New Thing #330: Coaching The Boys

One of the New Things I don't think I ever wrote about (I'm keeping track, but this may have come up somewhere else in a different context…I don't think it did) is the fact that I didn't coach a team in 2013. It's been one of the highlights of my school year - coaching the girls' basketball team in the winter months.

But the major project I undertook last year prevented me from doing anything extra-curricular…besides the project itself.

So I gave up coaching for the year, under no realistic belief that I'd get the same team back this year.

I didn't.

This year, I'll be coaching a boys team.

The season picks up after Thanksgiving break, so I don't know how it will all shake out yet.

But it's new - for seven years I coached girls' basketball.

I coached some 5th and 6th grade boys' basketball almost ten years ago, and I've coached co-ed cross-country teams, but I've not coached a boys' basketball team.

It may turn out to be no different than coaching girls - I don't know.

It just feels different.

I've watched some of the boys' games in the past - they're faster-paced, and there are more points scored.

So I know that will be different.

But at this point there are a lot of unknowns.

Except that I do know this - I'm looking forward to coaching again.

New Thing #319: FOX Sports Live

Ever since it debuted in August I was interested in checking out the new FOX Sports channel, FOX Sports One, and its flagship show, FOX Sports Live. (I always write the network FOX with all capitals, and I'm sure I could get away with doing it as upper-and-lowercase. Also, I think it's a flagship show. Not sure if that's the proper term. I'm just throwing that out there now before you all bombard me with mail critiquing me on those points.)

Anyway, the channel itself is never in my rotation when I'm switching around, and the show is on too late for me to stay up and watch.

So this week I made an effort to check it out - I DVR'ed a week's worth of shows to see what FOX Sports Live was all about.

I'll be honest - the big draw for me with this show is the duo of Jay Onrait and Dan O'Toole, who anchor the highlight desk (again, I'm going with my best guess on what to use for a title here). Onrait and O'Toole are Canadians who have reportedly been a huge success north of the border and were brought to this show to generate interest.

I thought they were the show's anchors, but I was surprised to see that it started on Monday with Charissa Thompson (a FOX personality who I feel like has been with the network in some form or another for a while) reading the intro and then the camera comes to Thompson's panel, consisting of Donovan McNabb, Andy Roddick, Gary Payton, and Kirk Morrison.

(That's a huge turnoff for me - I've found I enjoy sports a lot more without all of the talking head panels - I never watch NFL pre-game shows on Sundays anymore and I'm much happier. But I guess there are people out there who love them, since that's all they put on these days. So maybe I'm in the minority.)

I guess as a male somewhere near the demographic FOX is shooting for (OK. I'm too old for their demographic these days probably), I should be a fan of them using the attractive woman to start the show…but I'm really watching to see Onrait and O'Toole.

Maybe it's a carryover from my early SportsCenter days (when I was smack dab in the demographic ESPN was shooting for with the Dan Patrick-Keith Olbermann SporsCenter), but I wanted to see the personalities I had heard so much about to see if they measured up to what I remembered enjoying so much.

And I really enjoyed Onrait and O'Toole.

I liked the fun they had - on Monday they played 'NFL Quarterback or Character on FOX's Almost Human' in a segment called 'Case of the Mondays'. But I thought a little bit of the fun crossed a line.

When they reported about Steven Stamkos breaking his leg in a game against the Bruins on Monday, they gave a glowing lead-in about Stamkos' great start to the season, and the whole time the words "Unfortunate Foreshadowing" flashed on the screen.  I'm not sure that was entirely appropriate.

It's been a while since I watched a SportsCenter-type show in its entirety, so I'm not sure what the going rate is for an A-Block (that's the first segment of the show before you see a commercial), but I liked how the first segment of each show was almost 20 minutes. That seemed long. (Unnecessarily long on Wednesday, where the show came on aftter Ultimate Fighting and most of the first section was devoted to that sport.)

What I liked the best was the way they end the show - The 'Best Person In Sports', a not-so-veiled take on Keith Olbermann's 'Worst Person…' ending. It's a really positive ending, always highlighting something good in sports. Onrait and O'Toole themselves deserve a 'Best Person' nod - they're growing out mustaches on the air to raise 'Movember' awareness.

Tuesday and Wednesday they analyzed each other's mustache progress and took good-natured shots at one another in the process. Wednesday they spent 15-20 seconds of a story just admiring Andy Reid's mustache. (Or 'Lip Sweater', as they called it.)

A positive social statement, having fun all the while? That's the kind of sports I like.

I don't like all things FOX, but I like Jay Onrait and Dan O'Toole.

I think I'm a fan of FOX Sports Live.

New Thing #313: The Schedule Makers

I was sitting at my daughter's dance class Saturday morning, trying to entertain my 2-and-a-half-year old, hoping to come across a New Thing. She started to tie and untie my shoes, leaving me with the perfect 15-minute window to check Twitter on my phone.

Lo and behold, Buster Olney tweeted out a link to a 30-For-30 Short called The Schedule Makers.

I had today's New Thing.

I haven't watched very many of the ESPN '30 For 30' series…but obviously, they've been critically acclaimed, and the ones I've seen have been good. (The one that stands out the most is the one about Reggie Miller and the Knicks, but I think I've seen a couple of others.)

This one is about Henry and Holly Stephenson, the couple from Martha's Vineyard who created the Major League Baseball schedule from 1982-2004.

A couple of things about this story enticed me:

• It was a short - it runs 12 minutes, 25 seconds, so I was able to watch it sitting there on the floor of Dancer's Workshop, while my daughter untied my shoes. (I said before 'tie and untie', but that's wrong - she didn't tie my shoes at all.) (Also parenthetically, this was also a New Thing - rarely do I open up videos if I'm not on wireless, but this thing came across the network pretty well - no stops and starts.)
• Because of the local aspect of the Stephensons, I had heard about them before. It always boggled my mind that the entire Major League Baseball schedule was created from a home on Martha's Vineyard, at least as far as the annual brief mentions in the baseball column in the Boston Globe went. I think, if I remember correctly, after they stopped making the schedules, there was some kind of profile in the Globe, but that was at least 8 years ago. I'm not even sure if I read it or I just knew it happened. Or maybe I'm completely wrong.
• It's not exactly in my wheelhouse as far as how my brain works, but I always was intrigued by the idea that the schedule had to be created. Given a week or something like that where I could singularly focus on it, I would love the challenge of scheduling 162 games for 30 teams.

