This Just Might Be The Worst Marketing Idea Ever

Ok. Ok. .... Ok. For a while I have been considering writing an ode to what I consider the greatest sports-related commercial of all time, and others that I think are in the discussion, and while I have decided that I will bring them up, albeit later in this post, I came across, at work last night, a commercial that all of you will be bombarded with this coming weekend.

See, some of you might have heard that there's this golf tournament this weekend. I'm pretty unfamiliar, but apparently there's a lot of money and some green jackets involved. In any event, not only is there a golf tournament this weekend, but this Tiger Woods fellow is making his return to the tour after taking several months off to patch up family issues that resulted with his own personal infidelities. Now, I've touched on these topics and how I think some of -- or really all -- of the issues Tiger has to deal with are best left to him and his wife.

After all, these are his problems, and they are personal problems and they're nobody's business but his and Elin's. However, while I still believe the job of working out his marriage is not something the public needs to be involved in, despite Tiger's obviously manufactured and uninspired public campaign to help his image, the irrational passionate part of my brain wants to smack Tiger in the face after witnessing this.



This, and I don't think I'm speaking too irrationally here, might be the dumbest commercial in history.

We can argue all day and night over what Tiger owes the public. Some idiots think he owes us the world, while others realize that it is not for us to judge and Tiger, shockingly, is probably not the first professional athlete to be wildly unfaithful to his wife. But I think we can all agree on this.

Cheating on your wife is wrong.

Yup. There. Done. We've established the base fact at play here. It is wrong for you to cheat on your spouse. I think that's pretty clear. And Tiger did just that. Now he didn't do it to all of us, which is why he owes all of us nothing. However, it's either asking an awful lot of us, or it tells us that Nike thinks we're all stupid, to introduce an ad over the weekend of the Masters that asks us to cheer for Tiger out of hopes that we will see a tragic hero rise like a Phoenix.

Um, no. Sorry. I'm not jumping on this bandwagon. I understand that Nike has spent billions marketing this man, and I'm sure they're plenty richer for it, but asking us all to immediately love him again because his late father is a more emotionally conscious person than he is an outlandish request. It's bad enough that milllions, myself included, will tune in this weekend just to watch Tiger struggle to make the cut in Augusta after six months off.

This commercial is Nike asking us to forgive Tiger for his transgressions, and while America is a generally forgiving nation, and I suspect years from now this incident will be a footnote for Woods, who incidentally was awarded Golfer of the Year by the Golf Writers Association of America this week, asking us to forgive for no real reason is ridiculous. As I've said before, Woods doesn't really require our forgiveness, but that doesn't mean the public should go back to respecting him because the swoosh tells us he's a changed man.

Whether or not Tiger owes us anything, or whether or not he's changed, however, simply isn't the point here. This was a completely unnecessary advertisement that simply can only make Tiger look vapid and hubristic for appearing in it and make Nike look foolish for making it. And besides, how could Tiger possibly take himself seriously as he stared into that camera.

Your guess is as good as mine.

If this ranks as the dumbest sports commercial of all time, however, from a company that usually produces great ones, I have spent an inordinately large amount of time lately sifting through the great ones. I do think there is an interesting connection, though, in that all of the great commercials that come to mind involve Michael Jordan -- and if Tiger Woods was Nike and Gatorade's It Man of the 2000s, MJ was most certainly the superstar of the 1990s.

Interestingly though, if Woods' goal is to have the popular influence on golf that Jordan did on the NBA, and there certainly is something to be said for how the two each transcended their sport in similar fashion, there is a lesson to be learned. And that lesson is that Jordan shows personality in his popular advertising. Now, Jordan was no saint, and he has plenty of varied skeletons in his closet, but while Tiger only smiles and screams in pictures and after winning tournaments, Jordan showed a playful side in public, such as in his famous Big Mac-driven game of H-O-R-S-E with Larry Bird.

