I had purchased one ticket for the second game of the A’s-Mariners series just two days prior on a spring break whim. I’d never seen an M’s game by myself before.

Waiting by myself for the Fremont train in the smelly Berkeley BART station, among throngs of boisterous A’s fans laughing and conversing, I began to regret my whimsy.

Who goes to a baseball game by himself, I wondered. It’s a social event by nature; the slow pace of the game lends to conversation and company. What would I do in the half-innings of inactivity? What are all those people with their friends and their jokes going to think of me, alone in a sea of camaraderie?

These questions ran through my mind as I boarded the train. I found a seat near the window and gazed at the sun setting over the Oakland skyline.

The train arrived, and I took the long walk down the corridor between the BART station and the Oakland Coliseum. Not content with my third-deck seat, I snuck past an usher during the national anthem and found a seat in the first deck, parallel with the left-fielder on the third-base line.

After falling behind one run early, the M’s grabbed the lead for good in the third on a three-run homer from left fielder Mike Morse. I stood up and clapped while the surrounding fans groaned and booed the lone Mariners fan.

As the game wore on and the A’s fell even further behind, fans streamed for the exits. The sun faded into the hills beyond the stadium, and those remaining in the park bundled up with blankets and heavy coats.

Lying in bed later that night, I reflected on my initial hesitancy at the Berkeley BART station.

The game ended up being fun as hell.

I enjoyed analyzing the pitching and fielding of the players without the distraction of my friends. I liked texting my dad and friends watching from home. Sure, there’s plenty to recommend about going to the ballpark with your buddies, but the experience of going to a ballgame by oneself is both vastly different and similarly enjoyable.

My hesitance, I think, stemmed from my perception of the stigmas attached to attending an event alone.

In a vacuum, doing things alone is no big deal. But in my mind, I didn’t want to be the abstract archetype of a friendless loner. Those weren’t the actual circumstances, but my idea of what it meant to go to a baseball game by myself made me feel as if they were.

It’s much lonelier to succumb to your personal insecurities, I figured.

With that thought, I turned out my lamp, laid my head down on my pillow and fell asleep, content as I’d ever been.

Contact Michael Rosen at mrosen@dailycal.org. Follow him on Twitter @michaelrosen3.

The post Thoughts from an Oakland ballgame appeared first on The Daily Californian.

That’s right. Better than March Madness, the World Cup, Wimbledon, the Rose Bowl, the World Series, the Tour de France, the Kentucky Derby, the NBA Finals and the Super Bowl.

The Masters Tournament begins on Thursday in beautiful Augusta, Ga.

Alright, I will admit that the Olympic Games are better than the Masters. But they certainly are not as classy. And since the Summer Olympics don’t take place again until 2016, the Masters will be the greatest event in sports for the next three years.

This might shock some readers. For many 20 year olds, golf is just a boring sport for old, white guys. But anyone who thinks that hasn’t experienced the Masters the way I have.

I grew up with the Masters, and it has a special place in my heart that can’t be replaced by any other event or sport.

It’s just unlike any other major golf tournament. While in my adolescence I often hit the links myself, nothing got me more fired up to spend an afternoon on the course more than watching the Masters.

That’s because the Masters is different than any other event on TV. What makes the tournament so different is a respectful, relaxing environment that cannot be replicated anywhere else.

Golf is supposed to be the gentleman’s sport, and the Masters is its premier event.

The tournament has the best audience in sports. Tickets to the Masters are notoriously difficult to get, as they have stayed in the same families for generations. In 2012, the club released a handful of tickets to the general public for the first time in 40 years via a lottery system.

That exclusivity is unfortunate for fans like myself who dream of attending the tournament one day, but makes the TV experience something that can’t be found anywhere else. You will not hear rowdy fans yelling “GET IN THE HOLE” like you will at most other major tournaments. Those fans can’t get past the gates at Augusta.

The quiet, respectful audience combines with the soothing voices of Jim Nantz and Nick Faldo to create an environment like no other.

The experience of the Masters is something I’ve become addicted to, and it only happens once each year. In a world of high-intensity sports, there’s just something refreshing about the relaxing and respectful environment that is only found at the Masters. Even other major tournaments can’t replicate that unique environment.

