I Guess

     I do not gamble on games. I tried it once in Las Vegas over 25 years ago and it was on baseball. I did not win. After that misadventure, I never thought about doing it again. Despite my cousin's husband in California pestering me when it comes to betting on NFL football when he is in Nevada.

     Odds makers in Vegas know what they are doing. They are playing with house money and they make the odds with scientific precision based on mathematical principles. Given that I became a trial lawyer  as a profession, math was not my strong suit. Thus, bucking the odds like gamblers do, would be a foolish pursuit.

     I do not play fantasy sports. I find that the drafting and studying of rosters each week is too demanding for me. Why invest money like that based upon a player's performance, which is subject to too many variables. I leave my gambling like that to the stock market with the advice of professionals who have studied so many trends and corporations that their predictions are much more likely to lead to success than figuring out if Brandon Marshall will have a great day versus the Cleveland Browns or if Bryce Harper is truly the center fielder I want for my team given his sub-par 2016 season.

     Only rarely have I had the opportunity to participate in a Super Bowl pool. Those are based on number combinations for quarters, half time and the end of the game. I did not do too well there. Like a lottery, it is mere chance. I play the Mega Millions lottery for the sheer ridiculousness of believing that if I was to be lucky, it would be a huge financial windfall. I think the best I have done is win $10.00. My parents once won $1,000.00 which led to a nice day at Monmouth Park where the New Jersey lottery picked a winner of a $1,000,000.00.  It was not my family. 

     I have participated in NCAA Tournament basketball pools. I once finished third. Predicting the outcome of 65 games involving squads that can catch fire at any given time is a very difficult exercise. Since now I do not have access to a pool (besides they are technically illegal) and I scrupulously avoid the lure of CBS Sports, ESPN and other "sanctioned" pools, I make my selections for fun. Usually, by the end of the full first round I have routinely mistakenly picked the outcome of 6 to 7 games, one of them being the play-in games. 

     So my investment in gambling on games is a no odds pool that I jointly play with my daughter on NFL games. For 17 weeks, we try to figure out who is more adept and gives us hope that we picked correctly. The first couple of weeks are a crapshoot--how well a team can do based upon supposed experts feel for the team coming out of training camp or coming off of the prior year makes predicting the winners of 16 games nearly impossible. Who would have thought that the Jets would lose to the Bengals at home in Week 1, after a near miss for the playoffs last season? Could we know how good New England was going to be minus Tom Brady for four games as a result of his Deflategate suspension? 

     The first 3-4 weeks involves a lot of luck or the happenstance of a critical injury to a player, thereby dooming a team. Yet who could have foreseen the poor starts the Kansas City Chiefs and Green Bay Packers had? That the Cleveland Browns weren't going to win a game until Week 16? Or that the Jacksonville Jaguars and Carolina Panthers, the latter in the last Super Bowl, would have crummy years? Who foresaw the Miami Dolphins making a concerted late run to a Wild Card berth? And the Philadelphia Eagles would start out red hot only to falter badly and fall out of playoff contention behind a promising rookie quarterback? With so many teams just above .500 and contending for the playoffs, it is hard to decide who to support on a weekly basis. 

     Last year we collectively won once. This season we were on the precipice of a possible winning weekend dependent upon the tiebreaker--how many total points would be scored in a Monday Night contest. We did not win. It is hard enough trying to get to a position of being in contention for winning the pool in any given week--figuring out how many points will be scored is even more unpredictable. 

     Here we are in Week 16. We started off with defying the odds that the New York Giants, who had a 99.8% chance of making the playoffs before the Thursday night game with the Eagles, would lose to the sub-.500 Philadelphia team. But the game was at Lincoln Financial Field, the Giants are much better at home than on the road and the Eagles had not been swept by the Giants in many years. Logic dictated to me to go with Philly.

     While there were many close contests this weekend, there were only a couple of upsets. Somehow I saw the Browns, at home, beating the San Diego Chargers; no team really loses all of their games in a season just as much as it is so rare to go undefeated during the regular season.  The Jaguars surprised me at home; then again could I have known that Tennessee star QB Marcus Mariota would break his leg? I went with the Chicago Bears at home despite their mediocre record, based on the prior week's close game versus the red hot Packers and a hunch that the Washington Redskins were overrated. Blew that one badly. Plus I gave the Seattle Seahawks way too much credit at home versus Arizona, but then again it was a meaningless game because Seattle was not going to do much to improve its stock from being the NFC West champs. 

