Outside
Oberlin
Cleveland
Fans Experiencing Shift in Pro Sports
by Zach Pretzer
As
the ever-so-real and more exciting college basketball season prepares
to begin across the nation, the NBA has already gotten its season
underway, and with it our local misfits, the Cleveland Cavaliers,
have embarked upon another campaign.
Among the better NBA teams, such as the Lakers, 76ers and Nets,
surely fan support is something not very hard to come by
thats just the nature of the game. When you win, people will
come no one can argue with that. However, for those people
around this area who still cling to being Cleveland Cavalier fans,
still longing for the day when a great team composed of players
such as Mark Price, Brad Daugherty and Larry Nance can once again
be one of the best teams to never win a championship let
alone get by Jordan and his Chicago Bulls, which is perhaps todays
Bryant and ONeals Lakers Tuesdays home
opener should be an indication of things to come for our local professional
team.
On all of the Cleveland radio stations the day before Clevelands
first game, the Cavs organization was still trying to push
tickets for the game at Gund Arena, offering posters, discounts,
free hot dogs and virtually everything possible to spur people to
attend the contest with the hapless Boston Celtics.
There is one thing that should be noted right away; in the late
80s and early to mid-90s, when the Cavs
were still extremely competitive in the NBAs Eastern Conference,
there was one constant, win or lose, that pertained to the organization:
the seats were always packed and the house was always rocking. Am
I saying that Cleveland fans are completely fair-weathered? Not
necessarily. When Gund Arena opened, what seems to be only a few
years ago, the Cavs left their former home, the Richfield Coliseum,
situated fairly close to Blossom Music Center in Cuyahoga Heights.
The Coliseum was built perfectly for a professional basketball setting.
No other team played there, not the WNBAs Cleveland Rockers
or the IHLs Cleveland Lumberjacks (who no longer exist)
the Cavs had a home of their own that provided an atmosphere completely
incomparable to that of Gund Arena.
Dont
get me wrong, now. The Gund has gotten quite loud a few times, but
not as far as I can remember because of tremendous play by the Cavs.
Ive been to quite a few games in the somewhat new arena and
the loudest I have ever heard the place get was when the Cavs
President, Gordon Gund, led the ceremony of retiring the numbers
of Cavalier all-time greats Mark Price and Larry Nance.
As a comparison, anyone who has ever been to Jacobs Field, especially
in the last few years and in 1995-97, when the Cleveland Indians
had absolutely great teams, knows how loud Jacobs can get. After
all, in their own right, the Indians were one of the best baseball
teams in recent memory not to win a championship, so there was certainly
a unified longing to go the distance among Cleveland fans.
I would argue that not just for Cleveland, it is a sense of competitiveness
that brings people into the stadium, not necessarily a completely
dominant, winning team. Just look at the Cleveland Browns. No one
has a clue what lies in store for them during the rest of the young
NFL season because, without a doubt, they have shocked the league
by starting off at a 4-2 record, after winning only three games
in 16 attempts last year. They have an exciting young team led by
a new talented coach and have the ability to achieve the unthinkable.
So, appropriately, games at the new Browns Stadium are packed and
an amazing atmosphere is provided for the fans to watch the game,
the players to play the game and the coaches to direct the game.
Thats what a home team crowd and home team support are all
about.
However, if we turn our attention back to the Cavaliers, their organization
is displaying everything that is unexciting and unattractive to
a basketball fan. Sigh, where to begin. Lets start with the
fact that they lost to the Celtics in the home opener, 108-89. In
that game, the Cavs leading scorers were Trajan Langdon, who
averaged around 5.0 points per game last year, and Wesley Person,
who besides being a specialty three-point shooter, has no incredible
aspects to his game. The Celtics, who will most likely be one of
the worst teams in the NBA, were leading the Cavaliers by 33 points
heading into the fourth quarter. Cleveland outscored Boston by 14
points in the fourth to make it somewhat more respectable, but the
pervasive bottom line is that they got spanked by the Celtics, on
their home court, in the first game of the season. Well, at least
there werent many people there to witness it.
Perhaps the most prevalent problem about the Cavaliers this season
is quite simply their roster. Matt Harpering, unquestionably their
hardest-working and most consistent player last season, was one
of a few players traded to the 76ers for Tyrone Hill, who
despite contributing fairly well in last years NBA Finals
against the Lakers, is out of commission with a back injury, and
Jumaine Jones, who averaged a staggering 3.8 points per game in
two seasons with Philadelphia. There are a few players on their
roster, such as Andre Miller, Chris Mihm and Lamond Murray, who
some people have heard of, but for the most part, the Cavaliers
are a bunch of ballers (I use that term loosely) who no one has
heard of.
Having a bunch of no-names on your team isnt always a bad
thing, though. Take for example Clevelands football team.
Besides Tim Couch, their quarterback, and a few other select players,
I havent heard of a majority of the guys on their roster.
But despite their anonymity, they have already handed big losses
to Jacksonville and Baltimore, the home of beloved owner Art Model.
The Cavs, however, are quite a different story. Not only is their
squad composed of mostly players who have either traveled from team
to team or have virtually no experience, they dont have a
foreseeable future in winning, although they may become better and
wiser.
The same could be true for the Indians, who just announced they
will not re-sign two of their best players and will be without a
dominant cleanup hitter for the first time in over six years. The
Cavs may very well have become something close to the Indians of
the Major League movie days, though. Dont expect them to win
many more than 30 games if 73 center Zydrunas Illgauskas,
who has averaged over 13 points a game in his first three seasons
in the league and with the Cavs, fails to return from an injury
sometime soon.
