Single-A Opening Day in Virginia

I was trying to figure out what to do for my annual Easter vacation trip.  I usually travel the week after Easter, but my brothers were coming to town that week so that left me with the window of Holy Thursday-Holy Saturday to travel.  Before I knew that my brothers would be in town, I was thinking of going down to Biloxi, Mississippi, for minor league baseball and to cross Mississippi off the list of states to see a sporting event in.  I was thinking of combining that with a trip to Richmond because they were opening a new minor league stadium there.  But those teams weren’t home before Easter so I had to adjust my plans.  I thought about going to Mississippi State for college baseball.  They have the biggest college baseball stadium in the country outside of Omaha and it would be interesting to see some SEC baseball.  Not surprisingly, it’s really hard to get to Starkville, Mississippi.  I think my options involved a tight connection in Atlanta on the way home (I didn’t feel good about that) or getting home really late on Saturday night before Easter.  So Mississippi was out.  I was looking at the minor league schedule for a game in a place that I’d want to go to and I decided on Single-A Opening Day in Fredericksburg, Virginia.  This was my second Opening Day at any level of professional baseball.  No matter what happened, it was not going to come anywhere close to Opening Day for the Dodgers in 2013.

Fredericksburg was appealing for a couple of reasons.  I had wanted to go to Richmond for their new stadium.  Fredericksburg does have a pretty new minor league stadium.  The Richmond stadium is opening this year, the Fredericksburg stadium opened in 2021.  It was supposed to open in 2020, but the minor league season was canceled.  Although it didn’t host any minor league games in 2020, it did serve as the Nationals’ alternate training site that season.  So it’s a pretty new stadium.  The other reason I wanted to go to Richmond was because I think I’ve only seen one sporting event in Virginia.  Sean and I went to a Potomac Cannons game in the spring of 2003 (they were a Reds’ affiliate back then).  I think that was my first minor league baseball game ever.  I’ve spent a lot of time in Virginia since Sean used to live there, but I think that’s the only sporting event I’ve been to in Virginia.  I’ve seen plenty of sporting events in Washington DC and Maryland, but Virginia doesn’t have a major professional team.  I thought about going to the Notre Dame-Virginia football game in 2015 (when Malik Zaire got hurt and DeShone Kizer threw the winning touchdown pass to Will Fuller late in the game), but that didn’t happen.  So it was almost like Virginia was a state I hadn’t attended a sporting event in even though I’ve spent a lot of time there.  I was thinking about the states I’ve spent the most nights in.  Of course, New York is number 1 and Indiana is number 2.  My guess is that Florida is number 3 and California is number 4.  Virginia is probably number 5, Pennsylvania is probably number 6, and Massachusetts is probably number 7.  I’ve seen hundreds of sporting events in New York, dozens in Indiana, 22 in California (16 Dodger games, two Giants games, two Padres games, an Angel game, and an A’s game), I think 13 in Pennsylvania (four Phillies games, three Pirates games, four NCAA tournament games, a Lancaster Barnstormers game, and a Notre Dame-Pittsburgh football game),  I think 9 in Massachusetts (six Red Sox games, a Celtics game, a Notre Dame football game, and a Notre Dame hockey game), and I think 4 in Florida (Rays games in St. Petersburg and Tampa, a Marlins game, and the Notre Dame-Alabama National Championship Game).  

The game was on Good Friday.  If they had played on Holy Thursday, I would have gone to that game instead, but Good Friday was their Opening Day.  Going on Holy Thursday would have allowed me to eat whatever I wanted at the game and it did seem like there were some good food options.  But I was fasting for Good Friday and I couldn’t eat meat.  It seemed like the non-meat options were soft pretzels, mac and cheese, and a black bean burger.  I would have gone with mac and cheese, but soft pretzels are a traditional Good Friday food.  So that’s what I went with.  Fortunately they had real mustard (they had yellow also, but they had packets of Gulden’s).  If the pretzel had been warmer, it would have been very good.  To drink I had a Rappahannock Red from the 6 Bears and a Goat Brewery in Fredericksburg.  It was pretty good.  The bad thing about the concessions was that the lines moved very slowly.  There was one little beer stand that had cans that was pretty quick, but I was hoping to get it on tap.  There was a stand that had the Rappahannock Red on tap so I was waiting in line.  There was one bartender when they definitely should have had two.  The line moved slowly but I got to the point where there was a group of two people in front of me and then I was up.  But it never got to the two people in front of me.  The computer the bartender was using died and since the stadium is cashless, he couldn’t sell any more drinks.  So after waiting for a while for a beer on tap, I had to settle for getting a can.

As for the game, it was the Nationals against the Augusta GreenJackets (a Braves’ affiliate that plays in North Augusta, South Carolina).  The Augusta starting pitcher was Ethan Bagwell.  He left with a 3-0 lead (Augusta scored on a home run, an RBI single, and a throwing error) after throwing 78 pitches in six innings with six strikeouts and only a walk allowed.  I’ve seen a combined no-hitter in the minor leagues and I was nine outs away from seeing another one.  The bullpen was not able to get it done.  Fredericksburg had plenty of baserunners in the bottom of the seventh thanks to a hit by pitch, two walks, two doubles, and a triple.  They also had two stolen bases and a sacrifice fly in that inning and they took a 5-3 lead.  And that was all the scoring for the game so Fredericksburg ended up winning on Opening Day.