     I have the feeling we are in the running for the weekly prize (which I have no idea what amount that is) based upon tonight's game between the Detroit Lions and the Dallas Cowboys in Arlington, Texas. While the game means more to the Lions, even they would be playing the Packers next week at home for the NFC crown no matter what tonight's outcome is. Yet Dallas, who has only lost to twice to the Giants is our pick--they have only lost at home once this year, and that was by one point to New York on Week 1. 

     There you have it--my semi-educated prognosticating of NFL games. It is fun although somewhat addictive. Maybe we will win tonight. If not, there is next weekend, which may have nothing at stake for anyone other than Green Bay and the Lions nest Sunday night. My prediction is that game will go down to the wire. Whichever team I choose as my winner, after all, will only be based on a guess. 

                                                           Bowling

     For those aficionados of the Professional Bowlers Association Tour, this article is not for you. Then again, for those entranced with the present College Bowl system as it now stands including a four team playoff, then this also may not be agreeable to you.

     In 2016, there are a grand total of 41 bowl games slated from December 17 through January 2, 2018. Two of those games, the Peach Bowl, held in Atlanta, and the Fiesta Bowl, located in Glendale, Arizona, are hosts to the two semi-finals games for the College Football Playoff. On January 9, 2018, the winners emerging from the aforementioned two bowls will meet in Tampa, Florida for the National Championship.

     41 games in 17 days, largely because there are no contest held on Christmas Day in deference to religion (although the National Football League has scheduled a game and the National Basketball Association has games starting at noon into the night), and none on January 1 to allow the NFL to complete its regular season. That means 82 of 128 schools registered to play in the Football Bowl Subdivision are playing in the post-season.

     By comparison, there are 125 schools in the Football Championship Subdivision who only permit 24 teams to qualify for an actual single-elimination tournament overseen by the National Collegiate Athletic Association. The NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament, known commonly as March Madness, is capped at 68 teams while drawing from a body of 347 colleges and universities. Division III, comprised of smaller schools in terms of enrollment, has nearly 250 football-playing members and has managed nicely to have a playoff which starts after all schools complete their 10 regular season matchups in November and ended on December 16.

     So why is there such a glaring, disparate percentage of FBS schools permitted to play in bowl games? Money drives the bus here. FBS schools have seen their schedules increase from 8 to 9 to 10 and now 12 regular season tilts. In most every FBS college, the main source of revenue comes from the football program. It is also the most visible symbol of the school, due to the oversaturation of games televised regionally or nationally. Alumni support is keyed directly to the success of the football team; the better the team, more money comes into the school from the alums.

     The costs of maintaining football teams and their palaces--training facilities with all the newest bells and whistles, dorms and stadiums--runs into the millions of dollars. Scholarships cost plenty, too. Thus given the economics of the sport, it is nearly vital for a team to make the post-season in order to generate necessary revenue for not just football but to operate Federally-mandated Title IX women's sports too.  

     As a result we get games in multiple locales, some in warm weather, others in colder climates. If there is a sponsor or a local Chamber of Commerce looking to advertise their town and ESPN/ABC, CBS or FOX is willing to shell out the dough, then there will be a game. How many times has the University of New Mexico hosted a game in chilly Albuquerque--no less this time against the University of Texas-San Antonio with its gaudy 6-6 record? Or that New Orleans Bowl, involving two 6-6 teams, Southern Mississippi and Louisiana-Lafayette? I am willing to bet that the bettors in Las Vegas do not get too excited. The hometown Las Vegas Bowl generated more excitement and more betting too as the two teams, San Diego State and Houston ONLY had 3 losses. A total of 12 teams had .500 records. Three teams had sub.500 records and mad the post-season largely due to having acceptable graduation for its teams. Acceptable? Mediocre? Really?

     Some of the big programs are seeing their elite stars now opt not to play in a bowl game in order to avoid injury in a meaningless contest and thus hurt their marketability to the NFL. Do the schools care about jeopardizing the futures of young men who now are practicing beginning in August and playing 13 games to line conference and athletic department coffers?