The short doesn't get into the process a ton, but I liked hearing about the quirks that need to be considered when making the schedule: Baltimore likes to open at home, Seattle likes to be on the road for Seafarers' Week, other teams like to be home for certain events, Boston has to be home for Patriots' Day, and the Stephensons kind of laughed at all of the events scheduled in New York that needed to be taken into consideration.

I liked this picture they showed of the schedule sketch:

The teams are listed across the top, and the dates are down the side, and the numbers correspond to the opponent. That seems like something I could do.

One thing I know I would do differently - Holly Stephenson uses those pencils that are kind of mechanical but aren't really - they're yellow, they have the adjustable lead that comes out of the tip - but I've never loved those pencils. I've tried them - whenever I used them they had terrible erasers, and they broke easily. She also uses them when she does her New York Times crosswords, which they showed - she's a big puzzler. I always use a pen. I couldn't imagine using one of those pencils on the magazine paper.

I don't know that I would care enough to watch a documentary - no matter how short - on how schedules were made for other sports.

But there's something about the Major League Baseball schedule and Henry and Holly's long involvement in its creation that really piques my interest.

Clearly, based on this short, I'm not alone.

And, if anyone cares, I'd give it more than 12:25 if a longer documentary was ever made.

New Thing #309: Skipping A Week

If I get my Sports Illustrated on Saturday, that means it's late.  Usually it'll come on Thursday, and if it doesn't come until Saturday, well, that means I have a lot of reading to do in fewer days to make sure I'm done with it before the next issue comes.

And this week, I got the Sports Illustrated NBA Preview on Saturday.

Which is a problem, because it's a thick edition of the magazine. That's too short of a turnaround for me.

The other problem?

I was supposed to get this edition of the magazine a week ago.

Now, I don't particularly love the NBA Preview magazine. It's been a while since I cared a whole lot about the NBA, and this edition of Sports Illustrated is a whole lot of  information about something for which I do not care all that much anymore.

But, here's a little quirk of mine: I must read every word in every Sports Illustrated.

Not just Sports Illustrated - any magazine to which I subscribe. (I used to get TIME. The combination of needing to read every word in that and SI got to me. SI won. I unsubscribed from TIME.)

The magazines that come with the Sunday newspapers are exempt from this rule…but the articles which I do read regularly in those magazines need to be read through before I recycle them….in case you were wondering.

Anyway, this SI situation (SItuation?) presents my quirkiness with a big problem. Do I read through the NBA Preview magazine and possibly upset my Sports Illustrated reading pattern for weeks? Or do I break one of my unwritten rules? (You're surprised my rules aren't written down, aren't you?)

Silver Lining! The best part about this situation is that I have a use now for my friend Justin's Sports Illustrated Review. Every week (well, most every week. I am on top of it, and he's missed a couple in the past couple of months.) Justin writes about that week's edition of Sports Illustrated - what's worth reading, his reaction to the articles, and what's not worth your time.

I love these reviews. Absolutely love them. But I've never had any use for them as reviews - I just read them for entertainment.

Except for this week. I'll go through what Justin wrote and see if there's anything worth checking out before I give up on the NBA Preview. I think his opinions gel very closely with mine…so this should work just fine.

For your information - you should check out Justin's reviews each week - he's a funny writer. They're at Sports Crackle Pop!

As for me - let's just say I hope I don't have to rely on another one of his reviews anytime soon.

I'll need a while to recover mentally from not reading the whole NBA Preview.

New Thing #289: McHale's Bar & Grill

When I planned my Sunday in New York to watch football, there were a couple of parameters we needed to work around: -The place we went to had to be near 53rd Street and Avenue of the Americas, which is where the bus drop off and pick up happened

-The Jets game would need to be featured prominently, with the rest of the football games available to watch

-The place needed to be relatively affordable.

I thought we'd be drowning in choices in that section of midtown.

But when I got off the bus, it took longer to find an appropriate place than I expected.

Finally, I found McHale's Bar & Grill.

My brother gave me some good advice - he didn't have a specific place to recommend, but he did say I'd fare better heading down towards 8th or 9th Avenue rather than spots close to Times Square.

So, getting off the bus with as much time to spare as I had on Sunday, I was able to scout the area for a place.

I popped into a couple of places around 10am, as the staff was getting ready for the day. It was one thing, I discovered, for them to offer the Sunday Ticket...and another to see for myself whether or not they had enough TVs to show the games. McHale's came as close as anything to offering what I was expecting in my mind. (And, I realized later, New York City - well, Manhattan at least - is not well suited for a large TV screen layout. Most of these places go up, rather than out, meaning their multiple TVs are spread out among multiple floors.)

McHale's is on 51st Street, right off 8th Avenue. Downstairs there's a bar with a few TVs. Upstairs is another bar with a larger selection of screens, including a big screen they lowered from the ceiling to show the Jets.

Turns out, it's a popular spot for lunch for the matinee-going Broadway crowd. (The Gershwin, where Wicked plays, is right across the street.) But that didn't interfere with our game-watching experience. We had the Jets on the big screen and one of the TVs behind the bar, with the Browns-Lions game on another TV and the Eagles-Buccaneers game on another. (There's also a back room where the Packers and Vikings games were on, but they were out of our sight in the other room.)

It wasn't all of the games simultaneously like I was dreaming of, but like I said yesterday, that probably allowed me to be more social with my friends, which is a good thing. (And a lot of Sunday's games didn't go my way...so it's better I was only seeing the occasional score on the crawl rather than watching them fall apart play by play.)

The food was OK...not great. (The highlight was a brussels sprouts with bacon appetizer.) The beer selection was fine.

But the best thing about our day was the fact that we could stay there for seven hours and not once did I feel guilty about taking up a table or the need to move on. (Part of this was due to a somewhat inattentive waitstaff. But that was OK with me on Sunday.) When I tried to find places in Boston where I could watch the Jets (before football on my phone!) I always worried about taking away a prime viewing spot or a television the bar wanted to use for a different game.

And I know I shouldn't feel that way, but certain places ended up making me feel that way.

To its credit...that never happened on Sunday at McHale's.

New Thing #282: Watching A Stadium Changeover

I know this is a little late by now, but you know how I love ballparks - I have to write about this. On Saturday night, the A's played a playoff baseball game at the stadium they share with the Raiders.

Because it requires 24 hours for the stadium to be changed from baseball into football, the Raiders game on Sunday was moved from a 4pm eastern start to 11:35 that night.

