Apparently I had a little more company in my own little corner of the digital world then I knew of at the time. I won’t bore you with the details, but suffice to say that Fifty at Fifty is all grown up now, and now goes by the name of “It’s Game Time Somewhere” – a sponsored blog that you can access by surfing over to www.itsgametimesomewhere.com

Hopefully you’ll join us there and track my adventures in Sports Fan-dom as I endeavor to attend 100 uniquely different sporting events involving 50 separate sports — in less than a year. Yes, I am out of my mind. And no, my wife has not kicked me out of the house.

Thanks for visiting, and thanks in advance for becoming an It’s Game Time Somewhere follower.

All the best,

Tim

I was reminded recently of Emily Litella as an interesting Sports Fan topic began to unfold. So it is with deepest apologies to Gilda Radner that I ask, “What’s all this I hear about the NCAA basketball tournament expanding?”

The story first “broke” as I was attending the annual reunion of friends at Kels’ Frog Hollow manor near the banks of the upper Hudson River. Think Woodstock, with round-the-clock basketball instead of music. And much better beer. The sons and step-sons of Ithaca College, circa 1980 gather here each year to catch up on old and new times, make good-natured fun of each other, and revel in the early rounds of March Madness. 

The topic of a potential 96-team tournament was first brought up by game announcers desperate for material during one of the #1 vs. #16 seed blow-out games, and our resident panel of expert analysts were quick to spring to a conclusion. “That’s ridiculous”, we agreed and sent out for another round. It seemed like an open and shut issue. With 96 teams targeted for inclusion in the New! Improved! March Madness, we calculated that if we could come up with a three-point marksman, WE could probably qualify for the tournament. After all, we still had college eligibility left.

Having given it some thought since then however, I am moved to channel my inner Emily Litella and say “Never mind”. Here’s my rationale…

First of all, it’s a done deal. There’s big money on the table, and as very few people actually know, NCAA actually stands for Needs Cash Above All. What they do with the millions in rights fees that they already receive is a mystery, but that’s another topic. So it’s going to happen – the only question is how big the expansion will be. And I’ve thoroughly appreciated the comedic value of watching the talking heads on The Family Of Networks attempt to work out the math as the story unfolded.

I was never a whiz at algebra or trigonometry, but I like to think that I have a pretty good grasp of basic addition, subtraction and percentages, thanks to a lifetime of tracking sports statistics. And in anyone’s SAT study guide, 96 is 150% of 64 and 96-64=32. Which means that a new collection of 32 teams would be added to take up battle with the former low-rent squatters of the tournament’s caste system. For college basketball’s elite programs there would be no impact on post-season play whatsoever. The proletariat known as “every team seeded higher than 32″ would each play just one more game in order to then create the framework of the tourney as it exists today. Simple. And sure enough, that is the scenario that has gradually been spoon-fed to the media over the past several days. But may I add a couple of thoughts?

First, to those that say this means the end of the NIT tournament…well, you’re right. But the NCAA already owns the rights to the NIT, and by extension the souls of its participating teams. Ask any player whether they’d rather take part in a watered-down NCAA or the event that The Bird, in her best Rhode Island honk dismisses as “The Los-ah’s Tournament”. I’m guessing they’d unanimously go for the Big[ger] Dance.

Second, with regard to the quality of play issue, let’s be real.  A huge proportion of those that passionately track the spectacle of March Madness watch hardly any college basketball prior to the tournament. But they do love taking part in NCAA pools – and for all they know or care, William & Mary vs. George Mason is a guy and his girlfriend playing against a talented bricklayer. To these folks, adding another 32 teams to the mix is simply enhancing the fun of betting, much to the horror of purist basketball fans. And who can really argue with them? For my part, the only concern I have is how to get the whole 96-team bracket on one piece of paper without triggering mass blindness.

The thing that does truly trouble me though is the proposed timing of when these extra 32 games would be played. The fledgling schedule that has seeped out of NCAA HQ has the entire 150% larger tournament played within the same three week framework that exists today, with the bulk of what we now know as the First Round played on a Tuesday and Wednesday. This will never do. Can Corporate America absorb yet another two days of productivity freefall each March? And most importantly, what would be the timing impact on our humble Frog Hollow Reunion each year? The ripple effects on annual vacation planning boggle the mind!

So here’s my humble proposal. Expand the tournament to cover FOUR weekends. Maintain the Thursday through Sunday format, inserting a Pre-First Round Weekend (admittedly, there will have to be some work done on branding here). Spread the Economic Impact wealth to an additional four cities, each of which would host eight games. Day/night double-headers on either Thursday & Saturday or Friday & Sunday. OR! Make it a true live basketball bonanza in just two cities, each of which would stage day/night double-headers on all four days. You’d have to beat hoops fans away with sticks!

The beneficial impact of this elegant plan is two-fold. First, although it would make for a tough decision as to which weekend should be chosen, the delicate logistical balance of the annual Frog Hollow Reunion could be maintained.

Second, and perhaps most importantly, pushing back the Final Four by one week would eliminate The Quandary faced each year by this humble Sports Fan:  on the first Monday of April, do I dedicate myself to the NCAA Championship Game or savor every pitch of the Angel’s season opener? I think you would agree that Sophie’s Choice was a lay-up in comparison.

