travels home

Finally arrived home in NJ Tuesday after not being home since August. I stayed in Columbia until yesterday because I filled in a few live truck shifts. Otherwise I would have flown home Sunday. But anyway, I flew out of KC to Newark, and took the MO-X shuttle so I could leave my car at home. I'm thinking this was a bad decision despite near-exhaustion from lack of sleep the night before. I got on the MO-X at Gateway and changed buses at their terminal on Providence and the Business Loop. I boarded the bus and was surrounded by old women. I thought, "uh oh." I have nothing against old women, but I was NOT in the mood for making conversation. I wanted to put on my Springsteen Live in NYC on my noise-cancelling headphones and sleep for at least 45 minutes. So when the guy with a Bluetooth headset, enormous backpack, and walking cane steps into the bus, introduces himself, and tells everyone he has a laptop to check "traffic and weather for the whole trip" you can imagine how irritated I was. He then told folks he was a former Navy SEAL (the picture of him is included with this post) had "friends in NASA", and then asked the driver to plug in his portable charger to the power outlet in front. So upon departing Columbia, he began making small talk with just about everyone. I was basically asleep by the time the Mo-X accelerated onto I-70, and slept til about milemarker 75 (a good 30-35 minutes). I was awoken by the same man blathering on about his computer's internet connection and the old woman behind him horrified of missing her flight she'd be arriving for 3 hours in advance. I was forced to endure this background talk as my Springsteen blared on in my headphones. Of course, instead of taking I-70 through downtown Kansas City to I-29, the Mo-X takes I-435 around the entire city to the airport. It adds a good 30-40 minutes to the trip because apparently they're afraid of getting stuck in traffic - in the middle of the day, no less. Line of the day came at this point - the man pointed to his computer screen and said "We'll be out of this rain in 2 minutes!!" 2 minutes later, it was still raining, and he looked very disappointed. Anyway, he got off at USAirways (a completely different terminal) and I was one of the last to get off at Continental.

I ate lunch at the majestic Budweiser Lounge while being tempted by the fine alcoholic products available at 12:15 on a weekday. I didn't have any, but any later in the day I may have considered some. This, and going through security remained uneventful. Upon sitting at my gate for a while, a Continental employee got on the PA and told travelers the "aircraft's lavatory light is not working, and the pilot doesn't want to take off without that because it's a 2 hour and 15 minute flight, so we'll try to get it fixed, worst case scenario we'll either fly with no lavatory service, or change aircraft." I've never heard of that happening before - the lavatory light not working - and the fix seemed incredibly simple (change the bulb??) but what do I know, I'm not an airline mechanic. So they had us move to the gate next to ours, the plane to Houston, while the Houston passengers moved to our plane.

So all that goes on, and I get on the plane content to sleep again. We took off and enjoyed a relatively uneventful flight until about halfway through when the small child in front of me began 1) singing constantly 2) telling its Daddy to "DADDY LOOK THE WINDOW WON'T CLOSE". This eventually devolved into the child singing one line from "Joy to the World" on repeat until the door opened in Newark. Of course, the parents didn't do anything and seemed to think their child was just bringing JOY TO EVERYONE!!

Hardly - they would have been more joyful if the kid had just shut up! UGH!!!

Charlie Weis and wastefulness

Preface: I dislike Notre Dame, but I don't hate them. Nor do I enjoy the undue attention they receive from ESPN and NBC for playing pedestrian football almost every year for the past 10 years (besides their Fiesta/Sugar Bowl losses). And in those 10 years, it's become more and more common for the definition of "success" in college football to mean "making bowl games." Regardless of whether it's a BCS Bowl or the papajohns.com Bowl, I still consider it a success because you're playing in the "postseason", whether that be a playoff or bowl system. So with that understood, I find it shamefully lavish that Notre Dame (or its fans) want to fire Charlie Weis because he didn't win a national championship in 5 years. Somehow, it's forgotten in their thought process that under his guidance, the Fighting Irish played in 2 BCS games (against very good teams), earned 2 top-25-at-end-of-year BCS rankings, and won the Hawaii Bowl. This year, they're 6-5 (bowl eligible, yet again). Weis has a winning overall record in South Bend and 4 of ND's 5 losses this year came by a touchdown or less. Is that his fault? Maybe - but you can't deny the guy will see his QB and stud WR drafted early in this year's NFL draft. I'm guessing 110 out of 120 D-1 teams would be thrilled to have the kind of success Weis has had. Think they're screwed for the future? Rivals.com ranks Weis' recruiting class as #11 in the country.

From what I gather, there's at least $20 million owed to Weis, and it'd require at least $5 million per year to hire a new coach. I have no idea if donors and boosters are willing to cough up such an outrageous amount of money to fire a successful coach. If they do, it could be the most disgusting display I've seen in a long time. In economic times like this, it's simply a display of arrogance and unreasonable expectations, especially in a sport where athletes are unpaid. I have no respect for attitudes like this.

PA guys in Big 12

I've been fortunate enough to watch enough Big 12 football in my career at Mizzou to hear most of the stadium PA announcers either in person or on TV. Here's a quick list of how they stack up, in my boredom.