Everything went off without a hitch, with both teams picking up wins to boot.

But the stadium changeover is by far the most fascinating part of this story for me.

When I was a kid and I went to Shea Stadium to see the Mets with my dad, he would always explain to me how the stadium would be transformed for a Jets game. And I never understood it. I just could not wrap my head around it.

Because the orange seats - the lowest level - would apparently swing out, and I just never could figure out where exactly they went and how far they swung. My mind just doesn't work that way.

This video is the closest I'll come to being able to envision what that Shea Stadium football setup looked like - although I think the setup in Oakland is different, because I think the end zone at Shea went from home plate to center field. (I'm not 100% sure about that, though.)

I've seen plenty of the hockey to basketball changeovers - I've even seen baseball to hockey changeovers with the advent of the Winter Classic games - this is really the first time I've watched a baseball to football change.

There's so much to watch - I've watched it a few times. I'm shocked to see cranes involved. (And those stands they're assembling in center field don't look all that sturdy to me, if we're being honest.) I'm shocked, too, to see that they worked straight through the night. I thought a 24-hour turnaround seemed like it was too long for a changeover, but it really seems to take that long.

Now if only there was a time lapse video of a Shea Stadium changeover.

New Thing #276: Watching The Banner Go Up

Here's the rare hockey-related New Thing in 2013. I like a good hockey game, and I love playoff and Olympics hockey.

But it doesn't occupy my mind like football and baseball - and even college basketball - do.

Which is why it was so unusual that on Tuesday night, with the one-game wild card playoff baseball game on TV (between the Pirates and the Reds, so I had a rooting interest in Pittsburgh), when I switched over to see which hockey game was on, that I stayed there for a solid ten minutes.

The Blackhawks, you see, were raising their championship banner.

And I just couldn't take my eyes off of it.

First of all, I know how horrible my TV is. Sometimes the picture gets staticky, and you can see that in the many pictures I've taken this year of my TV screen, including the one above. Sometimes it's clear as day, but that doesn't happen all that often. Never is it in high definition, because it's not a high definition TV. (We were thinking of getting a high definition TV back in 2008, and then we instead decided to have a second child.) What it is is a ten-year-old TV with a picture - and it's good enough for me. So now I'm going to stop defending my TV against your non-existent barbs.

Secondly, I think you need to understand that I love championships. I love the matchups in the championships (especially new match ups!, which I think you know), and I love the spoils of a championship.

I love trophy presentations - especially the Stanley Cup. I like hearing about off-season ring ceremonies or seeing the presentations on the field. And I love the raising of the banner.

Rarely, though, do I watch the raising of the banner. Especially in hockey, because I just rarely watch early-season hockey. But as I said, I stumbled across the one in Chicago.

The players were introduced, there was dramatic music playing, and some little kids skated out with the banner. Then it was hooked up to the ropes, and raised to the rafters. It took a while, but it was gripping TV.

It was exactly the way I would do it. I love the idea of raising banners. I'll watch a game if they're retiring someone's number just to watch that number go into the sky. Maybe it's because of how big those banners are when they're on the ground next to people as opposed to high up in the arena out of context. Maybe I just like the pomp and circumstance surrounding it. I just love it - I like collecting miniature replicas of banners. I would raise a banner if I ever had occasion to.

So that's why I watched the Blackhawks raise their Stanley Cup championship banner to open the 2013-2014 hockey season. I probably won't tune in to the beginning of  another Blackhawks game all season - unless I happen to catch them playing a game against the Rangers.

And maybe next year I'll watch the banner-raising in full...because hopefully it will be happening at Madison Square Garden.

New Thing #273: Baselines

The Major League Baseball regular season is over (well, there's a game 163 today, but it's an elimination game, so for all intents and purposes the regular season is over), and the post-season is about to begin. It's a fun time of year for me...even if the Mets aren't in the playoffs. (I say that as though the Mets regularly appear in the playoffs. My default setting is pretty much the playoffs without the Mets in them. If the Mets are in them to say I enjoy this time of year is a ridiculous understatement.)

Anyway, it's a chance for me to take stock of my pre-season picks, and I know they were hard to follow this year, what with me picking them on Twitter and all. (Side note - I've searched my hashtag #30MLBPicks and get only two results, which is a little upsetting to me. Where are all my picks?)

But I'd like to draw your attention to my pick to win the National League East: The Atlanta Braves.

Because they won the NL East...and they are the subject of this week's Music Monday.

(Note: I did pick the Braves to lose to the wild card out of the NL East, the Washington Nationals, because I was buying in on the Nats as much as everyone else. And I was wrong on many other picks. But I had the Braves, which no one else did. I'm proud of that.)

Shifting to music, though: I heard on Buster Olney's podcast last week that there's a team song called Baselines about the Braves. It's a knock-off of Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines, and it's really well done.

It flows, none of the lyrics feel particularly forced. (Though it does violate an unwritten rule of mine about these types of songs - it twice goes after the other teams in the National League East, including my Mets. I think these songs should pump up your own team, not necessarily go after others. But I digress.)

I also have a special attachment to team songs. Olney referred to three others in his podcast - the Super Bowl Shuffle for the Chicago Bears, and two with New York connections:  Go New York, Go New York, Go (1994 Knicks), and Let's Go Mets Go!, about the 1986 Mets.

I loved that Mets song. I have the "Making Of..." video. I wore that VHS tape out. (And, as my friends point out since I'm one of the last few people with a working VCR plugged in, I still could if I so wished.)

So I leave you today with Baselines - a well-done song parody in tribute to one of my least favorite teams, the Atlanta Braves.

And to get the bad taste out of your mouth after that, please enjoy Let's Go Mets Go!, featuring, among others, my hero, the late Gary Carter.

Enjoy the post-season.

New Thing #265: A Stress-Free Fall Sunday

There's nothing like sitting around on a rainy Sunday doing nothing but watching football. Those Sundays are few and far between for me.

Either it's beautiful out and I feel guilty for staying in and watching the games, or the Jets aren't on TV and I have to figure out a way to get the free hours to leave the house to go somewhere to watch the game.

But that's no longer a problem.

I've already told you about 'Football On My Phone.'

I'm not going to rehash that - nor will I write much more about football after today (probably). But I do need to let you know today will be the first day I will be watching the Jets on my phone.

For the season opener they were on the local Fox station while the Patriots were on CBS. The next week they were the nationally televised Thursday night game.

Today there are just two games on local TV - the Patriots at 1 and the 49ers at 4.

