When I was a fifteen year old, there were three things in this world I obsessively saved my babysitting money for: tickets to sporting events, programs at said events, and the amazingly delicious hot-out-of-the-oven M&M cookies baked at the deli next door to my dance studio. And when you were making three dollars per hour babysitting in the Rust Belt, those three things were the only meaningful things one could save up for.

Programs were one of the reasons I would attend games and shows. When I was really young, my hands would shake nervously when I would hand over my hard-earned money for a hockey or ice show program. I would insist on getting to events right when doors opened so that I would have as much time with the program prior to the puck drop, first pitch, kickoff, or opening piece. I would devour the program the minute I sat down. I loved the smell – that toxic ink plastic-like brand new smell that graced the pages, especially if this was the beginning of the season or tour or the first one in the box. The pages would stick together upon that first read through, which made me develop this unconscious habit I still have today of flipping through the program at a rapid pace at first to separate all of the pages before settling in to fully digest the content.

Anyone who attended anything with me usually knew prior to our departure of my love of programs and the fact that they would most likely be on their own so that I could read every single word of it before the event started. I didn’t mean to be rude, but to me, reading the program was usually better than the event itself.

Somewhere around the age of thirteen, I wondered if there was any way to write just for event programs. I jumped at the chance to contribute to my school’s theater programs whenever possible, but I really wanted to write for a ice show program or hockey program. I would occasionally ask one of my creative writing teachers how one might go about writing for an event program, and they looked at me like I had five heads (which, given that I was this wanna-be sportswriter in a creative writing program filled with classmates focusing on teenage-angst filled poetry, was an everyday occurrence. In workshop, I shared fiction pieces about a klutzy female sportswriter tripping over her own feet while covering her favorite quarterback’s Pro Football Hall of Fame induction, while the rest of my class shared poems about boys breaking up with them and feeling like an outsider in such a “crazy, crazy world.”)

Fast forward nearly fifteen years, with late twenty-something me working in education, dabbling in sports blogging, and living hundreds of miles away from Rochester. My father called me one Sunday afternoon asking if I wanted to keep the Rubbermaid box of programs. He was in one of his rare cleaning moves, and he was feeling the urge to purge the crawlspace.

“Of course I do, Dad,” I answered, taken aback that anyone would ever suggest throwing my precious memorabilia out. “If you hang onto them until Christmas, I’ll bring them back to Boston with me then.”

Dad obliged and went about purging my old Girl Scout Handbooks instead (with my permission.) But his question got me thinking. I’ve found an outlet for one teenage goal, sportswriting, through the six gazillion websites I attempt to contribute to on a regular basis. However, I had never found an opportunity to work on an event program. I had to remedy this, and the opportunity was literally under my nose.

The folks in charge of coordinating the Boston University-Cornell University Red Hot Hockey rematch had moved into the offices below my own. Normally, I’m not a bold person when it comes to asking to be included on projects, but I overheard them mentioning that they were in the beginning stages of putting together the program, and I jumped on it. Pete, the creative lead, immediately gave me the chance of a lifetime – design and write both BU and Cornell’s player profiles.

I have not worked that hard on a project since my senior thesis. When Cornell was ravaged by their H1N1 outbreak and couldn’t provide us with the necessary information on deadline, I ended up researching stats and facts for the entire Cornell roster. I made drafts upon drafts, measured every pixel I could, learned options and functions in Adobe InDesign I never knew existed. Then I was allowed to write a sidebar. Then I was allowed to fact check and edit a major story.

Then, last Thursday, I walked up to my office after a series of meetings and found one of the first copies of the program waiting for me at the front desk. It smelled just like the programs I had saved up to buy as a teenager, had the same glossy cover as those programs, but when you opened to the table of contents and read the credits at the bottom, my name was listed.

I can’t even begin to describe what it felt like to read a program and see my name in the credits after a childhood spent obsessed with them. I immediately thought of my first Disney on Ice program at age four that I dragged with me everywhere for three weeks, the Buffalo Bills Gameday program I bought the only time I got to watch Steve Young play live, and the beautiful ice show programs I collected as a tweenager. Honestly, I wanted to go back in time and tell fifteen year old me what had just happened and then do a Jonathan Papelbon-esque happy jig with her. Knowing this would eventually happen would have made sitting through the boy-angst filled verse over a decade ago that much more palpable.

Let Rochester become a member of "The Eh Team." (T-shirt available at Noisebot.com)

Last Sunday, Western New York let you borrow the Buffalo Bills for a game. You gave them the Rogers Centre, a dull and lifeless home. They, in turn, gave you a dull and lifeless football game. I apologize for the unproductive exchange. Maybe when we have a quarterback, a new coach, and uninjured defense, this will go much better.

Because you were probably pretty bitter at the inferior goods we sent to Toronto, you decided last Monday to express interest in purchasing the Buffalo Sabres. Not all of you exactly, but the CEO of the best thing to come out of Canada since Tim Hortons Coffee, Research in Motion (RIM), which manufactures Blackberries. (I love my Blackberry like a second cat.) If they were for sale, RIM’s CEO reportedly is interested in buying the Sabres with a stipulation that some of their home games be played in Hamilton, Ontario.

Well, Canada, it seems that you are interested in all things Western New York. So do I have a deal for you.

Take us all.

There it is. I said it. If you want to take Western New York’s beloved but consistently downtrodden football team, and you want to take their lovable but manic depressive hockey team, then why not take all of Western New York.

I understand your argument that this might better us more than it betters you. My Western New York family would get universal health care, stricter gun laws, most likely better education, CBC, TSN, the better version of NHL Network, and even more Tim Hortons. You would get a lot of boarded up factories, Garbage Plates, and the ugly side of Niagara Falls. However, you would also get the two sports teams you desire, Wegmans, buffalo wings, and the Record Archive guy you already love so much. You would get the booming beer manufacturing business of Rochester (trust me, it pains my born-and-bred Bostonian fiance that his Sam Adams is brewed in Rochester, NY), the new MAC football champion University of Buffalo Bulls, and arguably the best stadium in Triple A baseball, Frontier Field.

You would have your coveted NFL franchise, and JP Losman could easily become the CFL quarterback he’s always deserved to be (especially after today’s heartbreaking loss to the Jets that I don’t want to talk about.) You would have an additional NHL franchise, one that especially hates southern US teams – well, at least the Dallas Stars – and you wouldn’t have to move them out of Buffalo to make them Canadian.

