But enough about my political thoughts.  I come to you today with links to articles that also have nothing to do with politics, because there will be a point sometime on Tuesday where you are going to want to bang your head against the wall if you hear one more iota about the election:

-Julie Robenhymer, from Hockey Buzz.com has fallen hard for the Boston University men’s hockey team. I love this article because she talks about the sense of team that has really seemed to form this year.

-”I claim voter fraud.” announced my partner-in-crime (aka the fiance) this evening.  “There is no way a team needs overtime to beat Merrimack and still stays in second place in the national polls.”  Chalk it up to a national championship boost for Boston College, as they are held up above BU in today’s polls (Colorado College stays in first.)  Boston College goalie John Muse has weaknesses – it’s just going to take a UNH, BU or Northeastern to expose them fully (NU already has.) I also would have flip-flopped Northeastern and Princeton at spots 9 and 10, because I’m wicked scared of NU this year.  Brad Theissen is too good, almost Curry-esque.

-I think I’m going to forgo the whole buying a Trent Edwards jersey/t-shirt, and just ask for a Ryan Miller shirt for the holidays.  Miller from my parents, and a Phil Kessel t-shirt from the fiance.  They are my two favorite NHL hockey players, and I seriously lack NHL wear. I’ll wear a Bruins shirt for non-Sabres related Bruins games, and the Miller when I’m back in Western New York and when the Sabres play the Bruins.  Is this wrong?

-If Bill Simmons doesn’t want his job, may I have it? Seriously, I don’t understand what’s going on between Simmons and ESPN, and I don’t even think I want to know.  His NFL picks are one of the only regular columns I and many others read on the site (along with anything Bucci), and for ESPN to forego publishing it is questionable. Did Simmons miss a deadline or submit something not up to par?

-Everyone’s Favorite Goalie continues his winning ways with a 5-4 win over the Houston Aeros. John Curry made 34 saves in the 4-3 win.  It’ll be interesting to see if they start a goalie rotation between him and former Rochester American Adam Berkhoel, who showed a lot of spark in the games he filled in for Curry.

-Two fun t-shirt retailers from my old and new homes: Buffalo Sports Tees (gotta love the “Remember the Aud” tee) and CPR Gear (fun and catchy shirts for New England sports fans.)

-Last, but certainly not least – I am looking for a few folks to interview for my new stint over at Examiner Boston.  The groups of interviewees I am looking for:

• those of you who play both lacrosse and hockey, for an article on the correlation between the two sports
• parents of lacrosse players, specifically in the New England area, for a series of pieces on getting your child involved in lacrosse.

Interviews will take place over email, and will be three to four questions at most.  Email me at sportsgirlkat AT gmail DOT com if you are willing to help out.

Sports fans, I’m with you on Election Day.  Keep fighting the good fight, and don’t get bogged down with Election Central on every station if you can help it.

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?

Here’s the converse of becoming a fan in that fashion–you absolutely despise other events, teams and athletes, but you can not tangibly explain why. I hated the Dallas Cowboys, because they were the arch enemy of both Steve Young and the Bills. Never mind that the early-mid 90s Cowboys were amazing on both sides of the ball, were crazy dominant, and probably were not the dirty cheaters my father pinned them to be. I hated them with every ounce of hate a twelve year old could muster. They caused the Monday after the Super Bowl to be the saddest day at school–every time you spotted a stray streamer in the #52 School gym from Friday’s “Go Bills” pep rally, you got choked up. I liked the Amerks, but I couldn’t tell you why I was booing the Hershey Bears–I couldn’t tell you if they were actually any good, what college teams the players came from, if they had a good defense. As for indoor track – I liked the hot guys, but my running form was awful and I couldn‘t tell you what half the events were–plus, when my coach tried to get me to practice hurdles, I often tripped over them not for lack of vertical leap (hey, I had been a gymnast, thus I had vertical leap to spare,) but because I was staring at the guys on my team. It’s not just me–think of a Boston University or Boston College student whose first introduction to hockey is in college. They hate the other school’s team, although most of them, at first or ever, can tell anyone else exactly why they should hate them.

Eventually, around the time I decided to become a sports journalist, I realized I had to learn a little bit more about the sports I liked. With that education came a dispelling of many of the dislikes I had carried with me since my tweenaged days, replaced with an appreciation of a good offense and excellent form, and the ability to call out a bad call or a missed tackle. Even though the whole sports journalist thing never did quite work out, to this day I try to stay neutral, enjoying the sport for exactly what it is, and trying desperately not to take sides.

Take Chris and I at the University of New Hampshire on Friday evening, watching the Boston University hockey team play a highly ranked Wildcat team. Everything I know about hockey tells me UNH is talented, and that Boston University relies too heavily on its defense and Hobey Baker quality goalie. UNH played poorly in the third, however, missing passes in the Terrier zone that could have been set up for some easy goals. However, I found myself defending the Wildcats, because my sports knowledge tells me they are good. I held back rooting on the Terriers because I can point out their flaws. This is not the first time this has happened. It is as if an alarm goes off in my brain if I start to get too biased towards one side that academically (as in the study of sports, not the team’s GPA) isn’t deserving of all of my support. In some instances, I can fully realize that the team is good, but the alarm orders me to stay neutral because I, as a “smart” sports fan, need to be a fan of the sport as a whole, and not any individual team.

I am still a fan of teams, I will still cheer, but there’s always that reluctance. I desperately want to be a serious, knowledgeable sports fan–but to do so, do you have to give up all bias? If you truly were an academic sports fan, your favourite team would be who was best in a given year, meaning in sports like football, where there is such parity, your favourite team will most likely change every year. Gosh, I’d love to cheer on the Bills till I’m royal blue in the face, but why am I doing so when they so obviously weren’t the best team in the NFL this year? If I have the knowledge to know better, than why do I cheer for them? Should it be treated like the legal world’s assumption of risk–it could be introduced that you have access to the knowledge that the team you are rooting for is horrible, but it can’t be used against you if you do not heed it?

Living in Boston, I live amidst many who claim to be baseball experts, but who wear their Red Sox hearts on their sleeves. Does this make them less of baseball experts? Possibly, because they are more likely biased. It’s considered a high crime to acknowledge that, hey, Jeter actually may be pretty good, but still root for the Red Sox at the end of the day. It’s just like knowing there wasn’t one Bills fan in Canton, OH this past August with a Troy Aikman jersey on, or there will never be a Boston University hockey fan who will even begin to acknowledge that maybe Boston College played a better game in Worcester last March. Are they less sports knowledgeable than those whose allegiances are silent or change with the handing over of a championship trophy? Better yet, given the pure basis of sports in our modern society, is it even possible to be a sports fan without taking a side?

I’ll keep trying to maintain that happy balance of trying to remain sports knowledgeable while cheering on my favorites, because I imagine there is no right or wrong in this argument. And anyway, the Bills need more fans who knowledgably disregard the fact that if they lose Nate Clements and London Fletcher-Baker, the team is screwed, and cheer for the team anyway.