Having grown up in New England, where the date that ”pitchers and catchers report” is a minor holiday, I had always longed to experience Spring Training for myself. As dispatches wafted their way north from exotic places like Winter Haven, Bradenton and Kissimmee I imagined myself sprawled out in sun-kissed splendor with other baseball fans. We’d trade stats and stories, interrupted only by occasional banter with up-and-coming young players working on a dream. It would be blissful.

Later in life I moved to Florida, and actually attended a few Grapefruit League games. There was no bliss. No banter. And only a limited amount of sun-kissed splendor that was not accompanied by either humidity or stiff, chilly winds. There were however, a lot of cranky septuagenarians who were miffed by the increase in tourist traffic. Spring Training lost its allure.

Recently though, the combination of a rainy Los Angeles winter and a budding case of Halo Fever made me decide that it was time to venture back into the fray. The Bird is always up for a road trip involving prickly pear margaritas, and so it was that we headed to Phoenix for a Spring Training weekend.

As we approached Phoenix Municipal Stadium for our game between the Angels and the Oakland A’s, the unmistakable sight of tailgating should have tipped me off – this Cactus League thing is an entirely different species of Spring Training baseball. Smiling faces greeted us in the parking lot and at the front gate. All around us the crowd was upbeat and diverse. It was 74 degrees and brilliantly sunny, with a hint of a breeze. There was a decided hum in the air. This was the Spring Training recruiting brochure that I had conjured up as a snow-bound New Englander.

Although it was technically a home game for the A’s, the crowd consisted of almost as many Angels fans. And tossed into the visual mix was a healthy sprinkling of shirts and hats bearing the logos of the Cubs, the White Sox, the Giants, the Reds…and well, pretty much every team that calls Arizona their Spring Training home. It was like a political convention – without the nasty name-calling.

In conversing with the people that were seated around us we learned that it was tradition in Phoenix for both visitors and residents to try and attend a game at as many different stadiums as possible. Kind of like bar-hopping with a warning track. In fact, we had been befriended in the parking lot by an attractive young woman who had met a group of people at a game in another stadium the day before and was subsequently joining them for today’s game. “Does this stadium have lawn seating?” she asked us. “I don’t know whether to bring my blanket in or not.”

I had purchased our tickets in advance, taking advantage of the low Spring Training prices to secure great seats about twenty rows behind home plate. The only snag was that an overhang above our section destined us to be sheltered from the sun for the entire afternoon. It became necessarily to activate our Voluntary Upgrade Program membership.

The VUP boasts members from all walks of life, and stretches from coast-to-coast and border-to-border. It’s Mission Statement reads simply “To Enhance The Viewing Experience”, and its Vision pictures every VUP member sitting in the best possible unoccupied seat in the house by the end of the game they are attending. Membership is free. The only associated costs are measured in Embarrassment Units, which are accrued when the VUP member discovers that the seat to which they have upgraded is not exactly “unoccupied”. Fittingly, the organization’s logo is a silhouette of an usher with their head turned the other way. 

I have been a card-carrying VUP member for so long I’m sure I must be coming up on Lifetime Achievement status. But on this day in Phoenix I was presented with a conundrum – is it appropriate to activate VUP membership in order to downgrade from box seats (with cup holders, no less!) to aluminum benches? After some consideration we reasoned that sometimes you have to do what you have to do, and despite the risk to our VUP standing we headed out into the sunshine of the cheap seats.

It was like moving into a neighborhood depicted in beer commercials, full of smart and funny people watching sports together. And friendly? If it had been a double-header, Bird and I would have no doubt ended up as somebody’s Godparents. Not only that, but since the A’s bullpen was located an arm’s length from the railing of our adopted section, there were, dare I say…Banter Opportunities. Hell, even the umpires came over to kabitz in between innings!

It was in this idyllic vision from my youth that we reveled for the remainder of the game, joking with newfound friends and listening to the P.A. announcer welcome all of the groups that had chosen to make a day of it at Phoenix Municipal Stadium. A bachelorette party…an office outing…a veteran’s reunion…a get-together of the Phoenix chapter of Red Sox Nation…screeeeeetch. The WHAT?!?

From every corner of the stadium a lengthy chorus of lusty boos rang out, loud enough for even the players on the field to take notice and hide a smile behind their glove. 

Hey, the Cactus League may be laid-back, but we still have our standards of fandom.

I am an American. I absolutely adore baseball. Hot dogs – you bet. Apple pie – check. My very first car? A Chevy Camaro. Three speed stick on the floor. I loved that car. I’ve swelled with pride during the past two weeks as one dedicated American athlete after another has taken the podium to receive their hard-earned medal. So this may come as a shock to you:  I am rooting like hell for Canada to beat the U.S. of A. in tomorrow’s gold medal hockey game.

Are you still there? Anybody? Allow me to explain, and perhaps you’ll understand. Please climb aboard the Way-Back Machine with me, won’t you?

It was February 22, 1980 and I was eating dinner with Doc, Feesh and Kevin in our lavish rental home in the student slum section of Ithaca, NY. And by lavish I mean that almost all of the bedrooms had both heat AND insulation. I’m guessing that we were enjoying cube steaks, Rice a Roni and canned corn – a traditional Friday night feast. While my housemates were still formulating their plans for the evening, I knew exactly what was in store for me. To help cover college costs, I was doing a little bartending at the time and had drawn the short straw, schedule-wise. I had the dreaded 8 PM-to-close shift at the on-campus pub, thus ceding any hopes of memorable revelry to the rest of the boys.