     I find that the whole bowl landscape has spun out of control. When I was younger there were the four New Year's Day bowl games without corporate sponsorships--Orange, Sugar, Cotton and Rose. They all were held during the day. The Sun Bowl in El Paso existed, as did the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville. The predecessor to the Citrus Bowl was the Tangerine Bowl and that was for smaller schools from 1947 until 1968.

     Seemingly games appear in markets that should never have a game. Do we really need a Pinstripe Bowl in Yankee Stadium? The Military Bowl in Annapolis, Maryland on December 27 is a barn burner. The Quick Lane Bowl indoors in Detroit's Ford Field is a must; do players desire spending a week in a nearly bankrupt city? While Nassau in the Bahamas beckons with its bowl game, we even now can justify playing outside of the United State for its Popeye's Bahamas Bowl coincidentally owned by ESPN Events, Inc.
   
     Miami, New Orleans, San Diego, Orlando, Atlanta, Tampa and Dallas have the need to twice enrich their coffers as well as their partners, which includes the particular affiliated conferences and the associated teams. I get that these events are worth millions to the local economy from the legions of fans who travel to see their alma mater play. Still, many bowls suffer from mediocre attendance and they survive because of the television contract and the sponsorships.

     The biggest bowls and the CPP Championship max out with $18 million payouts. While that is obscene itself, that is what the market bears. Promising a recruit the chance to play for something big is only limited to a handful of games with more established reputations in the bigger markets. While it is novel to play on the blue carpet in Boise, Idaho, try selling to a kid that your above .500 squad who may have finished in the middle of the pack of its conference gets to play for the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl trophy.

     I do not mean to diminish the efforts of those involved and dedicated to their bowls. It is just that there are too many games without the pizazz that should accompany a really successful season.

     It is my opinion that the major conferences need to cut back on the needless home games against lesser schools to fatten their resume as insurance for a tough season and institute a playoff like the FBS universities have. Notwithstanding the opposition from noted academics like former Ohio State University President Gordon Gee, presently the head of West Virginia University, whose reticence to a playoff was legendary, laughingly in the names of the students and academics,  whereupon only a handful of schools would find their way into the final four.

     I say take 16 bowls and make them into the championship. Situate them in areas where schools can readily play first round games without enormous travel. Four rounds would determine a champion, one which can be crowned in a big game in early January.  Then reserve another 16 games for those teams who reach a certain cutoff number of wins--let's day 8 victories in 11 games--as a reward for a nice season. This would permit some of the present sites to remain viable. Plus no site should host two games.

     To me this is a workable solution to an untenable situation. If their brethren in the FCS and Division II and Division II can make it work, then there is no reason this cannot succeed at the highest level.

     Until this happens, count me out of watching North Texas and Army tagle in the Heart of Dallas Bowl. Or Mississippi State and Miami of Ohio meet in the mausoleum know as Tropicana Field, home to the Rays for baseball but very ill-suited for football games.

     You can do better, institutions of higher learning. Use your collective heads in the NCAA and reach a realistic answer for the plethora of meaningless games which fill up dead time on the airwaves. The public, the players and the cities deserve better.

   
                 

                                                        Catholics versus Criminals

     Last night ESPN aired the aforementioned in its 30 for 30 series. The focus was on the 1980's football rivalry between the University of Miami Hurricanes and the University of Notre Dame Fighting Irish, with the emphasis on how the T shirt with the slogan which captured many people's imagination and flashed so much anger came about.

     Patrick Creadon, a Notre Dame alumnus who was a student during the heyday of the games between the two bitter foes, told the story from a decidedly Notre Dame perspective. He chronicled the story of how hostile the games were, stemming from the Miami successes under Coach Jimmy Johnson, which included a National Championship in 1987. To Creadon, the genesis of such hatred came from the 1985 game in Miami's Orange Bowl Stadium.

     Gerry Faust had campaigned long and hard to become the Coach of Notre Dame. An Ohio high school coach with a legion of great teams on that level, he could not win enough games to satisfy the rabid Notre Dame fans who expected championships every season.

     Faust decided to resign--not be fired--before the contest versus Miami. The team had quit on him, but there was still pride on the line.

     Johnson, a star at Arkansas as an undergrad where he became close with teammate Jerry Jones who owns the Dallas Cowboys, had worked his way up the coaching ranks as a valued assistant at his alma mater, then the University of Pittsburgh prior to becoming the head coach at Oklahoma State University. Compiling wins at Oklahoma State with a no nonsense brand of football, he was handed the reigns of the Miami program.

