Last Sunday, we decided to go to a baseball game. Richmond lost our Braves minor league team over a year ago. A new team moved into the ancient Diamond, a massive, 11,000 seat, 1970’s monument to un-eclectic symmetry and concrete, some of which once fell from the partial awning above and landed in empty seats [...]
The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue came out a week or so ago. I was buried in work the day it curled up in my mailbox. My wife and daughter grabbed it before I could see any painted body parts. They seem to enjoy it more than I do, albeit they use it for a different [...]
The Super Bowl is Sunday. It is a big deal for football, entertainment, advertising and Saints fans. If you enjoy the NFL, thank Steve Sabol. His stories created it. Sabol is 67 now. He became famous by turning football into art (according to Joe Posnanski in Sports Illustrated his week). It is a great story [...]
One sign of a sucky economy: NASA has put the space shuttle on sale. The 1970’s era icon used to be $42 million. Now if you want to ride the rocket (or rather just sit in it in your backyard) the price has been reduced to $28.8 million. This fall, the old orbital workhorses will [...]
During the holidays I was hit by a moment of revelation while watching Bobby Bowden coaching his last game at Florida State. After his final win, he gave a press conference. He was classic Bobby B. I flipped channels and there was Paula Dean on the Food Network. That is when it hit me; Paula [...]
Go to ESPN or Sports Illustrated and check out the college bowl games this year. There are 33 of them. We all know the Rose, Orange and Sugar Bowls. We know about the BCS Championship game. I’ll get excited about the Cotton, Gator and Fiesta Bowl. But did you know there is a Little [...]
Speaking of credibility: I love college football. Always have. But there are parts of it that chew at me. This is one of them: When a student athlete transfers to another program (for whatever reason), that athlete is punished by having to sit out a year, basically losing a year of eligibility at a time [...]
Did you know that the minimum wage in the NFL is $860,000 a year? That’s the minimum. See those guys standing around on the sidelines holding clipboards and not sweating or getting dirty? They’re racking up nearly 900 grand a year for that. See those guys high-five-ing the runner who just got his bell rung [...]
I know full well that college football is damned near pro football – perched right on the edge, sniffing the rim like a dog in the bathroom. I know that major teams are raking in millions while players scramble to keep from getting a season-ending/scholarship-ending injury. I have no defendable reason to love the game, [...]
It is fall; time for leaves to turn orange, yellow and red and butts to gravitate towards aluminum bleachers all over America. College football started last week and most big stadiums are surrounded by massive inclines of gleaming aluminum aching under the weight of thousands of screaming heinies. Every high school in the country has [...]
If you have seen, heard or read about sports in the last 25 years, you know Len Berman. Every day, Len’s punchy descriptions, devoid of hype and jargon ding into my email inbox. If you don’t get Len Berman’s Top 5, you are missing the purity of what sports used to be and should still [...]
After 24-hour-a-day basketball, what are we supposed to watch now? American Idol? Baseball that doesn’t matter? Diners, Drive-Ins and the Toast Chees I used to eat every day for lunch?
I went to a Southern university where proper ladies and gentlemen of culture wore suits, ties and sundresses to football games on Saturday. Since I was neither proper nor cultured and wouldn’t recognize a lady or a gentleman if they bit me in the ass (a suggestion I offered to more than a few of [...]
An old friend of mine, Peter Kaufman, recently invited me to a function where it was my job to be a panelist, talking to a fairly large group (who paid to get in – more for the drinks than the entertainment) about Super Bowl commercials. I was supposed to be a critic, comic, commentator – [...]
We tend to attach logos to the ends of our accomplishments in branding. I’d like to look at the last 29 years, however, as experiences (plural) rather than experience (singular). There is a big difference.