It was good to be at a baseball game for the first time since August in Minnesota.

Concessions were an issue, but there were good aspects of the stadium.  I rank stadiums based on my experience attending games and the weather helped.  It was 82°, which was nice because my last couple of Easter vacation trips have involved cold weather baseball (Des Moines and Portland, Maine).  It was a very nice looking stadium and the crowd was good (being there on Opening Day definitely helped with that).  Attendance was 4,230, which was mostly full (with a capacity of 5,000).  The game lasted two hours and 20 minutes.  So it was a decent enough experience for my first baseball game of the season.  I’ll probably get to more minor league games this season so I’ll hold off on rerunning my full non-Major League Baseball stadium rankings, but I think this one was in the middle of the pack as far as the ones I’ve been to.  I’ll probably slot it in around 20 on the list.

March Musings

March is a good month on the sports calendar, but it’s not a fun month as a teacher.  My only day off was my annual personal day for the first Friday of the NCAA tournament.  But the excellent month of sports started before that.  I went to the Thursday night of the Big East Tournament with Vin.  I think this was my twelfth Big East Tournament and my ninth with Vin.  I was hoping we’d get to see St. John’s.  In all my years going to the Big East Tournament, I don’t remember ever seeing St. John’s when they’re good.  That’s mainly because they haven’t been very good this century.  Since I started college in the fall of 2002, they’ve only made it to the NCAA Tournament in 2011, 2015, 2019, and now 2025, and 2026 (after making it 20 out of 27 years from 1976-2002).  It looked for a while like we would get to see St. John’s.  We were getting the 2 seed in the first game and the 3 seed in the second game and St. John’s had a good chance of being the 2 seed.  But they ended up sneaking their way up to the 1 seed late in the season.  So UConn was the 2 seed and they played Xavier in the first game.  Villanova was locked into the 3 seed for a while and they played Georgetown in the second game.

I have a clear hierarchy for how I root for teams in the Big East.  It goes like this:

Tier 1- Villanova.  I will always appreciate them for winning National Championship Games against North Carolina and Michigan.

Tier 2- Providence, Seton Hall, Georgetown.  This tier is the Catholic Schools from the Old Big East besides Villanova and one other.  We’ll get to them.

Tier 3- Xavier, DePaul, Marquette, Creighton.  This tier is the New Big East Catholic schools.

Tier 4- St. John’s and Butler.  St. John’s would be in tier 2, but their head coach is Rick Pitino, one of my least favorite people in basketball for multiple reasons (going back to his time with the Celtics).  I want them to be good because it’s good for the Big East and Madison Square Garden is more fun if they’re good, but I want somebody other than Rick Pitino to be their coach so that I can root for them.  As for Butler, I have nothing against them.  I rooted for them when Brad Stevens was their coach.  If the school converted to Catholicism, they would be straddling the line between the second and third tier even though they’re not an Old Big East team.

Tier 5- UConn.  There’s a big drop off from tier 4 to tier 5.  There’s nothing to like about UConn.  Danny Hurley makes them even more unlikeable.

That’s how I root for the Big East teams in general.  But I am willing to break those rules under certain circumstances.  For example, I was rooting for anybody other than St. John’s, UConn, or Villanova to win the tournament this year because those three were locks for the NCAA Tournament.  And they were the only teams the Big East was getting in the tournament unless somebody else won the Big East.  So I was rooting for anybody else.  Unfortunately Xavier didn’t get the job done.  It wasn’t competitive in the first game as UConn won 93-68.  Vin had to leave early in the second game.  I stayed until there were about eight minutes left in the first half.  It looked like Villanova was on their way to victory.  They led 27-18.  ESPN says that they had an 89.2% chance to win at that point.  But I guess they didn’t play well at all after I left.  Georgetown won 78-64.  While I was rooting for somebody other than St. John’s, UConn, or Villanova to win the tournament, I wasn’t too excited about that result because I didn’t think Georgetown had a chance to go any further in the tournament (I was thinking Seton Hall might be the only other team that had any real chance to win the tournament).  And not surprisingly UConn beat Georgetown 67-51 the next night.  St. John’s beat Seton Hall in the other semifinal and then they beat UConn easily in the final.

We were in the first row of the 300s level which was a pretty good view.

It was good to see Vin for another Big East Tournament.  Hopefully next year will be our tenth together.  I might try to get tickets for the semifinals or the final next year.  I’ve been to the semifinals and the final a few times, but tickets for those nights have been pretty expensive the last few years.  I always say that the Big East Tournament marks the end of winter and to celebrate, I had my first Sam Adams Cold Snap (their spring seasonal) of the year.  And now that we’re at the end of March, Sam Adams Summer Ale should be available any day now.