The phone rang and Feesh reached over to answer. “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. No! You’re shitting me!! That’s amazing!!! OK, OK, yeah – thanks for calling me.”  We were intrigued.

“What was that?” asked Doc.

“I can’t tell you. I promised I’d keep it a secret.”

“How about if I do the dishes for you”, ventured Kevin, warming to the task of negotiation. Once a Poly Sci major, always a Poly Sci major.

“Deal”, blurted Feesh.

I became concerned about the security of the country should Feesh ever be captured behind enemy lines and subjected to hostile interrogation. Shrugging it off I asked “So what’s the big news?”

“We beat the Russians”.

Dead, stunned silence.

Keep in mind that this was 1980. Before the iPhone. Before the cell phone. Probably before the portable phone.  Cable television was in its infancy, and ESPN anchors were still wearing those hideous yellow blazers. And the Internet? At the time we were still only 11 years removed from the very first cryptic transmission over the highly experimental ARPANET – I believe it was “Steve Jobs – come here, I want you”.

OK, I made that Steve Jobs part up. But the point is that only 30 years ago, information moved at a comparative crawl. If it wasn’t breaking news on television or radio (back when the phrase “breaking news” actually carried some credibility) it was conveyed person to person. And even more difficult to wrap one’s brain around:  as was customary at the time, every media outlet actually honored ABC’s request to withhold the final score until after they had broadcast the hockey game on tape-delay in prime time.  

Only 8,500 people had actually witnessed the U. S. Olympic hockey team’s monumental upset of the Soviet Union that afternoon. It just so happened that a good friend of Feesh’s father had been in Lake Placid that day. So he knew. And then Feesh’s Dad knew. And now we knew. Hmmmm…What to do with this scoop?

We quickly came to the agreement that it would add a lot more spice to the evening if we did NOT tell anyone what we knew; instead just letting the night unfold and enjoying the reactions of those around us. We made a solemn pact to keep it to ourselves. In Vegas, the over/under on how long Feesh would last was 3 minutes after the opening faceoff.

I headed out to my shift at The Pub wondering how many people I would encounter that had received their own version of Feesh’s Dad’s call. To my surprise, I discovered that either nobody working with me that night had heard, or like me they were guarding the secret.

The game started on The Pub’s two televisions, strategically placed in opposite corners of the room. At first people paid only passing attention. It was a typically boisterous Friday night crowd, and the audio of the telecast was easily drowned out. But when the U.S. scored with one second left in the first period to tie the game at 2-2, people started to take notice. By the time the two teams took the ice for the second period, most people were tracking the game. When the U.S. drew even again 9 minutes into the third period, everyone in the bar was riveted. And I was having a ball. Watching a historic moment unfold in slow motion when you have the advance Cliff Notes in hand is a cool experience. To do it in the ebullient environment of an on-campus bar on a Friday night is truly remarkable.

In the hours that followed Al Michael’s “Do you believe in miracles? YES!” the vibe in the bar was off the charts. Anybody that was there that didn’t get lucky that night subsequently dedicated themselves to a painful evaluation of both hygiene and social skills.  When I left work and headed back downtown to check out some late after-parties I was stunned to find that virtually everyone was not only still up and out, but still in full adrenalin-fueled party mode. Pure energy. Everyone loved everyone. U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A! It’s not enough to say that I’ll never forget that night – it’s virtually etched in stone in the “fondest memories” lobe of the brain.

And that is why I am rooting for Canada to beat the U.S. tomorrow. As I’ve previously explained in this space, in big games I tend to root more for the fans of teams than I do for the actual teams. Over the past two weeks I’ve viewed the pure unadulterated yearning that Canadians have for that hockey gold medal. It is everything to them. And somewhere in Vancouver there is a guy who will be starting his bartending shift tomorrow evening as the Olympians take their warm-up skates. I want him to have the same unforgettable experience that I had – so that 30 years later he will get the same goose bumps that I do every time I see footage of The Miracle On Ice. What do you say – can you give a Sports Fan a pass on this one?

P.S. I took the under on Feesh and won – he spilled his guts before the first puck was dropped.

Right up front I will admit that I don’t really know many of the details about Tiger’s…ahem…”indiscretions”. I’m not a big tabloid guy – I’ve never read the National Inquirer, don’t watch the E! Network, and it wouldn’t cross my mind to surf over to TMZ.com. So when the Tiger story originally broke I didn’t pay much attention. Hell, almost three months into the saga now, I couldn’t tell you the name of a single women involved if my life depended on it. I just didn’t care, much as I don’t care about any of the other “scandals” or scrapes with the law that professional athletes routinely ring up. Perhaps I have an unhealthy lack of curiousity – who knows.

But as time went by I began to realize that this was a much larger issue indeed, and that the sport that for almost a decade has put food on my table was experiencing a major kick to the groin – make that another kick to the groin. I don’t know if there has ever been a more disparate set of bookends to a horrific year for any industry than Barney Frank and Tiger Woods provided in 2009. The former kicked off the year by taking the podium in Congress and pretty much declaring that at the root of the country’s problems was golf – or more specifically golf used as a business tool. Then the latter tied everything up in a nice package by sucker-punching the integrity upon which the entire sport is built – and marketed. It was like all of a sudden Toyota began putting out crappy cars, and…what? What’s that you’re saying? The brakes don’t work? Well now, aren’t we all just going to heck in a handcart, as Woody Boyd used to say from behind the bar at Cheers.