And anyone who mistakes that relaxing experience as being “boring” has clearly never sat down and watched the Masters.

From Bubba Watson’s unbelievable hook shot out of the trees to set up his winning putt in a playoff last year to Mickelson’s shot between two pines in 2010, the Masters can simultaneously be one of the most relaxing and exciting events in sports.

And those are just the highlights from recent years — I won’t bore you with the tournament’s 76-year history of dramatic finishes.

But no matter how many highlights you look up on YouTube, the real highlight is the course — it’s breathtaking from every angle.

I have a romanticized version of the Masters brought on by my childhood.

Because of that, I don’t expect everyone to fall in love with the Masters the way I have. But everyone should be able to enjoy it.

So go ahead, turn on the TV this weekend.

With only four minutes of commercials per hour, the tradition and history will be nearly uninterrupted on a relaxing Saturday or Sunday afternoon.

There’s no way that after watching the Masters, you will not want to grab some clubs and hit the links yourself.

And with all due respect to the Olympic Games, no amount of watching Michael Phelps has ever made me want to jump into a swimming pool.

Only the Masters can inspire me that much.

Contact Riley McAtee at rmcatee@dailycal.org.

The post The classiest event in sports appeared first on The Daily Californian.

“I feel like I just fall in love with my 3-point shot. But I feel like I can score in any number of ways — I just don’t do it. And I don’t know why I don’t do it, it’s just something that I have to develop.”

— Allen Crabbe in 2012

For his first two years at Cal, Allen Crabbe was his own worst enemy.

Crabbe last year talked about leaping over his own mental barrier that kept him from being more aggressive with the ball and driving to the paint. His perfectionism and adoration of his smooth three held him back.

But this year, he changed. He became more assertive with the ball. Instead of settling for the catch-and-shoot 3-pointer, he absorbed contact and drove for more high-percentage shots. His points per game rose from 15.2 to a conference-leading 18.6.

It’s easy to identify Crabbe’s change in his style of play by simply watching Cal basketball games. But statistics help put context to how effective the incumbent Pac-12 Player of the Year’s metamorphosis has been this season.

All the numbers agree that Crabbe isn’t camping out by the 3-point line anymore. Compared to last season, Crabbe’s 3-point attempts this season decreased by around 20 percent (208 to 167), and his 2-point attempts shot up coincidentally by around 20 percent as well (207 to 259).

As his long-distance shots declined in frequency, his shot selection around the rim, whether it be dunks, layups or floaters, skyrocketed — according to hoop-math.com, his percentage of shots this season (20 percent) from around the rim nearly doubled from last year (11 percent).

Crabbe also isn’t driving into the rim recklessly and blindly. He’s been really astute with his high-percentage shot selection — Crabbe makes 70 percent of his shots by the rim.

Once a one-dimensional perimeter shooter, the 6-foot-6 guard developed a potent driving game, making him a more complete guard.

With Crabbe’s frequent drives into the post came an increase in fouls drawn. According to kenpom.com, Crabbe this season drew 4.3 fouls per 40 minutes, a whole foul more than in his past two seasons.

And with more fouls came more free throws. Crabbe’s free throw attempts rose by 30 percent this season. His free throw rate — an indicator of how frequently a player reaches the charity stripe relative to his field goal attempts — increased to 29.5 from 21.4 last season.

Statistically, there should be little doubt in saying Crabbe is more effective with his growing offensive repertoire.

But the statement reaches a quandary in the world of sabermetrics when realizing Crabbe’s effective field goal percentage and true shooting percentage — the two most widespread sabermetrics to identify a player’s shooting effectiveness —  remain almost identical to the past two years.

How is that possible?

Crabbe’s involvement in the Cal offense in terms of importance and volume ballooned this season. Last year, Crabbe was an auxiliary attacking option to seniors Jorge Gutierrez and Harper Kamp. This year, he has been Plan A in all of Cal’s offensive plays with little support.

Despite going up against the opposing team’s best defender every single game, Crabbe took more shots than in previous seasons. It’s actually impressive that Crabbe’s percentages have not dipped below his underclassman years’ this season.

