No I haven’t already given up my writing. The reason things have been quiet this week is because I have been getting everything ready over at my new home. I am still making some tweaks and getting the polish out but I should be up and running by next week (even if I don’t have my new logo yet).
Make sure to head on over, and for my many loyal readers be patient, I should have some more interesting things to say shortly.
Filed under Announcements
I love to read stories like this. It’s one of the reasons why I still believe that sports, at their core, can do good and teach people lessons about life. The coach at one of the local universities here in Indianapolis is coaching tonight’s game in bare feet to raise awareness for the needy children around the world who don’t have shoes.
Coach Hunter and the founder of Samaritan’s Feet, Emmanuel “Manny” Ohonme, came up with the idea to raise awareness for his cause. Samaritan wants to give 10 million pairs of shoes to kids and Hunter has already collected 40,000 pairs to give away.
If you are interested in donating to the cause you can visit Samaritan’s Feet website and donate.
Filed under Sports meet Life
It’s one of the oldest games in the book. If you could have dinner with five sports figure who would you have sit at your table and why?
Here are mine:
Wayne Gretzky: The greatest player to ever play the game
Jackie Robinson: A man who had courage and heart like none other
Brett Favre: The man is a legend in the making
Babe Ruth: Just to see if all the stories were true
Jim Brown: Because this is a man that is about more than just football
Who would your five be?
Filed under Misc
GolfWeek has recently found itself in a little bit of turmoil. On Friday the Editor and Vice President of Golfweek was fired as a result of the latest cover which had an image of a noose. The image, according to GolfWeek was to invoke conversation about race after The Golf Channel’s announcer, Kelly Tilghman made a lynching reference when talking about Tiger Woods. In response to Nick Faldo’s comment that the younger players on tour would have to gang up on Tiger, Tilghman replied jokingly that they should “lynch him in a back alley
The comment in my mind was not a bad comment. Mind you I am not black so I cannot speak to the emotions that might be conjured up when speaking of lynchings, but the context of the conversation was not racial. It was a comment made without regard to the race of Tiger, sure it was maybe a poor choice of words, but racially motivated? Tilghman apologized to Tiger and apologized on air, almost immediately. The Golf Channel suspended her, some comments of indignation were made on behalf of the Tour and the comments should have died. That is until the GolfWeek cover came out.
GolfWeek made the statement that they had hoped that the cover would provide an opportunity for a discussion on race. But quickly, with Commissioner Finchem from the PGA TOUR leading the charge, an uproar was made, advertisers threatened a pullout and the Editor was fired. Let’s be serious though, the cover was made to sell magazines, it was an attempt to sensationalize a brief moment in golf.
However this could have been a great opportunity to discuss race in golf. We could have had great discussions of why there are such few blacks playing the game. We could have talked about how golf, by nature of cost, is an exclusionary sports, and heck, the Tour could have talked about ways that they were addressing these issues. Instead we got knee jerk reactions, advertisers making empty threats and someone getting fired. But here is the funny thing about race in America, proven by the actions of those involved in this incident; we really don’t want to talk about it. Sure we say we do, but what we normally get is grandstanding and big statements such as we had in this case. We get political or social figures making names for themselves, capitalizing on opportunities but we rarely get actual discussions. We rearely get reasonable assessments of where we stand on issues of race, why people feel the way we do and to what extent steps are being made.
Sports is the perfect arena for these conversations to be had, and to be had relatively freely, because for the most part sports is still largely about being the best person in between the lines and being able to prove that you can do the job. Race is largely eliminated in actual competition because it is about who is the best, not about where you come from. So, the Tour could have used this opportunity to discuss race in a relatively neutral environment, but they didn’t. Maybe they were afraid of the can of worms it would have opened up, or maybe they were afraid to really look deep into a sport where for many years the only blacks were the shoe shine guys and the caddies. A sport where for so often not only blacks but women and other minorities were excluded. Maybe they were afraid because although the future of golf seems to be better for racial equality, its past still haunts it.
So the commissioner’s comment …”It was a naked attempt to inflame and keep alive an incident that was heading to an appropriate conclusion” spoke to exactly what most people want to happen when the issue of race comes up, for it to go quietly away, for people to forget about it without too much discussion and without too many issues really being discussed. And that is sad because we had a great opportunity to get real and talk about an issue that at times still needs to be talked about, but we didn’t, and now this too will “head to its appropriate conclusion” until of course, it surfaces again.
