What Were You Doing at Age 14?

What were you doing at age 14? After reading this piece, it made me think of what I was doing at that age. I was trying to find my voice in the midst of dealing with family issues because of divorce, growing up in southern Idaho in the early 1980's. Cable TV was still fairly a new development, computers had just entered the classroom, and I was scared to death about talking to a girl. Of those things, only the last thing still provides some mystery to me, but I can't imagine dealing with another life at 14, much less the decisions that kids have to make at that point.

Kids today try so hard to become adult, wanting to take on more responsibility for the choices they make and the situations they put themselves into, yet most of them have no clue about the potential ramifications of their decisions. There is a wonderful feeling you get at that age when you start to run things in your life a bit more, choosing your friends and clothes, and it makes you feel more independent, more responsible, more adult. But yet you can still have moments of being a kid, not worrying about where your next meal is coming from, where your stuff is at, what pressures and realities are going on in the world. It's a odd combination of having responsibility with having the world's best safety net there when things fall apart, parents and other adults.

Yet we live in a world of adults have millions of people that make one wrong choice, and their lives are suddenly turned inside out. The demands of the world are suddenly your concern, and consequences that were first ignored or not considered are staring you right in the face in the form of another person, an addiction, or some other entity, and unlike other things, they don't exactly go away if you wish really hard.

As much as I love living in our world of instant communication and wondrous technology, I wonder whether we've traded these gifts for a bit of the innocence or insulation that previous generations treasure. And I realize that I'm in the generation that bridges the younger group of "i want it now, why can't I have it" with the older generation of "back in our days, we didn't have this". I can see the wonders we all have right now, but I can also see the lure of simpler times and issues.

Which is why it's more important that ever to share stories like this one, and we as human beings continue to interact and learn more about each other all the time. With computers and technology, it's easy to become insular and uncaring, thinking that it's awesome to have 1,000 Facebook friends. But of such a large group, could you really count on those people if you were really in a jam, needing money, help or support? I may have a large group of friends in the FB reality, but I know all of them personally, even if the interactions have been short or it's been years since I've seen some of them. It's about fostering relationships, and investing time in people by sharing of yourself, and it's a lesson I'm glad I learned at that age. Now if I could have only mastered algebra, I'd really be on my game...

EDIT - Congrats to Mandjou Keita, Ryan Pore, Steve Cronin, David Hayes and Cameron Knowles from the Portland Timbers on their all league honors from the USL. Keita, Pore, Cronin and Hayes were all names to the USL First Division First Team (called the USL-1 All League Team), while Knowles was selected to the USL First Division Second Team. The Timbers head north to Vancouver for game 1 of their two game series with the Vancouver Whitecaps tomorrow night, and I'll be heading up there with girl. Should be a fun game, despite our historical troubles up there. I'll have a report at my other blog home.

And if you really wanted to learn more about the Timbers Army and what we are all about, read my good friend Shawn Levy's take on soccer fans and hooligans. It's one of the best pieces I've read about this subject in quite a while.

Principle vs. Moments in Time - Who Wins?

I've always hated the term "It's the principle!!" when it comes to people being right about things. Often times if it's the principle, it thinly veils the need for someone to be right at all costs, even if the situation doesn't immediately warrant being right. The whole principle concept really becomes apparent in two arenas, the courtroom and on the sports field. There's dozens of lawsuits over the most trivial things out there, but because people feel they need to prove their point at any cost, so the cases live on and cost everyone time, energy, and money.

Whether it's a need to feed the ego or the desire to be proven right, I've never understood the need to fight something on principle. Life doesn't always operate that fairly, especially in sports, where much of the situation depends upon human involvement, and last time I checked, we aren't perfect creatures. Officials and umpires make calls based on what they see, and more often than not, they're spot on in making the right call. It's the times where they miss something when the arguments about principle come out of the woodwork.

I learned really early that officials aren't always right when during my 7th grade track career, my relay team was disqualified because I ran out of the lane. Or at least that's what I was told when we finished in the top 3 spots and I thought we were due a long earned ribbon for a job well done. My excitement came crashing down when the officials disqualified my team because I had stepped over the lane marker in a 4 by 100 meter mixed relay (2 guys and 2 girls). The principle argument came up later in the meet when the same official found me, and admitted they had flagged the wrong team, as he mistakenly thought I was the guilty party, but it was the guy in the next lane. Principle would have dictated the race should have been rerun, and we get another chance to run the race for the elusive ribbon, but by the time the mistake was found out, the meet was almost done and so the mistake stood. I had to live with the fact that my team was one of the top 3 teams that day, but didn't have the award to show for my work.