     Miami had established a counter culture approach to football, as Howard Schnellenberger, Johnson's predecessor as head coach, had recruited inner city kids from South Florida with an attitude. Some of those kids went on to commit crimes. That, to the pious alums of the white, preppy elite of Notre Dame, was heinous. Johnson continued the recruiting theme that Schnellenberger had utilized to reap tremendous success on the field.

     And he taught his team to never stop putting the hammer to the floor. Which is why he stomped on Notre Dame and Faust in his last futile game. Which enraged a whole lot of Irish players and partisans.

     One subplot to this was that Creadon had 2 friends who were diehard Irish fans and Notre Dame students,, Joe Frederick and childhood chum Pat Walsh. They also interacted with some of the key players for Notre Dame, including the quarterback, Tony Rice, who was a Proposition 48 qualifier and had to bring his grades up during his freshman year before he became eligible to play. Thus the message that everyone knew everyone, including the Yale transfer Pat Eilers--that's right--a transfer from one America's top schools who actually walked on to Coach Lou Holtz's squad and who was instrumental in the notorious 1988 game.

     Then there was this whole Johnson-Holtz scenario. Johnson had been a top assistant at Arkansas under his mentor, Frank Broyles. When Broyles stepped down, it was all but assumed that Johnson was going to be the next head coach. Surprisingly, Holtz was brought into Fayetteville to assume control; Johnson wanted no part of that and he left for Pitt. While civil at the surface, the two men clearly did not like each other.

     Thus, when Johnson was running over teams at full steam, Holtz was rebuilding Notre Dame. He was starting off recruiting young men he wanted to have the pedigree necessary to win. As such, when he recruited Rice, he got into trouble with then Chancellor Theodore Hester and was reprimanded for promising a scholarship to someone who had not even taken the SAT. Hester magnanimously still honored the scholarship.

     Such was the prelude to the 1988 contest at South Bend. Miami was peeved that it was only ranked 8th at the start of the season after winning the national title. And they took it out on their opponents. Notre Dame played a rugged schedule and started to win games they had been previously losing. Both moved up in the polls as the fall progressed until they were ranked number 1 and 4 when they collided on a warm October day.

     Creadon's friend Walsh had built a small, illicit underground empire selling Notre Dame tshirts which the bookstore and in effect the school wanted no part of. This violated the school's rule of no business enterprises on campus as well as trademark and copyright infringement laws. He and Frederick came up with the logo of Catholics vs Criminals and the shirts sold like a wildfire grows. So much so that $36,000 was made by his friend on game day sales. However, Pat Walsh had been forewarned that continued tshirt selling would have significant consequences. So, notwithstanding that dire forecast and having invested some money that he needed to recoup, he nonetheless went ahead, even selling the shirts on campus near the stadium.  This cost Pat Walsh his childhood quest, to walk on as a member of Digger Phelps' Notre Dame basketball squad, which he had just made as a senior. As the documentary so succinctly captured, Phelps questioned why selling tshirts was worth more than  a place on the basketball team?

     The rivalry was so intense among the players that the tshirts only ramped up the rabid nature of the Irish faithful. From the clips of interviews of former players, the distaste for the rival was bitter and hostile. Before the kickoff, there was a rumble between the teams. The game was hard-fought and with many mood swings based on scoring. Steve Walsh, the Miami quarterback, spoke of the emotionality of the event. He also suffered a cut on the chin chasing after a Notre Dame player who had intercepted his pass and was trying to score. Holtz so fired up his team that he said he wanted a piece of Jimmy Johnson after the game ( to which he revealed that he would have gotten his ass kicked). In terms of Catholics versus Criminals, Steve Walsh reminded us that there may have been as many Catholics on his team as there were at Notre Dame.

     It all came down to a tale of conversions. First, Notre Dame going for and making a 2 point conversion using that little-used Yale transfer Eilers who Holtz was impressed with from his initial encounter at practice as well as his moxie in telling a doubtful Holtz that he did not transfer from Yale not to play football. Then Miami running back Cleveland Gary  seemingly broke the plane of the goal line only to have been ruled to have fumbled before crossing the line, thereby denying the Hurricanes the chance to win the game.

     Notre Dame exacted revenge for its seniors and absolution in defeating Miami. Miami still cries foul on the conversion. The bitterness of the rivalry, so exemplified in the alleged divergence between the two schools in their football teams philosophies, led to the halting of the series for a long period of time.