If youre from the Cleveland area, somewhere in Ohio or have
just become a fan of the local sports teams since becoming a student
at Oberlin, be advised the Cleveland Cavaliers are going
to be atrocious this season and the Indians could potentially be
on their way to becoming just an average team for the first time
since arriving in Jacobs Field in 94. Whether you want to
be a fair weather fan or are just plain tired of Cleveland teams
never making it all the way, my advice to you for the next few years
would be this: join the Rockers band wagon or hope and pray
that the Browns can pull off a miracle. You never know what may
happen.
The Major
Championships in Sports: For Obies
by Ian Haynes
With
the success of the For Dummies line of books, I figured
I would try my hand at enlightening this college campus on the major
sporting events that everyone should know. Dont take this
article the wrong way, Im not calling you dumb for not knowing
these, Im just saving you the embarrassment of not being able
to differentiate between the many major championships. It will be
good to know just in case later in life your boss comes up to you
and invites you to Game 7 of the World Series. How embarrassing
would it be to say to him, Hell yeah, I love horseracing.
I guarantee he would laugh his ass off until he found out you were
serious. Sure, he might still take you, but I guarantee everyone
in the office would send you a memo the next day asking how the
horse race was.
We will begin our lesson with baseball, because its major championship
the World Series is taking place right now. Baseball is known as
the American pastime because it is one of the oldest and most well-known
games. Just about everyone knows something about baseball, but maybe
I overestimate how much people really know because I play the sport.
Baseball is a nine-inning game, each half inning consisting of a
team hitting until they get out three times. The World Series is
played in late October every year with the best team from the National
League and the best team from the American League (each league is
one half of the Major League) playing a best-of-seven-game series.
That means the team that wins four games first wins the World Series.
The site of the World Series alternates between the cities of the
two teams that are playing. The first two games are played in the
city of the team with the best record, the next three in the other
teams stadium, and the last two if need be in the stadium
where the first two were played. The two teams playing in this years
World Series are the Arizona Diamondbacks and the New York Yankees.
The Yankees have won the last three World Series and are looking
for their fourth World Series title in a row.
Football is probably the next most well-known sport in America.
Its championship game is the Super Bowl, where the best team in
the American Football Conference and the best team in the National
Football Conference (each one half of the National Football League)
play each other on Jan. 28 every year. The site of the Super Bowl
changes each year, with a predetermined site before the season begins.
In America, college football is also big. Division I football teams
vie for national rankings and BCS points. BCS is a ranking system
that awards points to teams according to the strength of their schedule
and whether or not they win. The two teams that finish atop the
BCS point standings play in a bowl game for the national championship.
Other teams that have had good years also play in bowls of less
significance.
Basketball is also big in the United States. The National Basketball
Association plays 82 games each year, before playoffs and the NBA
Championships. Just as in baseball, the NBA Championship is a best
of seven series with the sites of the games alternating between
the arenas of the two teams playing. This is the sport Michael Jordan
plays. I know you have heard of His Airness,
everyone has. Jordan, possibly the best basketball player ever to
step onto the court, gained his fame first in college with North
Carolina, then later with the Chicago Bulls. He led the team, with
teammate Scottie Pippen, to six championships in seven years. The
year Jordan retired for the first time was the only year the Bulls
didnt win. Jordan again retired after the sixth championship
only to return after a three-year hiatus to play for the Washington
Wizards, a team he partly owns. For college basketball all one needs
to know is the term March Madness. This term refers
to the NCAA Championship Tournament, which is played every March.
A field of 64 is whittled down to two teams who then square off
for the NCAA Championship.
Ice hockey, a sport that is huge in Canada, is becoming more popular
in the States. The National Hockey League is divided into two different
conferences, the East and the West. Teams play all winter and after
the playoffs the two teams left play a best-of-seven series for
the Stanley Cup.
Golf has four major championships each year, the first being the
Masters Tournament in Augusta, Georgia. It is the only one of the
four that is played at the same golf course year in and year out.
The other three major tournaments are the U.S. Open, the British
Open and the PGA Championship. Winning all four in a year means
a player has won the Grand Slam. PGA stands for Professional Golfers
Association. This is the sport Tiger Woods plays. If you dont
know him Im not going to tell you who he is. In golf another
major event, but not a major tournament, is the Ryder Cup. The Ryder
Cup is a two-day event between a team from the United States and
Europe. It is played every other year, with the site switching across
the Atlantic each time the Ryder Cup is played.
Horse racing can be summed up with one race, the Kentucky Derby.
It is the middle third of the Triple Crown, which is comprised of
the Preakness, the Derby and the Belmont Stakes. The last horse
to win the Triple Crown was Affirmed in 1978, but the most famous
to ever win it was Secretariat in 1973. The Kentucky Derby is considered
by many to be the best two minutes in sports and has given us one
of the most well-known lines in sports when every year every announcer
yells, And down the stretch they come!
World Cup soccer is huge everywhere in the world, and is gaining
popularity in the United States. It is comprised of 32 national
teams that go through a lengthy qualifying process. Teams that qualify
then travel to a pre-selected site to compete.
In tennis, much like golf, four events comprise the Grand Slam.
They are the Australian Open, the French Open, U.S. Open and Wimbledon.
These tournaments are played on three different surfaces. These
tournaments are played with two on hard court (Australian and U.S.),
one on grass (Wimbledon) and one on clay (French). The tennis Grand
Slam is considered by many to be the hardest thing to win in all
of sports.
Boxing does not have a major championship, but if your boss ever
asks you if you want ringside seats at the title fight
do not say no, he is talking about the heavyweight championship.
If you need to know about boxing, I suggest you watch any of the
Rocky movies.
I hope these basic tips help you in the real world, where you cant
get by without knowing at least a little bit about each of the major
sports.
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