Surf's Down

Not me.  Not even close.

Let me begin by saying that I feel infinitely cooler carrying a surfboard.  I'm not sure what part of lugging a long awkward board down the boardwalk to the beach does it, if it is the additional glances you get from passer-bys or the feeling that you have somehow been inducted into some exclusive underground club   a culture that looks exclusive as hell from the outside   but I know I walked with my head held just a bit higher as we strolled to the beach last Sunday.

The feeling didn't last.  You quickly realize why surfing seems so cool to the rest of the tourists and sunbathers on the beach:  it is a pain in the ass.  The ocean is not a forgiving body of water.  For someone who is used to calm lakes in northern Michigan and the occasional trip to swim in one of the relatively tame great lakes, the Atlantic ocean might as well be on a different planet.  Even on calm days the waves have enough power to knock you backward as they crash onto the shore.  But with hurricane season upon us and a storm having swept northward through the Atlantic, the waves were higher than I had seen them in my entire stay in Virginia Beach.  Surfers love hurricanes, because if they aren't directly in your area they are making enough noise out in the ocean to raise the surf to dangerous levels.  All the flags on the lifeguard stands were red as we picked up the boards and made our way to the water.  They were red for good reason.

When we went out at first there was just two of us, both completely new to surfing.  My friend Joe had a slight leg up on me since he is an experience snowboarder.  My only attempt at snowboarding ended with a trip to the ER and a separated shoulder.  Don't think that wasn't in the back of my head as I started to paddle out.

Our crash course in surfing 101 was terrifyingly brief.  "Keep your leash on.  Don't ride someone else's wave or they will have a few choice words with you  Paddle with the wave and try to stand up when you feel the wave begin to lift you."

"That's it?" I thought when the friend of a friend we borrowed the boards from finished up with, "Oh, and have fun."  Joe and I shot each other a quick glance of confusion and worry over this sink or swim method of instruction, then grabbed the boards and made our way in, determined to make the best of it.

You can easily tell who is a surfer and who isn't just by the way they carry themselves.  The air of confidence they have as they stroll to the water, walk the board out and paddle far enough out to sit on the board and wait for the perfect wave.  Conversely, even the most clueless of the tourists on the beach could tell I was woefully unprepared as I struggled to harness the leash around my ankle as I was standing a foot deep in the water and the waves pushed the board away from me.  I was fighting a battle against a leash that was too small and the surf that even ankle deep wasn't going to take any shit from a first timer, and I was losing both.

Once I was strapped in I began to paddle out.  The choice waves are tough to get up on, and even tougher to get past for the inexperienced surfer, and there were a few times I was thrown backwards just as I thought I had made it to the crest and would make it down the other side.  One wave hit me so hard that it threw me backward, and then threw the board fin first into my elbow, knocking the feeling out of half of my left arm and hand.  Had I not been able to see that part of my hand still attached, I would have swore that I lost it somewhere in that wave.  Even a day later my fingers tingle and my elbow aches.

Finally I began to make headway and get out past the bigger of the waves.  Now it was time to try to ride one.  I turned the board so it pointed toward shore and waited for what I thought was a suitable wave.  Not knowing what I was supposed to be looking for, I paddled with the first wave that I saw, and fortunately I was right, it was a big one.  Unfortunately, before I was able to get my body off the board and into a standing position, the wave had grabbed the back of the board and flipped me end over end.  Getting dumped was exhilarating.  The waves were powerful and fast, and it made me even more determined to harness one, even as I spit a pint of sea water out of my mouth.

Beaten and queasy with sea water, I gathered myself and made my way out for another attempt.  This one ended much the same.  My body catapulting off the board on the power of the wave rising up behind me.  This happened a couple more times, but I was beginning to get my bearings.  I knew what the waves I wanted looked like, and I knew what they felt like.  Now I just needed to know what it was like to get up on one.

After making my way back out, I saw the next wave and began to paddle with it.  I felt the back of my board rise, and I started to pull myself up as I noticed a flash of color coming toward me from the left.  It was another surfer, already up and riding down the wave as it crested.  He hit me at full speed and we toppled over in a mess of arms, legs, and boards.  The hastily made leash that was rigged up that morning came unattached and after sorting myself out of the aftermath of the collision and assuring the other surfer that I was okay, I swam to shore, frightened that the board I had borrowed would somehow be sucked out to sea, to wash ashore somewhere in New Jersey.

As I waded in I saw a man pluck a board from the shallow surf and set it on the beach.  I knew it was mine when he made his way over to me.  "Are you okay man, I saw that guy come down on you," he said to me, as he motioned to my marooned board lying on the beach.  I told him I was fine, and wanted to ask if he had seen my pride wash up somewhere with the board.  As I went to check on the board a lady nearby laughed at the state of the patched together leash and told me in no uncertain terms that I couldn't possibly take the board back out. Beaten up, bruised, and still hungover from the night before, I agreed with her whole-heartedly.  I grabbed the board and walked through the throngs of people to our spot behind the lifeguard stand.  This time my head was held a little lower as I walked.