It's hard not to find many of these instances for anyone that has participated in sports at any level for any period of time. We all expect integrity and honesty from the people calling our games, but yet everything breaks loose if they miss a call or call something that doesn't appear to be there. We have trust in the guys and gals calling the games when things are right, but let them miss something and it's a crime that must be punished. And so you have stories about officials being punished for making mistakes, sometimes extremely severely.

I get that we need to hold people accountable for their performance, and part of the reason we have such punishments now is because of some grievous mistakes or officials with personal issues affecting their judgment. Ok, gambling problems is really an extreme description for a personal issue, but when officials have integrity questions, it causes havoc for everyone else as actions get scrutinized more significantly, even if the official doesn't have a history of issues.

The Internet has been showing a lot of angles about a baseball game on Sunday between the Colorado Rockies and St. Louis Cardinals. The Rockies are fighting for their playoff lives, and got the benefit of a call to end the game on Sunday, where it appears that infielder Clint Barmes may or may not have caught the ball to end the game. The umpires made the call that the catch was made, and the game ended, but that hasn't stopped the web from running the subject into the ground, saying the Rockies got away with another one.

The video seems to support people who use principle as their prime argument: the catch was missed and therefore the game should be replayed at that point. It's a simple solution that makes so much sense, but yet what do we gain if we follow that course. You'd have to pull together both teams to pick up the game in the heat of a pennant race, and restart things from that point. This doesn't account for the fact that Colorado still had an at bat left, and could have won the game in the bottom of the ninth. You don't know what might have happened if the game was called correctly, but now we can stand on principle of knowing the truth.

Even if that truth doesn't change anything. The Rockies still get the win to help their cause for the wild card race, the Cardinals are in the playoffs already so the result doesn't hurt them, and the schedule moves on. It's not fair, but at the same time, it's exactly what life is and what sports needs to be at certain points. The better team doesn't always win, the officials don't always get the call right, the scheduling isn't always fair, it's how things work. It would be nice if there was a way to impartially decide things like this, but even in sports that have computers help with calls like tennis, you still have disputes about calls.

I'm not stupid enough to advocate we all go Pollyanna with sports and that arguments like this need to be squashed. I'm just asking that sports fans take a moment of perspective and realize that in the grand scheme of things, calls help teams and calls hurt teams, and if you really look at the situation, nobody benefits anymore or less than anyone else. If you need to be proven right after every bad call that is put up there on the board to make you feel better about your team, I'd expect your sanity to be tested a lot over the years. There's more money in sports, and more attention about results and playoffs, and we'll see this happen more and more. Part of the character of sports is dealing with adversity, and showing class and sportsmanship in victory or defeat.

If you need any lessons in dealing with sports and integrity, just look closely at the West Ham United – Manchester City match on Monday. Carlos Tevez, an Argentinean player, had joined City during the offseason, but was an instrumental player in keeping West Ham out of relegation back in the 2006 – 2007 season. We've since learned about the other legal issues behind Tevez since then, but the simple reality is that West Ham owes Tevez a great deal, as he scored 8 goals to keep the Hammers in the Premiership. As Tevez notched a goal in the 5th minute of the match, he turned to the Hammers supporters and gave them a sheepishly apologetic wave of acknowledgement before his teammates joined him in celebration.

Tevez could have rubbed the moment into Hammers fans, but instead turned the situation into a wonderfully thoughtful, apologetic moment. It's not fair that Tevez left the Hammers, much less left the squad in a legal quagmire about his status that they are still paying for to this day, but the reality is that he moved on. For one magical moment, Tevez acknowledged his former fans and his former club in his triumph, but he did it in a rather classy way. Mistakes were made, sure, but the transcendent moment shared gave everyone a moment to forget the troubles and just be in the moment. And as far as sports are concerned, we should all remember that important lesson. Principle might be nice, but momentous moments are more inspiring.