Listen, Canada – I realize you have your own problems at the moment. This might not be the best time for you to annex a giant piece of land from the United States. But once you get your own governmental problems worked out, I think you should talk to President-Elect Obama about the idea. He’s a politician, meaning he won’t care about Western New York, and will probably okay the deal five minutes into the discussion. And Governor Paterson won’t care – he likes to pretend Western New York is a plague anyway. He’ll be happy not to feel guilty about everything he’s not doing to help the region.

And then I’ll really be able to say I’m originally from Canada, instead of having to explain why I act, look, and speak like a Canadian without the actual citizenship. I could say, “Well, I am originally from Rochester, Ontario, Canada. That’s why I say aboot, get a headache when I go more than two days without watching hockey, and have a natural ability for ice skating.” Rochester, Ontario, Canada has a nice ring to it.

My home region is practically Canada anyway. Just make it official. Come on, Canada – whadya say?

Well, this year, the partner-in-crime and I have decided to join a few colleagues of mine at tonight’s BU – BC matchup at Conte Forum, one of the few Hockey East arenas that I haven’t been to at this point.  Heaven help us.

Last night, both teams faced off at Agganis Arena on the BU campus for night one of the back-to-back. I think it was a good game.  It ended as a 1-1 tie, and both BU’s Kiran Milan and BC’s John Muse made absolutely amazing saves.  But besides that, I feel like both teams forgot how to skate.  In the second period, Eagles were falling all over the place, untouched, like the littlest of mites that play during intermissions.  As a Terriers fan, this was hysterical…until the third period, when it was the Terriers who were falling off their skates like five year olds. It wasn’t an epidemic, per se, but it happened enough times that it was noticeable.

A few other notes from the evening:

- I always get a kick out of the BC roster.  It is filled with mostly Irish or Italian names, aka “good Catholic names.”  Of course.

- Speaking of Irondequoit, I always feel a tinge of torn-ness when I root against BC, because over the past few years, their roster has been dominated by Western New Yorkers.  Chris Collins = Fairport, NY.  The Gionta boys = Greece, NY.  The Reasoners = Honeyoe Falls, NY. The Orpiks = East Amherst, NY.  I typically root for all things Western NY, but I just can’t when it comes to BC hockey.  Could it be that BC wins because they recruit Western New Yorkers?

- I think I am too used to seeing goalie extremes (way tall goalies like Ben Bishop, Carter Hutton, or way short goalies like Jeff Lerg), that when I saw BC’s John Muse up close for the first time last night (I’ve actually only seen him play once prior, and I couldn’t get a good look at him because I was in the balcony of the TDBanknorth Garden), he looked odd to me.  He’s not too short.  He’s not too tall.  He’s just in the middle.  He also has shoulders like a linebacker – his whole upper body is extremely broad, and it doesn’t seem to be just his padding.  Or maybe I’m just really used to seeing really small goalies?

- Another thing about Muse: he lets up ridiculously long rebounds, and leaves huge parts of the net open when he’s being pressured.  The teams that score on him must be the ones who pay attention after they make a shot on him.  BU did not do that last night.  They could have scored three more goals last night had they been paying attention to a rebound that went across the open part of the net.  And it wasn’t like the Terriers were being held up by the Eagles – no, they just weren’t paying attention.

- As I’m writing this, BC football is losing to Virgina Tech in the ACC Championship 30-10.  So not only am I walking into enemy territory tonight, the BC fans are going to be angry and depressed.  I don’t blame them – there was a ton of hype leading up to this afternoon’s game.  Maybe I won’t wear my jersey…

Oh wait.  Nathan Gerbe just got called up to the Buffalo Sabres.  Now the BC folks will be happy.  Okay, maybe I can safely wear my jersey.

What’s going to happen the first time Gerbe plays against Phil Kessel of the Boston Bruins?  I want to be there.  It’ll be a “2004-05 USA-Under-18 Development Team members who have made it to the NHL” matchup!  I want this to happen.  I want to be there to watch this.

Better yet, could we just reunite the two of them on the same NHL team?  Maybe including the FWNICM? Would that be too much to ask? The Bruins, maybe? Anyone who knows me personally knows that I spent the summer suggesting this lineup to every single hockey-knowledgeable person I know, including the brother of a actual factual NHL scout that my friends and I sat next to while watching Game 6 of the NBA Championships.

All I’m asking is that you think about it.  (And if you do, and decide that it would never work, just don’t tell me.  This is one thing I’d rather be blissfully ignorant about.)

Don't worry, Rian Lindell - I'm still thankful for you.

This Thanksgiving day, I have a lot to be thankful for. In the spirit of many blogs today, I will now provide a laundry list of all the things – sports related, that is – that I am thankful for:

I am thankful that the Buffalo Bills are still in Buffalo.

I am thankful that Dick Jauron has resisted the urge to throw in JP Losman when Trent Edwards has gone through his growing pains.

Reluctantly, I am thankful for Rian Lindell, because for every 47 yarder to win the game he misses, he blasts 50 other field goals and extra points through the uprights. (And I still don’t understand why more people are not naming their sons Rian with an i.)

I am thankful for the Buffalo Sabres’ third jerseys, because they remind me of my childhood.

I am thankful that the Florida Panthers aren’t completely running away of the mess that the Rochester Amerks are in, and actually will face the fans and address their growing concerns about the team.

I am thankful that Gabe Kapler came back from retirement and coaching the Single – A Greenville Drive to play for the Milwaukee Brewers, and had a few moments of greatness during the season.

I am thankful that of all the players the Boston Red Sox could have received in a trade for Manny Ramirez, they got Jason Bay. From a pox in the clubhouse to everyone’s favorite humble Canadian.

I am thankful that the NCAA is recognizing Steve Young’s accomplishments both on and off the field in January by giving him a 2009 Silver Annerversary Award. In case you aren’t familiar with his story, while Young was setting passing and rushing records in the NFL, he was going to law school in the off-season.

I am thankful for the lacrosse dynasty that is the Rochester, NY professional lacrosse. Big ups for making my hometown relevant.

I am thankful for all of the junior and senior elite gymnasts, like those I saw during the US Championships, who might not ever make it to the Olympics, but put such effort and energy into their sport anyway.