     So what do we come away with from this 30 for 30 episode? That the world that these two teams and their fans dwelled in in 1988 was screwed up as captured by Creadon. The emotionality that QB Walsh had noted was perverse in its universal application involving both schools. Football was beyond normalcy. Or was football the real normalcy among the Notre Dame fans and led to its sanctification as well as its banality? That so much was invested on all fronts that a rivalry needed to be discontinued so as to regain sanity? That the insanity provoked radicalness and racial stereotyping? An absence of morality cloaked in feigned elitist fidelity?And one boy was so caught up in his own world that he lost out on the thing he cherished most?

     So who were the Catholics and who were the Criminals? I think that they existed on both sides and to the detriment of all. And the fact is, it is not surprising in this day, that the tshirt still resonates among Notre Dame fans while it is vilified by those int was intended for--Miami players of the past and present. Because, in the end, both sides were and still are wrong about the game and its overtones.

   

   

                                                                An Athlete's Time

     I have been an athlete. I played college baseball. Post-graduate, I weight lifted, jogged, ran, sprinted, played tennis (predominantly singles), basketball, did elliptical, walked, hiked, bicycled (indoors and outdoors), swam. I played softball. And on the day before my 42nd birthday, I played my final baseball game against 21 year olds and younger.

     As I write this, I am 66 years old. I have endured a myriad of injuries related to sports leading to multiple surgeries since 1989, including 4 to my right shoulder. The last one has not healed like I wanted and the pain is only lightened by a recent cortisone shot. Presently I cannot go to the gym, reducing me to 3 miles of walking on a cold and windy early December day at the local track.

     I was weight lifting, biking and running only a couple of weeks ago. My body was in fairly good shape. I had even played tennis a couple of times, the first serious attempts at the sport since a foot injury followed by shoulder discomfort. After swimming for the first time in over a year and then doing weights the next day, all of sudden there was irritation and pain  near the surgical site. I thought this would never happen again.

     Instead, I look at my age and condition and wonder--is my time of being a gym rat over? As hard as I have worked, the countless hours of rehab and therapy--have I reached the end of the line as an athlete?

     I have done a great job of staying inside of a 34-36 inch waist for the last few years. But my weight has increased corresponding to my exercising or lack thereof. I feel bloated and heavier when I do not make it to the gym or run; undoubtedly some of this is psychological.

     With my current shoulder condition, I just want to return to normal activities--like typing this blog--without pain. Of course, there is the return to sports--will it happen or am I destined to be a walker for the remainder of my life?

     I look at so many professional athletes as they got older and how out of shape they appear to be. Contrastingly, I look at the number of men and women running at my age or older, or the ones playing tennis in the morning as part of their retirements. I know I am envious as I long thought that I would be one of them--so much so that I figured this last surgery would make the dream a reality and I would be swimming, hitting hard ground strokes and jogging merrily around the track. Not so fast.

     Am I resigned to the fact that my days of competition and self-regulation in the gym are over? Even with a vastly different diet, will I turn into another fat ex-jock?

     I recognize that my situation is nothing compared to so many others who have far worse conditions than I do.  Their plights are almost unimaginable.

     Which is why I complain about my shoulder and the attendant pain--I am not quite ready to cede my ability to stay in shape. But if I can no longer swim, play tennis or run without it hurting, then I look no further than in the mirror to say that I will be the best walker I can be for as long as I can walk comfortably.

     Then and only then will I have stopped being the athlete.  You can take away the tennis court or the gym but where there is a spirit to live this life to the fullest, then count me in.

                                                      Thanksgiving Weekend 2016

     As always, I had a lot to be thankful for this year. My wife and I spent the extended weekend in Pittsburgh with our daughter who is working on a feature film being shot in town (No details as I would get shot by my daughter but the stars are big time). A fine restaurant meal for us this year (a big shout out to Lidia's who did a first rate job in food and atmosphere) started the weekend right for us. We gorged ourselves on Hibachi, pizza, Thai, chicken piccata to name a few items.

     But the real gorging occurred with the number of games on television starting Thursday. Coupled with my following Rutgers hoops eking out a come-from-behind 77-75 win @ the RAC over Hartford on Friday to go 6-0 and the Facebook posting of Highland Park, NJ H.S. trouncing arch-rival Metuchen on Turkey Day, it was a cornucopia of sports to delight any palate.