So I'll be watching both of those games on TV, with the Jets on the phone late in the day.

And there's rain in the forecast, so I'll be able to sit and read the Sunday newspapers and then veg out without worrying that I should be taking the girls for a walk or to play outside or anything.

They can play inside and I can have a stress-free Sunday. (Provided I can get the newspapers inside the house before they get soaked through.)

I just won't be able to flip between the 4pm games on my phone, which is too bad. There are quite a few this week. But maybe I'll get my fill switching between the 1pm games.

I might even watch a baseball  game on my computer. David Wright is back in the Mets' lineup, and I haven't watched the Mets in a long time. And I just love David Wright. (He's been out 7 weeks. I might not have watched a full Mets game in something like 5 weeks.)

So that's where I'll be this Sunday if you need me.

Try not to need me.

Especially if you have news that might stress me out.

And if you happen to pass my house before I make it out to grab the newspapers, you can help make my Sunday stress-free by bringing those papers closer to the door and sheltered from the rain.

Thank you.

New Thing #258: Another New Fantasy Football Game

One of the first things I wrote about this year was fantasy football. And then one of the other first things I wrote about this year was fantasy football.

They were both playoff fantasy football games - and they were both fun ways to end last year's football season.

It was fun to play a different kind of fantasy football.

Well, a friend of mine e-mailed me with a new game to begin this football season, and at the last minute I decided to join.

Turns out I just can't resist a good stats-driven fantasy football game.

I'm in two fantasy leagues this year - this one I'm writing about today and another more traditional one - along with my picks pool, picking against the spread.

What's unusual about this year is that I'm not doing an elimination pool for the first time in a bunch of years, and for the first time in a few years I also don't have the fantasy league I've done with the guys I do a baseball league with.

But this pool fills some of those gaps.

It's traditional fantasy football - you pick a QB, 2 RB, 3 WR/TE, and then a defense. You pick a new slate each week. The catch? Once you pick a player, you can't pick them again the rest of the season.

It's an interesting strategic game, the strategy of which I haven't even begun to wrap my mind around yet. (The closest I've come to strategy so far is the chart that I created, which you see above. It'll at least keep me aware of the players I've picked.)

Since I made the decision to join so late, I kind of slapped together my Week 1 picks - I decided I didn't want to use any real stars yet, so I picked against the Oakland defense (which played better than I expected) and I guessed at a decent defensive performance with Miami (I succeeded) and filled in the rest of the gaps.

As the season goes on I'll employ more strategy, probably.

It's similar to a baseball picks league I used to run - it's all done by hand (though the guys in charge are working on a computer program to make it easier). As such, though, it's all guesswork during the day to as to how well your players are doing relative to other performances.

So far it's fun.

Another interesting thing about this football season is that I didn't make any season picks - that's the first time I haven't done that in possibly a decade-plus.

It's interesting - I sense that with my involvement in these games, and without the self-imposed pressure of my season picks, which may or may not subconsciously color the way I pick games and players - I might actually enjoy this season more as a football fan.

So far, as Week 2 continues today, I am.

New Thing #255: The Peter Schrager Podcast

If you're a football fan (and I'm sorry for this past week or so if you're not), you'll love this New Thing. My friend Justin texted me last week to tell me his brother had a podcast.

Now, this is not like if I started talking about the Jets and Mets and recorded it and my brother went around telling people his brother had a podcast.

No, Peter Schrager is fast becoming one of the most respected football guys in the business.

So if I hear that he has a podcast, I'll check it out...and I'm sure thousands of others have been doing the same thing.

Let me quickly catch you up on my football podcasts. For a year-plus I listened to the Rich Eisen Podcast. I figured the guy was on NFL Network, and if there was anyone who had the inside track on the National Football League, it would be him. Turns out I was right...but it also turns out that Rich Eisen is insufferable. I couldn't stand it. I'd listen and then complain.

Then I decided, I'll just stop listening. (This is a bigger step for me than you might realize. Or, perhaps after reading 9 and a half months' worth of reading about me, you're not the least bit surprised.)

Then Peter King started a podcast. That's what I listened to all last year, and it wasn't about him - it was about the football - it was perfect. This year it's the MMQB Podcast - I still listen to it.

After two episodes, the Peter Schrager Podcast is getting added to the list. In the first edition, Schrager had a good football talk with Pete Prisco and in the second one he spoke with Scott Fujita - a good storyteller - and Kevin Burkhardt.

The Burkhardt interview was awesome, talking about his rise through the industry to get to where this year he's doing play-by-play on TV for FOX NFL games. (As an aside: Burkhardt did the Jets-Buccaneers game Sunday. There were a couple of rough patches, but overall he and John Lynch were excellent. Here's how I know: When a broadcast is bad, I obsess over it. Case in point: Dick Stockton. Holy heck was he bad doing the Rams-Cardinals on Sunday. Hang 'em up Dick. Watching the Jets, though, I barely thought about the broadcasters. That's a sign they're doing it right.)

Back to the podcast: There's a really contagious enthusiasm in the way Schrager talks about the NFL - he strikes a real balance between being a fan and an analyst, as well as in the way he can really schmooze with his guests and also ask some pretty deep questions about them and about the game.

Justin and I often joke about the success of our younger brothers. I have to admit, though, that while I often heard Peter's name in various places, I didn't see his work all that much. (Which is becoming harder to do - he wrote a book with the Giants' Victor Cruz and soon a new one he wrote with OJ Brigance of the Baltimore Ravens will be coming out.) I just don't watch very much FOX Sports. (I'm working on doing more.) With this podcast, though, I now have the opportunity to listen to Peter without other elements of Fox that I might not care for.

So, finally, after all of these years of Justin supporting my brother's music, I can throw a little brotherly love back his way.

New Thing #254: Glickman

I had a free weekend of HBO this past weekend. I can't overdo it when one of these free weekends comes along.

I just don't have the time to binge watch a show like The Sopranos anymore. (Two Sopranos references in two days! It can almost challenge football's dominance this week!)

But if there's a show or a movie that catches my eye, I can either watch one or DVR it and watch it a little bit later - I have the time for that.

Thankfully, this documentary caught my eye - because I had seen an ad for it and I was psyched to watch it.

It's called Glickman - a documentary about Marty Glickman, who I remember primarily as the Jets broadcaster when I was little.

But his life was much, much more than that.

