Going the other way

If you read our post earlier this week about the difficulties the Yankees are having selling luxury boxes and the highest priced of their exorbitant season tickets then the title of this post will make perfect sense. The Yankees who are moving into their new stadium next Spring are jacking the prices and screwing the little guy. Two franchises are going the other way in different manners.

The Boston Red Sox are holding the line on their ticket prices, albeit for the first time in 14 years. Still, the Red Sox chief sales and marketing officer, Sam Kennedy, sounds like he gets it. Here he is quoted in the Boston Globe, "We do not want to be the ballpark of the rich and famous." The Red Sox took this position despite 469 consecutive sellouts and a waiting list of over 7,000 for season tickets.

The other franchise, the hapless New Jersey Nets did them one better. In a plan that we could hardly like better if we had thought of it ourselves, the New Jersey Nets basketball team will give unemployed fans who submit their resumes to the Nets Job Bank up to four free tickets, plus access to a Nov. 22 career fair at their home arena and distribute applicants' resumes to the team's corporate sponsors. Brilliant! Now all they need to do is find Vince Carter a job. (Up to 1,500 total tickets will be available.) Fans that are seeking jobs can sign-up at www.njnets.com and should email their résumé, former employer, contact information, and career field of interest to the Nets Job Bank at jobbank@njnets.com.

Ha, ha

The greedy people operating the Yankees and abusing the public trust by moving to a publicly financed stadium, right across the street, which was built over a Bronx park, are getting a little bit of comeuppance. Word is the they are struggling to sell some of their luxury boxes and outrageously priced tickets during this tough economic climate. The New York Times reports, "Seven luxury boxes down the foul lines priced at $600,000 remain available for the 2009 season...the team still had seven available in August, too." A similar story is playing out for the $500 to $2,500 per game tickets in the first nine rows of the twenty-five sections closest home plate. Nearly 20% of those extortion rate tickets remain unsold. In the immortal words of Nelson Muntz, we can only say, "Ha, Ha!"

The Yankees held a presser today with news they would rather you concentrated on, they have wired the whole stadium with Cisco products. That's right the wealthiest will be able to use a customized Cisco system in their luxury box to order food or surf the internet. Also noted, 1,100 flat-panel, high-definition TV monitors will be installed in concession stands, the luxury suites, around the restaurants and bars, and in restrooms.

Korean golfers

Despite the xenophobic mindset of the LPGA, and their deplorable leadership, the women golfers of Korean origin on the Ladies Professional Golf Tour do not fit into one neat stereotypical box. Their personalities, backgrounds and even their English language skills run a wide gamut. Here is a link to an excellent article in the New York Times by Karen Crouse covering the range of differences and similarities. Here is a link to a somewhat older article in the Bay Area rag, Metroactive covering one Korean golfer, a multiple tournament winning, less than categorizeable, self described "hip-hop goth," Christina Kim. The Clarion Content was most heartened when the hue and cry of the public and the media helped force the LPGA to withdraw its draconian "English only" policy.

Don't typecast me

Florida State junior safety Myron Rolle is one of 15 semifinalists for the Bednarik Award, given each year to college football’s Defensive Player of the Year. He also happens to be a finalist for a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship.

The accomplished and impressive Rolle, priorities in order, will miss FSU’s game with Maryland on November 22 to interview for the Rhodes Scholarship in Alabama that day.

"I thought about the fact this may come up a while ago," Rolle said of the scheduling conflict. "It didn’t crystallize in my mind until weeks ago when I learned I could be a finalist. It really hit me recently, but this is a priority for me and very special for my family."

His role model is Dr. Benjamin Carson, director of pediatric neurosurgery at John Hopkins Medical Institution. Carson who grew up poor in a tough Detroit neighborhood, in a single parent home, is the author of The Big Picture.

Fantasy Football has peaked

Like Starbuck's circa 2003, fantasy football has peaked. The Clarion Content's editorial board was first introduced to the game in New Jersey in 1986. There were no on-line sites to look up stats. Heck, the manual was a printed copy which had to be shared amongst participants. Drafts were conducted in person. When the Mile Square FFL league created Excel spreadsheets to assist in scoring, it was considered a tremendous advance. Even then, stats still had to be laboriously transcribed from the USA Today sports page into said spreadsheets.

The game has come light years from there. Drafts can be held virtually, on-line. There are not only numerous fantasy football magazines, but endless player rating websites. All scoring and even transactions can be processed for free by an outside service provider like ESPN, Yahoo, CBS Sportsline and their ilk. The central themes remain the same, a love of sports and competition with friends. But unfortunately, as with so many things, technology is squeezing the joy out of it. There is so much information on every game and every player available to everyone at this point, fantasy football has become overwhelming. Hours and hours can be wasted perusing not only box scores and injury reports, but scouting sites featuring minutia like average yards per carry, home and away, on turf and on grass, night and day, in cold or warm weather, ad infinitum, ad naseaum.