Because MJ showed off his fun side with ads like that -- or his dramatically unfortunate turn in Space Jam -- it gave him currency to display his competitiveness without reproach and perhaps bought him capital when the public became confronted with his mistakes. It's reasons like that why when this commercial came out in 2002 featuring an older Jordan facing himself in one-on-one, we were less turned off by his overt competitiveness than we were in awe of the man we've loved both as a young player and an aging superstar.

And what was the ultimate example of why we loved MJ? It's three simple words: "Be Like Mike". You may have guessed from that, as well as the embedded video below, that the 1992 Gatorade commercial with Jordan that simply tells us to "Be Like Mike" is, in my opinion, the greatest sports commercial of all time. The song is great, the slogan is so catchy that we still say it 18 years later even if we don't remember what it advertised, and the ad shows us both the champion and the fun-loving star.



These are the aspects of Jordan that made him a hero. From start to finish, "Be Like Mike" paints Jordan so positively in mutliple facets that we don't just love him. We want to love him. The juxtaposition of Jordan with the children, who are playing for the love of the game, gives us the implication that Jordan is, himself, a child at heart. And if that doesn't drive the point home enough, there are cuts to Jordan laughing hysterically with his buddies. The commercial was so good that it inspired a sequel with personalities ranging from Chris Berman to Mia Hamm to Bugs Bunny and, peculiarly, John Popper from Blues Traveler.

Manufactured? Sure. But that doesn't matter. "Be Like Mike" is 60 seconds of brilliance that made us get a song stuck in our head, want to be children and fall in love with Michael Jordan. And to think, all he had to do was laugh in front of us. Perhaps if Tiger had taken some notes, he wouldn't have had to make any commercials asking for our forgiveness.

The Halftime Score Was What?

Yeah, that's right. The score at halftime of this year's NCAA Women's Basketball Championship Game was an absolutely riveting 20-12.

That's 32 points. Total. Between the two best teams in the country. In 20 minutes.

Now, I don't want to come off as some sort of misogynist. I'm actually quite to the contrary. I'm a strong proponent of gender equality and I find women who are domesticated, well, boring. I like the independent, challenging ones. I voted for Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama in the 2008 New Jersey Democratic Primary because I wanted my future daughters to feel as though they had no obstacles, and if one of them tells me she wants to be a cheerleader instead of a soccer player, well, there could be issues.

But I'm sorry. This game was every reason that people think women's basketball is boring in a nice tidy package. It was a nonstop feast of layups, missed layups, beneath the rim basketball and more layups. Also, the eventual winning team scored 12 points in the first half. They scored 12 points in the first half.

Twelve.

That, is, well, not a lot of points. Considering UConn, the mighty juggernaut of an absurd 78 straight wins and counting, averaged 81 points per game throughout this season, a 12-point first half is downright bizarre. Sure, there's the chance Stanford just played a flawless defensive game in the first half, but considering the Cardinal only managed to get 20 points, it seems more likely that for a sport that stresses its focus on fundamentals, the first half was fundamentally awful.

Need anymore evidence? The Champion Huskies went a whopping 9 of 22 from the free throw line during the game. The sad thing is, a) As someone who spent a season covering women's college basketball, I know they can play better fundamental basketball than this, and b) UConn really is pretty damn good. There isn't a single player on that team that wouldn't embarrass me on the court -- not that that's particularly difficult. But a game like this, when the sport is arguably at its marquee moment, only adds fuel to the fire that women's basketball is a dull exercise in slow ball movement and layups.

Oh yeah, and beneath the rim basketball kind of sucks.



Even a bunch of sci-fi nerds can tell you that watching dunks is, well, significantly more awesome than not. What makes basketball exciting to the casual observer is not the solid execution of a triangle offense, but players with the length to make a backboard rumble. That is what made Candace Parker so much fun with Tennessee three years ago. And that's why college basketball's popularity may soon rest on the shoulders of the equally as talented, though slightly less unshakable Brittney Griner of Baylor.

This 6'8" freshman center is a freakish combination of height and skill that could allow her to dominate the NCAA for the rest of her college career. That is if she can get past UConn, and therein lies the other catch. Someone has to beat UConn before watching women's basketball becomes utterly dull.

