[NU Sports] Basketball

[Joe Thiegs]

Ooh--all three!  Admittedly, for radio it's only enjoyable for me with a
good play-by-play guy (and preferably a good color commentator), but that's
true for football too.  I like watching it on TV and going to games in
person too.

I like that it is a game that you can follow intently (see, for example,
people who keep their own scorecards) or simply have on in the background.
When I was in law school, I lived a little less than a mile from the
Metrodome, and occasionally during the week there would be "education
nights" where you could get a general admission ticket to a Twins game for a
buck or two if you showed a student ID.  In the late '90s, when you still
could bring a full backpack into a ballpark, I sometimes would walk to the
Dome, pay a buck or two, and then go find a sparsely populated row in the
outfield or along the third-base line, open up my casebooks, and read.
Maybe not the best studying environment, but a lot more fun than the
library.  I am one of those types who can enjoy watching a game following
every pitch too, though.

I like that it is the most affordable pro sport for families to bring their
kids along.  I don't think they have $1 education nights anymore, but you
can still pick up regular general admission tickets for most
ballparks--maybe with a few exceptions like Boston--for a small fraction of
what you'd pay to go to a professional football, basketball, or hockey game
(or a college football or big-school basketball game, for that matter).

I like that the regular season still means more than in most pro sports (in
contrast to the NFL, NBA, or NHL)--this is one of the arguments against a
big playoff in college football--but since it is a long season, each
individual game doesn't typically make or break the year, meaning you can go
to a game your team ends up losing and still leave happy simply for having
had a good time (with exceptions, of course).  Also, your team can go into a
little bit of a slump and still compete for a title.  (In college football,
if you have three bad games in a row, forget it.) These things are true too
to some extent for basketball and hockey, but more so in baseball, it seems
to me.

I like that there is the chance for something exciting to happen with every
pitch (and, occasionally, in between), meaning there are about 250-300 such
opportunities per MLB game (compared with maybe 140-160 in a college
football game).

There are a lot of other things I like about it too, but I am done with my
lunch, so I'd better get back to the grindstone soon.

I guess "to each his [or her] own" is applicable here.  To me, playing
soccer is fun, but watching soccer is more boring that doing taxes.  Same
thing with NASCAR.  For the record, my favorite sport to watch still is
college football.  But baseball is up there too.  Here's how I rank my
enjoyment of watching some of the more popular sports:

1.	College football
2.	College basketball
3.	MLB
4.	Tennis (any level)
5.	Most other college or amateur sports
6.	NFL
7.	NBA
8.	Golf
9.	NHL (I absolutely hate the fighting, and I'm not that big a hockey
fan anyway . . . which is an almost blasphemous thing to say in the State of
Hockey.  I do like high school and college playoffs.).

-Joe

-----Original Message-----
From: nwu-sports-bounces at tssi.com [mailto:nwu-sports-bounces at tssi.com] On
Behalf Of mlinhardt at netzero.net
Sent: Monday, March 31, 2008 12:26 PM
To: nwu-sports at tssi.com
Cc: Maureen.Linhardt at plexus.com
Subject: RE: [NU Sports] Basketball

Radio, TV or in person?

Most Cubs fans I know listen the cubs game while doing something else.  In
other words it is just background noise.  There full attention is not on the
baseball.

We go to a couple of Cubs games a year and I am fidgety as there is so much
downtime.  This does not happen with football.  I am constantly involved
even during timeouts.

As I age(mid 30s) and as I manage my time more(endurance athlete) I find
that I am even less patient with slow moving things, which baseball is a
prime example.

Please explain the way you experience baseball and maybe I can learn to
appreciate it more.

-- "Joe Thiegs" <thiegs at umn.edu> wrote:
Why, thank you, but I did find that to be something of a non sequitur.  ;)
-Joe

P.S.  Baseball is not boring.  It is fun and exciting both to play and to
watch.  Unless you play right field in a park and rec league in elementary
school or in t-ball.  Then it sometimes can be boring.


-----Original Message-----
From: nwu-sports-bounces at tssi.com [mailto:nwu-sports-bounces at tssi.com] On
Behalf Of mlinhardt at netzero.net
Sent: Monday, March 31, 2008 6:32 AM
To: nwu-sports at tssi.com
Cc: Maureen.Linhardt at plexus.com
Subject: RE: [NU Sports] Basketball

The Alamodome is a crappy football stadium.  I can't image how bad it would
be for basketball viewing.

I did not get into the tournament at all, although I followed the runs of
Wisconsin and MSU.  As far as I can tell the Big Ten performed exactly as
seeded with MSU's extra win making up for Indiana's loss.

We follow a little hockey(Red Wings), but beyond that the spring game and
the summer scrimmage are the only sports until fall.  

Baseball is boooooring, although I will continue to follow Joe's progress.

-- "SjT \(Stephen J. Truog\)" <sjtruog at yahoo.com> wrote:
<snip>
far - hope we get some good games in San Antonio.

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