My favorite time of year is right around the corner. I got a little taste of it last night when I attended the Redskins' first exhibition game of the season against Pittsburgh. I was happy to see that despite the long string of bad years this town has suffered, Washingtonians are still willing to don their Moss jerseys, pay exorbitant prices for tickets and make the trek out to Landover to support their team.
This time, the players rewarded us by not tripping over themselves, managing even to beat last year's Super Bowl runners up. When the Skins drew first blood on a beautiful toss from Rex Grossman to Santana, the crowd went crazy, belting out "Hail to the Redskins!" with the kind of enthusiasm I normally ascribe to college fans alone. I felt tinges of familiarity. It was almost like I was back at Florida Field.
Except not really.
Therein lies the real point of this blog post: for me to profess my undying devotion to college football and assert its superiority, as compared to the pros, in every way. Sure, the level of play of the NFL game may be higher. But so are the costs of fandom, and without the college game's rewards.
The adoration of the sport among players and spectators alike at the college level is unparalleled. It's matchless. Night games at the Swamp are an unearthly experience, one in which souls for miles join together in a wave of intensity and passion that I'm sure could power Gainesville if it could only be harnessed. I imagine fans at Death Valley or the Big House or The Shoe would say the same.
There's simply no way to argue the pro game can compare. Without the wild abandon of the student section, the pomp and circumstance of the marching band, the proud ownership of the program felt by decades of alumni, how could it ever hope to?
College football is more than a game. It's more, even, than an experience. It's a lifestyle, a way of living.
It's allowing yourself to be swept away in the magic of the season. To live and breathe and die with your team, knowing they are sweating and bleeding for you. It's to joyfully sacrifice whatever else may have the audacity to happen on a Saturday between Labor Day and New Year's and to instead immerse yourself in, to borrow a tagline the Masters don't deserve, a tradition unlike any other.
It's heaven. And it's here.
Three weeks from today, UF will open up another year. I have no idea what I think is going to happen.
I've always felt a high level of comfort in talking about our prospects in the off-season. A national championship was only ever twelve games away, and I knew my team well enough to have an idea about whether we could make a run. I was well-acquainted with the coach; I understood the system, having fallen in love with college football right alongside the introduction of the spread; and the players were my classmates in an abstract but still meaningful way.
This time around is very different.
We have a whole new coaching staff running an unproven pro-style offense. More importantly, I'm now three seasons removed from being a student there myself. Virtually none of the players I'd periodically cross paths with on campus are still around. The Gators are a different monster now, and with the press having been locked out of spring practices, I feel a complete absence of any sense of what to expect.
I'm nervous and excited and terrified and hopeful.
How amazing is it that a sport can make a person feel all that?
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Women's World Cup postmortem
Given that this blog has been exclusively dedicated to the Women's World Cup so far, it may seem out of place that I haven't yet gotten around to opining on the way this year's tourney ended. Rather than do that, however, I'm going to paste in excerpts from two blog posts I wrote four years ago -- the first after the U.S. women's team was stomped on by Brazil in the World Cup semifinals and the second after we pulled out the bronze-medal win.
September 27, 2007
I still remember my brother's away message after his Knights got killed by my Gators last year. "Mourning the massacre." Well, I can relate. Earlier today, the greatest team you've never heard of was upset in a big way.
I'm mourning for Brianna Scurry, and for Shannon Boxx, and yes, I'm even mourning for Greg Ryan (the stupid bastard). But really what I'm mourning here is soccer in America. ...
Nothing has ever succeeded in energizing Americans like wild, unadulterated successes. There was an explosion of interest after the '99 World Cup; Chastain's was the modern shot heard 'round the world. It sparked a following like no women's sport had ever before (or ever since) received, and Sports Illustrated bestowed its grandest honor on not any individual but the entire team that year.
Yet, as the latest iteration of the tournament was approaching, endemic skepticism seemed to sweep across the land. Sure, the country seemed to say, the hype was awesome while it lasted, but no American team can possibly hope to capture the cup, and the imagination of the world, without Foudy and Fawcett and Akers and Hamm...