I am thankful for original floor exercise routines and music, which are way too few and far between. I am also thankful for unique and fun balance beam mounts.

I am thankful for Phil Kessel finally, finally, finally being used correctly in the Boston Bruins playbook and having a smash up season so far because of it. (I am also thankful because he’s cute.)

I am thankful that a college hockey player I watched while I’ve had season tickets has actually played in a NHL game (John Curry.) You don’t have to leave college early and/or be drafted at age 18 to play in the NHL.

I am thankful that former Hockey East goalies are getting mega NHL love this year, with Ben Bishop playing with the St. Louis Blues, Cory Schneider getting called up by the Canucks, Curry playing with the Penguins, and Jonathan Quick getting time up with the LA Kings.

I am thankful that the senior class of the Boston University Terriers men’s hockey team have kicked the intensity up a notch this season, and hope despite the current slump, they continue to play with such drive.

I am thankful that the Mullins Center at UMass Amherst is so amusing.

I am thankful for the Skating Monk, aka the Providence College Friar, and his participation in the Hockey East Semifinal mascot game despite PC not being in the semifinals.

I am thankful that hockey has such a lively and fun online community.

I am thankful for all of my blog readers, for letting me fulfill my teenage dream of being a sportswriter (despite in a much different way than what fourteen year old me imagined.)

And, I am thankful for coffee, without which none of this would be possible.

And where does basketball fit into all of this? Is there a particular team that people in Western New York prefer to root for? I’d imagine that the Knicks–not even factoring in their past seven seasons of futility–represent everything that upstaters hate about downstate. There is the connection between the old Buffalo Braves and L.A. Clippers, but not even the most ardent fan of the A.B.A. would retain that kind of loyalty.

Now, I have been in quite a few relationships in my day, including some of those of the on-and-off, back and forth, toxic variety.  (Who hasn’t in their day?  The degrees of severity vary, but everyone’s had at least one.)  But none come close to the toxic back and forth relationship that professional basketball has had with my home region of Western New York.  Professional basketball took Western New York and toyed with its emotions – “You want an NBA Championship? Here you go. Oh, wait – you aren’t “big enough” to support professional sports!  Sorry, let’s move the team away.” – until a whole generation and their children decided enough was enough, and ceased following the NBA all together.

Professional basketball of the CBA, ABA, and NBA variety has awarded six franchises to the Western New York area since 1925.  It began in 1925, when the Buffalo Bisons and Rochester Centrals started play in the American Basketball League.  Both franchises were short lived – the Bisons lasted one season and Centrals lasted until 1931.

Rochester would get another stab at a professional basketball team in 1945 with the Rochester Royals of the National Basketball League.  The Royals – still spoken about in Rochester to this day – were very successful, winning the National Basketball League regular season and championship titles each year from 1945-57.  Due to a series of league mergers, the Royals found themselves in the NBA in 1948.  They maintained their success, winning the 1951 NBA Championship over the NY Knicks – a victory which some Rochestairans (my father among them) still hold near and dear to their hearts, ingraining a dislike of the Knicks to their kin.  Despite continued competitiveness, the Royals moved to Cincinnati in 1957, with the NBA claiming that Rochester was not considered “major league” enough to continue supporting a team. (And Cincinnati is?)  The franchise eventually ended up the Sacramento Kings.

Meanwhile down the Thruway, the Nationals had called Syracuse home since 1939.  Originally an independent team, the Nationals joined the National Basketball League in 1946. After the series of league mergers that took place in the late 1940s, the Nationals became members of the NBA in 1949.  The Nationals made the NBA Playoffs every year of their membership (1949-63), winning the NBA Championship in 1955.  Despite their massive success, in 1963 the Nationals franchise was purchased by brothers who wished to move the team to Philadelphia in an effort to replace the recently departed Warriors franchise.  Yet another NBA Championship winning team had left Western New York for a more “promising” location.

The NBA would give Western New York one more franchise – the Buffalo Braves, who were part of the 1970 expansion of the league.  Playing at the old Aud, the Braves struggled for a few years until finally earning a playoff spot in 1974, losing to the Boston Celtics in the conference semifinals.  The Braves made the playoffs for the two following seasons.  In 1976, the team’s ownership, lead by founding owner Paul Snyder, started shopping the Braves around to cities in Florida, claiming that Buffalo was a “hockey town” who couldn’t support the team.  The City of Buffalo (rightly, in my opinion) put up a significant fight, and got the Braves to agree to a multi-year lease at the Aud.  However, a clause in the agreement gave the owners an escape option if ticket sales fell below a set amount.  So what happened during the next two seasons? The team tanked, trading its best and most popular player, Bob McAdoo.  Ticket sales dropped due to the poor performance, and the agreement with the Aud could be voided.  In 1978, the team’s leadership, then lead by John Y. Brown Jr. (who would soon become Governor of Kentucky), switched teams with then Celtics owner, Irv Lavin. Brown had a hand in the very successful Celtics, and Lavin, in the Braves, had a team that he could now move to his home state of California.  The Braves became the San Diego Clippers.  Western New York had lost their third NBA team in nearly twenty years.

Rochester tried two times after the loss of the Royals to reestablish a professional basketball team in their city.  The Rochester Colonels played eight games in the Continental Basketball Association in 1958 – a fact largely unknown until three years ago, when Rochester sports historian brought their existence to light. In 1977, the Rochester Zeniths joined the All-American Basketball Alliance, eventually moving to the Continental Basketball Association.  Attendance for the Zeniths was some of the highest in the CBA.  Although winning the league championship twice and making the playoffs in every year of their existence, the franchise would fold due to financial issues in 1983. (In a random note, in researching this post, I realized that as a teenager, I taught the Zenith’s founding owner’s daughter dance.  It’s a small, small world. My parents bought TVs from him, I taught his daughter dance, and his wife made my solo costume one year. Why didn’t anyone bring this up earlier?!)

Rochester is still flirting with professional basketball – they are currently home to the Rochester Razorsharks, who have spent time in both the Premier Basketball League and American Basketball Association, setting attendance records and winning championships in both. (Using my analogy, one could say that Rochester is that girl who, despite having finally broken up with a guy, keeps semi-stalking him, hanging out with his friends, and dating guys that look just like her ex. Yep, Rochester is that crazy girl.  Gotta love my hometown.)