But that’s when the naked eye enters to be the final judge. The naked eye confirms what the numbers imply: Crabbe’s more aggressive style of play has been more effective.

This can only bode well for Mike Montgomery, Cal fans and, of course, Crabbe’s own NBA stock.

Seung Y. Lee covers men’s basketball. Contact him at sylee@dailycal.org Follow him on Twitter @sngyn92.

The post The UnSeung Hero: Is Allen Crabbe more aggressive now? Is it working? appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Coinciding with Lance Armstrong’s confession of using PEDs was the fact that the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) admitted zero players to Baseball’s Hall of Fame for the first time since 1996.

This year’s potential Hall of Fame class was unique in that it was the first time many players that were accused of using PEDs were eligible to go to Cooperstown. Instead of ignoring the issue, the Baseball Writers zeroed in on it.

If the BBWAA wants to keep Cooperstown clean, they’ll never be able to vote for players from the steroids era. Not until there is a clear way of determining who’s cheating and who isn’t.

So until then, there’s a solution for this problem: ignore PEDs when voting for the Hall of Fame.

I’m not saying fans and writers shouldn’t look down on PED use. But the reality of the situation is that today — it’s still a part of baseball.

Writers can’t base a PED accusation on what a player looks like. Some players that fans are almost positive took PEDs, have never been proven guilty.

The only way to determine if a player is guilty of cheating is if they test for high levels of testosterone. Even then, unless they admit to cheating, it still isn’t one hundred percent effective in proving PED use.

The mass Hall of Fame rejection struck a personal note with me. Craig Biggio, Houston Astros legend and my favorite ball player growing up, missed becoming a first-ballot Hall of Famer by 39 votes.

Despite over 3,000 career hits, he was rejected from being a first-ballot Hall of Famer — the last time a player with over 3,000 career hits didn’t become a first-ballot Hall of Famer was in 1945.

I could understand the likes of Clemens and Bonds, who became the faces of the rampant PED era, not getting in on their first try, but Biggio wasn’t that kind of player.

Make no mistake about it; there is no controversy with Craig Biggio.

Playing his entire 20-year career with the Astros, Biggio ranks fifth all-time in doubles and 20th in hits. He was a seven-time All-Star and a Gold Glover four times.

Former World Series MVP Curt Schilling, who was also denied an entrance into Cooperstown, offered an explanation. He believes that everyone was rejected because players were grouped together as one, for “[turning] a blind eye” to PED use. For that, they all paid the price.

I can’t help but agree with Schilling. And in Biggio’s case, it makes the most sense. After all, with the exception of Pete Rose and Rafael Palmeiro, all players with 3,000 career hits are in the Hall of Fame.

Baseball writers claim that taking PEDs isn’t fair. I agree with that sentiment.

But not voting for a guy who had 3,000 hits?  I can’t say I agree with that.

Contact Sean Wagner-McGough at swagnermcgough@dailycal.org

The post Press Room Banter: Biggio a victim of steroid crusade appeared first on The Daily Californian.

I’m inclined to agree, because about a month into the NHL lockout last October I settled down into hibernation. I stopped checking blogs for news, I stopped watching highlight reels of the KHL or the Swiss leagues, I stopped intensely missing hockey.

After all, four months is an awfully long time to go without something you love.

I’m not going to say the lockout was stupid or uncalled for. I get that both sides wanted more thumbs in the revenue pie, so to speak. I get that contract limits and a new CBA and that escrow thing are necessary evils lurking behind the curtain.

In my opinion, the stubbornness on both sides, the length of the lockout itself, was uncalled for. More than a year ago, both the NFL and the NBA knew to get their acts together in time for a sizeable season.

But hockey isn’t a normal sport. Hockey is a rarity, just underground enough to feel like the most exclusive yet comfortable club in the world.

Yet it’s for that same exact reason that hockey can draw out an already excruciating lockout. Not enough people care, and the ones who do, the ones who practically bleed onto the ice at the start of every game, are fed up.

It sucked. It sucked for me, it sucked for the fans. I’m sure it sucked for the players and the coaches and even the guys who drive the zambonis. Four months is a long time to be out of a job. It’s an even longer time to be out of a passion.

