This is my final answer, Regis

Congrats, Houston Dynamo on your MLS Cup win. For those of you who don’t pay attention to American soccer, Houston took home the prize at the eleventh Major League Soccer championship, defeating the New England Revolution.

What? You don’t follow MLS? Oh. That’s okay, I guess.

How about that Chicago Rush, huh? For awhile there, I thought the Predators were going to come back in the fourth quarter. A score of 69-61 is kind of close for a championship game. But hey, Matt D’Orazio really bounced back from being the former quarterback of the Rochester Brigade to lead the Rush to capture the ArenaBowl XX.

No? No ArenaBowl? Arena football is just like regular football but indoors. C’mon. No? Well, what else is there?

Hey, that was quite a season for the Rochester Razorsharks? What’s a razorshark? Not really sure, but they play a pretty basketball game. Only four losses last season paired with a dominant post season game brought a championship home to the Flour City. Not bad, not bad at all.

Really? What do you mean you haven’t TiVo’d the ABA games? It’s just like regular basketball but without the weird new ball.

Okay, so most people probably don’t pay any attention to these leagues. American soccer, indoor football, and minor league basketball don’t really register on the sports-o-meter of the American public but for a sports junky, these are further layer of sports to learn and bring up in conversation.

Is it sad that I can tell you that before playing in Milwaukee, the Brewers were once the Seattle Pilots? Is it pathetic that I know that the Kings made a cross country trip, going from Rochester and Cincinnati (as the Royals) and then becoming the Kings in Kansas City before finally reaching Sacramento? How about the fact that I know that the Tampa Bay Storm (AFL here, people, AFL) were once the Pittsburgh Gladiators?

I know that I’m not the only like this out there. There has to be numerous people lurking in the shadows who know that the Rochester Jeffersons got kicked around in the early days of the NFL and that the New York Yankees started the twentieth century off as the Baltimore Orioles.

Seriously here, folks, this is the life of someone who has nothing better to do than study the logos of the New York Islanders – 1996 fisherman, anyone? – and knows that MLS once had a central division.

Maybe sports facts were created just for the sole purpose of allowing me to win Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? one day. I’m pretty sure that’s not why we have math. Um . . . the circumference is 8.2, Regis? I don’t think so. Sports, like history, is a field full of random facts and knowledge, all ripe for the picking of those who don’t see the need in memorizing the formula to find how two triangles are congruent. That’s what my calculator is for.

I can tell you the name of every president back to Herbert Hoover and in which year they took office and I can tell you every World Series champion to before I was born. For the life of me though, I couldn’t explain to you how to factor trinomials. Honestly, I don’t even remember what a trinomial is anymore.

It’s kind of like natural selection, a survival of the fittest for the mind. I can remember history since it plays a part in everyday life and I can remember sports since it gives me something to talk about at Thanksgiving and makes my extended family like me.

One day, Millionaire will call. And on that, I will be ready. Former Mets’ manager Bobby Valentine coaches the Chiba Lotte Marines. Final answer, Regis, final answer.

- Originally published in the Cardinal Courier (Volume 6-Issue 5; November 15, 2006)

Athletics keystone of St. John Fisher College

I was thinking about writing another edition of weird sports that we should add to the Fisher athletics program. Last year, I made the proposal to create cricket, elephant polo, and Russian roulette teams . . . and no one ever got back to me on it.

Oh well.

I thought they would be exciting at least.

This got me to thinking though, what would happen had no one responded to the initial requests of basic sports at Fisher? You know, the first time a really tall kid brought up the idea of creating a basketball team? Or, the first time a kid who could throw a ball really far brought up the idea of creating a football team?

Actually to answer that last question, just see Nazareth. Or RIT. Go Tigers football! It’s grrrr-eat!

Anyways, just try to imagine this campus without any sports teams. What would Fisher be like without the athletic aesthetic?

Well, alumni and family weekends would be kind of strange without the football team to watch. What would the slew of visitors do in lieu of this activity? Hmmm . . . well . . . Fisher doesn’t have much going on on-campus does it? I guess everyone could hang out in the campus center . . . and . . . well . . . yeah, there’s not much there either. I guess alumni and family weekends would be just a little bit pathetic without the football team, huh? I pretty sure my family wouldn’t want to hang out in the campus center and watch COP work through the windows. Boring.

How about that rivalry with Nazareth College? Could we still hold onto that without athletics? Maybe we could start up a math league or something. Does anyone know if mathletes fight each other? I’d hate to be the security officer assigned to the multiplication matches.

“Daddy, what do you do for your job?” little Bobby would ask his father.

“Well son, your father works security at the Math Olympics,” the father would say. “It’s my job to make sure the fans don’t get into fights. You know son, there’s a lot excitement at those math matches – without me there, who knows, fans might get out of control and start throwing abacuses or something.

Little Bobby would look up at his father now. “Daddy? Am I adopted?”

Okay, so the idea of taking athletics out of the Fisher-Nazareth, ahem, equation would leave us with little to fight about. I mean, there really isn’t much to fight about when everyone already knows that Fisher is the superior institution.

So without athletics here at Fisher, we’ve so far checked off any excitement on alumni and family weekends and kicked the Fisher-Naz rivalry to the curb. What else could we examine?

How about the use of the space that the athletics facility now takes up? Imagine if the strip of land between the old Fishbowl up to I-490 was empty. Short of building a landing strip – Fisher International Airport anyone? – what could we use that area for?

Well, what could Fisher use? What are we missing? And you can’t say a pool or ice rink since that defies the purpose of this exercise. Hmmm . . .

I know. This is the answer to the biggest problem on this campus right now – besides the ladybugs that have invades my room, that is – a parking garage. We could use that space to put up a massive, leviathan of parking garage.

Only one problem. Without athletics on campus, without teams and players to rally around, we wouldn’t need to house all those cars. Why? No one would stick around if we didn’t have the athletics that we do.

Yeah, Fisher might not be perfect when it comes to athletics. Some of our facilities might be a little outdated or over-packed. We have teams that lose. We don’t have a pool or a track or an ice rink. But we’re doing pretty well.

Now how about that elephant polo team?

- Originally published in the Cardinal Courier (Volume 6-Issue 4; November 1, 2006)