Essentially, Western New York and professional basketball had a toxic relationship in the 20th century.  Despite success on the court and fan support, the NBA told Western New York three times that they weren’t a large enough market to support a basketball team.  Back and forth, the cities of Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse kept showing support and fandom for basketball, and the NBA kept breaking their hearts by allowing their teams to move.

Professional basketball had little influence on me and my friends growing up in Rochester in the 1980s and 1990s – we had no team to idenitfy with, and our parents were still bitter over what happened in the 1950s, 60s and 70s.  This is why I say Western New Yorkers could care less about the NBA.  The NBA showed that it never cared about them, so why should a Western New Yorker return the favor?

Friends, let me introduce you to my new favorite television show, Connect with English.

Yes, Connect with English is an instructional television show for speakers of English as a Second Language.  Yes, there exist workbooks you can order, and you can order the whole series on VHS for free if you are a ESL teacher.  For the rest of us, it’s shown on “Boston Kids and Family Television,” a random public access/PBS channel on my cable system.  For my Rochestarian readers, “Boston Kids and Family Television” is the equivalent of City 12 – your premium outlet for second and third run reject PBS shows (like the Mexican cooking show with the woman who used to scrape Teflon skillets with metal spatulas that my mother was obsessed with when pregnant with my baby brother back in the mid-1990s.)

Chris and I randomly started watching Connect with English a few months ago because the Bruins game we were watching was in an intermission, and instead of using the on-screen cable guide, Chris actually decided to channel surf (a concept that is so dying out with the invention of the on screen cable guide.)  We stopped on Connect with English because it was showing random 1990s scenes of Boston, and for some reason, we became intrigued.

Rebecca, the lead character of Connect with English

Connect with English is about Rebecca, a older twenty-something South Boston woman who works at Bell Worldwide Information Systems in 1997 Boston, who has (in my opinion) misguided aspirations to become a musician.  She lives with her old timey Irish father and her bad boy little brother.  She has a loser boyfriend who thinks she’s an idiot, a sassy girlfriend in an abusive relationship, and she wears over-sized 1990s Red Sox jerseys in her horrible adult softball leagues.  It glorifies every mid-1990s South Boston stereotype so well, you’d think it was Mystic River.

As one could probably surmise, this woman eventually moves to California (in reality, a sunny Brighton, MA – in fact, a few scenes were shot two blocks down from my apartment) to attend music school.  Her Irish dad doesn’t like it.  Her boyfriend and her break up.  Her brother doesn’t care.  While out in California, she gets involved in a love triangle between two brothers, one of which is played by a mid-1990s-freshly-married-to-Kelly-Ripa Mark Consuelos! (And I’ve explained my slight Kelly Ripa obsession before – I’m just enjoying her success because my Nana isn’t alive to.)

The show is entertaining for so many reasons.  One, the acting is pretty bad, and the singing is even worse.  The fake songs are so corny that you want to cry listening to them.  Chris likes to point out random scenes of Boston semi-landmarks that no longer exist (like Bell Worldwide Information Systems.)  The love triangle is so far-fetched, but yet, you get so into it (like when I saw two episodes out of order and realized that the opera tickets that Mark Consuelos’s character gives to Rebecca were actually free, and that he didn’t go out of his way to get them – oh snap!  How un-genuine of him, passing them off as special! Everyone in his office got them!)  It is almost like the producers threw the ESL teachers a bone and created a somewhat unpredictable love triangle with nuances that new English speakers won’t pick up on just to entertain them.  And there are so many funny comments and wisecracks you can make while watching the show with another person, that you never want the show to end.  We have come to calling it ESL Theatre 3000, after the long departed Mystery Science Theatre 3000, because making inane comments throughout the show makes the show.  Take the time Rebecca and one of the brothers spends Christmas together – let’s just say the episode is comedy gold for the double entendres you can come up with!

Heck, Connect with English is a good twenty times funnier than any actual sitcom on broadcast or cable television today.  It’s predictable, slightly nuts, somewhat cheesy – but gosh darn it, it’s good, old fashioned 1990s middle-of-the-roadness, and there just isn’t enough of that in 2008.  Why watch the misbehaving teens of Gossip Girl when you can watch the really poorly acted romantic angst of Connect with English instead?

Connect with English is on every weeknight from 8-9pm on Comcast channel 22, Boston Kids and Family. If you search hard enough, you’ll probably find it on other PBS or random public access stations as well.

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Given that my blog is about sports, I must make mention that the NFL season begins tomorrow, and I am not in any way prepared.  I did some horribly mediocre fantasy drafts, have already had to dismantle my DB/DLs in my league with individual defensive players, and can make no educated Super Bowl predictions.  I chalk this up completely to my work schedule, although I can not use that as a crutch.  I have approximately 19 hours in which to turn this around.  I have 19 hours in which to cram for the 2008 NFL Season.  Wonderful. Maybe I’ll keep WGR on in the office tomorrow and try to learn from a non-Brady-centric point of view.  I may not know what’s going on across the league, but I can most certainly tell you every single thing you ever wanted to know about Tom “Pretty Boy” Brady’s feet, thanks to the mostly clueless fan base and sports media here in Boston.

I will say this, however – Tom Brady will not have a lights out year.  Randy Moss won’t either.  I have made this prediction since June, and I am standing by it – one of them will be injured and will miss at least one regular season start this season.  Every great QB-WR combo eventually runs into injury problems, and I think this will be the season for either Brady or Moss to run into trouble. Both are too old not to run into such problems.

I am worried about the Bills, since they are still without holdout Jason Peters, Trent Edwards has that nagging knee bruise, and they are hinging their special teams cart to a somewhat inexpeiernced long snapper in Ryan Neill.  But their win two weeks ago over the Colts was encouraging – I know it was the preseason, and I know it doesn’t count, and I know they were all second, third, fourth stringers – but they had so much more guts and paid so much more attention on every facet of their game than Indy did.  Maybe it’s a sign of things to come.  Maybe I’m getting my hopes up too much.