Can they?
The bottom line was, these girls had one chance to reignite this country's nascent passion for the greatest sport the world has ever known, and just one way to do it. They had to at least earn a championship berth, and in the process take the world by storm. They had to win, and do it big, making household names of Solo, Tarpley, Osborne, Lloyd... they had to, they had to, they had to, and they didn't.
This morning, bad coaching and worse officiating extinguished our hopes of bringing home title number three. One hell of an impressive 21-year-old named Marta led Brazil to a 4-0 rout of the United States and left me mourning the massacre of my all-time favorite game.
September 30, 2007The more things change, the more they stay the same, eh?
Eureka, we're alive! A couple closing thoughts:
- Despite Germany's unprecedented eleven-nothing win in the tournament opener, and their clinching of the Cup this morning, Marta of Brazil still managed to walk away with the Golden Boot. They're already calling her the best female player in the world -- right up there with countryman Ronaldinho for the men.
- Power striker Abby Wambach scored six goals in six consecutive world cup games. What a feat. That's the kind of thing they used to look to Mia for. She is widely considered to be the heart of the U.S. team, and at 27, she'll be around to lead us on to victory for many years to come. Keep an eye out.
- Hats off to captain Kristine Lilly. I knew this was to be her last World Cup; something I didn't realize is that she's the only person to have appeared in all five, having made her international debut some -- count 'em -- twenty years ago. She stepped off the field in the 88th minute of the third-place game to deafening applause by an audience that seemed to understand instinctively the weight of the event. I was reminded in a powerful way of Michelle Akers's historic exit from the title game in '99, when the world stood and cheered for someone they recognized as the greatest women's player of her time.
Monday, July 11, 2011
A modest reflection on USA-Brazil
There was a match during the European soccer championships in 2008 in which Turkey defied the odds by making a spectacular last-minute comeback from two goals down to advance. At the time, I called it the "Boise State-Oklahoma of professional soccer," a reference to the Broncos' breathtaking Fiesta Bowl upset of the Sooners in 2007. It was, in other words, the greatest game that I had ever seen.
That's no longer the case. The Turkey game has been supplanted.
Yesterday's performance by the U.S. women's national team to defeat Brazil in the Women's World Cup quarterfinals was unlike anything I've ever witnessed. It was stunning. Just stunning.
The sheer act of athleticism that is surviving a soccer game at that level under normal circumstances is something I think goes underappreciated by most. In no other team sport I can think of are so few subs allowed. In no sport, therefore, does such a large proportion of the players remain on the field (or court or diamond) the entire time. In no other sport is play virtually continuous -- no commercial breaks, no time-outs by the captains or the coach. In no other sport is a game ninety minutes long, not sixty as in hockey or football or forty as in college basketball. Ninety minutes of all-out physical exertion. Ninety minutes. That in itself it amazing, when you really think about it.
During the knockout phases of World Cup soccer, games that end in ties go another thirty minutes. That brings the total to two full hours of play. No additional substitutions. Not even a break between overtime halves. At the end of such matches, players tend to be, understandably, exhausted beyond words. It's what they can only hope two-a-day wind sprints and suicides and stadiums in the heat prepared them for.
To play 120 minutes and come out with a win is a big accomplishment. The U.S. did it down a man for nearly half the game. They did it against the No. 1 footballer in the world and a team of cry-baby dive-artist cheaters. They did it despite refs who were, charitably, out of their minds. They did it on an impossible goal by their star striker (a Gator, might I add) and a keeper with her honor on the line. And they did it twelve years to the day after the '99 Women's World Cup final where a different team of Americans made history on penalty kicks.
Truth is so much stranger than fiction.
That's no longer the case. The Turkey game has been supplanted.
Yesterday's performance by the U.S. women's national team to defeat Brazil in the Women's World Cup quarterfinals was unlike anything I've ever witnessed. It was stunning. Just stunning.