This is not a tale of redemption.  I put the board down for the rest of the day.  The ocean beat me on Sunday, and I will admit it.  However, this isn't the end of the fight.  It is merely the opening round.  I'll be back another day, when the waves are a little lower and the beach a little less crowded.  I've felt what it is like to be part of the surf culture, and I've felt what its like to get swept up by a wall of water, if only for a few fleeting minutes.   Next time I'll be a little more prepared and a little less uncertain.  I'll ride that wave.  Next time.

Time Marches On

I am no psychologist, but I would imagine it is a universal property of human nature to be averse to change.  Continuity is comfortable.  We like our routines and don't like having to deviate from them.  We get comfortable in the present, and quickly forget the changes that brought us to where we are.  Its easy to get lost in the present.  To get caught up in the status quo.

As a child I was so afraid of change that I would get sad at the end of the school year as summer vacation approached.  I wanted the familiarity of where I was, and I didn't want to blaze a path through the summer only to re-establish myself the next year as I advanced to the next grade.  Change scared the hell out of me.  Still does.

Change isn't bad, but it isn't good either.  Change is simply a fact of life, for better or worse.  Time marches on.  What we know today was an unknown future yesterday, and the uncertainty about tomorrow will eventually be a comforting present.  The only constant in the world is the laws of physics that guide the universe.  Everything else is fleeting.  It is this constant evolution of everything around us that forces humans to adapt.  We have to make the best of our world as it is, not as we wish it to be.

Funny thing is, we often don't notice that things have changed until the rug is already yanked out from beneath our feet.  We ignore the little signs and tell ourselves that everything will keep humming along like it always does, even though it never has.  Humans have the tendency to be extremely short sighted.  We lose the forest for the trees.

Lost in all the talk of Big Ten alignment scenarios is the fact that the real change has already happened.  The fighting continues over what should be kept the same, what rivalries to protect, what geographical considerations to value in this new landscape of mid-western college football.  But things are already radically different, even when it comes to the greatest rivalry in college football:  The Game.

I am an unabashed Michigan fan.  Always have been.  The Game means more to me than just about any other college football tradition behind the winged helmets and The Victors.  I grew up loving Michigan Football wholeheartedly and waiting for that final fall Saturday to face off against the team from down south.  I hated OSU more than I hated anyone or anything.

But college football isn't the monolith of tradition that we sometimes believe it is.  Changes slowly creep across the landscape inciting pockets of rage from effected fan bases.  Today, the loudest voices come from the "Big Two", crying out for the sanctity of the storied rivalry:  It won't be the same in October.  This is all about the money.  Won't someone think of the children?

Fact is, the game lost its significance months ago.  Once the Big Ten decided to push for expansion to 12 teams, with a conference championship game as the goal, the writing was on the wall.  The Game has been the hallmark of the Big Ten for as long as any football fan can remember.  Over the past 75 years of the regular season showdown has been the de facto championship 22 times (30%) and had a direct influence on the Big Ten champ another 24 times (Credit to Maize and Brew for the numbers, and a good counterpoint to my argument).  While it bothers me to think that the Big Ten title won't run through Columbus or Ann Arbor every year, we can't cling to the notion that this rivalry carries the same significance it always has now that the road to the conference championship and the Rose Bowl is going to run through Lucas Oil Stadium.  Moving The Game to mid October won't diminish its significance, deciding to stage a championship game already did that.  In a college football landscape where conference championship games fetch big money, a clash of old enemies in mid November loses its luster, especially when there are ten other teams that would benefit from a bona-fide championship game.

The game will always mean the same to fans on either side.  I don't hate OSU any less in October than I do the week before Thanksgiving, and I would hope they would feel the same.  That universal vitriol is what makes the rivalry great.  The hatred and bad feelings were born from years of struggle for conference supremacy, but a showdown in November no longer sets up the same way.  If The Game is played on the last week of the season it will always be in the shadow of the championship game.

College football is still changing, and what we see today will be radically different than what we will see at the start of the next decade.  When we look at the way the sport changes we see large leaps to new rules, different conference membership, and more intricate (asinine?) championship calculations.  But it doesn't happen like that.  Change flows like a glacier, creeping along and tearing up the landscape in ways that we don't notice until we are right in the path.  The changes that will lead to a playoff or four super conferences are happening now, in every athletic department and stadium.  Or maybe they aren't.  We won't know until we are confronted with the new reality.  Thats where we find ourselves today.  Two fan bases in disagreement on everything but the storied rivalry that both hold dear.  The Big Ten has changed.  Who are we to stop it?

Michigan-OSU won't be the same no matter when it is played.  You don't have to like it   and God knows I don't   but we can't refuse to accept that things have changed in the Big Ten.  This decision is going to be made with or without the support of the proponents of The Game.  Time marches on, with or without us.

Stadium Rock for All Ages

When did liking Green Day become a cross generational phenomenon?  What brings together a group of 40 year old women, twelve year old punk kids, and mid-twenties stoners?

