Nebraska-VT tidbits

As promised, thoughts from the Nebraska-Virginia Tech game:

--There really is nothing in sports (that I've seen, anyway) like the atmosphere at a big-time college football game. The sheer volume of noise, the band, the student section, the red, everything. I've never been to an NFL game, but they all look so sterile in comparison. (Except for games at Lambeau, of course--I've heard that's the closest place to a college environment in an NFL stadium.)

--We sat on the floor, about 10 or 12 feet behind the Virginia Tech bench, with the other Red Cross Day volunteers. Let me just say I was not impressed with the Virginia Tech defensive players. During Tech's nail-in-the-coffin drive on offense (the one with the three personal-foul penalties), they were standing on the bench and would turn around to the crowd and pose or yell at us. There were state troopers standing between us and them to make sure we didn't taunt them or otherwise interfere with them. That job becomes a little bit tougher when the players you're protecting are the ones initiating the taunting.

--Nate Swift's punt return in the fourth quarter--wow. I had to watch it on Huskervision (we couldn't see over the VT sideline), but that was still the coolest play I've ever seen live.

--Before the game, Erin Andrews set up shop a few feet away from us. She's ESPN's top sideline reporter and the hottie du jour in the sports Internet world. (I would tell you to Google her, but you will feel violated if you do. And for the record, she seems pretty cool--takes her job seriously, hasn't posed for Playboy or anything--though Dana and I agreed her pants at the game were almost comically too tight.) At first I was annoyed because bunches of guys my age and pervy middle-aged guys were crowding around her (which also meant crowding around us) with their camera phones at the ready. But she spent the whole game on the actual sidelines, so that turned out not to be a problem. But it was funny to watch as she walked behind the line of guys leaning over the sideline fence to watch warmups, and one by one they snapped their necks around after she passed as you could see them going, "Whoa, wait--that was Erin Andrews!" It cracked me up.

--That was the fifth Husker game I've seen live, and the fourth that they've lost. Still, as far as the overall experience went, it was more fun than any of the first four. (The one win, Iowa State last year, wasn't too hard to top.) Just think how much more fun it'll be when this team actually starts playing well.

I wonder what this would have looked like in graph form...

A brief summary of my weekend in sports (all times approximate, and by approximate, I mean nudged around for maximum dramatic effect):

Saturday:
3 p.m.: Mets win, forcing the Brewers to win in order to maintain their one-game wild card lead.

5:30 p.m.: Brewers lose. They've just blown their wild card lead with one game to go.

6:15 p.m.: Badgers lose. They've just blown a 19-0 second-half lead against possibly the worst Michigan team in decades.

10:45 p.m.: Huskers lose. They've just been beaten at home in the first meaningful game in the Bo Pelini era.

Sunday:
2 p.m.: Aaron Rodgers, the Packers' quarterback, gets injured during a game against the Buccaneers. The quarterback the Packers turned Brett Favre down for has just gone down.

2:30 p.m.: Aaron Rodgers returns. And throws his third interception of the day.

2:45 p.m.: Mets tie their game, 2-2. If they win, the Brewers have to win in order to avoid missing the playoffs in the biggest collapse in franchise history.

2:50 p.m.: The Brewers are losing, 1-0, in the seventh inning after being one-hit by a bunch of relievers through six. They have the bases loaded with Corey Hart up. He strikes out.

2:51 p.m.: Packers lose.


At this point, we have what could be the worst sports weekend of my life. Badgers, Huskers and Packers lose, and the Brewers are about to blow the best chance they'll have at the playoffs for years. But all is not lost: If the Brewers can clinch the playoffs, I'll consider the weekend salvaged. This is what I tell Dana, anyway. She seems skeptical.


2:52 p.m.: Craig Counsell (AKA 12-year-old looking, goofy-stance-man) draws a game-tying RBI walk for the Brewers. (This is where the links get fun.)

3:30 p.m.: The Mets fall behind, 4-2, in the eighth inning on back-to-back home runs.

3:35 p.m.: Ryan Braun hits a two-run home run to put the Brewers in the lead, 3-1.

3:45 p.m.: Brewers win.

4:00 p.m.: Mets lose. Brewers make the playoffs for the first time since Dad used to swear at Brewers games. (Yes, it's tough for me to believe, too.)

I call it a pretty good weekend.

I hate to post yet another sports post, but Dana and I went to the Husker game, and I'll have some thoughts on that up tomorrow.

A little bit of perspective.

This post is about sports, but I promise it has substance. Hang in there.