My dream continues to be Notre Dame rejoining the Big East for all of our sports except for football and hockey.  We should always be independent in football and we should be in any conference other than the Big 10 or independent in hockey (since the Big East doesn’t have hockey).  Of course, right now we’re in the ACC for our non-football/hockey sports and we have our football scheduling deal with the ACC (for an average of five games per year, which seems to have become six with Stanford joining the ACC and us keeping Stanford on the schedule annually for some reason).  My ideal scenario would be a scheduling deal with the Big 10 and SEC for a total of seven games per year against those two conferences (USC plus six other games).  The rest of the games would be three games per year against ACC/Big 12 opponents, the Navy game, and one buy game against a Group of 6 team.  Of course, football is the most important thing, but I dream of being part of Big East basketball once again.

Notre Dame basketball has been depressing.  The men’s basketball team has been terrible in the post-Brey era.  Mike Brey had done all he could and I had no problem moving on, but it has not gone well.  It seemed like Micah Shrewsberry was a good choice to take over, but it has not worked at all and there is no reason for optimism right now.  As for the women’s team, they haven’t been as good as they were at the end of the Muffet McGraw Era, but they had a surprisingly good run in the NCAA Tournament this year.  The hockey team hasn’t been good lately.  The baseball team had a great coach in Link Jarrett, but then he left.  Since then, we haven’t been back to the tournament.  We might have a chance to get in this year.  But if you offered me a National Championship in football at the expense of being bad in every other sport, I would make that deal.  Of course, we’re allowed to win a National Championship in football and still be good in other sports.

With Notre Dame being terrible in men’s basketball, my interest in college basketball has waned greatly.  Still I love the Big East Tournament and the NCAA Tournament.  The Big East Tournament was good (despite St. John’s and UConn being the two teams in the championship game).  But the NCAA Tournament has been pretty boring.  For the second straight year, no 13-16 seeds won in the first round.  I don’t want a ton of upsets, but I want some.  The Sweet 16 was all Power 5 teams (and only one Catholic school).  People are speculating that this is the future of the tournament because it’s hard to build a team that can win multiple tournament games these days if you’re not in a power conference because your good players are just going to transfer to a power conference team.  College basketball was already in bad shape and it’s somehow gotten worse.  Duke finding a way to lose was nice, but the bad news was they lost to UConn.  And we have Michigan in the Final Four.  There have been some fun games, but this year’s tournament has been generally boring.  Hopefully Arizona will save us from the nightmare scenario of Michigan winning.

In the NBA, it’s been a good season for the Celtics.  I was optimistic at the beginning of the season when a lot of people weren’t.  I just thought Jaylen Brown and Derrick White were too good for the Celtics to be bad.  How many teams in the East have two players as good as the two of them?  Not many.  I did question my instincts about the Celtics when they started the season 0-3 and looking bad.  But since then, they’re 50-22.  Joe Mazzulla now has any many 50 win seasons as Erik Spoelstra.  I love Joe Mazzulla.  Things seemed bad for the Celtics when they had to replace Ime Udoka with Joe Mazzulla.  That has worked out amazingly well.  Joe Mazzulla is a better coach and he has a much more likeable personality than Ime Udoka.  Joe Mazzulla is Catholic (he has rosary beads made out of the Celtics’ old parquet floor) and he doesn’t care about the British royal family.  I love that guy.  So anyway, I was optimistic about the Celtics, but they’ve exceeded my expectations.  The Celtics are now the favorites to win the East.  I definitely didn’t see that coming.  If they win the East (they’re far from being locks, but it is very realistic), they will be underdogs in the Finals (as long as they’re playing the Thunder or Spurs), but the Pacers almost won the championship last year and I think the Celtics are better than the Pacers were.  Regardless of what happens in the playoffs this year, it’s been a very fun season and there’s a lot of reason for optimism for the Celtics’ future.

And I’ll finish up with some baseball thoughts now that the regular season has started.  The Dodgers are going for their third straight World Series championship and that is awesome.  The big change in baseball is the ABS challenge system.  Most people seem to like it.  I do not like it.  There are two reasons why I don’t like it.  First of all, we’re not sure how accurate it is.  Major League Baseball has said that they’re 95% sure that a pitch is within 0.39 inches of where the system says it is.  So that sounds pretty accurate.  But it’s not accurate enough.  You could have a pitch called a strike and that batter challenges it and the system says it’s 0.1 of an inch off the plate and the call gets changed to a ball.  But the margin of error is saying that the pitch very easily could have been over the plate.  So why should that call be overturned?  The other problem that I have with it is that it’s not using the actual strike zone.  There are two problems with the strike zone that they’re using.  The first is that they’re not using a three-dimensional strike zone over the plate.  They’re using a two-dimensional strike zone over the middle of the plate.  And why aren’t they using a three-dimensional strike zone?  When there’s a challenge, they show you the flight path of the ball so it seems like it would be pretty easy to use a three-dimensional strike zone.  And the second problem is that the strike zone is based entirely on a player's height.  Two players who are the same height but have totally different stances do not have the same strike zone.  If they were using the actual strike zone and they took into account the margin of error and didn’t overturn super close calls that might have been correct in the first place, I would be fine with using this system.  But that’s not what they’re doing.

So I don’t like the ABS system, but I am happy to have baseball back.  I should be attending my first game of the season later this week.  Hopefully I’ll get to a bunch of games in various stadiums this year.