And so it is that I feel compelled to add My Take On Tiger. With apologies to Bill Clinton – it’s my economy, stupid.

Over the years, when it has come up at cocktail parties or on long plane rides that I left a cushy (but boring) six-figure Corporate Job to start over at the bottom of the golf business the questioning has usually gone something like this:

My new friend:  “Are you crazy?”

Me:  “Apparently”

My new friend:  “No seriously, what were you thinking?”

Me:  “Evidently I wasn’t”

My new friend:  “Do you know Tiger Woods?”

Me:  “Nobody knows Tiger”

Prior to last Thanksgiving my response was based on the fact that, while I had often been around Tiger I had never heard him utter a word outside of an obligatory interview – or even make eye contact with anyone outside the ropes, for that matter. During my stint with the PGA Tour, he was well-known for being among the last to check in at tournament Registration each week (typically late in the evening), and his practice rounds almost always began at the first hint of daylight. I had always passed off this behavior as being required in order for The Most Visible Man On The Planet to maintain some semblance of a “normal” life. We now know of course that it was due in some part to the fact that he had things to hide.

So as television ratings plummet and sponsors of ALL golf-related activities waffle on re-upping or entering the fray for the first time, I have to wonder:  Where is the outrage among those of us whose livelihoods are directly impacted  by golf’s new pariah status in the boardroom? OF COURSE he owes us an apology, and OF COURSE it is our business – literally and figuratively.

Tiger Woods carefully cultivated a brand of ultimate integrity, and to a lesser extent arrogance well-earned through hard work, grit and determination. We all took his lead. We built upon the brand with complete confidence in its authenticity.

At one tournament for which I worked I was tasked with soliciting local in-kind sponsorships, i.e. “trade-outs” of goods and services for tickets and hospitality-related perks. In one instance I dealt with the CEO of a regional restaurant chain who was very interested in providing gobs and gobs of food for the tournament’s volunteers in exchange for some up-close and personal Tiger Time. As we went back and forth on finalizing this deal, I had absolute total access to this corporate titan. I kid you not when I say that I was on his speed-dial, and that he would excuse himself from meetings to take my calls. He loved the brand, and I was empowered by the brand. And on it went, as scenarios like this played out for years throughout the golf landscape.

And it was all a lie. A well-crafted lie, supported by an ongoing tag-team cover-up that would have given Woodward and Bernstein pause.

So to those that would say, “It’s a private matter between he and his wife” I say it’s a very public matter between he and my wife, each time I have to tell The Bird that another sponsor has decided to “go in a different direction” with regard to their sports marketing dollars.

So a note to Team Tiger as they embark on recrafting his image:  God help you  – The Bird has an uncanny ability to hold a grudge.

I had journeyed (if ten minutes in moderate traffic qualifies as a “journey”) to Gersten Pavilion on the humble campus of Loyola Marymount University to watch mighty Gonzaga University unleash the attack that had propelled them to Top 10 national status. Sure I had witnessed it on television already this season – only a week before I had watched them roll up 19 points before San Diego could even get on the board. And yes, I could have watched this one from the comfort of my living room as well. But in addition to to my desire to witness hoops wizardry up close, my motivation for taking up residence in the bleachers this night was fueled by curiousity. I wanted to see if the “advances” in media and marketing over the past thirty years had made the game time experience any different than that which made me fall in love with sports in the first place. And if what I was viewing at that moment was any indication, I was most likely headed back to the couch, the HDTV and the Cheesy Poofs.

It was 20 minutes prior to tip-off, and across the court the first fans in the student section were milling around near the railing that separated the stands from media row. Most of the two dozen or so students were dressed in LMU regalia, some outrageously so, as has been de rigueur since Dick Vitale first body surfed through the Cameron Crazies prior to a Duke/Carolina game. It was way beyond old, but pretty benign stuff. And then the handheld TV camera appeared, accompanied by a producer who encouraged the students to go nuts as the camera rolled. Which they did through repeated takes, shifting back and forth on command between idle conversation and full Times Square at Midnight mode. The viewer at home saw a rabid group of fans hungry for a big game to start. I saw 30 people in an otherwise empty section of stands going gaga on cue, hungry to get their face on television. Staged fanaticism. Sigh.

The charade ended soon enough though, and I started to focus on the pre-game rituals that were unfolding. The players gliding through warm-up drills, the fans filling up the stands and greeting each other enthusiastically, the band and the cheerleaders starting to hit their stride. It was nice. It was comfortable. It was vaguely hypnotic and I found myself smiling. This feel, this rhythm hadn’t changed since I was an active part of it. And I have the feeling that long ago when the rhythm was still new to me, it was familiar to a previous generation that sat in the bleachers on those nights taking it all in.

The game began, and as expected, Gonzaga jumped out to an early lead. They were big, they were fast, and they could all shoot 3-pointers like they were lay-ups. Conversely, Loyola Marymount had been out of synch since they stumbled through player introductions prior to the game. Gonzaga by three; Gonzaga by five; by seven; by ten. It was a pretty mesmerizing display, as wave after wave of fresh bodies came off the Gonzaga bench with no discernable drop-off in talent. In fact, their substitution pattern struck me as a little too brisk. Players were in and right back out, having spent only a minute or two on the court. As time went by their cadence started to get a little sluggish – shots started hitting rim instead of net. And LMU sensed opportunity.