The end came suddenly in the early morning at the beginning of January. There was no rumor mill to build up hype because, well, people were sick of building up false hope.

Hockey was back and in hyperdrive, trying to cover miles of lost ground before the start of a crudely salvaged 48-game season.
Right now I’m cautiously optimistic; compared to the diehards, though, I’m ecstatic. Numerous teams across the nation have held fire sales on concessions, merchandise and tickets in order to entice the disillusioned masses.

Me, not so much. I was depressed that first week, when opening day came and went in silence. There was no drop of the puck, no thud of bodies being checked into the boards. Worst of all, there was no sound of skates cutting across ice. And anyone who’s ever watched HBO’s 24/7 knows that that is a beautiful noise, crisp yet intimate. It might be one of the best things about hockey.
But that sound is back. Hockey is back.

It’s amazing how quickly you can settle into a habit. It’s also amazing how quickly you can shed it and return to what you love. Hockey is back, and with it the names of players I’ve come to respect and love, the hope and excitement that preludes the start of any season.
I was wrong to think that I couldn’t live without hockey. Because that’s what I did for four months. But starting now, give me time to settle back into the sport I love.

I’ll bet it takes less than 21 days.

Contact Annie Gerlach at agerlach@dailycal.org

The post Press Room Banter: The end of a most depressing winter appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Because in the NFL, if you don’t play through an injury, you’ll be thought of as soft. As a man lacking heart. You’ll be thought of as a quitter. That’s the culture of the game.

Just ask Chicago Bears quarterback Jay Cutler.

But if you play through the injury, you are risking your health and your job in the NFL. All for a chance to win a single game.

Just ask Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III.

Two winters ago, the Bears hosted the Packers in the NFC Championship game, and during the first half, Jay Cutler tore his MCL. When former Bears head coach Lovie Smith decided to pull him from the game, I, as a Bears fan, lost all hope.

Chicago lost the game without Cutler. But Cutler, however, lost something perhaps more valuable than what a game would be to a team or hope to a fan: his reputation.

As soon as Lovie Smith made his decision, current players, ex-players and analysts all across the country labeled Cutler as a quitter. Past and present NFL players took to Twitter to bash Cutler’s perceived weakness:

“Folks i never question a players injury but i do question a players heart. Truth” – Deion Sanders

“If I’m on chicago team jay cutler has to wait till me and the team shower get dressed and leave before he comes in the locker room! #FACT” – Darnell Dockett

“…When the going gets tough……..QUIT” – Maurice Jones Drew

Now fast-forward two years to last Sunday night’s wildcard playoff game between the Seattle Seahawks and the Redskins. Griffin was hobbled by a sprained knee suffered on December 9th against the Baltimore Ravens. By halftime it had become evident that Griffin was playing on one leg.

All it took was one play, one awkward twist of the knee to show ESPN, along with every other media outlet, why NFL players should never play on a bum knee. Now, the consequences are seemingly understood. In Griffin’s case, he partially tore his ACL and LCL.

And now the media, the same media that branded Jay Cutler as a quitter for sitting out with a knee injury, is blaming RG3 for wanting to stay in the game. The same media that referred to Jay Cutler as “Jay Quitler” is blaming Mike Shanahan for keeping his quarterback in the game.

If that isn’t hypocrisy, I don’t know what is.

For players and coaches, it’s truly a no-win situation.

If Griffin didn’t play, chances were that he might be cast in the same light as Cutler. But when Griffin did play, he ended up injuring his knee more severely.

If Shanahan made the decision to bench Griffin, he would be criticized for not giving his star player a chance. But Shanahan allowed Griffin to play and now he’s chastised for being reckless.

So ESPN, Fox Sports, the NFL Network, and all the sports media will blame Robert Griffin III. They’ll blame Mike Shanahan. They should blame both.

But above all, you should blame the culture of the game.

In the NFL, the type of behavior that RG3 displayed isn’t considered heroic. It’s a behavior that players feel they’re supposed to exhibit.

It’s the culture of the game.

“I’m the quarterback, it doesn’t matter what percentage I am,” Griffin said after the game. “If you can play, you play.”

His head coach, Mike Shanahan, echoed that sentiment.