     Vikings-Lions started the binge watching; it continued with the Washington-Dallas affair; and was ended by the non-traditional rivalry of the Steelers and the Colts in Indianapolis. Additionally, I saw the Giants in Cleveland; New England overcoming my New York Jets (again); Carolina-Oakland bonus coverage and Kansas City topping Denver. Throw in tonight's Green Bay contest with the Eagles in Philadelphia, that's 8 National Football League games out of 16 played or 50%.

     The 5 college games I took in for more than a fleeting moment were Rutgers-Maryland (why, I asked myself?); The colossal Michigan-Ohio State rivalry thriller; Michigan State traveling to Happy Valley to take on Penn State; a glance or two at the grudge match known as Auburn and Alabama; and the local game which ended in a basketball score--Pitt thumping the Syracuse Orangemen. Factor in some Houston-Memphis on the hotel screen--that is 6 games in total.

     The only basketball I took in was some of Charlotte playing the Knicks at Madison Square Garden; a D-League game in Delaware; and Iowa State playing Gonzaga in a battle of ranked teams. I did check on Franklin and Marshall rebounding from a stinging to loss to Gettysburg against Lebanon Valley College in Annville on Sunday.

     Then there was the National Hockey League. I saw Calgary visit the Boston Garden to play the Bruins along with the Rangers left New York to defeat the Flyers in Philadelphia. But I actually went to newly-renamed PPG Paints Arena where my New Jersey Devils lost a heartbreaker to the Pittsburgh Penguins first on a goal by all-world Sidney Crosby with :14 left in regulation, then to be beaten 1-0 in the shootout.

     Let me recap--8 NFL games; 6 college football games; 3 hoops contests; and 3 more hockey games including 1 in person. That's a total of 20 games in 5 days. With only 1 of them tonight.

     I am glad that I ate our sumptuous meal on Thursday in the midst of the Redskins-Cowboys tiff. By the time last evening was over, I was unsure if it was pass the meat (whatever we were eating) or hand me the remote. Fortunately I take antacids, because I would necessarily require such for an acute disease of sports televisionitis.

     Yes, I have plenty to be thankful for. How come the Utah Jazz is finishing its match with the Timberwolves in Minneapolis? Isn't Golden State on NBA TV at 10:30? Or must I wait until RU plays at Miami on Wednesday? Please serve me some more pumpkin pie...

                                                                    Football finis

     With the conclusion of yesterday's 152nd edition of the Lehigh-Lafayette rivalry, held in balmy mid-60 degree temperatures at Fisher Field on the latter's campus in Easton, Pennsylvania, my 2016 football season came to an end. I have bequeathed my 2 remaining night games with the New York Jets to my son. The advent of today's chilly and windy weather secured that, although the Jets losing record thus far was a major factor in my decision not to freeze my tail off at Met Life Stadium in December.

     Sure I will watch games, both college and pro, Jets games included. I will not be sorry to wee woeful Rutgers end its moribund season next week in College Park, Maryland against the Maryland Terrapins; I gave up on the Scarlet Knights last night at halftime when it was only a 9-0 deficit. That ballooned into a 39-0 rout. And my alma mater, Franklin and Marshall College, lost a game it had led in the fourth quarter, to Albright College in Reading, Pennsylvania yesterday in something called the Centennial-MAC Bowl, an amalgam between the 2 conferences for the highest finishers not selected to play in the Division III playoffs.

     So I am done with sitting in the stands for football. I saw one high school consolation game, one F&M contest, two Lafayette home games and one Jets tilt. My record for the season was 4-1, the lone loss coming from Lafayette at the hands of the bitter rivals, the Lehigh Mountain Hawks.

     Now I can nap if I want to. Skip games entirely. Or watch as I see fit. On my HD television in the comfort of my den. I might miss the camaraderie of the Lafayette tailgates. And certainly a warmer Autumn to enhance the viewing. But I will not have to put the gloves,thermals, five layers of clothing, hand, feet and other body warmers to sit outside this year. Which will not be missed at all.

     I guess that I have become a warm weather fan. Unfortunately, I live in a cold weather climate. Notwithstanding global warming. At age 66, some concessions must be made to sanity. For at least this season, I have opted for no more football games for this season. A wise choice indeed.