The first words you hear in the documentary are in Glickman's voice - "I don't remember ever walking as a young person. I always ran. It was just in my nature to run." I feel like I've heard this quote from him before...or maybe I read it. (Or maybe it was in the commercial for the documentary that I saw.) Regardless, it's a powerful quote.

Marty Glickman, above all else, was an athlete. Primarily, he was a runner. An Olympic-quality runner. Unfortunately, he was a Jewish American Olympic-quality runner in the 1930s. And the 1936 Olympics, when Glickman was 18 years old, were held in Hitler's Germany. And Glickman's American coaches - for what were later found to be Nazi sympathizing reasons - kept him from competing in those Olympic games. (It's somewhat chilling to see the video footage of the 1936 Olympics and all of the goodwill shown towards Hitler.)

I didn't know anything about Glickman when I was younger other than his voice. (When I placed a face to the voice it was close to the image you see above, which was featured in the documentary - that's how I remember Marty Glickman.) I think the first thing I learned about him later on in life was that he was really the first ex-athlete to become a broadcaster. He was really a pioneer in the field...a field about which I care a lot. Probably too much.

Glickman was an early sports broadcasting giant - calling the Giants, Knicks, Rangers, horse racing and any other number of sports and teams in addition to the Jets.

His voice means a lot to me - and it's featured prominently in this documentary. It's filled with passion and anger and sadness when he talks about how he was wronged in 1936 and when he talks about his biggest regret in life the following year. It almost has a 'gotcha' tone to it when he talks about how he realized no one was broadcasting basketball and took advantage of that to become the voice of the game. (And then prominent Glickman fans and proteges like Bob Costas, Marv Albert, David Stern, Larry King, and Mike Breen talk about the basketball broadcasting terms Glickman invented at that time.) He's frank when he talks about how he describes the games. It all reminds me of being in the car listening to Glickman's voice talking about the Jets. (And I didn't remember until the end of the documentary that his time with the Jets that I remember so clearly was actually post-retirement, when he came back to the Jets for a few years to finish his career.)

There's a bonus great story embedded in the documentary about Lou Zamperini, another one about how as broadcaster of the Giants Glickman beat some of the players in a footrace.

It's not the best-made documentary I've ever seen. (I'm getting old - sometimes just the very fact that graphics are too small and I can't read them is reason enough for me to get frustrated with a program. Also, I now call things "programs.") But it's a good sports documentary.

And, if you grew up like me, parts of its greatness lie in the sentimental reasons.

New Thing #251: Football On My Phone

I apologize in advance for all of the football talk over the next week-plus. It's a very exciting time of year for me.

Especially this year.

See, I'm the fan of an out-of-market team.

Years ago that meant I was destined to Sunday afternoons on my computer watching the prehistoric version of ESPN GameCast to try to figure out how the Jets were doing as the Patriots games aired on the local stations.

Over the years, though, my options have progressed such that I've alternately owned the Sunday Ticket on DirecTV or been able to seek out a place that does - watching the Jets either at home or a bar or restaurant anywhere within 25 miles of Boston.

This year, I should be able to watch the Jets from my home...or anywhere I happen to have my phone.

I'll have the Sunday Ticket again, but this time it's on my phone - and the story of how I got it is a good one.

I guess I should tell you first that the Jets are on TV in this area the first two weeks of the season. I had calculated this a while ago when I realized that they were going to be a FOX game and the Patriots on CBS...I long ago developed an ability to roughly gauge the chances of watching the Jets at home on local TV based on their schedule and that of the Patriots'.

But after that, by the time the networks recognize that the Jets are terrible, if I want to watch whether Geno Smith will progress into an NFL quarterback, I will need this Sunday Ticket more than ever to watch the Jets. (Or, more likely, to more closely follow my fantasy players.)

So let me tell you how all of this unraveled:

When I went to Florida the conversation with my friend Kevin turned to his Apple TV, and how I could use that to watch Mets games on my TV rather than my phone or computer. Then he told me that he heard about a deal where I could even watch the Jets.

Apparently, if you pre-ordered a special edition of the new Madden football game through Amazon, you could get a code to download the Sunday Ticket to your phone for the entire season.

There had to be a catch, I thought. Kevin thought so too. But we both separately looked up what had been written about the promotion, and it seemed legit. A couple of weeks later, I took the plunge and made the purchase. I bought Madden, which I will never play, and there was my login code. I downloaded the Sunday Ticket app, I entered the info, and there it was - football on my phone. (Including the Red Zone Channel and the opportunity to keep track of your fantasy players using the app!) (Also, it seems to be working OK right now...but there will be no higher anxiety on Sunday than about 12:45-1pm waiting to see if the video kicks in on time. Kevin is feeling the pressure too - he feels like I paid for it because of him, and if it doesn't work it's on him.)

I'm sure next year if this is a success (and I'm sure it will be) the price will be exorbitant or some part of this process will become more complicated.

But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Because for the 2013 football season, at least, I'll have all the games wherever I want to watch them.

It's basically all I've wanted in my entire football life.

And if the Jets miraculously turn out to be good this year, well then that's just all the better.

And I'll admit - the first time I saw the Manning brothers' "Football On Your Phone" commercial I didn't like it as much as some other people did. But now that I have football on my phone...well, my tune has changed. I think it's a kinship thing. Here that is, if you haven't seen it:

New Thing #248: No More Season Tickets

The NFL season opens tonight when the Ravens play the Broncos. I'll watch the game, of course, but for the 30th-plus year I'll really start caring on Sunday, when the Jets open their season.

This season will have a different flavor to it, though.

Not in the quality of play on the field - the Jets will stink, and unfortunately there have been way more of those types of seasons in my time as a Jets fan than the successful seasons.

No, it's the fact that for the first time in my life, my dad is not a Jets season ticket holder.

My dad has had Jets season tickets dating back to the 1960s. I've always been very proud of that fact. And I loved the fact that, less the tickets he'd give away each year, I knew that any game I wanted to go to, I could.

Of course, ever since I moved to Massachusetts it became a lot harder to go to multiple games a year. But if there was a home playoff game (there were a couple) or really important regular season game, I knew I could come home for it.

Not anymore.

But the truth of the matter is, it long ago stopped being convenient to get from Queens, New York to East Rutherford, New Jersey...and I learned to appreciate the benefits of watching NFL Football on TV rather than in person. (Though I still loved the atmosphere of a big game in a winning season at the stadium.)

And despite my dad being a loyal customer for more than 40 years, the Jets didn't treat him as such. There was more leveraging by the Jets over seating in the new stadium than there was appreciation towards long-time season ticket holders.