“He said to me, ‘Trust me, I want to be in there and I deserve to be in there,’” Shanahan said. “And I couldn’t disagree with him.”

But the NFL has the power and ability to help prevent injured players from playing and jeopardizing their health. The NFL has the power to help players avoid being called a quitter. The NFL has the power to start changing the culture of the game.

If it is truly serious about player safety, the NFL will give doctors unaffiliated with any team, the power to pull someone like RG3 out of a game.

Giving independent doctors more authority is truly a win-win situation. Griffin doesn’t get hurt, and the media can’t label him as a quitter.

The media will always find a way to stir something up, but the NFL can make it harder on them.

If the NFL is truly serious about player safety, changing the rules won’t be enough. It needs to change the culture.

The NFL can’t do it alone though. It’ll need the help of every major media outlet.

A long overdue apology to Jay Cutler would be a good start.

The post Press Room Banter: Win first, safety second in the NFL appeared first on The Daily Californian.

My father instilled in me a deep devotion to our hometown team with a legacy of scoring stars like Marcel Dionne, Luc Robitaille and the incomparable Wayne Gretzky. This passion is what made it so difficult to be away from home while the Kings took the NHL playoffs by storm en route to the franchise’s first Stanley Cup championship. As much as I wanted to feel like a part of the Kings’ Cinderella run, it was difficult to do so while editing news articles for the Daily Cal.

I did everything I could to watch or listen to the games when I wasn’t editing. I even left for a day to fly home for Game 3 of the Stanley Cup finals. The excitement and energy were unlike anything I’ve ever experienced, but the feeling was fleeting.

The Game 6 victory was everything I had dreamed of, but after the newsroom high-fives and hugs there were still articles to be edited.

My longest vacation this past summer was a three-day trip home for the Kings’ championship parade and rally. There were more Kings fans in Downtown L.A. that day than I’ve ever seen. We cheered and bought expensive merchandise in the Stanley Cup afterglow.

But I realized what I missed: actually watching hockey. I missed being surrounded by 18,000 screaming fans. Next season, I was going to go home for the first game so I could see the Stanley Cup banner hung from the Staples Center’s rafters, immortalized alongside the many Lakers championship banners.

Those dreams have since been dashed. The NHL team owners and players’ union aren’t close to establishing a new collective bargaining agreement. The owners claim they’re taking monetary losses and deserve a bigger portion of the profits. The players want to be paid fairly, especially given how much smaller NHL contracts are than those of other professional athletes.

At this point, it’s he said, she said. The owners won’t budge on their demand for a bigger chunk of revenue, and the players don’t think the owners are losing as much money as they say. But the consequences of this disagreement are very real — the first two weeks of the regular season have been cancelled, and players are fleeing the country for the professional leagues across Europe.

The situation is dire enough that ESPN has agreed with Russia’s Kontinental Hockey League to show a handful of games that will feature NHL stars like Alexander Ovechkin and Evgeni Malkin. Everyone is preparing for another NHL season lost to a lockout, like the most recent one in 2004-5. Now, hockey fans who awaited the start of the season are left with a gaping hole in their lives.

While the NHL owners and players have their own prerogatives, I hope they won’t forget the fans, especially the ones who came back after the last lockout. That season, we spent a whole year watching minor league and NCAA hockey just trying to satisfy that hockey fix we’ve come to depend upon.

The Kings deserve a chance to enjoy a season as the reigning Stanley Cup champions. We fans deserve a chance to be proud of their accomplishment, especially after supporting the team for 45 years and waiting for that first Cup.

And of course, Kings fans aren’t alone. All hockey diehards deserves a chance to enjoy the emotional highs and lows their teams elicit. Even Sharks fans. Maybe.

Contact Christopher Yee at cyee@dailycal.org

The post Press Room Banter: Locked out of a passion appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Over the past three or four years, an influx of new baseball statistics has emerged on the MLB scene as a radical alternative to the traditional statistics dating back to baseball’s origin.

The people in charge of the shift, named “the sabermetricians,” eschew statistics that rely on team-dependent factors (wins, RBI) and focus heavily on factors within the batter or pitcher’s control (strikeouts, walks, home runs).