     Besides, I have so many Rutgers games to attend; an F&M game or two; and maybe some others along the way until and through the NCAA tournament conclusion. RU is winning, F&M is nationally-ranked in Division III. The airwaves are jammed with games (even a relative by marriage  is broadcasting on CBS Sports Network from the Virgin Islands).  Non-stop hoops. Without even mentioning that Lebron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers and Steph Curry and Kevin Durant with the Golden State Warriors are TV favorites. Of the nation as well as me.

     Have no sympathy for me now that I have given up freezing at football games for the year. Surely have even less sympathy for me now that I am in hoops heaven. It is only a bridge until Major League Baseball starts again in March with games that count. Not just the Hot Stove trades and free agent acquisitions and Spring Training. They go hand-in-hand with the obsession to watch basketball games.

     After all, Cubs manager Joe Maddon, a Lafayette player in his younger years, passed 10 feet from me in the stands at the game yesterday. That was when I knew it was time to stop football for this year--baseball had already encroached upon me during a football game. Swish.

                                                        Rutgers, The State University

     I have loyalty to a number of New York-based professional teams in the four major sports. I have New York Jets season tickets--this is my 40th season. I had New York Rangers season tickets for 11 years. Additionally, I have had partial shares of New Jersey Devils tickets. My main pro team remains the New York Yankees. On a lesser scale, I watch with interest, the New York Mets. The New York Knicks and the now Brooklyn Nets only provide momentary allegiance. And the New York Giants I do not root against unless they play the Jets.

     Outside of my loyalty to my undergraduate school, Franklin and Marshall College where I played some varsity baseball and compiled football statistics in the late 1960's and early 1970's, my greatest alliance is with the teams of Rutgers University.

     Growing up across the Raritan River from Rutgers' New Brunswick campus and situated adjacent to the Piscataway fields, it was a natural for a sports geek like me to drift to Rutgers sports. That persistence remains today, over 50 years after I saw my first RU lacrosse match versus Princeton and from my first RU hoops game at the College Avenue gym in 1965. It is is intoxicating and beguiling, sometimes playing out like a Greek tragedy. A psychologist might have a field day investigating what drives me to remain a Rutgers fan.

     I have seen the aforementioned lacrosse; softball; tennis; track; wrestling; swimming; crew; field hockey and golf. There aren't too many other sports which I have not attended.

     The bigger sports are where my heart lies--football; men's basketball and baseball. Within that grouping, there is not much of a pecking order. I enjoy baseball on the spring days when I can bring my own chair and lounge outside the outfield fences and watch some quality Division I athletes, some of who will play Major League Baseball.

     Football is integral to Rutgers. The first ever intercollegiate game was between the Scarlet Knights and the Princeton Tigers in 1869, an affair won by RU. Fortunately, I attended the first game big time power Army marched in at the then Rutgers Stadium. I used to ride my bike and then scale the fences while in high school to see Colgate, Lafayette, Lehigh, Columbia play the mostly genial hosts. I knew Head Coach John Bateman through his sons who went to Highland Park High School like me. My favorite HPHS footballer, Richie Policastro played @ RU, leading them to a victory at Rutgers Stadium over Princeton on the 100th anniversary of their first game, and before a national television audience which permitted me to view the game in Lancaster, PA. Throughout the 1970's and into the 1990's, I followed RU at a distance as they morphed from a Middle Atlantic Conference University Division school into playing some of the tougher teams in the nation--Alabama under legendary Paul " Bear" Bryant, who barely won at Giants Stadium against the Knights; Tennessee; Auburn; Florida; Penn State, Texas. There was the undefeated season in 1976 and a bowl game called the Garden State Bowl in Giants Stadium  in 1979 (a loss to Arizona State).

     Rutgers went though a litany of coaches after Frank Burns had achieved a modicum of success. As the competition level ramped up, so did the losses--big losses. West Virginia, Miami, Boston College all regularly trounced RU in the Big East Conference. More competitive games ensued at times with Pitt, Virginia Tech, Temple and the University of Connecticut. Until no nonsense Greg Schiano showed up on the Banks.