The sheer act of athleticism that is surviving a soccer game at that level under normal circumstances is something I think goes underappreciated by most. In no other team sport I can think of are so few subs allowed. In no sport, therefore, does such a large proportion of the players remain on the field (or court or diamond) the entire time. In no other sport is play virtually continuous -- no commercial breaks, no time-outs by the captains or the coach. In no other sport is a game ninety minutes long, not sixty as in hockey or football or forty as in college basketball. Ninety minutes of all-out physical exertion. Ninety minutes. That in itself it amazing, when you really think about it.
During the knockout phases of World Cup soccer, games that end in ties go another thirty minutes. That brings the total to two full hours of play. No additional substitutions. Not even a break between overtime halves. At the end of such matches, players tend to be, understandably, exhausted beyond words. It's what they can only hope two-a-day wind sprints and suicides and stadiums in the heat prepared them for.
To play 120 minutes and come out with a win is a big accomplishment. The U.S. did it down a man for nearly half the game. They did it against the No. 1 footballer in the world and a team of cry-baby dive-artist cheaters. They did it despite refs who were, charitably, out of their minds. They did it on an impossible goal by their star striker (a Gator, might I add) and a keeper with her honor on the line. And they did it twelve years to the day after the '99 Women's World Cup final where a different team of Americans made history on penalty kicks.
Truth is so much stranger than fiction.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Why the Women's World Cup matters
It was a year ago that I realized soccer had caught on in America.
I'd met some friends at an Irish pub in Dupont to watch the USA-England game on the first Saturday of the 2010 World Cup. We got there early to secure seats, have brunch and watch Argentina play. When we arrived, the place was nearly dead. But over the course of the next three hours, something miraculous happened.
People started showing up. First the tables started to fill. Then it was standing room only. Then people began sitting cross-legged on the floor along the walls. They kept on coming and sitting until they had taken up every inch of space between and around the tables and were spilling out onto the sidewalk.
The waitstaff physically couldn't get to us to bring us the food we'd ordered. For weeks, the restaurant had been advertising two-for-one mimosas and Bloody Marys on game days -- before the match had even started, they'd run out of champagne. And Bloody Mary mix.
It was insane.
And the really remarkable thing was that it wasn't just the pub we were at. People were spilling out of every bar and restaurant in the neighborhood. Crowds descended on Dupont Circle, where a couple of big projector screens had been set up to air the games. They were wearing American flags and authentic football jerseys. Their faces were painted and, yes, they carried vuvuzelas.
And I thought, it's finally happened. America has finally discovered the beautiful game.
One might argue Americans aren't truly soccer fans. That they still don't follow the domestic league or know much about the players. They don't have fantasy teams, and most of them probably don't even really understand the rules. We're mostly in it for the excuse to be raucous and drunk in public before noon. But is that really all that different from the way the general public looks at American football? Isn't that too just an excuse to grill burgers and play bean-bag toss, and aren't most people inebriated beyond the point where a true sportsman's appreciation of the game is possible before kickoff, anyway?
I don't know. I guess my point is not that this is the peak of America's love affair with soccer. On the contrary, I think this is just the beginning. I think someday, average Joes will look forward to World Cup football with almost the intensity that I do. That eventually, the kind of fanaticism I witnessed on that Saturday last year will be expected when the tourney rolls around.
When that day comes, I think those who study sports culture (and are honest with themselves) will look back and agree it all started at the Rose Bowl on July 10, 1999.
America discovered soccer the moment Brandi Chastain slipped a shot past China's goalkeeper to clinch the Women's World Cup, ripped her jersey off and fell, euphoric, to the ground. It was a special moment for a lot of little girls like me who already lived and breathed the sport and got to watch our heroes Mia and Michelle and Briana and Kristine bring its highest honor home. But it was also, I think, an important moment for a lot of other people -- like our dads, who went in not caring an ounce about women's professional soccer but couldn't help but be swept up in the excitement of the tournament. Regular sports enthusiasts had no choice but to pay attention. "Oh, so that's what soccer looks like. Huh. It's rather entertaining, isn't it..."