Apparently, You Have to Have Smarts to Use Pom-Poms

I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it and read it in print. The Dallas Cowboys give their prospective cheerleading candidates a written quiz that helps in the selection process each year. You could be an amazing dancer with incredible energy, but show the intelligence of a house plant, and there’s a good chance you won’t be picked as a Cowboys cheerleaders. Never mind the instant hypocrisy of having this quiz given to the women on the team but none of the football staff, it just strikes me as having a complete different standard for some employees than others.

I get that it’s important for prospective football players to have talent and a rudimentary knowledge of football terms and plays, but these guys also get interviewed in public all the time. So why not test them to show some smarts, or at least the ability to carry on a simple conversation when needed as part of the draft process? The Wunderlich test does some of this, but it’s also determined that this test doesn’t measure football performance, which is still the benchmark for making personnel decisions. Character and poise, while important characteristics, don’t matter as much for some teams if you have talent and speed. Well, unless you want to shake pom-poms apparently.

Congratulations are due to Mandjou Keita of the Portland Timbers, who won the 2009 scoring title with his 11 goal, 7 assist performance this year. It has been a very special year for the lads in green and white, and it’s great to see Keita get some recognition for his work this season. I haven’t covered the team as much lately here because of my other work on the Interwebs, but you are always welcome to check out my work there. We still have a playoff season to cover, and I plan to post some regular entries over the winter about player news, team news, and anything Timbers related on my blog home there. I’m happy to be doing it, and still keep things going over here writing about whatever things I like. I just like writing, and hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy putting it together.

Finally, the Oregon football team continues to make news this year, and not just because of their recovery from the Boise State debacle and the aftermath. News recently surfaced that a Duck alumnus who was frustrated at the team’s performance in Boise wrote football coach Chip Kelly, and asked for a refund of his travel expenses. Kelly contacted the letter writer to confirm his address, and then sent him a check to reimburse him for his travel expenses.

The alum, Tony Seminary, didn’t know what to expect when he got a response to his letter asking for his address. When he received the check, he made a copy of it for display, and then sent it back to Kelly with a note of thanks. It takes quite a bit of guts to not only read your hate mail, but to put up your own money to back your program shows some confidence in what’s going on, too. But then again, we’ve already heard about what Kelly is as a coach and person. Even with the craziness of losing to the Broncos to start the season and dealing with the end of game drama, Kelly showed remarkable courage and fortitude to pick up his players after the result, and make his point that one game doesn’t make a season. Having a nationally syndicated columnist follow you during your first game as a head football coach in the Pac 10 would be stressful enough, but then add in the other factors, and you see how extraordinary Kelly is. He’s showing me an incredible fortitude and belief in his program and players, and I think Oregon will be just fine once the dust settles. Winning starts with having a leader to believe in, and I have no doubt the Ducks football team has that person running the show. It’s going to be a fun ride watching this group take flight.

The Fall Weather Is Coming!! And With It, The Boo-Birds are out!!

I have a great deal of respect for the folks at SI. They've been covering sports for years, and being relevant for this much time, especially after the explosion of the Internet and other competitors, is pretty impressive. However, in the zeal to be on their game, they really missed the boat about the MLS effort in Portland. With things changing so much this summer with stadium plans, financing, the state of the Beavers, and other things, I know there's a lot of things to cover about the topic, but you can't do better than talking about events that happened months ago as if it was today? All I can say about this is wow.

In the same thread of talking about sportsmanship and integrity, I've heard a lot of talk lately about sports fans booing at games, and there's been a lot of talk about the conduct of fans at high school, college and youth sports. There's been a movement of sorts to try and keep the boos away from the young kids and unpaid amateurs, because in most cases, they are giving their all out there.

It's a tough dilemma for sure, because some fans think buying a ticket gives them the right to do anything they want, and for my viewing of Timbers matches, I sit in the middle of the section of fans that sing, chant, and cheer the entire match. I know there are fans that don't like what we do, and as much as I try to be a good fan, I'll admit I've booed the team at times because of performance. I don't feel badly about booing professionals, especially since they are paid for their efforts. Ok, some players aren't played as well as others, but I think that being a professional means taking the good with the bad, and you get adoring and angry fans.