     Schiano recruited and developed talent. Many players went on to play in the National Football League. At times, the RU teams under Schiano were good. Sometimes not so much. He spearheaded the stadium expansion to its 52,000 seat capacity with lights for night games on TV. And he almost won the Big East and a trip to the Orange Bowl with his 2006 team but for a drop in the end zone of a perfect pass on a cold West Virginia night.  I was there to see Notre Dame come to Piscataway--Notre Dame, college football elite!! I too was there when RU upset no. 2 Louisville on a November night when the stands emptied onto the field before a national ESPN audience. And then he left for the NFL.

     RU is now in the Big Ten Conference. Where they regularly play the likes of powerhouses Penn State, Michigan, Michigan State and Ohio State. This is not the Big East of yore. Nor the the American Athletic Conference where Rutgers resided until joining the big boys. No more U Conn, Temple, South Florida.

     While New Jersey is a fertile base for recruiting, the football talent migrates away from Piscataway. Which leaves RU at a decided disadvantage. The scores reflect the dichotomy between the haves and have nots--RU was blown out by a subpar Michigan State squad in East Lansing on Saturday. They looked horrible.

     Pundits say that RU may not be competitive until full revenues kick in from the Big Ten in 2021. Until then, the struggles will abound. The recruiting should get better. Some of the games will become more competitive. The facilities will be enhanced. And I will go to High Point Solutions Stadium when invited and dutifully watch on television, hoping for those miracles that Greg Schiano (in a twist of fate, he is currently the defensive coordinator at Ohio State replacing the former coordinator, Chris Ash, now RU's head man). Simply because it is Rutgers, my state university, and my RU ties go back to my youth.


     Such fervor is good even if the football teams have not produced as I would have liked. Except to say that I get the most crazed when it comes to RU basketball. My ardor for the Knights extends back to the old College Avenue gym where I saw them play for the first time in 1966. I grew up in the realm of Bobby Lloyd and Jim Valvano--two of the greatest guards EVER to play for RU, who along with a talented bunch took the Knights to Madison Square Garden and a third place finish in the 1968 National Invitational Tournament after a tough loss to the Walt Frazier-led and eventual champion Southern Illinois Salukis. I trekked to New york to see them play; I emulated Lloyd's free throws and Valvano's tougher than nails defense. I was smitten with Scarlet Fever.

     Success was such at Rutgers under Tom Young, with a great team led by many future NBA players ending up in the Final Four in Philadelphia. A legendary team. Rutgers maintained a fairly high level of continuity into the early 1990's when in the Atlantic 10 Conference. But who could have predicted that the 1991 NCAA-qualifying team would be the last to represent Rutgers in the tournament?

     I have had a partial subscription for Rutgers basketball for a number of years. I like the environment at the Rutgers Athletic Center. The quality of the opponents from the Big East Conference included luminaries like Syracuse, Georgetown, Louisville, St. John's, UConn to name a few. RU had marginal success with the talent they could scrape together--almost all of the five star recruits avoided the RAC as their home floor. Coaches came and went; some with a little success, others clothed in scandalous conduct. Miraculous runs in the Big East tournament and three point bombs from Quincy Douby were all RU could really muster.

     Now in the Big Ten and yet with another new coach, RU has to play a different set of national powers--Ohio State, Wisconsin, Michigan State, Purdue and Maryland for openers. With the resounding win against a rebuilding Drexel five and a coach who had great success at Stony Brook, perhaps the Scarlet Knights are perched on the precipice of becoming players in the conference, winning more regularly versus the Penn States and Nebraskas while scoring some victories over the more proficient ones.

     Rutgers has joined the prestigious Big Ten Conference for the glory that it brings athletically and academically. RU has the academic thing down pat. Now it is time for the school to measure up against its sister schools--even before full revenue-sharing kicks in.

     Such is the dream of a man in his mid-60's who has endured more than enough athletic failure rooting for his New York Jets while doggedly sticking with his hometown college who has gone from the entertaining if not successful football games of the 1960's to the major conference football and basketball of the 2010's. The alumni want wins; so do I. We wish upon wish that the new basketball coach can survive and thrive. That better days must be out there after the possibility of a winless conference schedule in 2016. I painfully watched Michigan State pile on RU on Saturday. Sunday there was hope with the win over Drexel.

     Such is the life of the Rutgers fan I have always been. I hope someone is listening to me up high--not in the upper reaches of High Point Solutions Stadium nor the 300 level of the RAC--I am more than ready in my retirement for many more enjoyable days (and nights) with my Knights. Win a championship and I might even learn the entire alma mater...