In my Bills related rant of the week, I must bring to everyone’s attention that the Bills-Seahawks game, a Fox 1pm game, is not being shown in Massachusetts.  See, Fox would rather show NOTHING in Massachusetts than show the Bills-Seahawks game or any of the other three matchups they are broadcasting at 1pm.   I know these games compete with the Pats-Chiefs duel, but sheesh – that game may have blow-out written all over it, and you would then get viewers turning over to another game.  Then you would want a NFC 1pm game on.  I never understood the need not to show double header action on every station every Sunday.  Football is football, and I, along with thousands of other Americans, will watch football regardless of what team is playing.  I don’t want the tired and annoying Pats to be my only option.

I understand you currently have a tad bit of drama in your life. A few months back, you thought it best to retire from the sport you loved, because everyone was chomping at the bit for you to. All of us football fans had been anticipating your retirement for the last eight years, as all of your contemporaries hung up the cleats. But over those years, you still had the skills and desire to play, and fortunately, weren’t racked by debilitating concussions or other injuries that have forced some quarterbacks out too soon (gratuitous Steve Young reference of the post.) So you stayed in the NFL, losing some of your effectiveness as a quarterback and as a leader in the locker room (your teammates grew up watching you play – you’re from a completely different generation as yours) but still leading the Green Bay Packers to respectable seasons.

Then you finally did retire this past spring – with more tears than Jerry Rice while reading his poem to Steve Young at Young’s retirement ceremony (which I swear the only line of that whole poem was “and still, there was criticism.” Rice wasn’t going to be named poet laureate for that effort, that’s for sure. And yes, that was the second gratuitous Young mention of this post) After a few months of retired life, fishing in the bayou got boring, and you must have gotten sick of being the only guy in a female dominated household (especially considering your wife is one tough cookie.) You started practicing – because heck, what else have you been doing most of your life? – and figured out that even in your late thirties, you are still a thousand times better than the Kyle Ortons, Kellen Clemens, and random Dolphins quarterbacks of the world.

So you want to come back to the Packers. No biggie, you thought – I’m kind of a big deal, like the kids like to say. The Packers will throw me a ticker-tape parade for coming back. Then the Packers got all “player development” on you, said that they would rather give Aaron Rodgers the opportunity to lead the team, and stated that they were less-than-pleased with this turn of events. “Really?!” you must be exclaiming. “Aaron Rodgers over me? I’m Mr. Brett Favre! Fifty-year-old sports journalists have huge man-crushes over me! In fact, …On Being a Sports Girl named me one of the hottest quarterbacks of all time! Really?! You must be pulling my chain, Packers front office.”

Mr. Favre, I feel your pain. I mean, I haven’t retired and asked for my job back before. I did transfer colleges and briefly (as in for five minutes one day) consider transferring back. I’m pretty much the committed sort. But enough about me. Mr. Favre, if you want to come back, you should be able to come back and play. Not as a “mentoring” backup to a young gun. Not with a fight in training camp for a spot. No. You should be able to come back and contribute to a team that needs a solid, proven and reliable quarterback. A team that is small market, just like Green Bay. A team whose fans and front office is all about the old school, that will appreciate you for who you are.

Mr. Favre, have you thought about moving to Buffalo, New York?

The Buffalo Bills have a coach you are familiar with – Dick Jauron was defensive backs coach with the Packers during your first few years with the organization. He head coached two of your divisional opponents (the Bears and the Lions.) The Bills are a small market team, just like the Packers, but they also have a regional draw. Buffalo has a fascination with fried foods and cheese, just like Wisconsin – just in chicken wing and blue cheese form. Buffalo also enjoys its fair share of beer – hey, it’s not Leinenkugel, but Honey Brown isn’t shabby. And of course, Buffalo can out duel Green Bay in snowfall any year.

The Bills have their quarterback of the future, Trent Edwards, and as much as I adore the kid, a year or two on the bench watching you wouldn’t hurt him. And Buffalo is just waiting for a legit reason to drop JP Losman like a hot potato, and bringing you on board would totally be it! Just imagine the crazy Bills fans scooping up Farve Bills jerseys like they’re Wegmans coupons and storming St. John Fisher’s field even more than they usually do during training camp. Mr. Favre, Buffalo could completely rejuvenate your career. You could do no wrong in Buffalo!

Mr. Favre, please keep asking for your release or your trade from the Packers. Have your agent contact Ralph Wilson, or the more capable people in the Bills front office. Trent won’t care – he looked up to you as a kid, just like everyone else currently in pro football did. JP will care, but who cares about him. Coach Jauron will thank his lucky stars. You’ll give poor, depressed Western New York something to be happy about! I implore you, Mr. Favre- please come to Buffalo!

Whatever you do decide, I hope you make the best decision for you. But I really hope you make the best decision for Western New York.

With best regards,

Sports Girl Kat

P.S. Oh, and yes, I realize that Favre is misspelled on the Bills jersey above.  The custom jersey generator at the NFL Shop website will not let me input Favre, so I used the way I typically spell his name.  It must stink if you are really a Bills fan named Favre whose favorite number is 4 and you want an customized jersey.

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The following thoughts don’t deserve their own blog entries, but here they are nonetheless:

- The US Olympic Women’s Gymnastics team has been named. In addition to the previously named Shawn Johnson and Nastia Lukin, Scrunchie Girl Chellsie Memmel, the North Shore’s own Alicia Sacramone, Samantha Pesek and Bridget Sloan made the team. Shayla Worley, a favorite for that sixth spot, broke her fibula during the selection camp and Memmel suffered a mild back injury. And why do they insist on a selection camp again? You just subjected two of your country’s best gymnasts to injuries that might not have occurred if they hadn’t been training full out for three competitions to determine their worth.

- Did I pick a good year to jump on the Milwaukee Brewers bandwagon, or what? Oh, Gabe Kapler, your supreme hotness is inspiring the Brewers to succeed, I am sure.

- This is just about the most controversial thing I’ll ever say on my blog, but I’m going to say it. The majority of USCHO posters do not know hockey. That’s it. They are also driven by the cult of coaches. Not every coach is absolutely right in how he uses every player, and some players are with teams that aren’t perfect fits. Why not look at what a player has done in summer leagues, in the weight room, or in prep school or their development league before making wild accusations about someone’s talent? And gosh darn it, if you are going to follow hockey, learn the freakin’ sport. I have learned that if I want to keep my sanity as an overall hockey fan, I need to not visit USCHO in the off-season. I think their posters go absolutely nuts without college hockey to follow (not that I blame them) and turn their forum into an overrun by trolls bash-fest. Listen, USCHO Fan Forum-ers, there are a lot of people reading those boards, and some of them are probably the players you are talking crap about. Do what you will, but be respectful about it.