A hustle basket here, a circus shot there, a tightening of the screws on defense. LMU began to claw back into the game, and by halftime they were down just three. As the teams exited the floor for the break, a ripple of an idea began to swell. Perhaps on this night Gonzaga could be beaten? And if there was any doubt whatsoever that something odd was afoot, it was dismissed during the halftime festivities.

I’m sure you know the drill. A fan is chosen at random from the crowd to take part in a contest on the court. Something ostensibly achievable, but the combination of nerves and lack of skill always results in “Ooohhh, nice try! Let’s give our contestant a nice big round of applause”. On this night the fan had to make four shots from progressively further distances. The lay-up was solid, but the foul shot banked in. Never a good sign. Then the top-of-the-key shot also banked in. What are the odds? So I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when the half-court heave hit nothing but net. What the hell was going on here?

LMU came out of the locker room like men possessed. They got every defensive rebound, every loose ball. They got confident. And Gonzaga started to clang shots with regularity. The tide was turning, and when a driving lay-up put LMU up five with 13:20 remaining, Gonzaga called timeout to try and squelch the upset fever that was sweeping throughout the gym. It didn’t work.

With 4:23 left in the game LMU had a ten point lead, and we reached that point in an athletic contest when a huge upset is right there for the taking – as long as the underdog continues playing to win, instead of playing Not To Lose. It was painful to watch. LMU got tentative and Gonzaga got aggressive. In little more than a minute the lead was down to four. On its next possession LMU scrambled just to get a shot off before the 35-second clock expired – and with just one tick left Gonzaga deflected the ball out of bounds. One second to get the ball in, hoist up some kind of shot and hope for the rebound. Pretty long odds, given the circumstances. So it was understandable that the place went absolutely bonkers when an acrobatic shot off the inbounds pass…actually went in.

Now it was just down to foul shots, and bless their hearts, LMU made each and every one of them down the stretch. As the last few seconds ticked off the clock, delirium reigned. And when the final horn sounded, pure unabashed joy as the stands emptied in a torrent onto the floor. I could see people hugging and mouthing “Can you believe this?” to each other amidst the pandemonium. Others were taking cell-phone pictures of the scoreboard to preserve for posterity. For the first time in the 29-year history of Gersten Pavilion, the LMU Lions had beaten a nationally ranked team at home – a Top 10 team no less!

The irony did not escape me. Only two hours before I had witnessed completely staged fanaticism which made a sleepy environment seem frenzied on television. And now I knew that there was no way that television could effectively capture the euphoria that spread itself out before me. It was real, it was authentic, and it was just what I was looking for.

I am officially all in on this live sports stuff.

Truth be told, the decision pretty much made itself when the perfect storm of opportunity presented itself the other day.  Of all the sports that I love to follow, college basketball has a special place in my heart and in the creases of the brain where life experiences are preserved long after you’ve started forgetting what you had for breakfast that morning. You see, sometime in between the reigns of King Tut and Alexander the Great I actually played college basketball, albeit not very well. The Bird in fact thinks that the cause of my chronically sore knees is the pounding that they took from repeated trips up and down the court. I don’t have the heart to tell her that more likely it was the wear and tear from repeatedly rising from the bench and then sitting back down at the conclusion of each timeout. But I digress.

As a big fan of college basketball, I noted with interest that Gonzaga, the #9 team in the country, would soon be heading down the coast to play the southern swing of its West Coast Conference road schedule. Which meant that they would be visiting Loyola Marymount. Imagine that - a Top 10 team in my backyard. I wouldn’t even have to get on a freeway to see them. In fact, I could be on the LMU campus in just three turns once I pulled out of my garage. I had no earthly reason NOT to go.

And so it was that I wandered into the 4,156 seat Gersten Pavilion and found a comfortable vantage point in the wooden bleachers, well in advance of tip-off. Now I hadn’t been in a campus gym in a long, long time (Syracuse’s Carrier Dome doesn’t really count, since its cavernous size enables it to routinely house most of Central New York). But I was struck by how wonderfully familiar it seemed. All of the pre-game sights, sounds and smells were no different than they were back in the day. I even started to feel pre-game butterflies as a purely reflexive reaction.

As I looked around, it reminded me that this place had some significant history of its own. Back in 1980 a young coach named Paul Westhead had led the L.A. Lakers and their rookie guard Earvin “Magic” Johnson to an NBA title. He then succeeded to systematically alienate the entire team to such an extent that he was ousted in a mid-season coup, opening the door for an interim head coach with no previous experience. Guy by the name of Pat Riley. Perhaps you’ve heard of him. It’s too bad my friend Molly The Organizational Development Guru wasn’t around at the time to save Westhead from himself.

Apparently born with a miserable sense of timing, Westhead moved on to the Chicago Bulls where he managed to accrue just 24 wins before being asked to leave. It was that dark time in Chicago just preceeding the arrival of a skinny kid from North Carolina. Guy by the name of Michael Jordan. Perhaps you’ve heard of him.

