The Simplest Form

For an overwhelming majority of my life I have thoroughly despised hockey, and I don't mean that lightly. I flat out hated hockey and everything about it. I hated the long hair, the attitudes of the players and the culture that went along with it. I wanted no part of a sport that involved fans mostly consisting of 50 year old long haired men drinking beer, yelling obscene things, talking about their "playing days" and just in general acting immaturely. I hated how all throughout the NHL lockout all they talked about was hockey, and there weren't even any games going on! Then, once the Blackhawks became good, I started to like it even less. The Blackhawks quickly became one of the most popular team with most of my friends, and most of Chicago, after umpteen years of not being cared about at all, just because they were good. It seemed like everyone had hopped on the hockey bandwagon, and this made me feel even more passionate about my now counter-culture dislike of hockey.
But in the past two weeks I have had strong revelations about this game. It all started when I attended the Glenbrook North vs Fenwick Blackhawk Cup Semi-Final. Now I must admit that I was sort of dragged there with my friends, but I was semi open to the thought of going because I know a few kids on the team and enjoy cheering for GBN. Once I got there, the atmosphere was magical. The energy inside the small arena was incredible, everyone was yelling and cheering non-stop. The excitement was like the climax of a basketball game, except lasting the whole 51 minutes. I especially found the fast paced action very appealing, as sometimes I find myself a tad bored in other low scoring games. I was constantly enthused by the thill of a goal scored, and the agony of a goal allowed. GBN came out with the victory over the 1 seed Fenwick in a 3-2 slugfest to advance to the Final at the United Center.
And tonight I was lucky enough to go to that game. I was even luckier to attend that game as a member of the media for my sportscasting class. Having a media pass to the State Championship game was easily one of the coolest things I have experienced so far. My two fellow GBN TV sportscasters and I got to do countless things we will most likely never be able to do again. We got to visit the Blackhawks' locker room, the United Center press hospitality room (Which if you ever find yourself in, has the greatest mashed potatoes on the face of the Earth.), the United Center press boxes, and out on the ice to film the trophy awarding ceremony.
While this was all fun and nice, it was in the GBN locker room filming the coach's pregame speech that I finally fully understood hockey. As the coach said something along the lines of  "This is what you (players) have been dreaming of since you first put on your pads. It's your time. Go out and do it." (Rough Quotation) It was then I realized hockey wasn't about obnoxious 50 year olds, it was about the love of the game, the players that will never play again once they graduate from high school. It was the heart put into the countless hours of practice and the 60+ games a season, and now I finally understand. Sometimes you have too look at the simplest form of something understand the true feelings behind it.Maybe its time to change my feelings about water polo...

Oh Canada...

            Over the winter break my family and I went to Vancouver, Canada. I was very curious beforehand on how similar Canada would be to the USA since Vancouver is pretty much on the US-Canadian border, so while I was there I annotated the differences I noticed. The first thing I noticed as I arrived is that instead of policemen walking around the streets and patrolling the area, there are 3rd party security men. Even at the British Columbian Parliament, a government building, there was an independent security firm instead of policemen. The next thing that was different and impressed me a lot was the public transportation system. Their public transit, called TransLink, made it easy to efficiently get across Vancouver. For example, we were able to take a bus to the light rail, and from their we could take a ferry to another bus to get to where we wanted, all on one inexpensive ticket (~$2.50). Their buses also work the same overhead electrical as the light rail, so it is very energy efficient. But the thing about the TransLink that surprised me the most was the cleanliness. Having ridden the CTA many a time, I was stunned that the seats were not stain encrusted and the poles weren't as greasy as a fresh batch of fries. (And you could actually hear what the conductor said over the PA!)
            Here's a shocker, completely following the stereotype Canadians are some of the nicest people I've met. They are genuinely happy to talk to you and welcome you to their country. Even when your in the heart of Vancouver, the people are enthused to help you find your way around and share their favorite restaurants. While they do follow that stereotype, I was shocked when there where very little Canadians who said "Eh." I thought that they used it habitually but I only heard maybe 2 people say it. Supposedly it is frequently used by rural Canadians. As I was there over Christmas, I got to experience Boxing Day. Boxing Day is a national holiday the day after Christmas where shoppers flee to stores at unearthly hours in the morning to get good deals on leftover merchandise. Its sort of their version of Black Friday, except after Christmas.
           Now I'll just rattle off some miscellaneous differences. Canadian bacon is called back bacon (weird huh?), normal bacon is also called bacon. McDonald's serves up double Big Macs, placing 2 patties wherever there are normally one, not even offering a normal Big Mac. The candy Smartees is called Rockettes because Nestle had already trademarked their M&M competitor named Smartees in Canada before Necco brought the American Smartee to Canada. I still don't know what the flashing left turn signal on the traffic lights mean. All the hotels I stayed at (3 different ones) had a dog that resided in the lobby. Sales tax is ridiculously high (~16%). They had weird Pepsi products such as Melon Pineapple Powerade and Gingerale infused with tea. American corporations like to put the maple leaf in their logos of their Canadian branches. SportsCenter, the ESPN news program airs on The Sports Network, or TSN, which is ESPN's Canadian counterpart. They spell their news program SportsCentre. They LOVE hockey. While I was there, the front page story of the national newspaper was the World Junior Hockey Championships 5 of the 10 days. The NBA is second in popularity but even minor league hockey is more popular. College sports aren't really followed by the public or media there. And possibly the most annoying thing is that all of the light switches are on the outside of the room they control, which took a long time to get used to.
           While Canada was very quirky, it was a very fun time and I would highly recommend taking a trip, I know my family can't wait for our return.