Joe Mazzulla’s State

I’m very overdue for this blog post, but I went to Providence the day before the Super Bowl to see Providence play DePaul in basketball.  Why did I do this?  No, it’s not because it’s Joe Mazzulla’s home state.  It was because Rhode Island was one of five states where I had never attended a sporting event.  It’s a state where I’ve spent very little time.  I was in Rhode Island probably in 1995 when my brothers visited Providence on our way to see schools in Massachusetts.  Other than that, I’ve been through Rhode Island on my way to and from Boston.  I remember driving home from John’s wedding and checking the clock in my car and I think it took me 40 minutes to drive through Rhode Island.  In 2025, I crossed off three New England states on the list of states to see a sporting event in (Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire).  I probably would have done Rhode Island a while ago, but they haven’t had minor league baseball since 2019.  So a Providence basketball game was the best option.  The problem was it pretty much had to be a Saturday game and it had to be a game that didn’t interfere with watching football.  I think one year they might have played Georgetown on a Saturday after football season, but it was Ed Cooley’s return to Providence and ticket prices were really expensive.  But this year, they played DePaul on the day before the Super Bowl so that was pretty much ideal.  Also, the game was at 4:00, which meant I could leave home at a reasonable hour, get to Providence in time for the game (or so I thought), and get back home without having to stay overnight in Providence.

There was some snow in the forecast, but it didn’t seem like that big of a deal.  But my train was delayed.  When I got on the train, it was still sunny.  But the weather got worse as it went through Connecticut.  By the time I got to Providence, snow had accumulated on the train where the doors would open.  Providence had gotten a few inches and after walking about a half mile from the train station to Amica Mutual Pavilion (on some sidewalks that didn’t have the snow cleared), I made it to the game with about 9:00 minutes left in the first half.  I would have liked to have been there for the whole game, but it was better than only getting to see the last three innings of a baseball game in South Dakota.

It wasn’t a particularly exciting game.  It was two bad teams.  DePaul ended up finishing sixth in the Big East at 8-12 and 16-15 overall (which is actually a great season for DePaul during their time in the Big East).  Providence finished tied for seventh at 7-13 and 15-17 overall.  But this game was all Providence.  I don’t remember what the score was when I got there, but they led 43-26 at halftime and they won 90-72.  Jason Edwards had 25 points, Jaylin Sellers had 21, and Oswin Erhunmwunse had 10 points and 13 rebounds.  Providence was 9/21 for three and DePaul was 5/23.

There were lots of empty seats.

The box score doesn’t list attendance.  The Providence website said it was sold out when I was trying to buy a ticket (I got one pretty cheap on the secondary market), but there were plenty of empty seats.  That could have been because of a lot of no shows between the weather and the bad teams.  Capacity for Amica Mutual Pavilion is 12,410.  I would guess there were around 8,000 fans there (that might be generous).

Joe Mullaney was born in Flushing, went to Holy Cross, and coached at Providence.  He had 30 points and 52 assists in 37 games for the 1949-1950 Boston Celtics.  He also coached the Lakers for two years.  Fortunately he didn’t win the championship with them.  He lost in the NBA Finals against the Knicks in 1970 and then lost to the Bucks in 1971 (who ended up winning the championship).

The Amica Mutual Pavilion food and beverage program wasn’t very impressive.  I had a hot dog (sadly they didn’t have real mustard, only yellow) and a Friar American Golden Ale from Newport Craft Brewing.  Apparently some of the money from it goes to Providence athletes.  It was nothing special.

I’ll usually go with a local craft beer when I’m at a sporting event out of state.  I’ve had Rhode Island beer before, but this was definitely the first time I drank a Rhode Island beer in Rhode Island.

Providence won today in the Big East Tournament.  They play St. John’s tomorrow afternoon.  I will be at the Big East Tournament tomorrow night.  I’m rooting for anybody other than UConn, St. John’s or Villanova to win.  I will always root against UConn and Danny Hurley.  I would like to root for St. John’s, but I will not root for Rick Pitino when there are other Catholic schools I could root for.  Normally I would root for Villanova (I will definitely be rooting for them in the NCAA Tournament), but they’re making the tournament either way.  If anybody other than those three teams wins, the Big East will get a fourth team in.  If it’s one of those three, it will only be those three.  It would be a pretty big upset if somebody other than those teams won, but go Seton Hall (or whoever else).

So that was my sporting event in Rhode Island.  I still have West Virginia, Mississippi, Wyoming, and Hawaii to go.  Maybe I’ll get to one of them this year.

