Left Field

On the last few Sundays, I've done some strange things. I've gone to movies, ran (almost) three miles, folded laundry, endured three consecutive hours of a reality show about kids who can see ghosts, and NOT watched NFL football. Well, that's not entirely true. Last week I witnessed the Seahawks give up two touchdowns in 15 seconds of game time. Then I took a nap.
I'm having trouble watching the NFL this year, partially because the Seahawks appear to be half drunk and confused out there and also because it's been an exceptionally awesome college football season.

A World Series in which fans outside of New York are interested. NFL games featuring, among other things, at least one player with a broken ankle and a wiener-showing problem. The debut of the NBA's newest franchise, The Miami Lebrons Featuring Members of the Heat™. College football conference rivalries and BCS shuffling. NCAA basketball waiting in the wings. And, if you live in, or originate from, a region of the country where men still wear mustaches, there's also the NHL.

This week, the Associated Press poll, as well as the list compiled by the coaches, said that Oregon is the number one team in college football. But if you listen to the BCS, which as far as I can understand is operated and overseen by robots with flashing lights for eyes and little if any actual football experience, Oregon is actually number two.

We're not supposed to talk about Barry Bonds or Mark McGwire or Sammy Sosa – unless remarking about the sudden and inexplicable change in Sosa's skin color – because these are the guys we collectively decided, with the help of Congress, ruined baseball. Yet I doubt anyone could watch Baseball: The Tenth Inning, the continuation of bowl-cut filmmaking wizard Ken Burns' PBS documentary following the history of America's alleged pasttime, and not remember the absolute wonder that surrounded the 1998 homerun race.

I carry within me a deep, nagging and mostly illogical need to watch pivotal sporting events. If I miss a big bowl game or an NCAA tournament upset because one of my wife's college friends is getting married (this happens about every four months) or I get stuck at work or the cable goes out, I find myself feeling absent from the cultural fabric of the present tense. It's as if the sporting world has left me on the side of the road and continued on without me. Sure, I can catch the next bus and watch the 1:00 a.m. replay, but that's not the same. It's almost cheating.

“This doesn't seem safe, does it?” I asked, maybe to the bartender or maybe to the only other guy sitting at the bar. Almost ten seconds of silence followed and I felt marginally stupid because when watching football in the company of other football fans, one typically doesn't strike up casual conversation by bringing into question the relative safety of the sport.

It's pre-bowl season now in the college sports world, the period when your Saturdays are spent clicking aimlessly between non-conference college basketball matchups and TNT's weekly screening of Independence Day. The only other thing of note occupying your time is the ongoing assail of the BCS system. But the truth is you're wasting your time. There will never be a playoff system, let's accept that and instead use the other list of bowls strictly for comedic value.
Here are some bowls I propose the NCAA or whatever group of pharmaceutical companies, financial institutions and tortilla chip makers implement next season:

Guess what? No one we know in this region, likes, cares or has any desire to watch the Utah Jazz. Well, not at least since Stockton retired his thigh-bearing shorty shorts and Malone traded his one-hand-only dunks for rifles and shotguns of varying size and purpose. Still, Utah Jazz games continue to mysteriously and inexplicably appear on local cable despite the fact that the games aren't listed on that fun sliding color-coded programming chart.

What Usain Bolt did at the IAAF World Athletics Championships in Berlin earlier this month, breaking the 100 and 200 meter world records while capturing the bi-annual event's sprint races, is, well, insane, simply off the charts, the sports story of the year.
Bolt won the two races in record times of 9.58s for the 100 meters and 19.19s for the 200, breaking marks the Jamaican sprinter set at last summer's Olympics in Beijing.
In events where the difference between first and fifth can often be as minute as a body lean or a slightly askew stride, Bolt is putting visible distance between himself and his competition.

Memories from a baseball season as the play-by-play announcer for the Bend Elks on 106.7 KPOV:
The most horrifying, sickening sound in baseball is the contact of a baseball with a face.