Snow: From Amigo to Annoyance

As the snow first fell to the ground a week ago I couldn’t help but shake my head as my younger brother jumped up with joy. It seems as you get older, the less you enjoy snow. Maybe its because of all the responsibility that comes with the snow as you age, but I can remember when I was just like my brother, hoping that it would snow 3 feet. Back in 2000 when we had our blizzard, I played outside for hours on end in the white, fluffy, pure joy that was snow. As a young child, snow is the greatest thing since discovering ice cream. Its soft, mysterious, and formidable like a life sized clay modeling set to let your imagination run wild. But as you age, you tend to view it differently. You have to start shoveling your driveway, salting your sidewalks, driving in haphazard conditions and cranking up your heat. A patch of ice that used to be a fun slip and slide is now just a risk of breaking a bone. But still as I look out the window while doing my essays for English class, I can’t help wish I was like my brother, getting to take full advantage of the joys of the winter season without thinking about the negatives. Hopefully once this season I will be able to clear my schedule and play outside in the snow with my brother to try and recreate the feelings I used to have.

Extreme Makeover: BCS Edition

Critics said this day would come, and it seems like we’re inching closer and closer to a BCS meltdown. After 11 weeks of college football, there are still 4 undefeated teams with only a few games left to play. In case you don’t know what the BCS is, let me (try to) explain. The BCS, or Bowl Championship Series, is a selection system that places the top 10 college football teams in bowl games against each other, with the top two playing for the championship. It was created to make sure the number one team in the nation actually plays the number two team in the nation for the championship, unlike the prior system where the press voted on a national champion after the season. Sounds like a good idea, right? Maybe on paper, but the execution is very quirky and there have been numerous discrepancies over the years with the system. First off, the ranking system itself is very hard to understand and sometimes just makes you scratch your head. The rankings are determined by a computer algorithm that takes into account the media poll, the coaches poll, strength of schedule, and the computer rankings. This produces odd outputs sometimes like earlier this year then #3 Boise State was overtaken by #4 Texas Christian (who won 31-3) after a  48-0 win, despite beating Boise State beating TCU late last season 17-10.  There have also been numerous cases where legitimate contenders have been left out of the championship even tough they have beaten one of the teams in the championship. There are even situations where teams fail to win their own conference and are still selected to play in the championship. And there have been many times where a team can go undefeated in a season and not play in the National Championship, and it looks like this year #3 TCU and #4 Boise State will suffer the fate, again. (Boise State and TCU have gone undefeated in prior seasons and not reached the championship) My opinion? Switch to a playoff system for the top 8 BCS ranked teams. All other levels of football like high school and the NFL seem to use it fine, and it will eliminate most of the controversies. I might not be an expert, but I can tell you this: teams like Boise State and TCU will never be able to prove they deserve a championship until you let them.

NBA: National Boring Association?

Tonight marked the start of the college basketball season, and I for one have watched two more college games than NBA games already and there have only been two college games so far. During the second half of the Rhode Island-Pittsburgh game, I thought about this and seriously pondered why I liked college so much more than the NBA that has bored me all my life. I tried to figure out why but the reasoning seemed to elude me. Was it that the NBA is much faster paced dish-and-dash game that the paced, play running college game? No, it couldn’t be because there are many college teams that run a fast paced offence like Kentucky and Tennessee. Was it that there are more teams in the college game that never gives a repeated game in a season (besides conference)? Could be… but there are really only 50ish teams that TV stations choose to broadcast, which is relatively close to the NBA’s 30. Then I figured it out. The wording was elusive to me but I could finally spit it out. It is the soul, mentality and the passion put into the game, not only by the players but also the fans. Once you actively look for it, it is hard to not notice. For example, tonight featured a game between 25^th ranked Texas and Navy. This was labeled as a sure blowout by Texas tonight, yet Texas’ arena was still packed with fans and there was an atmosphere of a playoff game. How often is there a sold out crowd in the NBA when a pretty good team like Denver plays a bad team like New Jersey? The answer: not very. The NBA also lacks the hustle and effort put in by the players. Countless times I have seen a player go in transition for a layup with all the defenders waiting in the back court for the next possession. The NBA is also a collection of some of the biggest egos in the world. Players often complain about playing time, and the minute they start to sink in the depth chart, they call their agents to get them out of there. In college you see 3^rd string player come in and give 110% for the entire whopping 5 minutes he gets to play a game. Then came the next question in my mind, why? Why is it that college players go all out and leave it all on the court, but when professionals start losing in the game they think about where they’re going to dinner afterwards? I realized that it’s because there is a tomorrow for professional players. With 80+ games in the season, not every game matters. But in college there are only 30, so every game has implication on their postseason future. Also, most college players don’t go onto the NBA, so once their four seasons are over, its all over for them. They’re going to put in as much possible now because that’s all they get.  NBA players play an average of 10+ seasons so they can afford to call one season a failure and give up. My suggestion to the NBA: If you want to win me back, shorten the schedule, get rid of the whiners, and reward effort. This would tap into a large fan base, because I know there are others who feel exactly the same.