Super Blog

Eleven years ago, we had my nightmare Super Bowl.  And we have the same matchup this year.  It’s not as bad this time, but I still don’t like it.  I have to decide who to root for in the playoffs each year since the Jets haven’t been in the playoffs since before my eighth grade students were born.  So I have a system.  The first thing to look at is Notre Dame players on each team.  This year the Bears had four, the Panthers had three, and the Broncos, Texans, and Seahawks had two.  But there are disqualifying factors.  If your quarterback went to USC or Michigan, I can’t root for you (Bears and Seahawks).  If your coach is Bill Belichick, Pete Carroll, or Jim Harbaugh, I can’t root for you.  If you’re the Patriots, I can’t root for you.  So this year I was rooting for the Panthers, but I didn’t think they had much of a chance.  So my ideal realistic Super Bowl was the Broncos (Mike McGlinchey and Sam Mustipher) against the Rams (Kyren Williams).  And we were two results away from that happening.  Instead we got Sam Darnold against the Patriots.  It’s not as bad as Pete Carroll against Bill Belichick and Tom Brady, but I don’t like it.  Rooting for Sam Darnold isn’t as bad as rooting for Pete Carroll (we beat USC 49-14 and intercepted Sam Darnold once and sacked him four times the last time we played him).  So I’ll be rooting for Julian Love and Rylie Mills.  The Patriots might not have the cheaters anymore, but they’re still the Patriots and they don’t have any Notre Dame players.  So go Seahawks.

Speaking of cheaters, let’s talk about Bill Belichick.  John asked me if I thought he should have been voted into the Hall of Fame.  And the answer is of course not.  All of his accomplishments with the Patriots are tainted by the cheating.  Maybe he won some championships without cheating, but much like the steroids guys in baseball, it’s all tainted.  He received the largest fine possible under league rules for Spygate.  The Patriots were also involved in the Deflategate scandal.  It’s reasonable to suspect that they were just constantly cheating.  Even if they weren’t, the Hall of Fame isn’t just about counting wins, championships, hits, or home runs or whatever.  It’s an honor.  And you don’t deserve that honor if you’ve dishonored the game by cheating or gambling.  Even though Pete Rose, Barroid, and Roger Clemens would have been Hall of Famers without the gambling or the cheating, they did those things and not getting into the Hall of Fame is a perfectly reasonable consequence.  And what about the non-Patriots years when I’ll assume that Belichick/his team/his quarterback weren’t cheating?  He went 36-44 as the head coach of the Browns (insert joke about how a .450 winning percentage with the Browns is actually an accomplishment) and he went 4-8 in his first year as the head coach at North Carolina.  He’ll probably get in the Hall of Fame at some point, but I certainly wouldn’t vote for him.

John also asked me about what the right number of voters is for the Hall of Fame or awards.  It’s 50 people for the Pro Football Hall of Fame, over 400 for the Baseball Hall of Fame, and over 1000 for the Heisman.  I don’t have a good answer for that question, but things should be changed somehow.  I think if you look at the numbers, some positions are clearly underrepresented in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.  The Baseball Hall of Fame just let in two Dodgers that I had absolutely no connection to and a cheater.  In fairness, Jeff Kent and Andruw Jones are not going in for what they did as Dodgers, but they’re players that I just don’t care about.  Jeff Kent put up pretty good numbers with the Dodgers at the end of his career and he was on two teams that made the playoffs in his four years with the Dodgers, but I’ll always think of him as  a Giant and I can’t remember one moment from his career with the Dodgers.  Because he played second base, there’s definitely a case to be made for him being a Hall of Famer based on his numbers (if he was a first baseman or an outfielder, he would definitely not be a Hall of Famer) so I’m okay with him getting in.  Andruw Jones, on the other hand, should not be a Hall of Famer.  He was amazingly bad in his 75 games with the Dodgers (three home runs, 14 RBIs, .158, .256, .249).  A lot of his Hall of Fame case is based on what he did in the field.  I don’t remember anything about Jeff Kent with the Dodgers, but I think I remember a fly ball falling between Andruw Jones and Manny Ramirez in left center and the batter getting a triple even though the ball didn’t get to the wall.  Andruw Jones might be my least favorite Dodger of all time.  No, wait, Josh Reddick is my least favorite Dodger of all time.  Andruw Jones might be second.  And Carlos Betran is a cheater (in the Josh Reddick way, not the Barroid/Clemens way) so he doesn’t belong in the Hall of Fame.

The Baseball Hall of Fame has definitely let some people in that don’t belong, but they generally have done a good job of not letting too many guys in.  Sometimes there are cases of guys waiting longer than they should to get in.  I always believed Fred McGriff would have gotten in sooner if not for the fact that he was getting compared to a bunch of guys that did steroids and that made his numbers seem less impressive.  But getting into the Basketball Hall of Fame is a different story.  Basketball Reference has Hall of Fame probabilities.  They have Jayson Tatum at 59.61%, Al Hoford at 26.45%, Jaylen Brown at 2.14%, and Jrue Holiday at 1.67%.  If Tatum and Brown retired today, they might not get in.  And Tatum still hasn’t returned from a major injury.  But assuming reasonable health for them for the rest of their careers, they are absolute locks (and they should be if they play a few more years at a high level).  You can debate whether or not Al Horford and Jrue Holiday should be in, but they are going to be.  Horford has two national championships in college (which counts for the Basketball Hall of Fame), five All Star games, and an NBA championship.  He’s getting in.  Jrue Holliday has been in two All Star teams, he’s been on six All Defensive teams, he’s been a huge part of two NBA championship teams, and he has two Olympic gold medals.  He’s a lock for the Hall of Fame.  There are lots of questionable Hall of Famers, but considering some of the people that have gotten in, Horford and Holiday are definitely getting in.  If Mitch Richmond, Dino Radja, and Vlade Divac are Hall of Famers, then Al Hoford and Jrue Holiday are definitely getting in (Mitch Richmond, Dino Radja, and Vlade Divac should absolutely not be Hall of Famers, but they’re all in).