- I really am enjoying Scarlett Ice, a blog about the Ottawa Senators, as of late. The discussion of Ray Emery that has taken place as of late there is really thought-provoking. Even if you don’t follow the Senators, I recommend reading it.

- I also thought that this piece about Shawn Thornton by Kevin Paul Dupont in the Sunday Globe was awesome. I really enjoy the Boston Globe’s hockey staff – Dupont and Fluto Shinzawa – and don’t know what my Sunday’s would be without their Hockey Notes page. (I had a brief conniption last week when it was only half a page long.)

- Steve Page’s mugshot – posted on Perez Hilton.com – totally saddened me even more than I was already saddened by the incident. While Perez shows he knows nothing about the band because he exclaims at the end of his post, “Time to find a new lead singer!” – duh, Ed Robertson has been the lead on most of their biggest hits, and Page probably has the best voice in the past twenty years of pop music – he does point out the fact that Page screwed over his band big time. They had to cancel their children’s performances, and who knows what will happen to their plans to record this fall. I hope Page gets the help he needs, and that the band can still continue to perform and make music.

- I am looking for a new WordPress theme, and I am having an awfully difficult time finding one. Anyone have suggestions?

TO: The Collective Population of New England (especially the Citizens of Massachusetts)

FROM: A Disgruntled Western New Yorker Turned Bostonian

RE: Geography of New York State and the Sports Fandom it Dictates

DATE: November 2, 2007

I feel it prudent at this time to provide you with a refresher geography lesson of New York State (or for those of you who did not pay attention in social studies, a first lesson.) This lesson was spurred on by the absolutely drunk (and I believe underage) Bruins fan and native New Englander who sat in front of me during Thursday evening’s Bruins-Sabres game. This fan proceeded to taunt all the Sabres fans (of which there were many, including myself) by telling us that the “Yankees suck,” and that A-Rod does several unrepeatable acts of a sexual nature. He then decided to mention that “Look, who won the World Series this year – the Red Sox, not your stupid (insert-bad-word-here) Yankees.”

Oh, Mr. Underage Drunk who was using a fake ID to provide his even more underage girlfriend with beers, which proceeded to cause her to do several imitations of various Family Guy characters for all of us to enjoy throughout the evening (not well, by the way – they were clouded by her Jimmy Fallon-esqe fake Bostonian accent circa the Saturday Night Live “Billerica Knights of Columbus” sketch.) If the Massachusetts school system had taught you anything, you would know that true Western New Yorkers couldn’t give a darn about Major League Baseball, seeing that many of us go our entire lives without seeing a MLB game live. This, of course, because we live no where near a MLB team worth merit. Of course, we could cross the border and watch the Blue Jays, but no one has wanted to do that since the mid-1990s. Anyway, we are too busy with football, hockey and lacrosse – baseball would over extend our sports focus.

Mr. Underage Drunk and your fellow New Englanders, to best argue my case, I present a map of New York State.

The red part of the map represents New York City, Westchester County, and Long Island, aka, the parts of New York that Western New Yorkers and New Englanders mutually loathe. The orange part of the map represents a few counties that think they are Upstate, but are really lumped together in our disdain with New York City residents. The green part is indicative of the Adirondacks region of New York State, a part that I’m surprised has yet to be annexed and split in half by the provinces of Ontario and Quebec. People here don’t pay attention to sports that are not represented in the Winter Olympics. The rest – the yellow – represents true Upstate New York.

Upstate New York can be further divided into four separate areas:

1. Western New York (of which I am biased towards, being raised here.)
2. Central New York (another place I am somewhat biased towards, as I went to school here.)
3. Albany/Capital Region
4. Poughkeepsie, or the Land of Downstaters-Who-Aren’t-Really-Downstaters, therefore we like them.

Within these four regions, sports team devotion is quite varied. Those from Albany and Poughkeepsie definitely tend to like the Yankees or Mets, because of their proximity to New York City. However, for football, while those from the Poughkeepsie area tend to like the Giants or Jets, I have found that those from Albany like either the Bills, Giants or Patriots, but not the Jets. The Giants hold their training camp at SUNY Albany, the Bills are considered the team of all of Upstate New York, and the Patriots are somewhat close by (2 ½ -3 hours) and for a few years now, have been quite popular to follow.

Central New Yorkers seem to split when it comes to liking baseball – half seem to not realize the sport exists, while the other half either like the Mets or the Yankees. When it comes to football, this region is all over the map – while you will find your fair share of Bills fans, I have come across Philadelphia Eagles fans (for example, Binghamton, NY is on the Pennsylvania border, and is maybe a 3 hour drive away from Philly – thus the Eagles fans there) and Giants fans. Strangely, I rarely found a Central New Yorker Jets fan. It is important to note that the further North you travel in Central New York (Syracuse and Utica, for instance) you will find mostly Bills fans, while in the armpit (Broome, Delaware, and Chenango counties), you find the most diversity.

Now we come to the land of my birth, Western New York, where you are a Bills and Sabres fans upon your conception. Besides my Uncle Sean, I know of no Jets fans in Western New York, and I certainly have never met a Giants fan from here either. (Although, if I remember correctly, there is/was a bar on West Ridge Road in between the Kodak complex and the retail Candy Land that is Greece, NY that advertised as being the Giants fan hangout on Sundays. It is in that strip mall with the Abbots and, I believe, Buffalo Bill’s Tavern that has the white, hot pink and ’80s teal awing. Those of you who know Rochester know what I’m talking about.) The only other football team represented in the area are the Cleveland Browns – a small contingent of their fans exist throughout the area. These fans tend to be older in age and hawken back to the day before the Bills existed, and the Browns were the only team nearby. Strangely enough, this leads to a weird mix in Erie, Pennsylvania (just over the Buffalo border) where you have a pretty divided mix of Browns fans and Bills fans, with a smattering of Steelers fans.