I wished that some fans would behave with some decorum, but booing isn't nearly as bad as other things fans could do to show their voice about what's going on with the field. Besides, if you really read the disclaimer on any sporting ticket, every team and venue includes a clause that says the venue has complete control over conduct, language of signs and banners, and such. Free speech doesn't immediately give you carte blanche to make a complete jerk of yourself at a sporting event, as you could be ejected at any point if it gets that bad.

Where the line hits for me is conduct at other events, like youth events, high school, and things like that. Kids play games because they want to be part of a team, learn skills, perhaps earn a scholarship for college, or just be with friends, and as such, it's important to keep results and conduct in perspective. If you are throwing profanity at an official or coach of a little league baseball team for a missed call, are you really providing support for your child or just taking the whole thing too seriously?

I get there's a lot of pressure out there now, as parents often times see sports as a way for the kids to pay for their future, and so they push their kids to be the best. While I admire that tenacity, it's important to allow kids to be kids, and play sports because it's fun. It's also important to learn the lessons of sports, like respecting your opponent and officials, working together with your teammates, pushing yourself to do your best, and how to win or lose gracefully. Yes, we do keep score, but the lessons of sports for youths is more important than the score.
The only slippery slope is college, because for me, I can see both sides of the argument. Colleges are full of young people who are trying to learn the same lessons as noted above, and they might be paid a scholarship and other benefits for their efforts on the field, yet colleges are treating some programs as near professional in their program and approach. You might have paid or unpaid kids giving their all out there, and if things don't go right, does that give you the right to boo?

If you use the argument of booing the coaches, that might be worthy of the situation because coaches are well paid for what they do. But do you need to do it when the athletes are out there? And being paid a scholarship to play ball, is that enough to consider college students paid, meaning that it's probably OK to boo. For me, I don't see enough about college to convince me that it's OK to boo while there. The unintended consequences of booing while the game is going on if you are angry with the coach still means that athletes will hear it, and I don't care how strong a person you are, but hearing boos raining down on you would register with most people. Professionals deal with things like this day in and day out, but college athletes shouldn't have to deal with it.

Finally, the Portland Trail Blazers announced a change in ticket policy, as they will now charge slightly different prices for single game tickets, depending on opponent, day of the week, and other factors. This has been part of the ticket standard for many sports for years, as the English Premiership has had a form of tiered pricing for many years, as the more attractive matchups would be more popular for purchasing. However, these standards are usually set before the season. For the Trail Blazers' model, they will adjust pricing each week as the season progresses for any available tickets. They've announced that the price won't fall to less than what a season ticket or multi game ticket holder pays for their package, as they will push static pricing for tickets as an advantage to buying tickets in a bundle like this.

I'm surprised that this hasn't happened before with other sports and teams, although I've seen that the University of Portland does charge a slightly different price for tickets to see Gonzaga at Chiles than they do other WCC games. If you have a game that potentially could be a big deal with top flight competition or billboard type players, I think teams should be able to charge a slightly higher price for more in-demand games. What I hope is that they will practice some restraint so to not gauge fans to make more money just because they can. Teams already have a lot of revenue streams, and it's important to keep this idea from really becoming a huge distraction.

Swiss Cheese Memory, Sports Coverage Issue and Narcissists Unite!!

Ok, so I must be remiss if I didn’t post this, as my wife reads my blog and points out things that I mess up on. She jokes about me being a liar, but I think it’s just my swiss cheese memory because we do so many things and my notes and memories aren’t quite what they used to be.

For the record, we had fresh mozzarella during our craftsteak dinner, and the whole gluten episode and drunkfest started on Tuesday and went into Wednesday. However, all of the events did occur, and it just points out to me that I should get a laptop or just take better notes. I did have time to blog in Vegas with a nice laptop, but I also know that computer time for me leads to more time on the computer surfing, checking out Fark, trying to figure out what’s right or wrong with my various fantasy teams, and checking out the next fad on the Interwebs. Without further ado, we turn our attention to a few things from sports and society.

