPN, the writing is laughable.
Individual teams have websites, but they're usually of the educated, entirely too intellectual realm of conversation, with such introspective thoughts as, "NEW YORK JEST RULZ!! WE R #1!!!!!!!!!111 FUCK THE HATERZ!!"
Does that make your eyes bleed? Cuz it does mine.
So, I'll just rant here in silence, and if I'm wrong, no one will know. God knows I'm not perfect; Doc Rivers had a losing record as a head coach when the Boston Celtics hired him, and once he was on board, he continued to lose, because he's not a very good coach. And then the monster trade happened... Kevin Garnett came to Boston from Minnesota. "He'll never go as far with that talent as it deserves," I told a friend of mine who actually works in sports. "I bet you a case of beer Rivers will be fired by next season."
Well, Rivers did not make the Finals that season, but for some reason the Celtics kept him anyway, probably because they didn't know who else they'd hire, or more likely because Rivers is a really nice guy, so who cares if he's not good at his job? ... Then Rivers won the NBA championship. Though, to be fair, with that line-up... it'd be pretty hard not to. Rivers kept his job. I still owe my friend a case of beer, but can't figure out how to ship it safely from Seattle to Houston.
That aside, I've been reading sports columnists and criticism for the better part of twenty years. Even before I'd ever left Houston, I recognized excuse-making and homerism when I saw it. "Oh, it's okay that the Astros are 30-87," the writers would write. "Coach (x) has a great team and is on the verge of turning the team around." Excuses. Excuses, excuses. In New York or Boston or Chicago they'd never put up with that shit. And here I was living in the supposed 4th-largest city in the country, and the media and fans were giving the local teams the kid-gloves treatment.
And then I discovered the newsweekly.
Growing up, your parents only ever read the daily. The Houston Chronicle exists to this day; the Houston Post folded sometime in the early 1990s. When I started going to see local music, I saw the two newsweeklies; I never knew such things existed before: the Houston Press, and Public News. The former was corporate owned and seemed disinterested in covering local music. The latter was in black and white and all it CARED about was local music. I wrote a letter to the editor about the show I'd seen that week, one band was good and the other one was shit. They ran it. First time I'd ever seen my name in print, beyond my junior high school newspaper. The headline they'd put on it was something like, "Amateur Music Critic."
Also in that issue was a one-page sports column, from a writer I had never met; a year or two later when I interned there, and a year or two after that was was paid for my work, that writer had already moved on. He wasn't a big-city writer, but just a friend of the editor who had something to say, and was entertaining enough to have a following. The column was called "Sports for Heretics."
And the writer loved the local sports teams, and called them on their bullshit. He wasn't friends with the owners or players, he was just a fan with a family who didn't understand why a day at the ballpark for him and his kids would cost over $200. And so every trade, every win, every loss, every business decision, every bullshit plea from the local "real" sports columnists, he was on it, fighting for the little guy, and saying so in a comedic way. Then one day his column wasn't in the paper anymore. Then one day, in 1998, the paper wasn't on the stands anymore.
Such is the way of the privately-owned newspaper. The Houston Press, Dallas Observer, and Seattle Weekly are all owned by the same company: the letterhead is the same, oftentimes they'll share stories with each other if they have national relevance, like with movie reviews or a band coming to town. Meanwhile local writers have to resort to blogs, and crude bathroom graffiti. I'd like to think I'm a Shakespeare of the latter. The former? Remains to be seen.
And so when the message boards bore me, I have this little corner, knowingly spewing it forth with the knowledge that it will not be read by anyone, and one day it, too, shall disappear from the internet, like so many deleted MySpace pages.
But it's a fitting tribute for the man I never met, who inspired me and let me know I could make a difference, by speaking truth to power... even if power was too busy to listen.
Houston, you raised me up and spit me out. It's far beyond time to go out into the world and make my fortune. I don't know if Seattle will be it, but....
Goddamn, the Mariners are fucking awful. Get it together, people.
And so it begins.................
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