So as another season gets underway, there have been elements that have made it not just another season. Usually by now I've put my magnetic schedule on the fridge, gone through the yearbook for the upcoming season, and checked out some kind of free gift - all perks of the season ticket holder. (Even though it was my dad's account, I'd get all the spoils.) I know from Twitter that this year I missed out on a fleece blanket.

This year, there was none of that.

My dad and I have talked about taking advantage of not having to use the upper deck season tickets this year and buying some nice seats to one game - spending a little more on a game to sit closer to the action, but spending nowhere near what he would have spent on tickets to all the games.

So that might happen at one point this season.

There will definitely be a different kind of season ticket to this year's Jets games. And I'll be telling you about that New Thing later in the week.

New Thing #247: Drafting From My Phone

Probably 12 or 13 years ago I was one of the suckers who paid to play fantasy sports. I knew fantasy baseball was free elsewhere, but I thought I was getting a better deal on ESPN's site for however much I was paying for our league.

I only played on that platform for a year or two, but that was definitely a year or two I could have been playing for free.

Since then, I've used Yahoo!, with maybe one ESPN (now free) exception.

And this year, I'm playing on ESPN again with some folks from work.

But that's not what's new...the New Thing I want to tell you about is that I drafted part of my team from my phone!

I had seen the ESPN football app recently when I was looking quickly through the apps. I thought about it only in terms of editing my lineup - it never occurred to me that I could draft my team using the app.

But about a half-hour before the draft a friend of mine texted to say that's how he was doing the draft. So I downloaded the app to check it out.

As soon as I logged in to the app, I was booted from my computer - it wouldn't let me be signed in from two different places. So I disconnected the app and went back to the computer - I had the first overall pick and I didn't want to screw things up with the new technology.

But I knew, with a snake draft and the first overall pick, that I would have a lot of time in between my picks to play around with the app, so I came back to the app in the later rounds to try out the draft.

The computer makes little noises when someone is drafted from your preferences list, and when it's your turn to draft.

The app made the same noise when someone was drafted from my 'queue,' but as far as I can tell it didn't make a noise when it was my turn to draft. It also made no noises when other people drafted. And I couldn't find where the draft history was.

So you have to pay close attention to the picks as they happen because they only show at the top of the screen and there aren't really any noises to draw your attention to a new person making a pick.

Other than that, though, it was pretty much the same experience on the phone as the computer. You had the countdown of how long there was for the pick to be made. You had the ability to sort available players by position. You had the chance to check out your list of preferred picks.

It's just, on the computer it's easier to navigate between all of those things. On the phone, it was harder to keep track of everything.

I made my last four or five picks from the phone, which was enough to just get a taste of the experience.

I wouldn't want to conduct an entire draft from the device...but it's good to know the option is there if I ever needed it.

New Thing #235: Gainesville

If you're keeping score at home (and I know you are) you know I mentioned Tampa, St. Petersburg, and Jacksonville this week. "When," you're probably asking yourself, "will John tell us about Gainesville?"

Well, today's the day.

But before I launch into my Gainesville experience, I need to give you a little history.

Because my time in Gainesville was literally a dream come true.

I have no idea why, but I have recurring dreams about two sports-related places: the football field at the University of Florida and Mile High Stadium. (Maybe it's Invesco Field at Mile High - I can't remember if the dreams go back as far as the Broncos' original stadium.)

In the Florida one I walk out from a corner end zone and look up at the sea of seats. In the Broncos dream I'm sitting way up in the stadium - like, second-to-last-row-type seats, and I'm with some family members.

So when I knew I was visiting Gainesville, I knew I'd want to swing by the football stadium. My friend Kevin was way ahead of me - we'd be visiting the stadium, he said, because that's about all there is to do in Gainesville.

When we walked to the stadium I was disappointed because the outside looks nothing like my dream - it's kind of like a brick outer facade. That's what you see above. Then we walked in.

We emerged at one of the corners and walked down towards the field. It was kind of surreal because other than a different type of seating it was very, very similar to my dream. It also didn't stretch as high into the sky as my dream. But I certainly felt familiar with the place.

I think two things about this whole weird experience. I would like to think I have some kind of second sight (is that what it is? ESP? Or just being weird?), but I think:

1) Both the University of Florida and the Denver Broncos are orange and blue, just like the New York Mets. So maybe that aspect about them and their respective stadia (plural for stadiums?) stand out to me and work their way into my subconscious.

or

2) Later that afternoon, reverting back to our college days as we do often when we're together, Kevin and I sat down to play some video games. Our choice was the version of NCAA Football that he had. As soon as the game started loading up, it occurred to me that I probably dreamt about Florida Field so much because I played this game so much years ago and it was drilled into my head. The more I think about it the more sure I am that this is the case.

Beyond the field, Kevin was right. There wasn't a ton in Gainesville. But next to the field were the football offices, and on the ground floor of that building is a great little museum - not even a museum. A display center. In glass cases are Florida's three national championship trophies, displays of national championship teams and award-winning players, and the three Heisman Trophies won by Florida players. (The Heisman Trophy is much, much larger than it looks on TV.) This was very cool.

We also poked our head into the track/swimming/basketball facility, which was neat. And we stopped by the bookstore and I bought some University of Florida souvenirs for my girls.

But none of that quite reached highlight status of the trip for me.

After all, I've never dreamed of stepping foot in those places.

New Thing #233: Tropicana Field

I love ballparks. Most of you know this about me...but I'm sure there are people who will read this who don't know my history. (This a good place to start for most of my writing about ballparks I've visited. That page links to the parks I've visited and wrote about between 2004 and 2010. I can track down others if you're interested.)

The most recent new ballpark experience is the one I thought I would be least interested in seeing: Tropicana Field.

And I have to admit - I was pleasantly surprised.

The first thing we did when we got into Tropicana Field was check out the Ted Williams Museum and Hitters Hall of Fame. You may remember this place from when Williams died back in 2002 - that's where much of the local Boston reports were centered. It was located in Hernando, Florida, which is really in the middle of nowhere. I guess it moved to Tropicana Field (I had no idea until we walked into it), and man is it worth a visit. Great displays about Williams, and a good selection of other hitters and team items are on display. The only fault I found was this plaque featuring Rays' managers, with Joe Maddon's name misspelled. Seems like the type of thing you should get right.

Seriously, I could write a whole other post about this museum, I was so impressed by it.