Or depending on who you ask, more utterly dull.

Yes there are occasionally major women's college stars who get national publicity, but with the exception of a handful -- Rebecca Lobo, Diana Taurasi, Parker -- those women rarely remain household names if they ever became them in the first place. Who remembers UNC standout Ivory Latta? Anyone know what Epiphanny Prince is up to these days? Does someone know where Courtney Paris is or if she ever paid Oklahoma back for her scholarship? I'm guessing the answer is no.

It's hard to ask more six-and-a-half footers to be born so women can dunk with the same regularity as men -- and believe me, I know that dunking is pretty damn hard -- but maybe if there are a few more people that enter the sport, or if the National Championship doesn't become a certainty two weeks into the season, well, maybe women's basketball will be a little more interesting to watch and a little less likely to be fodder for cartoon writers.

Or maybe everyone is just waiting for the inevitable rise to prominence of the Northwestern Women's hoops team. After all, they did win a postseason game this year after averaging single digit victories for most of the past decade. If they keep improving at that pace the Cats should be in the National Championship Game by 2012, right?

That Joe McKeown is a magic man, I tell you.

What If Verbal Kint And Dave Kujan Just Died Of Brain Aneurysms?

Well if that happened we'd probably all be a bit frustrated because it would be just about the least satisfying ending to a great movie we could possibly imagine -- short of the two of them just hugging for a few minutes. No Keyser Soze, no Kobayashi, no Dean Keaton. The Usual Suspects is just a big fat dud at the end.

That would totally suck.

I bring this up because that's pretty much what we got last night with Duke's victory in the NCAA National Championship Game. Don't get me wrong. The game was phenomenal the whole way through, and Butler proved they belonged on the national stage, but after one of the greatest tournaments in recent memory, the team that wound up cutting down the nets was the one team that absolutely no one wanted to see win. And that leaves a profoundly unsatisfying taste in the mouths of just about everyone who doesn't live in Durham, North Carolina.

And it's quite a shame that we lost what could have been the most appropriate ending to such a wild month of basketball when Gordon Hayward heaved up a potential game-winner three-pointer from half court and it clanged off the rim at the buzzer. We were this close to getting what we wanted -- a moment in college basketball that would have been talked about and replayed for decades -- a small school in its home town knocking off mighty Duke University for the National Championship with a buzzer-beater.

Alas, it was not meant to be, and all we have to remember it by is an incredibly lame game story by whomever was writing it for the AP. He actually writes "What a game!" in the story. Good lord.

It is difficult to know that Butler had not one but two chances to take the lead in the final 30 seconds, but in the end, a great game at the end of a phenomenal tournament isn't all that bad. And with the impending expansion of the tournament to 96 teams next year, this isn't the only shining moment college basketball has had, but it may be the last.



In other news, some of you might have noticed that the Mets opened the season yesterday with a solid 7-1 victory over Florida. The game was actually quite taut most of the way until three errors by the defensively inept Marlins opened the floodgates in a four-run sixth inning for New York. Prior to that, Johan Santana and Josh Johnson had been locked up in a tight pitchers duel, with David Wright's first-inning home run providing the only difference.  Eventually the Mets would pull away for the comfortable win, continuing their remarkable record of winning on Opening Day.

Now comes the hard part. Playing the other 161 games. With that pitching staff it won't be easy.

As one of my favorite teams begins its season another's regular season is ending. New Jersey is hardly done. Even if they get eliminated in the first round of the playoffs they'll still be playing until late April. Hopefully they'll be around until June. Either way, the next step in the Devils' close race for the Atlantic Division title with Pittsburgh comes tonight in Atlanta, where Ilya Kovalchuk will make his first appearance since the Thrashers dealt him to New Jersey in February.

While that is the big story, however, what may eventually be the biggest is that a win for Martin Brodeur will make him the first ever member of the 600 win club.