The Timbers won the USL First Division title last night by virtue of their 2 to 1 win over the Cleveland City Stars. Granted, the team had already clinched mathematically on Saturday when the Puerto Rico Islanders lost to Carolina, and by virtue of schedules and results, no other teams could overtake the Timbers. They could tie the Timbers, but the Timbers had all the tiebreakers in their favor. However, after clinching the title, the lads in green and white proceeded to play some of their worst soccer in losing to Austin and Cleveland over the weekend. They finished the season last night versus Cleveland, and with the win, there’s no technicalities, no debate, the Timbers have 58 points and nobody can catch them. It was what needed to happen, not just for the fans, but for the psyche of the team.

I expected the Oregonian sports page to cover the game, and sure enough, there’s a headline on page one talking about the game. However, the article title says “Timbers head into playoff with win” as the secondary headline, while the signing of Juwan Howard by the Trail Blazers is the main headline. Granted, I’m a Trail Blazer fan and I’m happy about the boys in red and black adding a key cog to their title run, but it just proves to me that the Trail Blazers rule this town, and the rest of the sports in this market are pure afterthoughts.

We have one major professional team playing in the NBA, one professional soccer team that is moving to MLS, a triple AAA baseball team, a junior hockey league team, two major colleges that reside around 2 hours away, many other college teams, and a smattering of other fan groups and interests. If the NBA sneezes, the sports world here catches a cold because of its status. In some respects, that is good because we get unbridled attention about the team and its inner workings. But because it has little to no competition, the spotlight is put squarely on them.

But the disjointed coverage gets worse. Sports radio is obsessed with college football all weekend, wondering if the Ducks or Beavers will win their games against decent opponents, while talking a bit about the Trail Blazers. The Timbers are an afterthought, even though we have only won a regular season title just once in our history. Being a soccer fan, I’m used to being ignored and having people look past my sport, but at the same point, the media perpetuates it at points. Even the Duck and Utah game got a colored headline that draws attention to the game, and I agree it’s a big game. There’s part of me that just wished that for one day in the world of sports, the sports world would appreciate my team as much as I do. I guess I should take comfort in the fact that it’s still a personal experience, and something that only a handful of people can really say they can enjoy. Maybe there is something to being one of the best-kept secrets in Portland.

What’s not a secret is talk of sportsmanship, as I talked about last time. I surf CNN from time to time, and I read a rather interesting commentary about this new talk of rudeness, and what might be causing this issue. The commentator pointed out that many people within the last two generations have become extremely narcissistic, only being involved with things that benefit them directly. It starts with being told you are special, and then thinking you are more important that you might actually be, trying to keep discomfort and anxiety down to the point of some young people have never dealt with their own issues.

I’ve never heard the term “buy-in” so much until I spent time in the workplace, and it’s phrased in a way to talk about the benefits of changes so people understand what’s going on. While I agree with this approach, as it helps folks deal with change by better understanding it, it does perpetuate the belief that changes have to benefit in order to be accepted. There’s some things that happen in life that aren’t good or provide benefit, but the reality is that life isn’t always fair, and the sooner people learn that, the better things will be.

We have too many people trying to protect the younger generation from reality so much that they can’t deal with things the way they are, and you wonder why there is so stress associated with things that should fun. And in order to deal with things, it’s all about selling things by spinning the benefits, making things sound better than they are, whatever it takes to gain acceptance.

I’ve had to learn some rather tough lessons in life, and there’s some issues in my own psyche that I’m trying to deal with, but I’d like to think that I’m fairly well grounded in the sense that I understand how life works. We don’t always win the big game, we don’t always date the cheerleader, we don’t always get straight A’s, and life doesn’t wrap problems up in 23 minutes, just in time for a compact simple lesson to be displayed followed by a touching family moment or fun dessert.

And honestly, I’m completely OK with that reality, because a life where everything is always good or always about you isn’t really worth living. I’ve learned more from my adversity than I ever have from winning, but yet I understand on some level why some parents do it, “I don’t want my kids to face what I did, so I’m going to make it all better no matter what.” While that’s an admirable sentiment, what it’s done is create the situation we have now.

That isn’t to say that every young person is like this, but I see and deal with more and more younger people with this attitude. While I appreciate the efforts to work on sportsmanship and being more civil to each other, I’d like to see us really make a move to show the younger generations the reality of life, which isn’t on a television set or on the Internet. It’s not always fair, and you will get hurt at some point, even if you play by all the rules. But when things really come together, you will have achieved something that should be treasured and appreciated. And in my book, that’s better than being famous any day.