After flopping around basketball for a few more seasons, Westhead returned to Los Angeles and landed at Loyola Marymount, where from 1985-1990 his small-school team rose to national prominence with a run-and-gun style that virtually ignored the concept of playing traditional defense.  At the height of this era, Westhead enticed star USC players Bo Kimble and Hank Gathers into transferring across town, and tiny Gersten Pavilion became the place to be in L.A. For a time even the mighty UCLA took a back seat in SoCal college hoops to LMU. And then tragedy struck.

Well on their way to a third straight NCAA tournament appearance, LMU was comfortably leading a West Coast Conference tournament game when Gathers scored on an alley-oop dunk, turned to head up court, and suddenly fell to the ground. Dead of a massive heart attack. 

In one of the most stirring two-week spans of college basketball history, LMU dedicated its NCAA tournament to their fallen star and proceeded to knock off New Mexico State, defending national champion Michigan (by 34 points, no less), and Alabama before falling to eventual tournament champion UNLV. Gather’s co-star of that team, Bo Kimble, honored his best friend in each of those games by shooting his first foul shot left-handed, as Gathers had done once while trying to break out of a foul-shooting slump. Kimble made each of those three shots in the team’s run to the Elite Eight. It was the farthest that Loyola Marymount would ever advance in the Madness of March.

My visit to Gersten took place almost 20 years to the day that Hank Gathers died, and his presence could still be felt everywhere – from the large “Hank’s House” sign on the wall to the replica #44 jerseys that the cheerleaders, band and pep squad wore. In one of the on-court contests that ran during a time out, the winning fan was thrilled to receive a piece of twine from the net cut down after one of those historic NCAA wins in 1990.

But here’s the thing – in spite of all of that history and all of those big wins, Loyola Marymount had never beaten a ranked team in the 29 years since Gersten Pavilion first opened its doors. And as I watched both teams warm up, I couldn’t help noticing how small LMU looked in comparison to Gonzaga, the #9 team in the nation.

To Be Continued…

Back in the day, I first got hooked on starting my day with SportsCenter because I wanted, make that needed to get scores and highlights of the previous night’s games. No Virginia, there wasn’t always an Internet. It used to be that SportsCenter was chock full of scores and highlights, and the Rosetta Stone of the genre was “The Big Show”. To blunt the impact of each Monday morning, Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann gave us 90 freakin’ minutes of highlights interspersed with truly clever, often downright hilarious commentary. For us old-timers this was pure bliss, for the ”The Big Show” served as a welcome respite to our normal routine of dodging dinosaurs and contemplating uses for that new “wheel” thing-y.

I got to thinking about this the other morning when I turned on SportsCenter and was greeted with a segment on the “Top 10 Developing Stories for the NFL in 2010″. Earlier in the week we’d had the obligatory saturation coverage of the Super Bowl and its aftermath, and the previous day we’d been treated to highlights of the Saints victory celebration in New Orleans. There was nothing more to say. Honestly.

Now I know the weather’s been bad in the Northeast lately, and communication lines may have been down. So in the spirit of public service I offer this gentle reminder to the folks in Bristol:  THE FOOTBALL SEASON IS OVER!!! Give it a break. Relax. Take some time off. Tony Kornheiser, you can finally check into getting that “I Heart the NFL” tattoo you’ve been craving. Mel Kiper, let your hair go natural for a couple of days while considering this – if you spent the same amount of time tracking the daily activities of female collegiate athletes that you invest in male collegians you’d have a host of restraining orders sworn out against you by now. Mark Schlereth and John Clayton, this is going to come as a shock to you – there is no such thing as a “breaking story” about a sport that won’t see its first day of practice for months. And to all of you I say from the bottom of my heart…I truly don’t care in February if Brett Favre is coming back to play in September!

With that out of my system I turned to the Lead Stories of the day. Rick Pitino denies interest in Nets job (meaning of course he’ll sign with them as soon as his season is over). Lindsay Vonn’s shin injury prognosis. A preview of the NBA Slam Dunk Contest, replete with expert analysis from every conceivable perspective. And of course, breathless reporting on Danica Mania as her NASCAR debut draws near. Evidently there were no actual sporting contests played the previous day. 

But then the clouds parted and miraculously footage emerged of a real, actual game. And what a game it was – a quadruple overtime women’s basketball contest between Utah and TCU, featuring one of the greatest buzzer-beating, game-tying 3-point heaves I’ve ever seen (by Utah’s Kalee Whipple). It was pure highlight magic, worthy of “The Big Show” in its hey-day. I wanted more.

I clicked over to ESPN2. Nothing but talking heads – Jay, Dana, Skip, Guest Debater Whose Name I Did Not Recognize. At one point the talking heads were engaged in serious discussion about…other talking heads. Click.

ESPN Classic. Cue Beethoven for his “Ode to Joy” – I was greeted with an actual game in progress. Unfortunately however that game had originally been played some time ago, and I already knew the ending.

“How about ESPNU?” I thought. “That channel was supposed to have been created specifically to cover college games!” Click. And there, much to my dismay was a simulcast of an ESPN Radio show hosted by The Entitled One.

I had been vaguely aware of the existence of The Entitled One for some time. Occasionally during the middle-of-the-weekday dead spot in programming I had caught bits of his show on the car radio. He was nothing special to listen to, and his material never struck me as very original. What he has in spades however, is smugness – hey, he has his own ESPN Radio show, and we…do not. Does that not put him on par with the elite athletes that he discusses?