However, baseball fandom in Western New York tends to be highly personal in nature. I know three devoted Red Sox fans in the area and two Yankees fans. When I was in tenth grade, I knew a few guys in school who aligned with the Red Sox because it was, in the words of one of them, “the team that college kids like.” I don’t recall their fandom going any further than the purchase of Red Sox hats. The majority of Western New Yorkers really do not align themselves with a particular baseball team. For example, when I was growing up, I once asked my father, who I looked to for all of my sports knowledge, what baseball team I was supposed to root for. He shrugged and answered, “I don’t know – the Blue Jays?”

Western New Yorkers do care about Triple A baseball, with the Buffalo Bisons, Rochester Red Wings and Syracuse SkyChiefs all in the International League and all playing each other regularly in “Thruway Series” games. But when it comes to Major League Baseball, Western New Yorkers live too far away from New York City (at least a six hour drive) to make it to a Yankees or Mets game on any regular basis. In addition, culturally, Western New Yorkers despise New York City with every ounce of their being – we equate Bloomberg, Guliani and their political counterparts with the devil for monopolizing state funding away from our region; we blame New York City for the past two decades’ influx of crime in the area due to criminals from NYC being sent to serve their time in Western New York and residing here when they are released; and overall, we hate the way Downstaters pretend we don’t exist. Truthfully, Western New Yorkers have an inferiority complex when it comes to Downstate, and we aren’t afraid to show it. Thus, the majority of Western New Yorkers would never think of adopting a New York City sports team as their own.

This disdain of Downstate New York is a reason why many young Western New Yorkers are seemingly flocking to Boston to lead their adult lives – career opportunities in our home region are so limited, but we can’t bring ourselves to move down to New York City because of our overwhelming dislike of the area. So we choose Boston, an area with similar, if not more intense, feelings towards Downstate as the ones we were brought up with. And this is why, at Sabres-Bruins games, the Sabres fans come close to outnumbering the Bruins fans – we’re moving up here in droves.

So, Mr. Underage Drunk, the next time you attempt to taunt Buffalo Sabres fans by telling us how much the Yankees suck, recall that we too, hate the Yankees. Instead, we recommend that you just singsongingly taunt, “Chris Drury. Chris Drury. Chris Drury.” or make up some taunt regarding the 1999 Stanley Cup Finals. We’ll smirk, and then, just like what happened on Thursday, some Sabres fan will remark to the other Sabres fans around him, “Never mind – the Rochester Amerks (the AHL team in Rochester) sell more tickets than the Bruins.” We’ll all laugh, proclaim the fan’s correctness, and look at the New Englanders’ confused faces.

*******

An aside added later – I forgot to add an important discussion piece in this entry. I feel that Major League Baseball had more of a fan base less dependent on geography before the most recent players strikes. In order to appeal to fans outside of a teams geographical region, a sport needs to have a momentum building that transcends geographical limitations. With baseball, when you had larger than life players like a Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio and the like, ones who seemed almost mythical, the story sold in places with smaller populations like Western New York, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Iowa, even though the teams involved played far away. Once player strikes began to happen, outlying fans such as these had less buy-in than fans in the actual regions where teams existed, and thus, were the first to abandon baseball. Baseball has been back for over a decade now, but only now are they rebuilding the momentum – you had three long suffering franchises win the last four World Series, which is again news worthy for those with no baseball team in their area. It will take a bit longer for baseball fandom to reach its before strike levels, and the fear should be that they have lost an entire generation (those 22-28 or so, who were of prime fan development age during the 1994 strike) of fans. However, I have no doubt that baseball will always be a relevant and successful sport in this country.

The NFL has this momentum now, with a wide ranging appeal that defies geographic boundaries. What helps professional football is that every state in the US has a Division I college football team, which is essentially the equivalent of the farm system in baseball. Even those states with seemingly nothing else have college football (Montana State – always a contender in Division I-AA, Boise State – the surprising stars of last year’s college football season,) thus allowing fans to follow players from college into the professional ranks. This buy in increases the propensity for someone not near any NFL team to be a fan of a NFL team. The NBA had the mythical athlete appeal through the 1980s and 1990s and have lost it – thus why the NBA is increasingly suffering loss of viewership over the past view years. The NHL barely touched the mythical athlete appeal with Gretzky, but besides that, never had a reason for those not located near a team to become a fan – thus why the sport is now failing miserably. A professional sport built on a pure regional adoption of team as the sole reason for fandom model will no longer succeed in America.

*********

8:33PM Tony Kornheiser is dissing the Bills like its no tomorrow. “I went to school in Binghamton,” he posts a map of New York State, “and even I didn’t care about Buffalo.” The Triple Cities just turned on you, Mr. Kornehiser. I might recommend not coming back for the Bracketbuster ESPN2 game in February.

8:37PM Suzy Kolber. I wish I was you. I have wished I was you since I was 11. I’m 25, and I still wish I was you. Darn it.

8:39PM Thanks for making Buffalo look like the blue collar depressed former industrial time it is. We couldn’t spruce it up for the video? Have I mentioned that the Bills haven’t played a home Monday night game in my little brother’s lifetime until tonight? He was born a month and a day after their last home Monday Night game. Craziness.

8:43PM See, again, the Bills offensive line gives Edwards much more time.

8:44PM How awesome was that fake punt!? I heart the Bills special teams. Bobby April is a genius, and Marv Levy’s love of special teams is always clear in his teams. Steve Tasker, Don Beebe, Steve Christie, Chris Mohr — you can name tons of great Bills players on special teams.

8:47PM Gotta love that all the Bills have is special teams.

8:50PM Checking my Blackberry almost distracted me from seeing that crazy interception. Who was Romo throwing to? The great punt by Moorman definitely helped that.

8:55PM At what point do I take a picture of the screen because it’s the only time the Bills will lead tonight?

8:59PM Two interceptions in 87 seconds? What is going on with Romo?

9:03PM my late dinner of leftover buffalo wings from Grille Zone (the closest thing to real you can get in Boston) and Wegmans Cream Soda was just prepared during that time out.

9:04PM way to take the wind out of our sails, cowboys. And how did the Cowboys fans get up to Buffalo?

9:06PM Delay of game, Cowboys. By the way, warmed up buffalo wings — not so hot. I guess that’s what blue cheese is for.

9:10PM Suzy definitely thought it was going to be colder — she’s outfitted in a trench coat and turtleneck. It’s 70 degrees.