As I walked through the throngs of people smashed together on the lawn at DTE music theater, I couldn't help but wonder what brought each one of the spectators into the wooded outskirts of the metro Detroit area.  What songs were they hoping to hear?  Were the fifteen year old goth kid and his girlfriend excited about hearing songs off Green Day's breakout album Dookie?  Was the balding man a few feet in front of me an old school punk fan, or just a disciple of top 40 radio?  What made the five middle aged women in front of us dance?

I could have spent much of the three hour setlist trying to find the unifying thread behind Green Day's widespread popularity, but it would have been at the cost of the spectacle unfolding in front of me.  The concert itself was less about the music of Green Day, and more a piece of performance art that tries its best to bring you in to Green Day's universe for three hours of uninhibited fun.  More circus than rock show.

I would not consider myself a Green Day fan.  I haven't actively followed their music since I bought Nimrod when I was in middle school, and of the 30+ songs they played I could probably only name a handful.  I have nothing against Green Day, and I must say that the songs I loved when I was young haven't lost their luster.  I still get excited to hear When I Come Around, Basket Case, She, and the rest of my early alt-rock radio favorites.

Luckily, Green Day does their best to make sure you don't have to be a hardcore fan to at least enjoy yourself.  They reward the casual listeners in ways you only see in big amphitheater and stadiums.  They are the perfect example of a band that has "made it", and the show pulls no punches in that regard.  The mildly popular album tracks come out in the beginning of the show, played with as close an ear to the studio renditions as you can get on a live tour.  Rising up behind the band is a wall of digital screens that look almost like a city skyline   shooting up into jagged peaks and valleys.  The screens alternating music waves and flashes of color with pictures of the band that descend into static.  Just in front of the screens, there are a handful of firework cannons that spit out blasts of white light and sparks to punctuate the ends of songs and the crashing of guitar chords and bass drums.  As the show wore deeper, the band began bringing kids on stage to sing along, much to the chagrin of the majority of the audience   at one point my friend summed this annoyance up perfectly: "we paid twenty dollars to hear Green Day not sing Longview."  The songs at this point began to grow more grandiose in scale.  Early verses would be backed by just the strumming of an acoustic, with pauses before the chorus, only then to explode into a fully backed verse soaked in fireworks and cries from Billie Joe Armstrong to join in.  By the encore, the audience was in a state of rapture that wasn't quelled until the stage lights came on.

At one point the band teased the audience by playing bits and pieces of classic rock songs such as the opening riff to Stairway to Heaven, a verse of Sweet Child O' Mine, and Back in Black.  If it was funny to imagine what brought an eclectic group spanning three generations to a Green Day concert, it was surreal to see everyone immediately react to the highlights of an average hour of classic rock radio.

I was probably one of the only people out of around 15,000 to think that three hours of Green Day was a little much, but I was tired of standing and still feeling the effects of a long weekend spent drinking in the sun on a lake in northern Michigan.  Cultural fascination can only carry one so far in the face of exhaustion.

As I made my way to the car after the show, tired and in pain from hours on my feet, I couldn't help but go back to my original question.  What brought these people together?

Only now, looking back on the evening does it start to make sense.  Green Day has a little something for everyone.  This is a band whose musical career spans over twenty years.  They were playing garage band punk music and listening to The Replacements and The Ramones before I was even enrolled in kindergarten.  Since then they've put out solid punk rock (everything on Dookie), hokey "class song" material (Time of Your Life), emo tinged pop music (Boulevard of Broken Dreams), and wildly popular political commentary (American Idiot).  What used to be a staple of the alternative rock stations of my childhood has slowly grown to be a cash cow and chart topper.  Something for everyone.

All of this comes together as a picture of a band that has accomplished all its goals.  They have built a feverish audience, put out a handful of very successful albums, and developed a piece of performance art fit for the stages it is played on.  But I can't help but feel like they have lost some of that same energy that originally attracted me to the three chord fuzz of the early hits.  The hunger is missing.  Can a band that is filthy rich and wildly successful ever capture the same magic that helped get them to the top?  The songs were all hiding behind fireworks and call and response, cues that tell people when to cheer and when to sing.  The chords sounded the same, but didn't always feel the same.  When Billie Joe Armstrong talked to the crowd between songs about how much he loves Michigan, it felt like something out of This is Spinal Tap.  The sheer scale of it all can't mask the gimmicks and air of workmanlike performance from everyone involved.  The band is going through the motions, but it's all part of the show.

Is this a bad thing?  Do I feel bitter that Green Day has sold out?  No.  They obviously play the music they want to, and love the chance they get to perform in front of crowds this size.  And those crowds are full of genuine fans who love the music for what it is.  Green Day aren't the punks they used to be.  They are fathers just like some of the men in the crowd.  They play music for fun to an audience that just wants to have a good time.