A few years ago, when Brodeur had won his 400th game, I did a brief extrapolation to examine how many wins he would wind up with at his current pace. I assumed some things would slow him down, age and perhaps his triceps injury last year among them. But I had found Brodeur could wind up with as many as 700 wins. I never expected that to happen, but with 600 on the horizon, and Brodeur still winning 40 games a year, with perhaps three seasons left in him, well, it doesn't seem quite so far-fetched.

And given that the most anyone else has ever won is 551 games, well, it's mighty impressive. Here's hoping he crosses that next milestone tonight.

Tales From Prudential Center II

I know that hockey talk is a bizarre choice when I can be talking about Opening Day for my beloved Mets today, but it has occurred to me that if I simply post a chapter of my book every Monday, well, I'm likely to be tapped out of material within three years or so.

And we can't have that.

So I will try, on Mondays, as a bit of a temporary experiment, to write about other sporting experiences that won't necessarily make the book. Unless, of course, the Eagles and Redskins happen to make the most bizarre trade ever, in which case, I might get distracted. But that isn't happening today (though for the record I don't think either team wins the deal, but slight edge to Washington), so instead I'm going to regale with you my venture out to the Devils-Blackhawks game this past Friday night.

The peculiar thing about going to Devils games, is that the crowds are not always great. Perhaps this is skewed by the fact that my work schedule doesn't allow me many weekend nights off -- my Devils games often come on Tuesdays and Wednesdays when the crowds are sparse -- but this was a different case. By luck of the schedule I was given the night off, but as the Devils, my lifelong favorite team, were facing the Blackhawks, a team which I have had a soft sport for ever since I worked for them in college, I would have made it a point to be at this particular showdown.

Remarkably, a number of other New Jerseyans did the same thing. In fact, the crowd was not only large, but also vocal, and you could sense it as you walked in. People were gathered all around the outside of the arena, crowds were drinking and kids were playing hockey in a makeshift rink in the plaza next to Prudential Center. It was an unusual, but welcome sight for a Devils fan always wary of his fan base's meager reputation.

Once inside the arena, not only was the crowd a sea of red jerseys -- no not because there were also Hawks fans -- but the chants and cheers were loud and in unison. For possibly the first time since watching the team at Brendan Byrne Arena, I didn't just feel like I was at a hockey game. I felt like I was at a Devils game.

On this particular night I had lucked into getting my company's suite tickets, which meant feeling like I was a big shot for the next two and a half hours. I waited for Nomaan, a cohort at the Daily Northwestern who is working in New York, in part of my desperate bid to convert more hockey fans. Nomaan, you see, grew up outside Chicago, and with the Blackhawks in the midst of a turnaround from their previous levels of mediocre, now was the time to strike. Fortunately, it just may be starting to work.

After coming through the turnstyles and finding that we had our own special entrance, we made our way up to the suite level, through the "Goal Bar" and to our box in the Devils attacking zone. I had been in a luxury box at Madison Square Garden, a sort of disappointing angle at which to sit, but being in a box at the Rock was a new experience, and the modern architecture shows. The views were remarkable, the seats roomy and comfortable and the design, you know, tasteful.

The only thing missing was food. I did happen to snag an order form that allows you to buy food for the entire box, but the prices seemed a bit on the robust side. I'm sure the $135 Crisp-Crusted Chicken Breast Strips and the $40 Home-Style Coleslaw are delicious, but that ran a bit steep for my wallet, even if it would be enough for the entire box. A $112 bottle of Glenlivet 12 also would be a bit of a setback.

Nomaan and I decided to spend the first intermission instead looking for food elsewhere, and while there was a little trafficked concession stand in the Goal Bar right near our suite, we decided to search around and see if there was free food to poach. Or at least fancier food. Luxury sections on the bottom bowl have access to All-You-Can-Eat bars, and we thought the suites, even more exclusive, might lead you to the same perks.

Evidently this is not true.

During our cruise around the suite level I did enjoy taking in the decor, which was covered with paintings of various major players and moments in Devils history. While we found no free food, we did happen upon the intermission report where Mr. Devil Ken Danyko was interviewing owner Jeff Vanderbeek. Eventually we happened upon a restaurant with a sprawling fancy buffet and a sign claiming it was reserved for a private function.