Losses in baseball don't get much worse than the Brewers' loss yesterday. They were up by 4 with two outs and nobody on in the Cubs' bottom of the ninth ... and somehow found a way to lose.

Fortunately for my own sanity and that of everyone who would've been around me, I was working while all this happened. But as soon as the boxscore came across the wire, my head was firmly implanted in my hands. A coworker who's a big Cubs fan walked into work 15 minutes later, stopped at my desk, gave me a look as if one of my family members had died and just said, "Mark ... I'm sorry."

I tried to vent to Dana, but with 13 Brewers losses in the last 17 games, I long ago used up all my empathy points with her. So I did the only thing I could think to do to get myself out of my funk: I called my grandma.

My grandma is the diehardest Cubs fan I know--she's been following the team for 70 years. She started listening to the team on the radio with her dad as a little girl in Wisconsin, long before Milwaukee had its own major league team. Now she watches every single Cubs game on TV while she knits at home down in Texas.

Now, calling my grandma was a major violation of the unwritten rules of sports fandom--if your team gets beat in gutwrenching fashion by your rival, your buddy who's a fan of that team calls you--you never call them. To do that would be asking for punishment, voluntarily subjecting yourself to gloating during your worst hour.

But I needed to remind myself that someone--and not just someone, my grandma--was made happy by yesterday's game. And it was so good to hear her laughing about the game, talking about how she was thisclose to turning it off, marveling at one of the Cubs' ejection in extra innings, asking about the Brewers' starting rotation.

I'm usually driven nuts by the Cubs fans' bellyaching about 100 years since a championship. I mean, how many of those years have most of those fans lived through, let alone been a fan through? 20? 30? 5? But my grandma is the real deal--she's gone almost three-quarters of a century as a dedicated Cubs fan without a World Series title. As much as I get upset about one September collapse, that's misery. And she takes it all in stride, just a laugh and a sigh when they blow it yet again, and a genuine joy when they do well. I could stand to learn a lot from that.

So if--or, let's be honest, when--the Brewers don't make the playoffs, I'll be rooting for the Cubs to win it all. It's heresy for a Brewers fan, but it's just the right thing to do by Grandma.

Get to know ... the Beach Boys

What you know: Surfing, fun, summer, sun, surfing, cars, girls, surfing. Really high, intricate, poppy harmonies. I couldn't stand the Beach Boys growing up--those voices just grated on me, and every song seemed so simple and syrupy, like the '60s equivalent of Radio Disney. But then as I got into college, I was shocked to find out that the Beach Boys were actually critical darlings, and Brian Wilson was regarded as a musical genius. You're probably familiar with that work, too--Pet Sounds, "Good Vibrations," "God Only Knows."

After that, it's standard "Behind the Music" material: Way too much LSD, band falling apart, getting involved with a hippie murder commune, untimely deaths, lawsuits, reunions, a return to the charts, a few decades doing the Boomer nostalgia circuit. But there's more...oh yes, there's more.

Get to know: The Beach Boys' psycho, trippy, drugged-out, falling apart period. Yes, they actually tried to make music during this period, and some of it was actually pretty good. "Darlin,'" with its soulful Carl Wilson vocal, hardly sounds like them at all on first listen, but still retains their trademark flair for hooks. You hear a little more of that soulful, quasi-shouter style on "Wild Honey," along with some of that synthesizer trippiness Brian was playing with at the time. But the strangest and most compelling hit of that era is "Heroes and Villains." It's like "Good Vibrations" from some parallel, darker universe. The structure is similar, the production is similar, except where "Good Vibrations" pieces together perfectly, "Heroes and Villains" feels disjointed. Don't get me wrong--it's still an amazing song and a fascinating listen. But it feels like a brilliant idea Brian had in his head that he just couldn't quite communicate to the rest of us. And it feels like a perfect example of what the post-"Good Vibrations" Beach Boys could have been. Friends don't let friends do mountains of acid.

Ugh.

It's been a brutal week to be a Brewers fan.

Stat of the year: The Brewers have come up to bat this year 113 times with the bases loaded. They have a grand total of 19 hits. They have 7 extra-base hits. They have yet to hit a grand slam. Their batting average is .202. Their OPS (for all you stats nerds) is .557. 557!

By comparison, the Cubs (the team the Brewers are chasing) are batting .321 with the bases loaded. They have 21 extra-base hits, including 6 grand slams. Their OPS is .928. 928!

How the heck is the least clutch team in the National League 20 games over .500 again?