As for the Heisman Trophy, it’s now almost always the award for the best quarterback on a good team.  I know that quarterback is by far the most important position in football, but we have an award for the best quarterback in college football (the Davey O’Brien award).  If the Heisman Trophy was what it should be, then Manti Te’o would have won it in 2012.  Unfortunately, when it comes to the problems with the Halls of Fame and the Heisman Trophy, I don’t think they’re getting fixed.  I just hope they don’t make the Halls of Fame worse by letting in more people that don’t deserve to be in (especially the steroids guys in baseball).

I have some other random sports thoughts to finish up.  I thought the Celtics would be pretty good this year.  I thought Jaylen Brown and Derrick White were too good for the Celtics to be bad in the Eastern Conference.  Between the two of them and Payton Pritchard and other guys who have been solid to good (Hauser, Queta, Garza, Gonzalez, Walsh, Scheierman, etc.), they have been good, but it didn’t look that way at the beginning of the season.  They got off to a very bad start, but they’ve been consistently good since then.  And they’re doing it without Jayson Tatum who was like the fourth best player in the world before he got hurt.  Jaylen Brown has been having the best season of his career.  It will probably be Shai Gilgeous-Alexander who wins the MVP this year.  But if he somehow doesn’t end up with enough games played and Jokic doesn’t end up with enough games played, Jaylen Brown would deserve serious consideration for the MVP.  I would give it to Jaylen Brown over Luka Doncic a million times out of a million because Luka Doncic doesn’t believe in defense and Brown is a good defensive player.  I would also consider Cade Cunningham and Anthony Edwards before Luka Doncic.  And Brad Stevens deserves a ton of credit.  The Celtics were a second apron team and he got under that by trading Jrue Holiday (a 2024 hero, but he’s getting old and he has a bad contract) and Kristaps Porzingis (also appreciated for what he did in 2024, but he can’t stay healthy between injuries and illnesses).  Then during the season he got under the luxury tax by trading Anfernee Simons for Nikola Vucevic and then trading a bunch of guys who don’t play (but I will always fondly remember Xavier Tillman’s performance in Game 3 of the 2024 NBA Finals).  Because of the stupid collective bargaining agreement, these moves were necessary.  Being over the second apron is a nightmare.  Getting under the first apron and the luxury tax will help put them in a position to compete for their next NBA championship as soon as possible.  And Brad Stevens got under the luxury tax without trading Derrick White, Payton Pritchard, or Sam Hauser and the Celtics still have a good team.  If Jayson Tatum comes back and plays well (he doesn’t have to be anywhere close to fourth best player in the world Jayson Tatum), they could get to the NBA Finals this year.  I wouldn’t bet on it, but I wouldn’t be shocked if it happened.  I think they could beat anybody in the East.  Will they win three straight series against teams in the East?  Probably not, but I wouldn’t be shocked if it happened.

Once we get done with the Super Bowl, the focus shifts to the Winter Olympics.  I was thinking about why I love Olympic curling so much.  It’s because the Olympics are the pinnacle of curling.  Nothing would top winning a gold medal in the Winter Olympics when it comes to curling.  But for other sports, the Olympics is not the pinnacle.  I think things would have been different in 1980 if I had been alive for it, but now I would rather have the Rangers win the Stanley Cup than have the US win the gold medal in hockey (but I guess the US has a better chance to win the gold medal this year than the 0% chance the Rangers have of winning the Stanley Cup this year).  As for the summer Olympics, basketball is a little bit different because the US has to win the gold medal or it’s a complete failure.  But baseball is kind of like hockey when it comes to the Olympics.  Give me the Dodgers winning the World Series any day over the US winning the gold medal in the Olympics (or winning the World Baseball Classic this year).  But I am looking forward to watching the Winter Olympics.  Besides curling, my favorite event is short track.  Those races can get crazy.  The Winter Olympics really helps bridge the gap between the Super Bowl and when college basketball starts to matter.  But I renew my call for more sports in the Winter Olympics (the Summer Olympics have a lot more than the Winter Olympics).  Yukigassen would be a good addition.

And I’ll go back to football with some thoughts on the aesthetics of the Super Bowl.  First of all, we’re getting a bad uniform matchup.  But the Seahawks against anybody is a bad uniform matchup because they might have the worst uniforms in the NFL.  Their throwback uniforms are so much better.  They need to go back to them.  The Patriots are close to having pretty good uniforms.  They should get rid of the silver and the Flying Elvis and just be red, white, and blue with Pat Patriot as the logo.  I would keep the blue jersey as the home jersey instead of going back to the red because the British wore red coats.  The Patriots should wear blue at home.  And for both teams and for the NFL in general, I lament what has happened to socks in the NFL over the last 10 years.