Filed under Sports meet Life
He isn’t supposed to be completing passes nearly falling down. He isn’t supposed to jumping into the arms of his lineman or throwing snowballs at his receivers after a touchdown catch or playing football like a kid, but he is.
Sure Favre has been given a pass (pun intended) many times, yeah he will throw into double coverage, try to squeeze a ball into a space where it shouldn’t but he gets those passes because he plays the game with unabashed enthusiasm. He has had many heartbreaks and mortal moments. The death of his father, his wife’s cancer, the struggles with Vicodin and alcohol, but he always comes back and he always faces the music. And that is why when his immortal moments come they seem more special. Remember the Monday Night game? The Monday after Favre’s father died, one of the greatest games you will see ever see. But if you look at the game again, Favre made some good throws but he also made some not so good throws, ones that his receiver went up and got almost inexplicably. His guys were playing FOR him that night. They played outside of themselves because they wanted to make that night special, give a little something back, give something that he had given them so many times before, a game played with heart.
If you look at the new breed of quarterbacks like Brady and Manning they are good, even great. They are refined, clean, crisp, almost sterile. Favre is a gunslinger, probably the last gunslinger, a guy who plays with his heart just as much as he does with his body and mind. A guys who looks like a big kid playing a grown up game. The only guy that will smack Warren Sapp on the ass in the middle of the game and live to tell about it. A quarterback who most guys in the league would take any day of the week and especially twice on Sunday.
So you have to wonder how much longer will we get to see the special moments play out before our eyes? Like some sort of magic show, something we can’t believe, even though we are watching it unfold minute by minute? Sure I would love to see him play forever, but wouldn’t it be great if the last image of Favre we have is him slowly fading into the tunnel, his wife by his side, his teammates following close behind after another Super celebration at Lambeau?
Filed under Nostalgia
I was flying out to San Francisco the later part of last week and I had a layover in Minneapolis. As we were approaching the runway we flew over a school that had an outdoor rink behind it and it brought back some great memories of growing up in Wisconsin and playing hockey as a kid.
I realized that my son, if he is so fortunate enough to play the game, will never get to experience the way that I got to experience the game (we now live in Indianapolis). He will never be able to walk down to the nearest outdoor rink and lace up his hockey skates in a dank warming house that smells like over-heated plastic from the rusty old space heaters and the rubber mats used to “protect” your skates from the sand and rocks. Getting to know the attendant by first name, she letting you carry your stick inside, even though hut rules explicitly warn you to put your stick in the bin outside the door when you enter.
He will never be able to play in the Wisconsin cold, a cold so cold that your breath freezes as soon as it hits the air and your lungs burn with every stride, but you don’t go in, no matter what. He’ll never get to show up and find the warming hut closed but wanting to skate so badly, you find the most open spot you can and hop around on one leg as you try to get your skates on, trying your hardest not to get your socks full of snow. Playing with kids two years older and two year younger, throwing your stick in the middle of the ice and separating them from one side to the other to create teams, looking for the older kids sticks so you can somehow get on the same team as them.
He will never be able to skate in early spring when the ice is almost too thin to skate, but you do anyway because the sun feels good and you can just play on a half sheet if one side gets too slushy. Never get to play the game it was intended to be played, amongst friends and foes, but always for fun.
Filed under Nostalgia
I just ran across this trying to catch up on all of my post holiday reading. My day job is in marketing, albeit for a form builder called FormSpring, but I always love to read stories about sports and sports marketing. The business of sports often seems outrageous to me, trying to fathom how much money is spent in sponsorships. ads, product placements etc. it is just mind boggling, and I wonder what real return most businesses get from such deals.
Advertising for Notre Dame football games can demand up to $80,000 per 30 second spot, as a web marketer, I think it is crazy, first that companies spend that much, but secondly that companies spend that much on a medium that has little chance of direct ROI. But that could also be because I work for a start up and I couldn’t imagine spending more than a grand on an ad.
The other ridiculous thing is that unlike most teams, say in the Big Ten, who would normally share any TV revenue with the rest of the league teams, Notre Dame keeps all the money from any deal they make. So when Joe Paterno says “Notre Dame has gone from being an academic institute to a banking institute,” it isn’t too far of an exageration.
Now, if Notre Dame and Charlie Weiss can improve on that great ‘07 season they just might be able to justify those amounts.
Filed under Sports Business