As we passed through with little attention being paid, it occurred to Nomaan and myself that we could probably start taking food and no one would notice. And so we did just that. We helped ourselves to potatoes au gratin, carved pork, brisket, stuffed sole and any other foods available. No one questioned it. We fit in. We were going to get a fancy free meal.

And then Nomaan noticed there was no silverware.

We saw an employee walking around, who looked conspicuously like a waitress, and asked her where we could get some, to which she said, "Your server should have given you place settings. Did your waitress not come by?"

"Um, no. We haven't seen a waitress yet?"

At this point she said to us, "You do know this buffet is $45 a plate, right?"

"No, we did not know that."

And then, she looked at us as if to say, 'Are you fucking stupid?' and told us, "You can't just come up here and take free food."

We sheepishly put our plates down and left only to hear that the second period was starting and we had missed our opportunity to eat without missing any of the game. I had barely eaten that day and the hunger was distracting me from the fact that we were actually seeing quite a phenomenal game between two potential Cup contenders. Martin Brodeur and Antti Niemi were both standing on their heads, while Ilya Kovalchuk's power-play goal provided the lead for the Devils and New Jersey and Chicago were so crisp in their play that the outing would be the first NHL game without a penalty being called in nine years.

After the second period, we finally got food at the nearby concession stand -- I got a cheeseburger and left the bun behind because it was passover -- and after a third period of more remarkable scoring chances and even more remarkable saves. With Brodeur on the cusp of the 109th shutout of his career, however, Chicago's Kris Versteeg would score an ugly goal to force overtime and, eventually, a shootout.

In my years of hockey games, I had never actually seen a shootout in person -- at least not as a fan. The last time I did see one was as an intern for the Hawks four years ago, and my memory is hazy. Shootouts are awfully exciting. Even more so when your team wins. Unfortunately, that wasn't exactly the case this time, but Nomaan did leave the arena quite satisfied.

Instead of sole possession of first place in the Atlantic, the Devils found themselves in a tie with Pittsburgh with just five games remaining, but it's ok. I'll survive. And if I'm lucky, I'll get to watch the Devils again from the same luxurious vantage point.

I wasn't used to walking out of the arena with so many people, nor was I used to doing so from the suite level, so I had significantly lost my bearings -- not a great combination when you're already disappointed about the outcome. But as Nomaan and I waded through the crowd to the exits, I did look around and happen to notice Millburn High School's jersey among the plethora of New Jersey High School hockey programs that get recognized around the arena. It was a different jersey from previous years and they had shuffled them around from the prior season, but it was still pretty cool to see the Blue "M" hanging on the wall.

Go Millers.

Nomaan asked me where my Millburn hockey jersey was. Alas, it's one of the few I don't own, and I disappointed him with the information that I did not, in fact, play hockey in high school. Frankly, I'm not sure I was in shape to play anything, but I did let him know that I was on the football team. Of course, telling people that might give them the impression that I was actually good. And that would be a bald lie.

Despite the loss, I couldn't complain about seeing a great game between two contenders. Given that the regular season is winding down and my life during the playoffs gets a little hectic, it may be a while before I'm back, though I obviously will look forward to it. Next time, however, I will figure out what to do for food beforehand.

Or at the very least, I'll try not to look like a fool in front of the Arena staff.

Your Completely Incorrect And Only Slightly Biased 2010 Baseball Preview

Sometimes when you're young, Opening Day seems like some far off beacon and you count down the days excitedly until it's here. Other times, you're so preoccupied with life that it kind of sneaks up on you, even though you've been reading stories and watching Spring Training games on TV almost daily. 2010, for me, is most certainly the latter. In fact, it didn't hit me until about three days ago that baseball season was pretty much here. Hockey, college basketball, Israel and life in general have all conspired to keep me in the dark, but after a few moments of contemplation I'm ready.