What put me over the edge into Full Boycott Mode though was a show of his that I caught last October (again while in the car).  The Entitled One was in the midst of a rant about how, given the dispersal of broadcast rights, it was hard to find the MLB playoffs on television. He freely admitted that he had seen only a few innings of the recently concluded Angels/Red Sox ALDS series, and “not a second” of the Colorado Rockies NLDS series against the defending National League champion Phillies. And he capped off his diatribe by saying, “Hey, I have a social life!” I almost drove off the road.

Over the years I’ve had the pleasure of meeting and working with a great number of people just starting out in their careers as sports journalists and sports management professionals. Their stories are all different, but they share the same common bond – they would kill for a job like the one held by The Entitled One. I know for a fact that there are literally thousands of people capable of doing his job who would not consider it an imposition on their time to look up a listing for a game – and then watch it from beginning to end, social life be damned.

I say all of this because I fear that the lunatics have taken over the asylum in the sports biz, much to the detriment of the Sports Fan. And in the spirit of full disclosure I will admit to some culpability in this evolution myself. Ten years removed from the time that I crawled into the belly of the beast of this industry, I honestly can’t say whether or not I still get the same charge out of simply watching the games.

But I do know this – I need to find the answer to that question.

“Of course we can do that!” I heard Cynthia say, by which she meant, ”I haven’t the slightest idea where this request is coming from, and it’s really screwing up my schedule – but I suppose it’s remotely feasible if I give up yet another hour of sleep.”

To which The Client responded with a broad smile, ”Whatever was processing in your mind, I love what came out of your mouth.” Laughter ensued throughout the small cluster of people privy to the exchange. Laughter because everyone knew exactly what had been processing in Cynthia’s head, laughter at the cleverness of The Client in restoring good nature to the conversation, and laughter because it was a rock-solid lock that Cynthia was going to get it done.

And there in perfect microcosm form is the life of the Event Warrior.

We were standing at the time in the middle of a combination football stadium, concert venue and high-end celebrity lounge. That in itself is not overly remarkable in the events biz, but the fact that this 5,000+ capacity structure was in the process of rising up literally out of the sand of Miami’s South Beach made the whole thing a little…well, non-standard, at the very least. And that was why Classic Party Rentals was there.

If the name Classic Party Rentals inspires visions of cardboard hats secured under chins by grey rubber-bands and a big inflatable bounce house full of sugar-crazed kids, well you couldn’t be further off the mark. If alternatively the name conjures up elegant courtyard weddings, your thoughts are much more on track – but only partially inclusive. If, however, you also envision the Kentucky Derby, the U.S. Tennis Open, the Academy Awards and the Lollapalooza Music Festival…well now you’re cooking. To quote Ray Romano’s character in the new TNT show Men Of A Certain Age, Classic Party Rentals is ”more than just balloons, you know”.

In fact, Classic Party Rentals is kind of like the Northwestern Mutual of the hospitality and entertainment world. If you’ve ever attended a high-profile event at a venue that’s been custom-built from the ground up, chances are your experience has been shaped by CPR. They are quite simply the invisible 800 pound gorilla of the events business. So for a Sports Fan such as yours truly, when the invitation came to ride silent shotgun on the recent build-out of several Super Bowl week event venues…well suffice to say I couldn’t get to Miami fast enough.

Which brings me back to South Beach, Cynthia, and the rest of the Event Warriors. I was shadowing Philip, one of my CPR hosts, as he took part in a site walk-through. The “instant stadium” was just one of four different site builds that he was managing on behalf of multiple clients, and despite the near-constant curveballs thrown his way, he maintained an aura of bemused calm – well, either bemused calm or severe sleep deprivation. Whichever it was, things were progressing more or less according to the detailed plans that he had been putting in place for months. And they had to, because at the stike of noon on Saturday the show had to go on. If he wasn’t ready until 12:05…well there’s no way around it – he would have failed. Such is the life of the Event Warrior.

Philip and Michael, my other CPR host on this visit, are kindred spirits of mine in that each of us has “held the clipboard”, done the last-minute scramble, cajoled the client and somehow or another pulled everything together in time to meet a concrete-hard deadline time for tee-off, kick-off, tip-off and pretty much every other iteration of “starting time” you may want to add. And then when the last participant or spectator has headed for home with a smile on their face, we’ve “taken it all down and evaporated” as Michael succinctly puts it. If somewhere in the back of your mind Jackson Browne’s “The Load-Out/Stay” is starting to play I know you’re with me.

Event production is a lifestyle for which people are either ideally suited…or suited not at all. Lots of travel. Long hours. Tons of pressure. And although you are intimately involved in making world-class entertainment happen, you rarely see any of the event that you are there to produce. There is virtually no public recognition of your work, and very little glamour.

But there are the people you work with. Smart, creative people. Fun people who love to laugh when they work. People that you can count on to deliver; no questions asked, no matter what. On an event site, everyone has a specialty or special assignment, but when push comes to shove…well, everyone pushes and shoves together. Often times quite literally.

In fact, getting a venue ready for a competition is very much like being part of a competition in and of itself. Getting everything done just right, on time vs. immovable deadlines, and often within a rapidly changing operating environment – that’s the equivalent of winning the actual game you’re there to stage! Cameraderie naturally inhabits the DNA of the Event Warrior, and the resulting sense of teamwork that pervades each production site makes for very satisfying work  - assuming of course you don’t lose your mind in the process.