9:12PM I wish Roscoe Parrish was more consistent, or better yet, had a more consistent quarterback (which is currently being developed.) He has the ability to be a great fantasy WR. I like him better than Lee Evans. Parrish fights for the ball — Evans used to.

9:17PM To pay a little bit of attention to that game that the rest of Boston is paying attention to — it’s Indians 4, Yankees 1. I’m surprised to see “A. Rodriguez struck out looking,” starting off the last Yankees inning at bat. What’s going on with him? Not that I have a problem with the Yankees losing, but to have such a decrease in production like A-Rod’s had as of late is concerning – is there an injury no one knows of?

9:21PM I don’t like T.O., but this “no spiking the ball” rule is like the NFL equivalent of Buzz Killington, the Family Guy character. “Let me tell you a story about a bridge.” On a related note, I would bet money that my father just thought, “That’s for all of those unfair calls against the Bills in Super Bowl XXVIII! HA!”

9:24PM I think AT&T maybe ought to stop running this Roger Clemens commercial, where he asks his wife if he can come back for another season, and the call is dropped. It might not be that funny anymore after what has gone down in New York the last two days.

9:40PM I love fakes that are so good that the cameraman is faked. Now, Edwards’s fake in the red zone wasn’t fantastic, and it resulted in only a field goal, but it’s always fun when the cameraman is faked.

9:45PM Can you believe this?! Romo’s pass on about the Cowboys 10 was just deflected and intercepted by Chris Kelsay and returned shortly for a touchdown. I’m surprised B The Bills were ranked 32nd on defense coming into today? How? Are we sure about that? Miami wasn’t ranked below them?

10:10PM Wait – Steve Young is in Western New York for the first time since 1999? WHY AM I NOT THERE?!

10:15PM In all of his various Hall of Fame related public appearances, Thurman Thomas has been overwhelmingly gracious and classy. They just showed him being recognized at halftime, and he expressed such gratefulness that is refreshing in athletes in 2007. Maybe I’m just jaded.

10:17PM The ESPn first half stats just confirmed my estimation that the Bills are winning the time of posession battle for the first time in like…forever. At least, since I was a freshman in college.

10:19PM A neighbor’s smoke alarm keeps going off — it regularly does, so I’m not overwhelmingly paniked — and my cat subsequently keeps freaking out.

10:20PM Don’t challenge if Julius Jones’ knee is down — it’s obviously a loss of a time out that the Bills are so going to need later. This is especially true because Trent Edwards seems to keep having trouble hearing calls through his headset, and a pumped Buffalo crowd will not continue to help him in this regard.

10:21PM Oh, that call worked out for the Bills. Again, my dad is probably muttering at the television back in Rochester, “That was for 1994…that was for 1994.”

10:24PM I heart the number of Binghamton references being made this evening. It’s helpful for me in the long run — I hopefully won’t get that many quizzical looks when I tell people where I went to college because of it. “Western New York gets a bad rap.” says Jaws. Very true, very true.

10:28PM Terrell Owens has always suffered from the dropsies like he has tonight. See the 1997-98 San Francisco 49ers. See especially the 1998 Packers-Niners divisional series. Is Owens’ talent worth the chance? At what point do you determine this? When are teams going to stop taking this chance?

10:35PM I always get jeers for picking Terrence McGee in my fantasy football league that involves picking individual defensive players. For the past three years, the guys in my league laugh at me for that pick. And for the last three years, I have cleaned up defensively. See again, right now — Terrence MeGee, 103 yard return for a touchdown. By the way, my defense in that league is very good — Ray Lewis, McGee, London Fletcher Baker, Mario Williams, Ike Hillard. Too bad my offense in that league stinks.

10:41PM First mention of Kevin Everett by the commentators tonight with 7:25 left in the 3rd quarter. Wow, I expected one much earlier than this.

10:42PM In baseball news, the Yankees-Indians game is still going — it’s in the bottom of the seventh. That game began a hour before this football game did. This is why I prefer football. Baseball is slow and can take forever. Football does have its game length problems, but at least it’s almost constant action. Gosh, do the Yankees ever play a game with a duration under three hours?

10:59PM I almost don’t want to watch the rest of this game. I would like to recall it with this eleven point lead that I have a inkling won’t stay that much for long.

11:14PM Turnover number five. Between last week against the Jets and tonight, the Bills can’t be last in defense anymore. And I would like to argue they weren’t horrendous defensively before that — they were worse than St. Louis and Miami? Really? I’ve seen four games of theirs now, and listened to the fifth on the radio, and I would like to dispute this supposed #32 ranking in defense.

11:19PM First specifically Rochester reference of the night, regarding the regionalization of the Bills franchise and the number of season ticket holders from the area.

11:20PM Marshawn Lynch has excellent tumbling ability, as evidenced by that backward roll after his most recent run. He should be a gymnast — or not. (Yes, I taught toddler tumbling in a prior life, thus why I just made such an inane comment.)

11:23PM That’s it — I’m turning back to the baseball game. After that interception of Edwards, I can’t watch this game anymore. Darn.

11:25PM I couldn’t stay away — I’m not a baseball fan, who am I kidding, I’m just a glutton for punishment — and I see a tail end of the fifth Tony Romo interception off the evening, this time by DiGiorgio, leading Kornheiser to announce, “It’s not pizza, it’s DiGiorgio.” However, I’m a Bills fan — it’s not over and I’m still pessimistic.

11:29PM I just watched a Sportscenter game break about Jake Delhomme – how could all those fantasy football experts be right in saying before the season not to draft him? Are they psychic? I mean, I know they claimed “loss of production expected” as the reason not to draft them, but were they just afraid to disclose their injury psychic abilities?

11:36PM I’m officially scared and don’t want to watch this game anymore — it’s going downhill fast. Baseball? I’ll switch to baseball.

11:37PM Ewww, Yankees home run in the bottom of the ninth. I’ll turn back.

11:45PM Yeah, I really shouldn’t have turned back.

11:46PM I honestly muted the television and covered my eyes with the last two plays. But did I expect such a defeating, horrible loss? Of course. I’m a fan of the Bills. I came back to the Bills after two years of Patriots fandom because I like to be depressed and I like rooting for the underdog. So at least they scared the Cowboys and we all had a good time while they did so. Well, except for those who had money on this game. I don’t think they had a good time. No, they probably didn’t.