Maybe.

This is a peculiar season for me because, as a Mets fan, everyone seems to think disaster is going to strike and 81 wins is a pipe dream. A remarkable change in my mind considering this team, which was mostly injured all of last season, has a largely unchanged starting lineup from the one Sports Illustrated picked to win the 2009 World Series. This team reminds me an awful lot of the 2007 New York Giants, who, after a disappointing 2006 season in which they were expected to contend for a Super Bowl, naysayers had finishing 4-12 before they made a remarkable run to the third Super Bowl title in franchise history.

The 2010 Mets, in a sense, seem similar to me. Of course, I'm also a naive wide-eyed optimist. So view it for what you will. I acknowledge that the pitching after Johan Santana doesn't scare a baby, but John Niese showed promise before becoming the umpteenth Met to go down with an injury last year, John Maine and Mike Pelfrey have both shown flashes of being solid Major League pitchers and, who knows, maybe Oliver Perez finally puts it together.

Ok, that last one is a bit of a stretch.

But who knows? It could wind up better than we think. That's why they play the games. I caution you all with the knowledge that I am making my picks as I write this so there's a good chance it will seem ridiculous. And as I always say when I have to write these things, none of you are probably going to remember what I wrote in November anyway. Always the silver lining.

Off we go:

NL East

1. Philadelphia
2. New York Mets
3. Atlanta
4. Florida
5. Washington

Wishful thinking that the Mets will crack second place? Probably. Atlanta could easily take that spot and Florida's talent is not to be trifled with. I would expect to see the Nationals stay in the cellar, but they're finally starting to build the right way. Five years from now, they could be at the top looking down.

NL Central

1. St. Louis
2. Chicago Cubs
3. Milwaukee
4. Cincinnati
5. Houston
6. Pittsburgh

Chicago will probably be the stronger team on paper, but I just can never put faith in the Cubs. Interestingly, I wouldn't be surprised to see the middle of this division -- Milwaukee and Cincinnati -- make some noise. As for the Pirates, I wouldn't be surprised to see them lose 100 games. Again.

NL West
1. Colorado
2. San Francisco *
3. Los Angeles
4. Arizona
5. San Diego

Colorado looks like the most well-rounded team of the lot to me, particularly once Huston Street is healthy, and while the offense is certainly lacking in the Bay, I think a rotation with Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain and potential strikeout machine Jonathan Sanchez is just too good not to make the postseason. Of course, if the Dodgers win this division like they're supposed to, I'll look like a fool. I can handle it.

NLDS:
San Francisco over Philadelphia
Colorado over St. Louis

NLCS:
Colorado over San Francisco

AL East
1. New York Yankees
2. Tampa Bay*
3. Boston
4. Toront
5. Baltimore

It really is a shame that the rest of these teams get stuck in the same division as the Yankees and Red Sox. I can't really see the Bombers not making the postseason, but with a number of impending free agent contracts, the Rays are loaded with talent and in "win now" mode. They'll have to make waves.

AL Central
1. Minnesota
2. Chicago White Sox
3. Detroit
4. Cleveland
5. Kansas City

The Twins have some obstacles to overcome, particularly with Joe Nathan going down for the year with Tommy John surgery. But the rotation is still strong and the lineup is still talented. And with Joe Mauer locked up and Target Field getting its debut, I suspect the stars will still align for Minnesota -- especially since they can spend money now.

AL West
1. Anaheim - Yeah people. They still play in Anaheim.
2. Texas
3. Seattle
4. Oakland

The Angels look like the clear favorite to me, but I'm awfully interested to see what happens with the Mariners and Rangers, both of whom are intriguing teams that could make a splash. If Cliff Lee gets healthy, Seattle has a nasty top two in their rotation with him and Felix Hernandez. The Rangers meanwhile, once Ian Kinsler gets back, have a lineup that can match anyone's. Well, except Anaheim's.