Blog Action Day (Remix)

First off, I would like to apologize first because I know I’m a little late to the Blog Action Day party. However I thought I would do a little variant to the topic, which is water accessibility, particularly in 3^rd world nations. Instead I will talk about a different water topic, the stigma of tap water. All of my life I have found the concept of bottled water ridiculous for many reasons. First off it has an astronomical price for something you can get virtually for free. A gallon of bottled water at my local grocery store costs $2.50 (a price similar to gasoline) and a gallon of the local tap water costs about $.05. What exactly are you paying for with that extra $2.45? Most would respond better quality? No, actually bottled water is held to lower standards than tap water. (Note: read more at http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/bw/exesum.asp It is very interesting what the companies hide.) Maybe you’re paying for convenience? I guess you could be, but why not spend $3 on a nice Nalgene and fill it up with tap water? You’ll save a bundle in the long run. In essence, when you buy bottled water you’re paying for their profit, nothing else. It just sickens me that we have perfectly good tap water that other developing nations dream of and we won’t even drink it, and it even more amazes me that the marketing firms for these water companies have some how told a whole nation that they need to buys something they already have. However they did it, I applaud them because I sure don’t think I could do that.

NBA Elite Stumbles in Trasition

Two days ago Electronic Arts Sports was supposed to release NBA Elite 11, the latest title in their long running, lackluster basketball franchise. Consistently critics have bashed EA’s prior NBA Live series for being “unresponsive” and “lacking control of your own players.” This has caused them to lose many sales to rival 2K Games. So earlier this year at E3 (the Electronic Entertainment Expo), EA dropped a bombshell when they announced that they were going to totally revamp the dwindling franchise. They heralded this as the “most realistic basketball game ever” thanks to an all new, fully re-written physics engine that would give you “complete control”, a problem that had plagued the prior installments. They even gave the franchise a new title to try to show that this would be a completely different game. When EA had announced this, I was initially doubtful since their previous games had really flailed in comparison to the 2K series, but after watching the preview video it caught my eye, and I decided to look into it. After researching it on the internet during the summer, I started to get excited about it. It had seemed that EA had fixed all of the problems that constantly popped up in basketball video games. They gave it a new control scheme that was much easier to understand, and they had finally gotten rid of what they call “dice roll shooting”, a system that determines whether you make a shot by chance, with better players having better odds of making the basket. Shooting in the game would now take skill, dividing the good from the lucky. Having lost many a game on lucky shots from half court, this feature really called to me. Overall this game sounded awesome, but I found out that they were releasing a remake of NBA Jam to come bundled free with NBA Elite 11, I was ecstatic. I can remember the countless hours I played that game on the old Super Nintendo system at my Aunt’s cottage as a young child. This had sealed the deal for me; I was going to purchase that game. Early this fall I pre-ordered it, and they told me October 5 it would be ready for pick up. Each week the anticipation constantly built up inside of me, when it got to September I could barely stop thinking about it. And then the call came. It was the Wednesday of the week before the release, September 27^th. I had come home from school delighted to find that the demo for the game had been released and available to download. I promptly initiated the download, but halfway through the phone rang. Caller ID said it was Gamestop. Being the week before the release, and having pre-ordered games before, I knew the drill. It was going to be a pre-recorded message of an overly peppy employee about how my copy will be ready next Tuesday. But when I put the phone up to my ear, half-listening I was stunned. The pre-recorded message was telling me that the game has been indefinitely delayed until at least 2011, with the rah-rah cheerleader voice adding insult to injury. My jaw dropped, and I didn’t believe it, immediately calling Gamestop back. But it was true, and I was stunned (Though my parents would beg to describe my reaction differently). Now it took a while for me to get over this, but I finally did. I realizing that if they can’t even release it by the holidays, then there must be major problems with this game and it is probably for the best that it is delayed. But just when it seemed that I had gotten over there little calendar misjudgment, EA decided to stick some salt in the wound with the announcement that NBA Jam will be released separately next week for an undisclosed price and will no longer be bundled with NBA Elite 11. I found this utterly shifty of them to not reward loyal customers of theirs who had preordered the game and who decided to wait out the lengthy delay while 2K would be released on time. I lost all faith in EA at that point.They have made some mistakes before, but they really dropped the ball on this one. Sources estimate that EA Sports will lose over a million sales (at $70 a piece), and I can tell you now that one of those lost sales will be mine.