1) Randy Wright, Missouri: Of course he's a huge homer and I'm totally biased towards him but he does an excellent job both feeding off the crowd and getting people fired up at football or basketball games. He rarely makes mistakes with players' names/numbers and usually has pretty good phrasing for plays. I'll give him and the Mizzou marketing people credit for coming up with the "First down, M-I-Z" - you can hear him around :15 in this:
2) Name unknown, Oklahoma State: This guy has an AWESOME voice. He uses a few quirks in his announcing - i.e. instead of the overused, cliche "That's good for a [insert team name and wait for crowd to yell 1st down]" he says "Oklahoma State 1st down and ten". He also doesn't use the opposing team's name - simply saying, for instance, on defense "3rd down and 3...for the visitor." Definitely a fan. You can kind of hear him in this
3) Name unknown, Kansas: The state of Kansas is pretty good for PA guys. Like OSU, this guy has an great voice. I haven't been to a game in Lawrence but having heard him in the background on TV and the radio, he doesn't get too fired up and lets his inflection carry the enthusiasm, instead of yelling or sounding crazy. It sounds like he avoids cliches and sticks to the basics, and, gets them right. I'm guessing he's an old-school guy and he does a good job.
4) Name unknown, Kansas State: Also has a great voice, but uses too many cliches/overused phrases to try and fire up the crowd i.e. "That's another WILDCAT [pause while waiting for crowd to yell "First Down"]" I also noticed several crucial errors in identifying opposing players - for instance, identifying Aldon Smith as someone else, or completely missing Sean Weatherspoon for someone else. Not sure if you can hear him in this, but it's worth a try.
Schools I have not heard: Texas, Texas Tech, Texas A&M, Baylor, Nebraska, Colorado. For the sake of this article, we'll assume they fill slots 5-11 as I leave the schools below out for a reason.
11) Name unknown, Oklahoma: Not a very good voice, occasionally to the point of irritation for listeners and fans. His voice was monotone and lacking depth. He had decent form and phrasing, but I do recall him saying Chase "Daniels" instead of Daniel, a crucial mistake for any announcer's credibility. I don't mean this in a bad way, but he sounded like a less enthusiastic Alex Anthony (New York Mets' PA announcer)
12) Name unknown, Iowa State: Probably the worst PA guy I've heard call a football game at any level. While it could be a symptom of a bad sound system, the guy sounded like he was literally screaming into the microphone. To make matters worse, he used every cliche in the book - from "THAT'S ANOTHER CYCLONNNNNNNNNNNNEEEE FIRST DOWN!!!!!!!!!!!!" again, literally SCREAMING into the microphone, while on defensive 3rd downs, shouting "IT'S 3RD DOWN AND ___ MAKE SOME NOISE!!!!!!" Overall, very irritating - and it's unforgivable to announce like that if you don't have the voice for it. You can kind of get a sense of this guy from this:

November update

This is the 1st Friday I've been free since the start of the semester! I've shot football games just about every Friday night, and with high school football just about over, I'm pretty much free now on Friday nights. I'm gearing up for a trip to Manhattan, Kansas tomorrow for Mizzou's game against the Kansas State Wildcats. This will be my 2nd road trip (3rd if you count the Illinois game) for Mizzou football, and I've shot every game except for Nevada. It's been a blast to shoot all the Mizzou games, despite the disappointing record and tough home losses. I can honestly say I've shot in all weather conditions this season - from torrential rain and cold during the Nebraska game, to warm and humid during Bowling Green and Furman, and plain ol' chilly during the Oklahoma State game. Tomorrow looks to be in the 50s and overcast, so it should be comfortable. Meanwhile, producing sports has gone well. I've definitely improved since I began. It's VERY easy - much easier than I thought. I've even gotten to the point to where I think "Hey, this isn't so bad, I could do this for a living" until I realize it's still not the greatest place to be. But hey, at least I've gotten some experience in it and had some fun with it.

I noticed my last update came after the Nebraska game. I traveled to Oklahoma State the next weekend to shoot the game down there - also really cool but a disappointing result again. I was greatly impressed with the quality of Boone Pickens Stadium - insanely nice overall. The attention to detail is immaculate - everything from deluxe catered meals for the media to OSU engraved elevator buttons. Clearly, ol' Boone is sinking money into his namesake's building, and I can definitely see the results. However, I thought the crowd would be a lot louder than it was - perhaps because the stadium's capacity is around 55,000 - but after experiencing OU in 2007 I expected the same outrageous decibel level in Stillwater. It only got really loud after Gabbert's pick-6 and OSU's TD towards the end of the 1st half. Their student section seemed into the game the whole time, and their odd paddles certainly made a lot of noise. But, I can definitely say Boone Pickens Stadium, while VERY nice and luxurious, is not nearly as tough to play in as I'd expected.

I'm curious to see if Bill Snyder Family Stadium is any more hostile! I'll be sure to take plenty of pictures and such of the journey. Will Maetzold and Brandon Spiegel are joining me on this trip - Maetzold hitching a ride and covering it for Palestra.net, Spiegel also with KOMU.

Check out my Youtube for some of my packages - here's an embedded link.