And after all is said and done, isn't that what rock and roll is supposed to be about? 15,000 soccer moms, sons, classic rockers, punks, stoners, hippies, and at least one detached twenty-something music snob had fun at a Green Day concert yesterday.  It was all part of the show, and I couldn't be happier.

Killing the Messenger

What do you get when you send a glorified gossip reporter to Las Vegas to cover a party?


If you answered anything other than, "a gossip column," you're either an editor for ESPN or an idiot   the two no longer seeming so mutually exclusive.


And so we are treated to another chapter in the LeBron James saga of media saturation.  A column goes up and comes down in the course of ten hours, only to later to blow up online as another example of rampant ethical miscues that have plagued the worldwide leader since The Decision   and the fact that I can capitalize that shows just how ludicrous the situation surrounding LeBron James has become.


By all accounts, Arash Markazi did exactly what he told his editors at ESPN-LA he was going to do.  He went to the Tao nightclub in the Venetian hotel and casino and spent the night in the company of King James and his army.  Markazi, by all accounts, has a great deal of access across Las Vegas   hint, hint ESPN   and used this to go behind the ropes.


The article in question is fairly innocuous by NBA nightlife standards.  Star and entourage take up residence in VIP section of nightclub, star surrounded by legions of bodyguards and yes men, and star catered to all night by nightclub staff.  The only controversy outside of James beating Lamar Odom in a dance off (I would have thought spending that much time with the Kardashians would have him better prepared) is a one off remark from James about his preference for panty-less women acrobats, an almost universal sentiment held by twenty-five year old men I can assure you.


The article, seemingly edited and formatted for print, was down almost before it was able to be swept up by the summer's growing fascination for all things James and media conspiracy theories.  However, in pulling the article, ESPN opened itself up for a great deal more criticism than it would have received had it just let another irrelevant "after hours" piece run on one of its local affiliates.  Some in the sports blogosphere would have picked up on it, but most would have shaken the article off as another superficial glimpse into the life of a celebrity athlete who has the fame and resources to live like many of us sometimes dream we could.


Why did ESPN pull it?  Editor Rob King cited Markazi's failure to, "identify himself as a reporter or clearly state his intentions to write a story."  That certainly hasn't stopped many of the great journalists of the past (not to say Markazi's piece even belongs in the same universe as the work of Talese).  And it seems likely that Markazi, while not explicitly stating his intention to write a story, was probably not purposely vague or deceitful when speaking with James' crew about his background, and his being well known around town further casts doubt on his ability to go undercover.


So what is the problem with all of this?  It isn't necessarily ESPN's on-again-off-again relationship with journalistic ethics, since it is becoming widely known that ESPN has painted itself into a corner as both a news source and a entertainment provider.  And since ESPN has spent the summer cozying up to James, any questionable move is bound to end up, and rightfully so, the topic of the day on Deadspin or The Big Lead.


The real problem, in my mind at least, is that ESPN wants to punish a writer for doing exactly what they sent him out to do.  Markazi went to Las Vegas to spend the night partying with LeBron and write about what he saw.  When he returns with a predictable piece about fame and excess and what it is like to be the most wealthy and popular twenty-five year old on the planet set loose in the kind of town where even a unpopular, poor twenty-five year old can find himself in any number of questionable situations, the editors  feign surprise and ax the story.


ESPN is having enough trouble juggling the dual responsibilities of being the worlds largest sports news source as well as the worlds largest sports entertainment provider.  To try to juggle worlds biggest sports gossip provider as well is a recipe for disaster that is compounded when a case of cold feet gets a questionable story yanked.


A friend of mine, after reading the piece in question, asked me what the big deal was.  I didn't really have an answer.  There is nothing in Markazi's piece that we haven't heard 100 different times from TMZ or the New York Post.  The only really interesting bits are the reaction that other NBA players had to the spectacle, a simple shake of the head.  Perhaps Chuck Klosterman said it best in a tweet yesterday, "For 3 weeks, people whine about seeing too much LeBron coverage. Except when ESPN spikes a story about him. Then it becomes essential news."


For almost thirty years the people at ESPN have known exactly what they were doing, and executed the plan so effectively that ESPN has become the unquestioned leader in sports coverage.  It seems to me there are two ways to go:  ESPN gets its act together after a regrettable stretch of poor judgement, or we all see just how hard it is to be the top dog when you want to have your cake and eat it too.

The Internet Comment Board: Where Thoughtful Discussion Goes To Die

It is the end of July and all across the college football universe it seems clear that we know one thing for sure:  we know nothing.  This is the nature of the sport.  When teams experience 100% turnover every four years you are necessarily limited in what you can predict.  Things come together quickly, windows close almost as soon as they open, and unless you are on the top you spend all your time fighting and clawing to get there.

Four years ago the University of Michigan was a bad penalty and a last minute comeback from playing for the MNC.  Today?  Well, laughingstock might be too strong a word, but that only depends on what bar you are hanging out at.  We don't know what we are going to get year in and year out.  Will the all world recruit live up to the hype, or will he get the "special teams touch of death" and spend the next two years as nothing more than a human bowling ball?