A statistic called WAR (wins above replacement), another product of the sabermetrics revolution, attempts to capture the entire value of a player in one statistic. For batters, park-dependent hitting, fielding, positional value, and baserunning all count as factors.

Makes sense, right?

Well, not to the dinosaurs of major newspapers.

Old-school baseball writers like Murray Chass of the New York Times have criticized the sabermetrics movement, calling the proponents of the new statistics “stat freaks” who “forget that human beings, not numbers, play the game.”

The debate between new-school and old-school has simmered beneath the surface for the past few years, only gaining attention from the diehards who spend inappropriate amounts of time reading baseball journalism.

But with an epic debate for the AL MVP hinging on the credibility of WAR as a statistic, sabermetrics have officially entered the mainstream.

Miguel Cabrera of the Tigers represents the traditional choice for the award. Cabrera won the Triple Crown award, given to a hitter who leads his league in batting average, home runs, and RBI. Cabrera currently sports a .331 average with 44 home runs and 139 RBI. His adjusted OPS+, which utilizes on-base percentage and slugging and adjusts for park effects, is 167.

In the “stat freak” corner is uber-rookie Mike Trout. Trout leads the major leagues with 10.3 WAR, a good three wins above Cabrera. His adjusted OPS+ is 169, a bit better than Cabrera. Trout has generated an entire win’s worth of value over Cabrera in baserunning and plays Gold-Glove defense in one of the more difficult defensive positions to play. Cabrera’s defense at third base resembles a hippo trying to balance on one leg.

Essentially, Trout measures out to be an essentially equivalent hitter to Cabrera and adds his league-leading stolen base total and far superior defense to the mix.

Objectively, Trout is clearly the choice for the MVP. But the antagonism against the “nerds in their parents’ basements” seems to be manifesting itself in MVP voting arguments.

Bill Madden of the New York Daily News recently wrote a column arguing Cabrera should be the MVP because “this growing infatuation with WAR is, in my opinion, turning baseball into an inhuman board game.”

No argument of Cabrera’s superior value, except for a claim to the superiority of his batting average and RBI totals.

Just a claim that WAR is a “nebulous, ludicrous… new-age statistic.”  Madden didn’t even take the time to understand the formula behind WAR; he simply dismissed it by saying “don’t ask how the conclusion (of WAR’s formula) is reached.”

Madden fails to see the irony in his argument. He stakes his claim on Cabrera’s superior statistics but is too narrow-minded to realize that the metrics he’s using to make his argument (batting average, RBI) are outdated and useless in this day and age.

The portrayal of the rationally based statistically minded baseball writers of the modern era as antagonistic emotionless robots by the older columnists of major newspapers will likely continue until the older sportswriters die out.

But the sabermetricians will have the last laugh, as Chass and Madden make themselves look like close-minded grandpas fulfilling the classic old-man stereotype: a dogmatic, irrational resistance to change of any kind.

Contact Michael Rosen at mrosen@dailycal.org

The post Press Room Banter: Frankly, old people are kind of silly appeared first on The Daily Californian.

I’m the guy who always comes five minutes late to the game, taking his sweet time walking up to the very top row of the bleachers. I’m the guy who is always separated from the rest of the crowd, always scribbling something down in his notepad.

I may or may not wear sunglasses, but I have the same apathetic poker face on for 90 consecutive minutes. Some may think I am a MLS scout or just a socially awkward stalker. But honestly, I’m just a guy that, inside, is always having the time of his life.

After covering women’s soccer last fall, I had the chance to move up the Daily Cal ranks to cover volleyball or football this semester. But I chose men’s soccer instead, because I wanted — nay, needed — another fall season with Cal soccer, Edwards Stadium and my unofficial seat at the very top row.

Home matches at Edwards give me a therapeutic consolation. It’s where I can sit in my comfy concrete seat and turn off parts of my brain. Goals in a soccer match can happen in a blink of an eye; if you get distracted in your thoughts, you will miss that match-winner. This comes straight from experience.

It’s where you can disconnect yourself and just watch the match — and the rest of the world — go by. Perched atop the bleachers of Edwards Stadium, I sometimes feel like a Roman emperor at the Colosseum. At the movement of my thumb, Berkeley will tremble at my feet.

