constant crises

Fantasy football... Sometimes you win and sometimes you get into the playoffs as the number three seed only to see your pretty-boy quarterback do absolutely nothing for you and then your star wide receiver on monday goes nuts for 2 td's but you still lose by less than a point because your opponent had steven jackson and he caught two balls in a garbage time last-minute drive. And then you feel bad. Awesome.

i don't spend too much time criticizing the bad behavior of professional athletes. i never considered them role models, even when i was young. i always had my grandfather for that. as a result, i always find myself pleasantly surprised when a star athlete is actually all of the qualities that you would want to impress upon your children: confident, humble, gracious, kind, and pleasant. i just watched ladainian tomlinson (LT) on leno and was struck (again) by how genuine of a person he seems to be. when you've listened to as many sports radio shows and interviews as i have, picking out the athletes who pretend to be modest and kind (shane battier, shaun alexander, curt schilling, jerry rice, mark mcgwire) from those who are actually humble (elton brand, grant hill, derek jeter) becomes fairly easy. LT is certainly representative of the latter. it's hard to not root for a guy that great. go chargers, i guess...

so first my oakland a's decide it's time to hang out in fremont [editor's note: FREMONT?!], and now my 49ers have decided to run from famous candlestick point to the glorious urban center of santa clara? what a week for bay area sports! in all seriousness though, what the HELL is going on? as much as i enjoy both of my favorite professional sports teams moving closer to me geographically, i'm wondering how we've come to this. simple answers... oakland athletics: oakland doesn't deserve a professional baseball team. i'm sorry, but it had to be said. this is, after all, a team that has gone to the playoffs multiple times in the past few years with absolutely zero home-field advantage in the second-most decrepit (more on that later) professional sports venue in the entire country. honestly, it has been pitiful. would i have rather seen the a's go to a city like san jose, a large city that has already proved an ability to support a team (the sharks! it's hockey for christ's sake.)? yeah. but you know what, fremont is a nice-enough place and games will be close by. i just hope they don't actually call themselves the fremont a's. yech. san francisco 49ers: network associates (oakland) coliseum is the second-worst professional sports venue because monster park at candlestick point is THE worst. have you ever gone to a game there and tried to exit the parking lot? stoops and i once finished watching the niners-browns game, got to his car, threw a football around for an hour and a half, drank a couple of beers apiece, and THEN sat in traffic for an hour (true story!). and that doesn't even touch on the horrific nature of the stadium itself. honestly? i'm happy that the niners are leaving, because i don't think they would have ever gotten the stadium done in the city. yes, it makes me sad to actually agree with john york, but i'll do it just once. i'm just happy that they're sticking with the name "san francisco 49ers." so there you have it. all in all, i'm pretty happy about the whole thing (surprisingly). after all, finding asian food before baseball games just got ten times easier.

i just returned home after the usc-stanford drubbing at stanford stadium. it was, as all stanford games have been this year, an extremely sobering experience. there was a time when we were actually competitive on the field. stanford fans today now refer to the tyrone willingham years as "the good years". we may have lost some games back then, but we NEVER got embarrassed. but these years under buddy teevens and walt harris have been truly debilitating as a stanford fan. it has been so atrocious, that a column in the san jose mercury news this week suggested that it's a good thing because it's SO bad that our administration will need to consider relaxing admissions standards. in any other situation, such a column would make me respond in a heated email to the writer, but this season has been so painful that the column actually made me pause for thought. after all, i used to resort to the same silly comebacks that stanford fans tend to use when we lose any sort of game. choose one of the following: 1. we're smarter than you 2. you're winning because you let mentally deficient "student"-athletes into your school 3. you'll work for me one day 4. you're attending one of our safety schools these spiteful remarks are simply a result of frustration most years. just stupid comments that come from the pain of losing. but this year's football team has been so embarrassing that stanford fans look like complete jackasses when they say these things, no longer just frustrated and disappointed fans. we're not competitive. we're not frustrated because we lost the game. it is way beyond frustration. it's just pure embarrassment. our team is so embarrassing that, for any reasonable stanford fan, it outweighs any director's cup trophy that we win for the umpteenth year. i want my football team to win games, i don't want to tell people how we have "the best overall sports program in the country," because i honestly don't give a shit about that anymore. actually, scratch that, i just want my football team to be decent enough that i actually want to defend them when someone rags on them. i want them to be decent enough that i don't wish i hadn't spent $90 (a tiny amount) on season tickets. most of all? i want them to be decent enough that i don't feel like a +23 point spread is a lock for the other team, every week. so what should we do, as a school. open up our academic floodgates like so many other schools, as wilner suggested in the mercury column? no thank you. i still enjoy being able to laugh when ignorant sportscasters talk about how notre dame and stanford are on the same academic level (as tyrone said WHILE he was coaching the irish, that is preposterous). but i don't think it's unreasonable to have a competitive team without giving up academic standards. after all, didn't we go to a few bowl games just a few years ago? i'm tired of trying to come up with excuses for the pitiful nature of our football team. every game looks worse and every season looks more disappointing. i just want a decent team. not even a good team (right now), just a decent one. otherwise we might as well join the ivy league. stanford football: stop making me sick. edit: just as i finished this post, the stanford-usc lowlights came on abc. i turned off the tv.