And lastly, the need to fix Super Bowl logos and the field.  The biggest thing with the field is the end zones.  The team names should be centered.  They’re going to have the team logo on the left side and the team name not centered.  They used to do the conference logo on the left and the NFL logo on the right with the team name centered in between them.  I would definitely bring back the conference logo on one side.  The other side could be the team logo or helmet or the NFL logo (I don’t really care which one) with the team name in the middle.  And it’s been 16 years of bad Super Bowl logos.  Super Bowl XLV to LV were absolutely terrible.  The last five have been better, but they’re still not close to being as good as what we got before Super Bowl XLV.  I don’t get it at all.  It’s like when the NCAA Tournament had every game in the first four rounds played on the same floor.  How is that visually appealing?  Much like Super Bowl logos, the NCAA Tournament has improved that a little bit, but they would still be so much better if they just let the games be played on the home court.  The NFL needs to bring back creative Super Bowl logos.  So I used Google Gemini to come up with logos for this Super Bowl that are more along the lines of the pre-Super Bowl XLV logos.  Here are my favorites:

I’m giving this one the gold medal of all the logos I got Gemini to make.  I like the simplicity (a lot of the logos it made were way too complicated and although they were better than what we’ve gotten for the last 16 years, they didn’t seem like the pre-Super Bowl XLV logos).  It’s got a nod to the Bay Area with the bridge and it’s very patriotic for 250 years of the United States.

This one gets the silver.  It’s a little clunky in the middle with that shield.  Maybe get rid of the shield and jazz up the Super Bowl LX with like some kind of patriotic lettering (like stars in the letters or something) and I think this one would be really good.

I’ll give this one the bronze.  I like the Bay Area aspects of this one and it’s patriotic.  I think I would change the gold buildings in the background to red to go with the blue background and then change all the silver to gold since the game is being played in the Golden State.

J-E-T-S Ugh

I was once a huge Jets fan.  In the early years of this century, they were probably the team that I cared about the most.  Of all the professional teams that I like, only two of them are in New York.  I wasn’t watching the Celtics regularly until I had access to NBA League Pass in 2004.  I wasn’t watching the Dodgers regularly until I had access to MLB Extra Innings in 2008.  My other two favorite professional teams were the Jets and Rangers.  I wasn’t much of a college sports fan until I went to Notre Dame in 2005.  And I was a bigger football fan than hockey fan.  So I was a huge Jets fan.  And now I care very little about them.

My Jets fandom started to wane when I went to Notre Dame, but it definitely didn’t go away.  I remember watching the Jets in the playoffs against the Chargers the night before I moved into my dorm at Notre Dame and against the Steelers after my first week as a Notre Dame student.  But a lot has changed.  Unlike the other sports, I care more about college football than professional football.  Even if the Jets were really good, I would care about Notre Dame football more.  Notre Dame basketball can get close to the Celtics for me, but even when Notre Dame is good, it’s still only 30ish games as opposed to 82 games plus the playoffs for the Celtics.  After a pretty good run by Jets’ standards from 1997-2010 (120-104 in the regular season, seven playoff appearances in 14 years), they’ve been terrible since then (85-156, no playoff appearances in 15 years).  Only the Browns have a worse record during that time and the Jets have scored the fewest points during that time.  They were the only team in the four major sports to not make the playoffs while Pope Francis was the pope.

Even before they became terrible, there were reasons why I struggled to be as excited about the Jets as I once was.  Rex Ryan got the Jets to two AFC Championship Games.  I didn’t like the way he conducted himself at all.  The other problem with those Jets teams was that Mark Sanchez was the quarterback.  I was still a pretty big fan during those years, but I did not like rooting for a USC quarterback.  Later they drafted another USC quarterback (Sam Darnold) and I just couldn’t do it again.  I used to watch every Jets game.  You could probably count on one hand the amount of Jets games I’ve watched from start to finish this decade.  Another factor was how the Patriots got caught cheating multiple times and they just kept winning.  I would love to get back to caring about the Jets, but I don’t think I will ever care about the Jets as much as I once did.  If they had a star player from Notre Dame (like Jeremiyah Love or CJ Carr), that would help.

And while the Jets have been terrible, the two professional teams that I care most about have been great.  The Dodgers have the best winning percentage in baseball for the last 15 years and they’ve won three championships and made it to the World Series five times.  The Celtics have the third best winning percentage in the NBA for the last 15 years (they have the best winning percentage in the last 10 years) and they’ve won a championship and made it to the Finals one other time.  It’s fun watching them.  It’s not fun watching the Jets.

Anyway, I went to see the Jets take on the Dolphins last weekend.  Vin has season tickets and he invited me.  I took the train.  It was my third game at MetLife Stadium, but my first time taking the train.  My NJ Transit train from Penn Station was delayed, but it’s not a bad way to get there.  Vin lives in New Jersey so I was meeting him there and I didn’t want to drive to the Meadowlands by myself.  I was hoping to get there around noon.  With the delay, it was more like 12:30.  On my way, I kept checking Twitter to see the college football playoff matchups.  They were not out by the time I got to the Meadowlands.  I was walking through the parking lot to find Vin and I heard somebody say that it was Alabama-Oklahoma and Miami-Texas A&M.  That meant that inexplicably, there was no spot for Notre Dame.  Then the texts started coming from various people.  So it was a bad start to the day.  As I continued walking through the parking lot, I heard somebody say hello to me.  I saw three former students who were also going to the game.  They are all in their early-mid 20s now.  It’s weird to randomly run into former students in another state.  But with the small crowd, I guess if somebody I knew was going to be at the game, the probability that I would run into them there was higher than you would expect.  Anyway, I finally found Vin and we had a Sam Adams Winter Lager in the parking lot before heading into the stadium.