ALDS:
Tampa Bay over Anaheim
New York Yankees over Minnesota

ALCS:
Tampa Bay over New York Yankees

2010 World Series:
Colorado over Tampa Bay

The Colorado Rockies winning the World Series? Really? It seems odd to me too, but I think it could happen. And while a matchup between them and the Rays is hardly the sexiest thing fans could be seeing, it should be two damn good teams facing off. And if that doesn't excite you, you probably don't like baseball as much as I do. Either way, even if you don't care about the Rockies, at least you probably don't hate them. And unlike some other sporting events going on right now, that in and of itself would be satisfying.

First pitch is in seven hours. Get excited. Just try not to be distracted by Geelong's big showdown with Hawthorn four hours later.

An Apology And A Dave Sighting

I'm sure the 10 of you out there that check this on some sort of vague basis are probably very upset that I'm not going to have my weekly 1995 NFL Mail Bag up today, but unfortunately, a change in day-long plans, which start pretty early on my watch, are forcing me to postpone it for a week.

I hope you can manage.

In the meantime, some of you who took a gander at NHL.com yesterday might have come across this gem of a story about Nashville Predators coach Barry Trotz. Yeah, that's right. I got my first byline on a non-preview story, which kind of makes me feel like a real sportswriter for the first time since college. Maybe, just maybe my friends out there will take a read and realize that hockey is, you know, awesome.

And speaking of hockey, a friend of mine pointed me to this article yesterday, which notes that March of this year was the first month to not see a murder in the city of Newark, New Jersey since 1944. That's 66 years, which is quite a stretch. Clearly, Shaun Rodgers wasn't going all Rae Carruth at EWR like he could have, though that doesn't excuse him from the fact that bringing a loaded gun into an airport in your carry-on luggage is outrageously stupid.

What does this have to do with hockey? Well, there's never been a safer time to go see the New Jersey Devils at Prudential Center in downtown Newark. And as I've had my share of not feeling safe in Newark, if now is the time, I'm certainly taking advantage tomorrow by attending the New Jersey Devils-Chicago Blackhawks game. As a life long Devils fan and a one-time intern for the Hawks, it should be a pretty special night.

Also, my seats are fucking awesome.

If you happen to be there, don't be afraid to come find me. Until then stay tuned for this weekend. I'm sure the Final Four and MLB Opening Day will provide no shortage of fodder for me to ramble on.

Happy Friday everyone.

Defecating Publicly On Persistence Of Memory

Yeah, I know. That's a pretty vulgar title, and certainly a number of you are displeased and perhaps confused as to why I'm making that the title to this entry. I rather enjoy the work of Salvador Dali and spent most of college with a poster of "Soft Watch At The Moment of First Explosion" over my desk, but ruining an artistic masterpiece in such a foul manner is pretty much the only way I can accurately describe what the NCAA is apparently planning to do. Reports came out yesterday that Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delaney believes an expansion of the NCAA Tournament to 96 teams is "probable".

The issue will not be determined until the NCAA board gathers to vote on the matter on April 29th, but the thought of altering what, to this point, has been possibly the most intrinsically perfect of American sporting events is wholly unpalatable to just about everyone who watches college basketball, with the exception of coaches and college presidents. And why would they bother expanding the tournament field from 65 to 96 teams? Well, you don't have to be an Ivy Leaguer to figure that one out.

Money. Duh.

This summer the NCAA has the option to opt out and renegotiate its television contract with CBS, and with 30 more games potentially on the docket, that contract becomes a whole lot more valuable. For the coaches perspective, being the skip for a lower-level college team that can now make the dance allows you to burnish your laurels a little more than an NIT berth would, and as for the big program coaches, soft first-round matchups lend the prestige of saying you've made it to the second or third round more often than you used to.

Of course, if these seem like particularly material or vain reasons to expand what is, theoretically, a purely scholastic event about the love of sport, that's because, well, it is. Now I'm not naive. I know this event stopped being about pure competition long ago. Now fortunately, the NCAA is unlikely to pull an Avery Brundage and continue to insist that Division I college sports are all about the love of the game when they clearly aren't. It acknowledges that the bottom line rules here.

