Summer (and fall) plans

It’s been a long time since I’ve written here, but fortunately I have a few good reasons for that — reasons good enough to justify the absence to myself, anyway. A 30-second recap of my last month:

• Went to Japan and took in a baseball game. (More on this, of course, in a subsequent post.)
• Transitioned into a new job. (Well, same place, but new responsibilities.)
• Went to the Coachella music festival. (You’d be hearing a lot more about this if this blog were called The Itinerant Concertgoer.)
• Got sick for the third time in five months.

But enough about the past; the future is what we’re focusing on here. Especially now that the NFL schedule has been released — an event so momentous that the league has to announce when they’re announcing the date the announcement will be made, and when it finally is made, ESPN devotes 10 hours of their airtime of it. But if you like getting out to the games, it’s like Christmas in April because all of a sudden, you can start planning your fall. This season, I have an ambitious slate of games I want to get to. Not sure if I’ll be able to do them all, but here are the games I’m targeting:

Itinerary: Qualcomm Stadium, San Diego

To say that Qualcomm Stadium is the best NFL stadium in California is, as a friend used to say, like bragging about being the tallest midget in the circus. It’s a serviceable stadium, no doubt — one good enough to host Super Bowls in the past — but it’s showing it’s age, and the Chargers have been sniffing around for ways to replace it for years. Still, it’s the best place in California to watch a pro football game (if we included colleges, it would be a whole different story) because its two competitors up north play in stadiums either haphazardly configured for football or ruined by additions that detracted from the venue’s overall feel. (Really, the 49ers and Raiders need to put their heads together, go the Giants-Jets route and build one nice new stadium that they can share… but I digress.)

As I’ve mentioned too many times to count previously, I attended the Chargers’ divisional playoff game against the Jets with Mrs. Fan and our friend Jersey Boy, a big Jets fan. It was my first Chargers game in more than 10 years — so long that the last time I saw them live, Craig Whelihan was the starting quarterback. Who’s Craig Whelihan, you ask? I’ll just say that the whole Ryan Leaf mess the franchise endured in the late 1990s resulted in Craig Whelihan being the starting quarterback, and I’ll let you draw your own conclusions from there.

Soaring like a Jet

In the interest of fairness, and since I strive to operate as nonpartisan a blog as possible, I’m letting my buddy Jersey Boy write a guest entry on attending the Jets-Chargers playoff game at Qualcomm Stadium last Sunday from a visiting fan’s perspective. After all, he was the one who flew cross-country to be there, not me. So I’ll let him take it away, and I’ll stand back and try not to let the twisting of the knife hurt me too much…

***

Jersey Boy and the thrill of victory

From the time I turned 16 through my 24^th birthday in 2003, the New Jersey Devils won three Stanley Cups, which for many sports fans is more championships than their teams will combine to win during their lifetime. For that reason, I try to keep the complaining to a minimum when griping about my teams – the Mets, Jets, and Devils (the Knicks and I have had a rocky relationship since the start of the 2000s, and I don’t see it ending anytime soon).

With that said, these last few years have left me to wonder if I really did sell my sports soul to the Devil in exchange for those three championships. Since that time, I have seen the Mets blow a Game 7 at home in the NLCS (Thank you, Yadier bleepin’ Molina), then collapse in consecutive seasons on the final day of play. I’ve watched Doug Brien miss a pair of field goals in the AFC divisional round in Pittsburgh in 2004 – either of which probably would have propelled Gang Green into the AFC Championship Game, and then last season’s collapse from 8-3 to 9-7 and out of the playoffs (thanks, Brett Favre). Last April, the Devils blew a 3-2 series lead and a 3-2 lead in Game 7 to the Hartford Whalers – eh, Carolina Hurricanes – when Hall of Fame goalie Martin Brodeur inexplicably allowed two goals in the final 120 seconds of regulation. Stunning doesn’t begin to sum up that loss for a team that captured the Atlantic Division crown despite Brodeur missing approximately 50 games due to injury.

The long journey home

(San Diego Union-Tribune)

The thing about love is that it makes you do certifiably crazy things. If you’re in love with someone, you think nothing of hopping in a car, or on a plane, and traveling long distances just for a few fleeting but cherished moments with that person. The other thing about love is that it’s designed to break your heart. If you’re in love with someone, the moment will eventually come when, in some fashion or another, they will do something to profoundly disappoint you, or even crush you. If the love is strong enough, you’ll eventually forgive — but you’ll never forget. And that makes you appreciate the good times even more.

The point of this blog, in some ways, is to celebrate the profound love many of us have for sports teams. Sports is a small (and, some will argue, insignificant) part of our society, but try telling that to those of us who spend a great deal of free time and expense traveling from city to city to watch their favorite team play. In the end, whether they win or lose doesn’t matter when there are so many other problems in the world, but to you, the sports fan, your team will always be the source of so many memories, whether they be joyful or bitter, hopeful or rueful.

Investing in your (team’s) future

(Renato Guerreiro)

Trying to see your team in the playoffs is an odd thing. First off, you get those generic-looking tickets where an opponent isn’t listed — instead it says something like “Home Game B, Date and Time TBA.” Then you have to be very cognizant of when the game is so that you aren’t that guy who shows up at the stadium or ballpark or arena and there’s nobody around. And then there’s the matter of buying tickets, probably at a huge markup if you’re not a season-ticket holder or you’ve missed the release of the few hundred tickets the team had left, for a game you aren’t certain will be played. Unless you have a crystal ball, you’re taking a chance buying tickets.

Take the NFL playoffs, for example. There are three possible sites for both the AFC and NFC championship games on Jan. 24, and an unscientific survey on StubHub reveals there are tickets on sale for games at those sites. Here’s a rundown of the cheapest listed tickets at each site:

AFC

• Indianapolis: $180
• San Diego: $219
• New York Jets: $60

NFC

• New Orleans: $315
• Minnesota: $150
• Dallas: $75

The variation in prices among the sites probably is a reflection of two things: 1) The probability that a game will be played next week there, and 2) The confidence sellers have that there will be a game there. Based on the numbers above, people who have tickets in hand feel pretty confident the NFL will be coming live from San Diego and New Orleans next week.

The question for fans is this: Is the prospect of saving a few — or many — bucks worth the risk of buying tickets now? Say you do so because you’re brimming with confidence that your team is going to win this weekend. Then they lose, probably in dramatically awful fashion (at least in your eyes). Not only are you left disappointed (or furious) that your team lost, but now you’re left with tickets that you overpaid for and can’t use, and have to go through the hassle of getting a refund from the team — and only getting face value back for them. So now not only did your team upset you by not coming through for you, but now they’ve cost you money. And you didn’t even bet on them! (At least in the traditional sense, you didn’t.)

There is one interesting concept out there that tries to get around this. Anyone interested in going to the Rose Bowl this year could have registered here to give yourself a chance to buy tickets at face value on condition that your team made it. If it didn’t, you wouldn’t have been able to buy tickets. Of course, if you read the fine print you’ll see that you have to pay to register, and you’re only entitled to one ticket at face value. But hey, it’s a start.

As for me, I’m going to one of the NFL divisional games this weekend. I’d consider going to the conference championship game if my team makes it… but I don’t want to be the one disappointed and with a worthless ticket in hand.