Toward the end of my visit, I asked Michael what he would do for a living if he couldn’t work in events. The subsequent stare and “blink, blink” would’ve done Homer Simpson proud. “I never really thought about it”, he said after a bit. “Maybe work for a charity?”

“Oh, won’t you stay, just a little bit longer. We wanna play, just a little bit longer…”

I’m sprinting up and down a crowded sidewalk on a Saturday afternoon in the dead of winter, dodging the likes of Marilyn Monroe (looking as lovely as ever, btw), Captain Jack Sparrow, Darth Vader and The Joker  – as well as the phalanx of admirers that surround each of them. I’ve been doing this kind of thing all over the city for almost three hours now, and I’m sure my heart rate is hovering in the “Maybe You Should Rethink This” zone, but I’m lost in the hot pursuit of precious information that will lead to…well, I’m not exactly sure what’s at stake. All I know is that I want to win. And I wonder “Where else in the world would my current sweatball status and bizarre behavior raise not a single eyebrow among the people I’m trying desparately not to run over?” I love L.A.

More specifically, I love The Amazing L.A. Race, which has inspired 50 or so other maniacs on this day to do what I’m doing. So I’m not alone in my lunacy. In fact, I have five teammates:  a filmmaker, a professional golfer, an Organizational Development guru, a medical instruments company exec, and an action sports event manager. We range in age from 23 (the pro golfer) to 50 (yours truly), and are split evenly across gender lines. It shouldn’t surprise you to learn that our team is called Mixed Bag. But let me go back to the beginning…

Long before CBS struck ratings gold with “The Amazing Race”, and long before the phrase “reality television” had even become a twinkle in “Survivor” producer Mark Burnett’s eye, there was BARF – the Bay Area Race Fantastique, which in turn can trace its genealogy to the mother of all urban scavanger hunt marathons, The Game. Begun in 1973, The Game became legendary as an underground multi-day mental and physical competition that covered hundreds of square miles of constant motion and puzzle-solving. A slightly less apocalyptic version of The Game, BARF was created in 1985 by a group of Stanford students, some of whom through natural West Coast migratory patterns brought the concept with them to SoCal. No LARF-ing matter (sorry, I couldn’t resist), the parent organization of  The Amazing L.A. Race is run by Larry Toffler and Bob Gloverman, who have shortened the race a bit and added all of the elements that make it a blast for virtually any adult willing to spend half a day dashing around L.A. in search of clues that will unlock the mysteries of the city. 

And so it was that 12 teams of people of various walks of life gathered on a cool sun-splashed Saturday morning at the Hollywood Bowl. Since some members of our team were meeting for the first time, we felt the need for a quick round-robin cleansing session in which we revealed what we felt might be any weaknesses that the team would have to pull together to overcome. I copped to bad knees that precluded long distance running and my better half The Bird admitted that she could get lost in a long hallway with no doors. Molly asked “Is a hangover a weakness?” We mulled that over, and deciding that it wasn’t, turned our attention to sizing up the competition.

Some teams had matching shirts or similar apparel – one charming woman named Robin had made sequined ballcaps for her team. OK, so they had us on preparation. Some teams were made up primarily of young athletic types. Others bore boastful names like “Defending Champs”, even though it was their first time in the event. OK, so they had us on creativity. We did however, have two secret weapons. The first was our spiritual mentor, Lloyd from “Dumb and Dumber”, who when told by Mary that he had a one in a million chance of ending up with her responded “So you’re telling me there’s a chance…”. Our second secret weapon?  To a person, Team Mixed Bag hates to lose.

And so, at exactly 11:28 AM, following a thorough and humorous briefing from Larry on the rules and regs (the “no sabotage” statute was particularly unpopular), Team Mixed Bag sprinted off toward our first destination – without the slightest hint of a plan of attack. It was like a class full of overachieving kindergarteners let loose on an unsuspecting playground. We didn’t know exactly what we were doing, but we were doing it with gusto.

It was then that a wonderful thing happened, something that I submit to you only happens in its purest form during team competitions. We just naturally meshed. Our communication patterns fell into automatic synch. We each subconsciously put forth our particular strengths when called for and stepped back to let others lead when their particular strengths were in play.  And we hustled. Nobody wanted to be the weak link in terms of keeping up. Remember my previous mention of knee problems and difficulty running? On this day I was magically cured (the next day…well that’s a different story).

We arrived at the finish line exactly 2 hours and 59 minutes after we had started. Bob was there to greet us  – and while it may have been my imagination, I think he was startled to see us so soon. We were told that we had missed setting the course record by just 17 minutes, but that might have fallen under the category of ”I bet you say that to all the winners”. Multiple hugs and high fives ensued all around, followed by a beer (or two) to fuel the animated discussion of how we could have shaved 18 minutes off our time.

As each team finished, they were met with a rousing ovation from those that had preceded them to the finish line, and classy displays of congratulations flowed freely. I won’t reveal what our hard-won prize was, but suffice to say I won’t be needing to rearrange the contents of my safety deposit box to clear space. I will tell you though, that my prize is prominently displayed in my office as a reminder of the fact that even old guys can still generate enough adrenaline to compete and win. And that was worth several times the registration fee – just don’t tell that to Bob or Larry. 

So what did Team Mixed Bag do after the awards ceremony? Bowling – mixed pairs, penny a pin. What else?