Sometimes I run a commentary in my head during matches. From my bird’s-eye view, an English-accented play-by-play announcer will ramble on while a color commentator will drop witticisms every few minutes. And I will just nod my head to the color commentary, telling myself, “That guy is a freaking genius.”

The bird’s-eye view from the top row of Edwards provides me the optimal perspective to watch and write about soccer. Soccer is a game of nuances: with so little stats to work with for articles, I need to zoom in on facets of the game that are near-invisible to the naked eye. From my throne I must construct stories of fluid, fleeting moments throughout the match that only a few can identify within the stadium.

The intense concentration required to cover this sport of details brings me warm solace. The feeling of empowerment over my pen and my thoughts strokes my ego and feeds my self-confidence. I think everybody craves to be the best at something, anything — arrogant as it may sound, I think I found my niche in writing about soccer.

But then again, reality splashes me with cold water every once in awhile. Soccer reporting? It’s about as practical as crochet-knitting, lad. Get your act together, and find something more useful.

And then with a heavy heart I head over to Edwards Stadium, back to my usual place. From my unmarked seat, I see the Neoclassical campus architecture and the towering Campanile meshing with the rolling hills in the background as if in some obscure pastel painting.

Then everything, from the soccer match below to life itself, begins to blur, and I can hear parts in my head switching off. And the play-by-play commentator in my head opens his spiel the same way as always: Welcome to Edwards Stadium.

Contact Seung Y. Lee at sylee@dailycal.org

The post Press Room Banter: Talent from the stadium seats appeared first on The Daily Californian.

I had my way this past Sunday, enjoying the game between the Baltimore Ravens and the New England Patriots. The tilt, despite featuring two of the best teams in the league, was largely overshadowed by the replacement referees.

Sunday night’s game was one that Chris Collinsworth described afterward as “the MMA and NFL mixed into one.” The most controversial moment of the game didn’t occur until the very last play, when the Ravens lined up to attempt a game winning chip-shot of a field goal. After a night of everything going wrong — including Ravens’ coach John Harbaugh getting penalized for trying to use a timeout — surely the officials would get the call right on a field goal.

Instead, rookie Justin Tucker booted it directly over the right upright, leaving the officials dumbfounded. The officials deemed the kick as good, and the Ravens defeated the Patriots, 31-30. All the officials had to do next was outrun Patriots’ head coach Bill Belichick as he chased them down, and they were in the clear.

The NFL, however, is not.

Because the NFL is stuck in a labor disagreement with the NFL Referee Association regarding salary and pension issues, it decided to employ collegiate Division III referees to take over the officiating while the NFL negotiates with the NFLRA.

The NFL claimed that the replacements would be up to par by the time the regular season started; however, it has become clear that the replacements aren’t up to the task.

One of the biggest complaints has been directed at how long it takes these new officials to reach a decision, highlighted by last Monday night’s game that lasted over four hours. Another qualm is that the game moves too fast for these guys.

However, the fault does not lie with the replacements. You don’t force your five-year-old son to cook you dinner and then get mad when he burns the food. Instead, the criticism should be directed squarely at the NFL and head honcho Roger Goodell.

The current referee situation has proven the NFL likes to pretend that it truly cares about the integrity of the game.

It doesn’t. The NFL’s only goal is to make money or to sell tickets.

“The bottom line is they don’t care,” ESPN analyst Steve Young said after the September 17th game between the Broncos and Falcons. “Player safety doesn’t matter in this case… If it affected the desire for the game, they’d come up with a few million dollars.”

In essence, the only way to force the NFL to actually care about the refereeing crisis is to stop tuning in every Sunday.

Unfortunately, just like the millions of others who suffer withdrawals from March to September, I am addicted to the NFL. Regardless of who is officiating next week, I still plan on tuning in to Sunday Night Football.

“In the end you’re still going to watch the game,” Young said. “Go ahead, gripe all you want. I’m going to rest. Let them eat cake.”

I hate to say it, but Steve’s right: Let them eat cake.

Contact Sean Wagner-McGough at swagnermcgough@dailycal.org

The post Press Room Banter: Referee crisis not black and white appeared first on The Daily Californian.