That was a bigger moment in sports history than I think almost anyone realizes, because it was the moment that made a women's sport relevant for maybe the only time in history, that made a women's sport more popular in America than its male counterpart. Female athletes became household names. (And if you don't believe me, consider who graced SI's cover as the 1999 Sportsman of the Year.)
It didn't last, of course, our love of women's soccer. But I believe it primed this nation to appreciate the (men's) game. Think about it: Team USA's following has gotten larger and more invested with every passing World Cup in the twelve years since that day.
That's why I get so excited for Women's World Cup soccer. Because there's always a chance something miraculous could happen. That the country might be forced to stop and take note of not just the greatest game in all of sports but some of the greatest athletes. Against all odds. In a world where even women don't care about women's sports, where even I don't care about women's sports. Except this one.
I'd met some friends at an Irish pub in Dupont to watch the USA-England game on the first Saturday of the 2010 World Cup. We got there early to secure seats, have brunch and watch Argentina play. When we arrived, the place was nearly dead. But over the course of the next three hours, something miraculous happened.
People started showing up. First the tables started to fill. Then it was standing room only. Then people began sitting cross-legged on the floor along the walls. They kept on coming and sitting until they had taken up every inch of space between and around the tables and were spilling out onto the sidewalk.
The waitstaff physically couldn't get to us to bring us the food we'd ordered. For weeks, the restaurant had been advertising two-for-one mimosas and Bloody Marys on game days -- before the match had even started, they'd run out of champagne. And Bloody Mary mix.
It was insane.
And the really remarkable thing was that it wasn't just the pub we were at. People were spilling out of every bar and restaurant in the neighborhood. Crowds descended on Dupont Circle, where a couple of big projector screens had been set up to air the games. They were wearing American flags and authentic football jerseys. Their faces were painted and, yes, they carried vuvuzelas.
And I thought, it's finally happened. America has finally discovered the beautiful game.
One might argue Americans aren't truly soccer fans. That they still don't follow the domestic league or know much about the players. They don't have fantasy teams, and most of them probably don't even really understand the rules. We're mostly in it for the excuse to be raucous and drunk in public before noon. But is that really all that different from the way the general public looks at American football? Isn't that too just an excuse to grill burgers and play bean-bag toss, and aren't most people inebriated beyond the point where a true sportsman's appreciation of the game is possible before kickoff, anyway?
I don't know. I guess my point is not that this is the peak of America's love affair with soccer. On the contrary, I think this is just the beginning. I think someday, average Joes will look forward to World Cup football with almost the intensity that I do. That eventually, the kind of fanaticism I witnessed on that Saturday last year will be expected when the tourney rolls around.
When that day comes, I think those who study sports culture (and are honest with themselves) will look back and agree it all started at the Rose Bowl on July 10, 1999.
America discovered soccer the moment Brandi Chastain slipped a shot past China's goalkeeper to clinch the Women's World Cup, ripped her jersey off and fell, euphoric, to the ground. It was a special moment for a lot of little girls like me who already lived and breathed the sport and got to watch our heroes Mia and Michelle and Briana and Kristine bring its highest honor home. But it was also, I think, an important moment for a lot of other people -- like our dads, who went in not caring an ounce about women's professional soccer but couldn't help but be swept up in the excitement of the tournament. Regular sports enthusiasts had no choice but to pay attention. "Oh, so that's what soccer looks like. Huh. It's rather entertaining, isn't it..."
That was a bigger moment in sports history than I think almost anyone realizes, because it was the moment that made a women's sport relevant for maybe the only time in history, that made a women's sport more popular in America than its male counterpart. Female athletes became household names. (And if you don't believe me, consider who graced SI's cover as the 1999 Sportsman of the Year.)
It didn't last, of course, our love of women's soccer. But I believe it primed this nation to appreciate the (men's) game. Think about it: Team USA's following has gotten larger and more invested with every passing World Cup in the twelve years since that day.
That's why I get so excited for Women's World Cup soccer. Because there's always a chance something miraculous could happen. That the country might be forced to stop and take note of not just the greatest game in all of sports but some of the greatest athletes. Against all odds. In a world where even women don't care about women's sports, where even I don't care about women's sports. Except this one.
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