This doesn't end the fascination, speculation, and rampant argument that accompanies any sport where enough people have emotionally invested themselves to the point that they will sit through unbearably hot September afternoons and bone chillingly cold November snowstorms for a chance to watch their alma mater.  Pair this with the anonymity of the internet and you have the perfect storm of stupid comments being amplified by stupid people gathering in groups and message boards.  Every fan base has them, and you have no doubt seen it for yourself.  These are the kind of people who think "scUM" is a clever moniker for UofM, and any mention of MSU is followed by the obligatory prison joke.

Its all fun and games until it isn't.

Earlier today I read an article on MSU's chances at making the Rose Bowl this year   not out of the realm of possibility by any means.  The schedule is set up well, the team returns a lot of offensive firepower and the best defender in the Big Ten, and with solid play from the most unknown units (offensive line and defensive backfield) the team could conceivably make a strong run through the Big Ten.  I finished the article and broke one of my own rules of the internet:  I read the comments.  I wanted to list a few of the most egregious comments in this post, but I didn't have the heart to even click through two of the seven pages of comments.  In fact, those two pages provided one comment that even referenced the article in question.  The rest were a series of insults and bombastic statements aimed to belittle the opposing team.  What do last year's discipline problems at MSU have to do with this year's team now that all those involved have been dealt with?  Why is the quickest comeback to a UM fan a swift kick to the dead horse that is NCAA sanctions?  What is the point of arguing for arguments sake?  Are we as fans so bitter toward our rivals that all we can respond with is petty name calling?

It is July, and what do we know?  Nothing.  But that doesn't stop the chatter.  People will argue about who will win the national championship, who will inevitably disappoint after huge pre-season expectations, and why anyone still lets Eastern Michigan play football (seriously, someone needs to take Ron English's squad out back for some Old Yeller treatment).  Most of those arguments are interesting, and when taken with a grain of salt they can lead to some very heated but enjoyable barroom discussions or emails.  However, do yourself a favor.  If all you have to respond with is a played out internet meme (lolsparty, scUM) or personal attack, remember what Mark Twain said:

"It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt."

LeBron, Legacy, and Letting Yourself Love Sports in the Moment

I admittedly haven't been a sports fan for long in the grand scheme of things.  If you want to trace my roots of true fandom back, you would inevitably start in the late 90's.  Those were my middle school year   the dregs of every child's development   and probably the first time I really cared about sports and a team.  I had watched sports before then, but it had always been somewhat coincidentally.  I watched the Lions play every Sunday in the fall because my father would have the game on.  I would watch golf and baseball during the spring and summer, but again, it was on TV.  Sports were something that happened in the background, and while I enjoyed going to games and watching on TV, I had no real connection.  But in the closing years of the 90's I started to become invested.  I started to switch the channel to sports, started to talk to my friends about games and players, started to develop my own identity as a fan.  Through th years that identity has grown as I have spent more and more time watching, reading, and thinking about sports.

Sometimes it feels like I have let the beast grow out of control.  Do I care too much about sports now?  Do I spend too much of my day reading college football blogs, NBA trade rumors, and Bill Simmons columns?  Sports bring me a lot of joy, but I find myself   somewhat unfairly   wanting more.  That idea of more seems to be one thing sports fans have in common.  The joy of watching sports in the moment has taken a backseat to wanting more of those moments.

After years of watching Michael Jordan lay waste to the rest of the NBA, fans clamored for the next big thing.  The league did its best to deliver, anointing young up and comers like Grant Hill and Penny Hardaway as the next big things, but it never stuck.  Michael Jordan gave every game he played in an added significance.  You felt like you were part of history when you were watching those Bulls games in the 90's because you never knew what feat might be next.  I can personally remember watching game six of the 98 NBA finals at a friends house gathered around the living room TV to watch what still may be the single most important moment of basketball I have ever witnessed.  Jordan put his team on his back, stole the ball, and with time winding down, as he dribbled the ball in the back court, everyone sensed the weight of the moment.  He drove in, pulled back, and unleashed a beautiful jump shot.  With that shot, history was made.  The man walked off the floor as arguably the greatest champion to ever play the game.

As sports fans we crave moments like this.  We want drama, we want achievement, and we want to see the greatest players exceed our expectations on the biggest stages.  It is a sick relationship really.  Half child-like reverence for larger than life heroes, half projecting our selves into these moments, living vicariously through the athletes we love because they have accomplished the things we never could.  When our heroes let us down in big moments it hurts us deeply.  We invest ourselves emotionally in the teams and players we root for, and that relationship is all too often one sided.  If you were a Lions fan when Barry Sanders prematurely retired, you felt hurt.  If you were a Supersonics fan when the team moved to Oklahoma City, you felt crushed.  And if you were a Cavaliers fan a few weeks ago when LeBron James ripped your heart out on live television, you felt angry and betrayed.  If you love a team or a player on some level, you have invested parts of yourself into them.  You've taken time to watch the games, paid money to sit in the stands (and if you were over 21, you probably paid 8 dollars for a beer), and you invested your emotions into the fate of the team.  You cheered when the won and cried when they lost.