We went into the stadium just after kickoff.  The game went terribly.  At one point in the first quarter, the Dolphins had run 15 plays and scored 21 points while the Jets had run six plays and scored no points.  When the Jets finally forced the Dolphins to punt, Isaiah Williams returned it 78 yards for a touchdown.  That was exciting.  But that was the only touchdown the Jets scored.  Tyrod Taylor and Brady Cook combined to go 15/34 passing with 142 yards, no touchdowns, and three interceptions.  Jet quarterbacks had more turnovers in this game than the Jet defense has forced all year (they have two fumble recoveries and no interceptions in 13 games).  As a team, the Jets rushed for 65 yards on 17 carries.  We left at halftime with the Dolphins leading 24-7.  Vin grabbed spicy chicken sandwiches for us on the way out so we enjoyed those and drank Guinness in the parking lot.  The Dolphins ended up scoring 34 points despite Tua Tagovailoa only passing for 127 yards (they had 239 rushing yards on 41 carries).  The final score was 34-10.  Vin is not renewing his season tickets.  On the bright side, at least the Jets were wearing some stupid uniforms that Nike and the NFL were forcing them to wear.  Attendance was listed at 68,625 and it was 41°.  I assume that they did sell 68,625 tickets.  Wikipedia lists the capacity at 82,500.  I would guess that there were maybe 30,000 people there.  It had to be the smallest crowd of any NFL/college game that I’ve been to.  When I went to Notre Dame-Navy at FedEx Field in 2014, attendance was 36,807.  That was a bigger crowd.  For this game, the lower level was pretty full.  We were on the second level, which was probably less than half full.  And the upper level had to be at least 90% empty.

There were lots and lots of empty seats.

This was only my second NFL game in person.  The first was Jets-Panthers in 1998 (here’s the box score).  My uncle got a bunch of tickets somehow so it was my dad, at least one of my uncles, some of my cousins, and me.  I don’t want this blog post to be all negative, so I’ll talk about that game.  That was the Jets’ second best season of all time.  They went 12-4 in the regular season, got a bye, beat the Jaguars in the playoffs, and lost to the Broncos in the AFC Championship Game.  So they ended up 13-5.  When they won Super Bowl III, their record including the playoffs was 13-3.  Anyway, Jets-Panthers the Sunday after Thanksgiving in 1998 was fun. The Panthers took a 7-3 lead in the first quarter, but the Jets took the lead on a 60 yard run by Curtis Martin later in the quarter and never trailed for the rest of the game.  Vinny Testaverde was 16/21 passing for 255 yards and two touchdown passes to Wayne Chrebet (seven catches for 107 yards).  Curtis Martin ran 21 times for 110 yards and two touchdowns.  Keyshawn Johnson caught three passes for 77 yards and scored a touchdown on an end around that went for 35 yards (that’s the one thing about the game that I remember well).  Aaron Glenn had an interception and Anthony Pleasant had two sacks.  Bryan Cox had a sack for a safety.  John Hall made four extra points (the Jets had an unsuccessful two-point conversion attempt on their other touchdown) and four field goals.  John Kidd was the punter for the Jets.  I don’t remember him (apparently he played eight games for the Jets in 1998, the final season of his 15 year NFL career).  The starting quarterback for the Panthers was a Notre Dame quarterback, Steve Beuerlein (if I knew that he went to Notre Dame at the time, I didn’t care).  He was 13/23 passing for 169 yards with a touchdown and an interception.  The Jets won 48-21.  Attendance was 71,501 (much more accurate than 68,625 for this Dolphins game) and it was 53°.

I think Vin described MetLife Stadium as Soviet-style architecture. It’s bad. It has such a sterile feel. Part of that is having two teams that play there, but that’s not the only reason. The stadium has no personality. My previous trips there were for Notre Dame-Navy in 2010 (a miserable game before the blog) and Notre Dame-Syracuse in 2014 (maybe the least enjoyable experience I’ve had attending a Notre Dame win). Notre Dame played Syracuse there again in 2016 and Navy in 2024 and I never even considered going to either game. Maybe I would have considered going to the Navy game if we weren’t also playing Army at Yankee Stadium last year. I don’t know if Notre Dame has any future games scheduled there. The only reason I would consider going is because it is fairly easy to get to with the train and it would be a game I could go to and not have to get a hotel room. I do hope to get to another Jet game at some point in the future when they’re not so terrible. Maybe it will be in a new stadium that isn’t so terrible.

So anyway, it was a rough day for me.  Notre Dame’s football season came to an end in the most ridiculous way possible and I watched the Jets play a terrible half of football.  But it was good to see Vin.  I hope for him, my brother Sean, and some other people who still care about the Jets a lot more than I do that the Jets will finally win a Super Bowl someday during our lifetimes.