And while money is clearly the governing factor, and the likely reason that this will almost certainly happen, it's not ridiculous to express frustration over what will change the greatest weekend in sports. And I'm not the only one who's doing it. The first two rounds of March Madness are a phenomenal show, and every sports fan is so well versed that they can reel off the automatic seed pairings -- 12 vs. 5, 11 vs. 6, 14 vs. 3 -- out of second nature. Two proposals I've read have either the first round expanding to four brackets of 24 teams each or, even worse, the top 32 teams in the country getting a bye to the second round.

The top thirty-two teams!

Hell, we only rank the top 25 during the course of the season. Why should an unranked team with eight losses get a day off? Moreover, if a 16 seed has never beaten a 1 and a 15 has only knocked off a 2 a handful of times, what chance does a 24 seed have of taking out a 1 seed in the opening round? All this does is create dozens of games that will be uncompetitive blowouts or give a day of rest to a team that didn't deserve it. The only upside I could see to this would be if the NCAA decided to share some of the profits with the players of those sacrificial lambs of mid-major schools that are being put out to slaughter, and I'm not the only person to think the idea of paying the athletes has merit. But if you think the NCAA would ever pool money to be distributed among the athletes of its revenue sports, you probably also think expanding this tournament is a good idea in the first place.


What's more, expanding the bracket to 96 teams would cheapen the accomplishment of dancing for smaller schools or throw in bigger programs on off years. I don't need to see this year's UNC freshman-palooza in the tournament, and as an alum of a school that has never made the NCAA Tournament -- and breaks my heart in its failure to reach it year after year -- seeing Northwestern finally break the field because the tourney became more inclusive would feel less like an achievement and more like condescension. I don't want my school's first berth to be gift-wrapped. I want the Wildcats to earn it.

Remarkably enough, Northwestern coach Bill Carmody, who could become a hero in Evanston if the Cats finally get an invite to the ball, is also against expansion.

In the end, fighting the inevitable is pointless, particularly since we will continue watching next year and filling out our brackets like the slaves we are. But perhaps just once, it might be nice if the NCAA listened.

As for the tournament still going on, Saturday's Final Four could be wholly uninteresting if Duke makes its way to a championship, which Vegas has them pegged to do, but I'm still holding out hope that West Virginia can save us from the most reviled school in college basketball winning its first title in nine years.

In other news, another team that went nine years without a championship has officially lost a major part of its history, as the demolition of the original Yankee Stadium is nearly complete. The last parts of the upper deck were torn down yesterday as you can see in pictures here and in the video below.



Color me sentimental, particularly considering I'm a Mets fan, but even I think its odd to see those walls come down. And the one show of the hollowed out old Yankee Stadium next to the new one is just a bizarre site to behold. It still makes me feel strange to know that in just six months, Shea Stadium, Yankee Stadium (I) and Giants Stadium will all be figments of my imagination rather than physical structures (On a side note, the NFL announced yesterday that the new Meadowlands Stadium will be opened by a preseason Giants-Jets game on August 16th. The Jets will be home.).

Yankee Stadium is expected to be replaced by parkland that was lost when the new stadium was built, but the idea of taking your kids to use the swings where Babe Ruth honed his craft is at times awesome and at times, well, strange. At least for me. My kids will never understand it.

On a final note, one that is happier than the rest of this post, I'm pleased to announce that Team No. 32 is officially on the docket, and that lucky team is going to be the Atlanta Braves. I've never been to Atlanta and not gone outside of the airport, so I think a stop at the Coca-Cola factory might be necessary, but the big occasion will of course be seeing the Mets visit their division rivals on May 17th and 18th at Turner Field. I don't have tickets yet, but I'm not anticipating that being a problem and my flight is booked.

My college roommate Sam, an Atlanta native, is likely to be among my companions to the ballpark, and upon hearing that I was a Mets fan, his father thanked me for paying for Tom Glavine's retirement. Sam repeated this mantra throughout college.

I wholly expect to hear it again. And I'm awfully excited about it.