But the relationship is largely one sided no matter how unfair it feels to the blue collar guys in the upper deck, the season ticket holders who show up every night, or the kids at home whose rooms are filled with posters and pennants.  All the love and adulation we throw at our heroes isn't in exchange for loyalty or championships.  Pro athletes owe the fans one thing and one thing only: effort.  It is hard to blame Cleveland fans for wanting more.  Feeling that they are owed loyalty from one of their own, a native son of northern Ohio.  But what is interesting when you view the LeBron saga from the outside is the reaction of fans of the NBA in general.  Fans like me.

Like most anyone who has invested themselves in sports themselves, and not just specific teams, I spend a lot of time thinking about legacy.  I read up on the history of the different leagues.  I love the stories and the significance.  The reverence you hear in the voices of interviewees on NFL network or 30 for 30 documentaries when they speak of those moments from the past that meant so much.  I get caught up in thinking and talking about how everything relates.  These debates matter to me.  They matter to a lot of people.  We spend more and more time arguing about the past and future of sports than we ever have.  Bill Simmons once proposed that these arguments mean so much to us because we always want to believe that what we are witnessing is the peak of performance.  We want today's NBA players to be "better" than yesterday's because it will validate the time we spend invested.  Nobody wants to think the best years are behind them, even if it is the best years of competition.  We naively believe that the game and players are always getting better.  And so we look to the stars of today to make that next step, to become the greats that history will remember so we can be satisfied with what we see today and look back long into the future and say, "I remember when."  We want feel like we are a part of that history.

In the last couple weeks the sports world has gotten the input of players like Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson on LeBron's decision to sign with Miami and play along side Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh.  Would Jordan have done it?  No.  Magic?  No.  And the reasoning seems simple.  Those guys wanted to beat each other, not hang out.  They wanted to win championships and destroy their opponents and prove to everyone that they were the best out there, and we loved them for it.  We identified with Michael Jordan's unwaivering desire to win because we the fans felt the same way.  This was the way a pro athlete was supposed to carry himself.  Jordan wanted to win above all else, and we have loved him for it.

So when someone says that LeBron "closed the book" on the debate over the greatest of all time, it hurts.  In Cleveland he was his own man, and the rise and fall of his team was almost squarely on his shoulders   I guess his and Danny Ferry's.  In New York, New Jersey, and even Chicago things would have been the same.  It would have been LeBron's team, and he could have set about trying to build a legacy that rivaled or surpassed Jordan.  If you loved LeBron you wanted him to have that chance to maximize his talents, and if you hated him you wanted to see him falter alone, with no one to blame but himself.

Miami offers none of those options.  If LeBron wins, he doesn't do it as "the guy", the shadow of Dwayne Wade obscures what could have been his achievement.  And if he loses?  Face it, this team won't lose.  They may not run off a string of 6 NBA titles (keep in mind that it could happen), but they will reach the mountaintop.  So what are we left with, as sports fans craving history.  We get to witness a potential dynasty, one which is quickly becoming akin to the nWo in terms of ire felt by opposing fans.  It will be interesting, but will it be enough?

As a long time fan of the NBA, someone who cares deeply about its history, I feel robbed of the chance to see the kind of history that I was too young to appreciate during the prime Jordan years.  However, I realize that my disappointment is no more valid than that of Cavs fans who believe that LeBron was indebted to toil away in Cleveland and deliver their city the championship that it seems may never come.  I can't allow my dreams for LeBron's legacy to seem important.  My expectations of him don't matter, only his expectations for himself.  History wasn't stolen from NBA fans like me in the same way the O'Brien trophy wasn't stolen from Cleveland.  It was never ours to begin with.  It belongs to the teams and the players.  All we can do is sit back and watch, try to savor the victories a little longer and move past the losses a little quicker. There is nothing wrong with loving your team.  Just know that your team won't always love you back.

Crying Wolf

I won't begin to excuse the state of political discourse in the country today.  We take too many of our opinions from the talking heads floating around Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, et al. to have any meaningful discussion on the issues that matter.  So when I hear someone complain about almost anything to do with politics I usually just walk away.  The intelligent observers still exists, but it can get frustrating wading through all the chaff.

This is the fundamental problem with the 24 hour cable news cycle:  24 hours of news doesn't exist, and frankly, even if it did it doesn't sell.  We tune into cop shows to see action, soap operas to see quarrels, and reality TV to see humiliation.  Today's viewers aren't of the same breed as those who watched the evening news through televisions golden years of network dominance.  Substance can only take us so far, and the best news is almost all substance.  So instead, to fill the airwaves and the corporate coffers we get Glen Beck, Keith Olbermann, and everybody's favorite curmudgeon, Bill O'Reilly.