A brilliant description of the state of fantasy football now from Clarion fave, Bill Simmons, "Really, the fantasy football season isn't fun. Winning is OK; losing is agonizing. You constantly feel awful about your choices and your bad luck; it's the only exercise that causes arguments with friends you normally never would argue with; and you spend roughly a kazillion hours managing your team for the 10 percent chance that you might win your league. There's just not a ton of upside. It's almost like smoking cigarettes -- it started out with good intentions, and it's something to do, and it can be fun in the right moments, but ultimately, there are an inordinate amount of moments when you find yourself leaning out a window in 20-degree weather to puff out a quick cig as your nose gets frostbitten, or bumming a cig from a group of horrible girls and then feeling obligated to talk to them, or waking up in the morning and coughing up your right lung. Really, it's more harm than fun. And yet, we continue to do it. And love it. This entire paragraph made me want to smoke."

Latest LeBron speculation

Read ESPN basketball writer Mark Stein's latest analysis about how LeBron James's impending free agency is going to play out here. The Clarion Content has long said and continues to believe that there is no chance of LeBron being a Net. As veteran New York politics watchers, we knew Nets owner Bruce Ratner was never going to be able to get the development deal done in Brooklyn that he was claiming he could. Even before the global economic credit crunch, there was no chance. (Recall the NYC Olympic bid and the Jets West Side football stadium follies.)

This inability to move to Brooklyn means that the Jay-Z being a minority owner of the Nets shtick is cool, but not necessarily a game changer for LeBron's free agency decision. The Clarion Content would say now that Isaiah is no longer running the team, the Knicks have to be at least co-favorites for the LeBron free agency sweepstakes. The other favorite, has the opportunity to offer him the one thing the Knicks can't between now and then, a championship. If LeBron wins that title, he just might stay in Cleveland.

Stein's Daily Dime also has a list of the highest salaried NBA players this year, including such genius contracts as tied for the second highest paid player in the league at $21 million plus per annum Jason "Zero Titles" Kidd and Jermaine "North of the Border" O'Neal. Of course, no one really tops the non-playing, sixth highest paid player overall, Knicks bench warmer, Stephon Marbury.

Knicks hope

As Knicks fans we will continue to hold out hope for at least a few more weeks...

Texas Tech, epic

Here is a link to an excellent article about Texas Tech's stupendous win over the #1 Texas Longhorns last night. Texas Tech's euphoria may only last a week or two, highly ranked opponents Oklahoma State and Oklahoma lay ahead, but this game will be sewed into the tapestry of Lone Star state football. In a state that loves its football as much as anywhere in the nation, this was a game for the ages. It was the best game the Clarion Content has seen since Vince Young found away to propel the Longhorns to a national championship victory over mighty USC, a real humdinger!

Florida-Georgia

It is now fair to say that Georgia Coach Mark Richt's ridiculous and unsportsmanlike stunt last year won Georgia one game, but lost them one, too. Florida looked pretty motivated today.

For those who don't know the story: Coach Richt in the locker room before the big game in Jacksonville last year told his kids to "make sure" that they got an excessive celebration penalty after they scored their first touchdown in the game formerly known as 'The World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party.' He claims despite making this asinine recommendation that he didn't realize his entire team would storm the field to stomp on the Florida endzone. Whether he knew it or not to get the unsportsmanlike penalty was his suggestion, not the kids' spontaneous idea. It appeared to motivate Georgia last year, though Knowshon Moreno's 188 yard rushing day probably helped at least as much.

This year it surely motivated the Florida Gators as they were asked about it all week. Florida Coach Urban Meyer put a gag order on the team in regards to the incident, but it was all over the airwaves and the newspapers. Today Florida took Georgia out behind the woodshed. Leading 49 to 3 over the formerly one loss, 6th ranked Bulldogs, before beating them 49-10.

Singletary

The NFL has been buzzing about Hall of Fame linebacker and new San Francisco 49ers coach Mike Singletary. Not only did Singletary send a player to the locker room early, launch into a postgame press conference tirade, but apparently he dropped his trousers at half time to make a point to his team about how badly they were playing. The Clarion Content has no problem with it. Discipline at work for highly paid athletes, it is their job. They are likely playing in a stadium that was at least partially publicly financed. We are glad to hear that Singletary thinks they have an obligation to try to play their best. Hold them accountable, coach.