We went to two games at Tropicana Field - both against the Mariners. The Rays won the first after coming from behind, scoring a run in the bottom of the 9th to win (that's what you see above), and they won the second 7-1. We had great seats, which we got walking up to the ticket window (we never saw a line) and paid just $40 for.

It makes me simultaneously sad and happy. I loved kind of having a ballpark all to ourselves, walking around wherever we wanted because there were no crowds, but at the same time the Rays are a good team and it's a shame that no one is coming out to their games.

By the second game, we had kind of exhausted most of the things there were to do at the park. But out in center field there are a couple of attractions that we took in. First of all, we watched the first couple of innings of the second game from a barbecue restaurant that is in straightaway center field - Everglades BBQ Company - which was probably a better bargain than the concession stands. I liked it, though the green tinted windows were a little too green.

Then on the way down, there was no crowd at the rays tank, which houses what are probably the best-fed rays in the world. You can reach in and touch the rays, and even feed them. We did not feed them....but we did touch them. (Yes, I did. It was kind of a weird sensation. I didn't love it.)

This was the first time I'd ever been in a baseball game in a full-on dome. I've been to retractable roofs (Houston, Seattle, Arizona) and a football game with a roof (Indianapolis), but never a baseball game inside. (Even in Arizona, where the roof didn't open when we were there, it felt a little more open.)

The dome at the Trop made this field feel very close. But the lack of fans in the seats opened things up again. I think this: That place could get loud. It could be a tremendous home field advantage. The fans that show up are passionate, they ring their cowbells - it got kind of loud with very small crowds when we were there - and the ballpark isn't bad. It's clearly not drawing crowds...but if the Rays can figure out how to get fans in there, it could be a place that opposing teams won't want to go.

I liked the '162 Landing' down the left field line, where Evan Longoria's homer landed in 2011 when the Rays clinched their playoff spot on the last day of the season. I liked the in-game entertainment. I liked the scoreboards and videoboards and in-game stats.

Oh yeah - and the baseball the Rays played was pretty good too. I leave you with this - the moment Jason Bourgeois made contact with the fly ball to right that brought home the game-winning run Wednesday night, setting off the celebration picture you see above:

Let me know if you can find the ball - I think it may just be out of the picture to the right, but I'm hoping it's in the frame.

And for goodness' sake - if you're in the Tampa area and the Rays are at home...check out a game. It's a good time.

New Thing #227: Rooting For The Pirates

I used to hate the Pittsburgh Pirates. Time was, before the addition of the central divisions and realignment, that the Mets and Pirates were divisional rivals.

Familiarity bred contempt.

1990 was particularly tough, with the Pirates beating out the Mets for the division and ushering in some tough times for my team. (Though not as tough as the times the Pirates were about to experience. More on that later.)

I'm pretty sure it was 1990 when my dad taught me the theory that I should root for the Pirates to just go on and win it all...so that the Mets would be beaten out by the best. (My stubborn 12-year-old self would never admit the Pirates were 'the best'...or at least better than the Mets.)

But the Pirates hit some hard times...and now, I find myself rooting for the team I used to hate.

After three straight division titles (1990, 1991, and 1992...the latter two of which brought them to within a game of the World Series), the Pirates embarked on 20 straight losing seasons.

It's the longest such stretch of futility in professional sports.

In the meantime, they built a beautiful new ballpark which only the past couple of seasons has seen exciting baseball...though we got an indication of what it can look like for a big event when it hosted the All Star Game seven years ago.

I think there are a few  things that make the Pirates appealing to me:

• That ballpark. I love PNC Park. Those bridges in the background, the layout of the ballpark...I love it. I think it's my favorite new park - the sight lines play a big part in that. I am dying to see some playoff games with that ballpark all decked out for the post-season and packed to capacity. And I'm really excited to get back there in person...though I'm not so eager about driving back to Pittsburgh. (That picture up top is a picture of a picture I took there back in 2005. I did not take great pictures capturing the beauty of the park when I was there. I need to get back just for the sake of better pictures.)
• The color yellow. Really, it's no small thing. I've always liked the Pirates' color scheme (though not always their uniforms) - yellow and black. And the aforementioned bridges - they're my favorite color yellow. I find the Pirates visually appealing.
• It's fun to root for an underdog. I got a taste of it last year when the Pirates were strong into July, before they fell apart and ended up below .500 once more. This year they're definitely going to end their losing-seasons streak, and it's almost certain they'll make the playoffs. It's fun to see this type of turnaround for a team. (Then go back to not liking them.)
• Lastly, the Pirates are a good team to watch. Andrew McCutchen is a solid player, but also according to all accounts, an even better person. So I like rooting for him. They're a young team with strong pitching...they're exciting to watch. They're the type of team I like to root for, and I'm kind of mad at myself for not picking them to be this good - they have the type of recipe I look for when I pick playoff teams at the beginning of the year, like Washington a year ago and the Giants a few of years ago. (Baseball editorial - I was all in on Washington - a division rival - last year, and they definitely angered the baseball gods by shelving their ace with the thought that they'll get back to that spot with him. I still like Strasburg, and I will enjoy watching Bryce Harper for the next 20 years or so, but I'll never root for the Washington Nationals again.)

Even better for me - that recipe the Pirates have this year and the Nationals did a year ago and the Giants did three years ago? It's the exact kind of team the Mets will be a year from now.

Then I won't have to root for the Pirates as the playoffs approach.

My team might be making its own post-season run.

New Thing #206: Playing Tennis With My Daughter

I told you last week how my daughters were having a grand old time at camp. One of the activities my oldest daughter has particularly enjoyed is tennis.

This led her to off-handedly remark to us that she might be interested in taking some lessons.

This is a girl who has had no interest in any organized activity whatsoever in her seven young years.

And my wife and I certainly were not going to force her to do something she didn't want to do.

But when she opened up this door we came barreling through.

My wife scoured the internet for lessons that might work.

And last weekend I took her out to hit some balls.

For some reason this felt like a third-person story...so that's how I'm telling it.

It was a humid morning, but not unbearable like it had been recently. Still, it wasn't the type of day people were rushing out to play tennis. So, the dad and his daughters had the courts all to themselves.

The dad had never played tennis. Well, not in an organized way. There was that one time playing his brother years ago when he swung hard, whiffed on the ball, and the racket hit him in the eyebrow. He still bore that scar - it probably needed stitches but he was so embarrassed he pretended like it was no big deal. You have to look hard for the scar - it's hidden by his eyebrow. But he had gone through enough instruction at different points in his life that he felt he could pass some knowledge on to his daughter. (Beyond "Hit the ball, not your face.")