Is it any wonder that we are where we are?  When O'Reilly exists for a large portion of the population as the heir apparent to Cronkite, Brokaw, and Jennings? (A statement that I have no doubt would tickle Bill pink if he ever heard it).  We now live in a time where outrage passes for genuine interest and sound bytes pass for legitimate discourse.  For a country that is staring down some dire straits this is not the place to start.  It seems now we can't begin to confront issues because we don't even know what we are looking at.

Two weeks ago, LeBron James made a hasty   to say nothing of ill-advised   exit from Cleveland, drawing the ire of fans, journalists (with the exception of the few who were so star struck that they lent their names and credibility to the slimey proceedings.  I'm looking at you Wilbon), and a somewhat rightfully betrayed owner.  And when that owner made the mistake of sending out the first draft of his statement (and there is a lesson in this for everyone:  write your angry email, but wait twelve hours before you hit send) most of the sports world divided into the two reasonable camps, "Dan Gilbert is right to be outraged," and, "Dan Gilbert is crazy if he thinks the Cavs will even win 30 games before LeBron wins a title."  The letter read like something you write after being dumped, with insults and disappointments thrown together in a barrage of caps-locked statements and chest pounding.  Regrettable, yes, but for a city that hitched its collective hopes and dreams squarely on the shoulders of a 25 year old man-child surrounded by a posse of sycophants and yes men, it was an understandable response.

But it wasn't enough.  Soon, Jesse Jackson got into the game for no other reason than someone turned on a  microphone within a three block radius.  Now the conversation was shifting, was this letter just that of an angry and betrayed owner, or the embodiment of a slave-owner mentality that pervades professional sports   hockey excepted.  People talked, talking heads argued, and some awoke to this unforeseen outrage that had been "going on" under their noses for years.  Eventually things cooled off when the Heat began to sign players at an alarming rate and everyone began what might be the only pastime more beloved that arguing over hot-button issues, wild speculation over the future.

Was Jesse right?  No, and I cant say it any better than Jason Whitlock.  Jesse was just looking for a way to steer the conversation to attack what he saw as an unfair attack against a black man by a white owner and a large portion of the white media.  For all the bad things that can be   rightfully   said about Jesse Jackson, he has good intentions, but we all know what they say about those.  Jackson misread a complex situation in a way that is becoming all too common.  He saw black vs. white, and figured "where there is smoke, there must be fire."

Our society has too long and rough a history with black vs. white narratives to allow many to step back and view those issues in the proper context.  We become mixed up in first impressions.  Some want to punish guys like Don Imus for being racist, when they should really just punish him for being an idiot.  Others cry about affirmative action as "reverse racism" without paying attention to the hundreds of years of mistreatment and segregation (be it overt or de facto) that have built the society we live in.  We as a country have a knack for injecting racial outrage into issues that  have little basis in actual racism.  We see smoke, and we believe there is fire.

Racism still exists.  Discrimination still exists.  But the steps taken since the days of MLK and Malcolm X have driven those problems underground.  Today's racism is subtle, and todays discrimination is based in deeply rooted inequalities that have been shaped over hundreds of years.  African Americans still overwhelmingly populate the poorest sections of our inner cities, and for that reason are locked into a section of the education system that struggles to keep its head above water.  When "proficient" becomes just another word for three grade levels behind, then we know we are faced with a bigger problem than some idiot using the n-word on TV or rap videos glorifying wealth and excess.

But the types of problems that face this country in it's long slow march toward true equality are the kinds that aren't easily understood and even harder to fix.  So we focus on the superficial problems and hope that the rest will sort itself out.  This gives everyone the satisfaction of "doing something about racism" without really doing anything.

This is why it doesn't surprise me when I read that Shirley Sherrod was pushed out of her job at the USDA for her remarks at an NAACP banquet.  She stated that when helping a poor white farming family she:

"was struggling with the fact that so many black people had lost their farmland and here I was faced with having to help a white person save their land. So I didn't give him the full force of what I could do."

If all you look for is the racism that bubbles to the surface, you are going to miss the real stuff that does the most damage.  Worse yet, you are going to miss the real lessons that not everything is about race.  Some people have learned that.  Shirley Sherrod certainly has, because later in the same speech she got to the point that many missed when they railed against a black public servant withholding the full scope of her power in helping a white family.

 "I did enough so that when — so I took him to a white lawyer that we had — that had attended some of the trainings that we had provided because Chapter 12 bankruptcy had just been enacted for the family farmer."

"So I figured if I take him to one of them that his own kind would take care of him. That's when it was revealed to me that the job is about poor, versus those who have. And not so much about white — it is about white and black, but it's not — you know, it opened my eyes. Because I took him to one of his own."

This country has enough battles to fight to overcome racism.  We certainly can't afford to be fighting the wrong ones all the time.

(I implore all of you to follow the work of Jason Whitlock and John McWhorter, two of my biggest inspirations in writing this piece.  My ideas on the subject have been shaped by their thoughtful and provocative commentary on race relations in this country, and for that I thank them.)

