Friday, September 24, 2010

random thoughts - Friday September 24

You can tell when fall hits around Portland because the sports radio talks turns incessantly to football and Trail Blazers. Because my sports interests are a bit more expanded, nothing frustrates me more than having a big sports news day with lots of interesting topics about, and sports radio is obsessed with what the Trail Blazers might do because one of their key guys has a hang nail. I understand that this town loves the NBA, but the obsessiveness in which they love their team gets rather old...
I wouldn't need to listen to sports radio so much, but I can't trust the wasteland that is Portland radio. Every time I'm encouraged about some wonderful development in radio, it does nothing but frustrate me even more. 910 AM was finally switched to a feed of 94.7 two, a radio station that is strictly Northwest bands, and it's almost completely commercial free. It's a wonderful alternative to the crapfest that is most everything else, but because the two somewhat local guys need their afternoon show every day, the baseball team from up north has their broadcasts moved to 910 AM at points. I like baseball, but even I'm not enough of a fan to want to listen to the mess up north. I'd rather watch a team that can actually play baseball...
I'm tired of the so called baseball fans trying to throw the leadership in Portland under the bus because baseball is leaving Portland because the multi purpose stadium is being turned into a soccer/football facility. This town has a wonderful collection of baseball fans, but until you have a sustained group of Portland Beavers baseball fans, there's absolutely no way baseball will come back to town. Most baseball fans in this city think we should try to get MLB here, ignoring the fact that there's no available owner wanting to come here much less a city that has the money to help pay for a stadium. We couldn't find $30 million dollars and a site for triple AAA baseball, but by all means, MLB should come here. I get that many of the fans love the team they grew up following or will drive to MLB parks near Portland to see games when they want, but until the group of baseball fans cares about the product that is here in town or cares enough about the local team to show up regularly, baseball isn't coming back here anytime soon...
Oh, wait, it's that song by the Killers that they played into the ground a few years ago. Wait, it's not them? I seriously can't tell because most of the "modern bands" playing on the radio sound so much alike that it's hard to tell the difference. Hey, it's time for some sponsored bit that we'll end up talking about the sponsor for all this time as a commercial for some product or service we can't live without instead of playing music that people want to listen to. Yeah, I can see why people have abandoned terrestrial radio for Ipods, MP3s, and other music devices. If I had to truly depend on regular radio to know what was going on music, I'd think the Killers were the best band ever...
Oregon State plays in Boise this weekend, and it's unusual for me to see all this fuss simply because I grew up there and still have family that live there. When I lived there, Boise was this rather largish town in Idaho that really wanted to draw attention to what a wonderful place it was. And the university was trying to do anything to get attention to the fact that it's a rather big and nice college. Well, flash forward 20 plus years, and the Broncos are on the big stage. It's a great story to see a Cinderella finally get some attention, but in order to make the big jump, you have to play well with the target squarely focused on you. Sometimes, it's harder to play when you are expected to win, but it seems like the Broncos might just have gotten past that. And the biggest city in Idaho continues to grow past its rather sleepy roots from back into the 1980s into a place that is actually drawing people and businesses because there's something going on...
I'm currently finishing up fantasy baseball while fantasy football and soccer have just gotten rolling. I know, some people hate fantasy sports because some people talk incessantly about their teams and what players they have. But I'm not that guy, and really, I play fantasy sports for two big reasons: learning more about the game and players while having fun with friends. I'm not foolishly thinking that any expertise that I show in fantasy sports suddenly means I'm a candidate for running a real franchise because fantasy operates in a vacuum. Fantasy sport managers don't have to worry about media distractions, contract disputes, or the other dangers of running a team, it's all down to performance and player status. Well, and being able to rib your friends that picked the injured guy early in their drafts because they forgot to do research...

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