He started with the grip - he remembered that the skin between your thumb and index finger should form a "V" when you held the racket. So he showed the girls that. He could tell, though, that they were really interested in hitting some tennis balls. He started to lose patience. And he started, in that moment, to sympathize a little bit with the hard-driving parents who pushed their kids too far with sports...wanting the kids to know the skills a little more, sometimes, than the kids wanted to themselves.

So he stopped and reminded himself that they were only 4 (almost 5) and 6 (almost 7).

He tried to show them how to balance the ball on the racket. How to try to hit the ball themselves by bouncing it and then swinging at it. (The resulting swings and misses were almost cartoon-esque.)

Then he started tossing the ball to them over the net. This was met with minimal success. The 4-year-old quickly lost interest - hitting a couple into the net and barely over using a variety of non-USTA-endorsed methods and then chasing the balls that got away from the other two.

But the 6-year-old was ready to learn.

The dad showed her where to position herself on the court. He put her just inside the 'T' halfway back to the service line. (Is that correct terminology? He doesn't know.) He showed her how to be ready - knees bent, racket in the middle.

He tossed her a couple of balls. One she hit into the net. One she hit too hard - way out and towards the fence. But she was making contact. Progress was being made.

The dad started hitting the ball to her lightly. Every once in a while his daughter would make contact.

Then, a perfect return.

The dad was caught by surprise. He certainly wasn't in the ready position himself - he stumbled to lightly hit the ball back to her.

Then - again! - a volley!

He certainly wasn't ready for this next hit. He hit it into the net.

The daughter knew she had done something really good. (She had played 'Dungeons and Dragons' at camp. The dad knew it as 'Jail'. If you hit a successful return you stayed in line. If you didn't, you were out - either in jail or in the dungeon depending on the variation you played. She knew that for the first time in her life, she had managed to avoid the dungeon. What she didn't know was that she had also won her first career point.)

They continued for a few more rounds, never meeting with the same success as the first volley of the daughter's burgeoning tennis interest.

The dad put away his racket and came back towards the net where his daughter had gathered the stray balls and was making her way towards the car.

"How was that?" the dad asked. "How do you feel?"

She smiled, and her reply made his heart melt.

"Proud."

New Thing #204: The MMQB

I have a vague memory that years ago I read Peter King's 'Monday Morning Quarterback' pretty regularly. Don't ask me how I forget something like that, but there was a time in my life that I dove headfirst into anything sports-related...and I guess it all gets jumbled up in my mind.

But for whatever reason, it had been years since I read Peter King's Monday column...until last August or so.

I began in the off-season, carried right through the regular season, stuck with it in the post-season, and then dropped off again.

But with football season fast approaching, I need to get back to it.

And just in time, there's a brand-new website for it.

I know Peter King has his critics (man, everyone on Twitter is a critic of everyone), but I love what he does. I think, deep down, I stopped reading him because I wanted to be him with my work the past nine or so years. Without, you know, the intense reporting and all-around knowledge.

The sheer volume of King's work every Monday is probably what impresses me the most...but is also the number one reason that I can't commit to reading it all the time. I kind of need a rest from it...and sometimes I just don't have the time to dedicate to reading it.

So that all was when King's column appeared on Sports Illustrated's website. For a year or so now King has been talking about an affiliated but separate website that he's running - themmqb.com.

It debuted on Monday, as NFL camps set to open up.

And as you can imagine for someone who felt overwhelmed by a column, the site is a little overwhelming. There is so much content.

But it's good content.

It's all football, all the time. (I think my dream would be someone like Buster Olney developing a baseball site like this.) And I'm not all that into football right now - I'm still 100% baseball-focused...but I couldn't get enough of the site on its first day.

There was King's regular 'Monday Morning Quarterback' column, an entry from Greg Bedard (late of the Boston Globe, who I really grew to like in his 2-and-half years covering the Patriots here...he went from dumping heavily - often - on the Jets to becoming a really well-rounded writer...although he was probably always a well-rounded writer, he didn't always show it) about the way the Patriots go about business no matter what is happening off the field, and Jenny Vrentas with a pictorial of Larry Fitzgerald's off-season travels and another article about the Dolphins. My favorite was the first of what will be a regular feature - 3 at 3 - in which some football-related figure (or high-profile fan) answers three questions at 3pm daily. Monday's was Joe Namath. (Wednesday's will be Rex Ryan! UPDATE/CORRECTION: I forgot...Rex Ryan will actually be doing the '10 Things I Think I Think' segment. I think it's Wednesday, but I'm not sure. Also another good segment, by the way.) The accompanying picture of Namath is one of the best old-time NFL still pictures I've ever seen.

I read all of the content in the above paragraph. That still leaves a bunch of content on the table that I didn't read. I'm going to have to pace myself, and figure out a way to get past my desire to dive into something like this website 100%. My instinct is to read everything put on the site. But I know I won't be able to keep that up.

I'm going to need to settle into a routine and figure out which articles I'm going to read. And when. (That's another thing - there are updates with new stories every few hours on the site.) And next month King will start up his podcast again, and he wrote Monday that there will be other site-related podcasts.

It may seem daunting, but I'm sure I'll figure out a way to face down this adversity and make the best of it.

I am a Jets fan, after all.

________________________________________________________

A couple of notes about the beginning of a new site like this:

-I went to the site over the weekend, when the domain name had been released but before it was supposed to have content. I thought it was interesting that this high-profile venture starts out just like any regular joe's website:

-And then there was this - I typed mmqb.com into my browser early Monday morning - some Mondays during the school year I would read Peter King over breakfast because I wouldn't have another chance all day. I figured I'd try that with the new site. And this is what I saw:

It looked spottier than I expected, but I figured they were working out some bugs, so I clicked what I thought was King's article and I got this:

I'm embarrassed to admit I thought it was for real. At no point did I even come close to considering paying money for the content, but I was furious. "How can they go from offering this content for free at SI.com to making people pay this much for it! That's terrible business! Who's going to pay that?!" Then I took a breath. I realized that I had never heard this was going to be a site that charged money. I went to Twitter and it didn't look like, from there, the site was up yet. So I waited. And later that morning I saw the real thing unveiled.

But I wonder if anyone who is slightly more gullible than me - enough to pony up money immediately - fell for the fake site.