Train wreck, in real time

If you are lucky enough to know me, and I mean really know me well, I might have let you in on a dirty little secret of mine. It is something I am not particularly proud of--the type of thing for which the term 'guilty pleasure' was meant to be applied. I am hopelessly addicted to celebrity gossip.

Step one: admit that you have a problem. Check.

I came to terms with this problem a long time ago, and have set about pursuing a path of tasteful moderation. I only have two gossip blogs I will check on a regular basis, and two more that I might wander to every few days. I refuse to look at these sites on anything but my home computer--I don't need WWTDD popping up on my work history. I even limit my intake of stories. I won't read about the Gosselins. I skip over everything related to Paris Hilton. And until recently, I had exhausted myself on anything to do with Lindsey Lohan.

Lindsey and I go way back. I remember sitting around the house with my younger sister watching Lohan in the remake of The Parent Trap with Dennis Quaid and the late Natasha Richardson. She may have been 11 at the time, but hell, I was only 14, and I was smitten. So smitten in fact that a few years later while home sick I threw in my sister's DVD copy of Freaky Friday, a movie which provided me nothing other than an hour and a half to leer at an older, more intriguing Lohan. Once I had seen Mean Girls--which I proudly own to this day--I was officially hooked. The movie became a staple around the dorm room, usually played opposite Mario Kart as we pre-drank on Friday and Saturday nights. We all loved the movie, and all the more because of her. She was the sex symbol of the times. The barely legal knockout. Red hair, long legs, and just enough freckles to drive you nuts.

The honeymoon, as they say, didn't last. Lindsey started partying harder and harder, around the same time that the internet seemed to be making it easier to keep up with your favorite celeb while they were off screen. Sure, she would release other movies over that time, but they never drew me in like Mean Girls, and even if her album had been any good I wouldn't have been able to take it seriously because I was in a four year exodus from the world of popular music.

By the time the wheels had come off I had cooled on Lindsey. She still looked like what I fell for as I was growing up, but the person behind the mask had changed.

--

Enough nostalgia and retread. The world knows the saga of Lindsey Lohan and I can offer no additional information on that. There were drugs, eating disorders, mental breakdowns, burglaries, car accidents, and sensationalist claims from family and friends that hit on either the extremely positive (Lindsey is brilliant and misunderstood, but sooooo strong as a person) to the extremely negative (Lindsey has AIDS, Lindsey is a thief, etc.). She has even gone to great lengths to compare her life to that of another drug addict that was spit out by the Hollywood machine--Marilyn Monroe.

At first I laughed. Lindsey broke into a house and stole jewelry? Hilarious. Lindsey kicked out of Club ____ for drunken behavior? What an idiot. Lindsey launches a clothing line and it flops? Funnier still. But after all the bad things seemed to pile up with no end in sight I became disillusioned. People joke about rubbernecking, the fascination with watching accidents occur and seeing the aftermath, but rarely do they actively engage in watching a tragic fall from grace, and derive pleasure from it. I hated myself because I hated Lohan. I felt she deserved what was coming to her, and that ultimately the universe was punishing her for her outlandish behavior and inflated ego.

And so I stopped reading. When I saw her picture or her name in the banner I would simply scroll past to the next story. My tolerance level had been reached. This went on unchanged for months. I avoided any mention of Lindsey's name and was generally a happy person.

Eventually, however, the curiosity crept back in. I started reading a blog post here or there about her. How could I not? The headlines were getting even more ridiculous than before. Now she was over a half million in debt and making a scene outside clubs after being refused service. This was the big leagues. No more getting fired from movies, she wasn't even being considered for movies in the first place.

It seems too cliche to say Lindsey is a case of the American Dream gone horribly wrong. Talent and beauty rewarded too fast. A poor soul who couldn't escape the clutches of her selfish and overbearing parents. It doesn't fit for the same reason anyone with a brain mocks VH1's "Behind the Music"--it's too predictable. Of course the drummer died, the singer and the guitarist fought over a woman, and nobody cared about the bassist. Thats how it always happens.

Too often we look for ways to pass off blame for celebrities. Different ground rules apply. People say Michael Jackson was just a product of an extremely dysfunctional childhood, but what does that really mean when we look at some of his actions? Is his pedophilia somehow less revolting because his father was a religious maniac? Are the molestation charges somewhat softer because he was denied a proper childhood? No. These actions matter, and anyone who says anything else simply has his head in the sand.

So I will continue to watch the downfall of Lindsey Lohan. I'll read about her next arrest, look at pictures of her stumbling drunk outside a club, and probably even watch a couple minutes of the sex tape that she is bound to release at some point. I am not saying I will feel good about any of this, but I won't feel bad either. Lindsey has had all the chances in the world to straighten up.

Ultimately, watching Lindsey slowly bankrupt herself of money, credibility, and dignity isn't about feeling good or bad, but simply feeling something. Ill do this for the same reason that millions of people will watch The Bachelor or Jersey Shore--entertainment. Somehow I get the feeling that is what Lindsey wants.