After a grinding week of late nights and marathon floor sessions, the state Senate granted final approval to a new Minnesota Vikings stadium on the final day of the legislative session. …
The Senate approved the $975 million project on a vote of 36-30 amid cheers from Vikings fans in the gallery. The House gave final approval to the bill at 3:30 a.m., after the team agreed to kick in an extra $50 million.
Foes and supporters predicted Senate passage, although not without a bumpy ride. The plan to build a new stadium on the site of the Metrodome in downtown Minneapolis, with the state share funded by a huge expansion of bar-gambling, still has many critics.
But they don’t appear to have the support to stop the bill from reaching Gov. Mark Dayton, the stadium project’s most ardent supporter at the Capitol.
Amazing what the junction of sports teams threatening to leave and election years can accomplish, isn’t it? The project is supposed to be funded by electronic bingo and pull-tabs, and, should those revenue sources be insufficient, a 10-percent admissions tax on “stadium luxury seats” and a sports-themed lottery game.
The amazing thing is that Leif Ericson Field, or whatever it’s going to be called, will cost more than every stadium project in the Twin Cities since 1990 combined — the $412 million Target Field in St. Paul, the $303.4 million University of Minnesota TCF Bank Stadium, the $130 million Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul. the $104 million Target Center in Minneapolis, and the $20 million University of Minnesota Mariucci Arena,
This will bring to an end the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, built on the cheap in the early 1980s because Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington was falling apart. (And was never really designed for major league sports anyway.) There is unquestioned convenience with not having to deal with the elements when at a game. The Metrodome was not a bad place to watch football. It was a horrible place to watch baseball, but the Twins won two World Series because they had an unparalleled home field advantage due to the noise a full Metrodome would generate.
Note that the Vikings have never been to a Super Bowl since they left the Met, but a generation of Vikings fans apparently believes it’s too cold to sit outside to watch Vikings games in December. Wisconsin, I think, will be fine with keeping Miller Park (100 percent fewer rainouts and snowouts than Target Field) and Lambeau Field.
If the Vikings think a new stadium will automatically mean more wins, though, recent history shows they’re mistaken. It obviously will mean more revenue for one of the lowest revenue franchises in the NFL, but that also means more revenue for the 31 other NFL teams. Being awash in money is no substitute for competent general managers and coaches, as the Dallas Cowboys can attest.
The other thing is that home field advantage appears to be fading in the NFL. Note that the Packers won Super Bowl XLV despite playing three road games. The Packers went 15–1 but lost in the playoffs to the Super Bowl XLVI winner, which won two road playoff games three years after winning a Super Bowl with, as with the 2010 Packers, no home playoff games.
I’ve heard coaches say their players concentrate on things better on the road, which is the opposite of what you might think given that home games feature a familiar floor and home cooking. It’s possible that the various stadium player accouterments have taken away some of the opponent road disadvantage. (No more cold showers in cramped locker rooms, for instance.) Travel certainly is not as onerous as it was in the days when players took trains or propeller planes to games. the fact the Packers haven’t won a home playoff game since Brett Favre was the quarterback might have prompted the ideas behind the Lambeau Field South End Zone renovation, one clear purpose of which is to increase the volume level inside the stadium.
With the domed Thor God of Thunder Stadium, the Vikings can no longer stand on their own sidelines, not even wearing gloves, and watch their opponents focus more on the cold than on the game. Vikings coach Bud Grant was a great coach, and the Vikings had some of the better players in the NFL in the ’70s, but the December home field advantage couldn’t have hurt.
The Packers will still have the oldest stadium in the NFL. The gap between Lambeau Field and the next oldest stadium will grow when the 49ers move out of Candlestick Park, built in 1960. Next oldest are the stadium originally known as the Oakland–Alameda County Coliseum and San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium, both housing teams rumored to be heading back to Los Angeles. The Packers demonstrate you don’t have to keep building stadiums if you do them right the first time, and remodel appropriately thereafter.
You may not have noticed that the Milwaukee Bucks were eliminated from the playoffs last week. The NBA playoffs began Saturday once again without the Bucks.
Today is the 41st anniversary of the Bucks’ only NBA title, clinched with a four-game NBA Finals sweep over the Baltimore (now Washington) Bullets (now Wizards).
The Bucks’ only other NBA Finals appearance came three years later, a seven-game loss to Boston despite the classic Game 6 double-overtime win:
(CBS’ play-by-play guy is, believe it or not, Pat Summerall.)
The Bucks were also good in the late ’70s and much of the ’80s, with coach Don Nelson, forward Marques Johnson and then Terry Cummings, and guards Sidney Moncrief, Brian Winters and Paul Pressey.
In those days, the Bucks were arguably the fourth best team in the NBA, behind Boston, Philadelphia and the Los Angeles Lakers. Unfortunately, the Bucks could never get past the Celtics and 76ers to get into the NBA Finals in those years. Their main problem seemed to be their lack of in-his-prime center; the ’80s Bucks teams first featured Bob Lanier, then Jack Sikma, both of whose best days were with their previous teams.
The Bucks’ last shot at NBA relevance was in 2001 with George Karl as their coach, guards Sam Cassell and Ray Allen, forward Glenn “Big Dog” Robinson, and sixth-man Tim Thomas. (Robinson was the third of four Bucks who were the number one pick in the NBA draft, which tells you all you need to know about how those teams were.) The 2001 Bucks had the Eastern Conference’s second best record, and indeed they were second-best in the East, losing a seven-game conference final series to, once again, the 76ers.
Following the Bucks has been frustrating under the ownership of U.S. Sen. Herb Kohl (D–Wisconsin). During the ’80s when Kohl bought the team, he was seen as the franchise’s savior, with his purchase compelling Lloyd and Jane Pettit to donate a new arena to the city, the Bradley Center. But Kohl and Nelson reportedly clashed, and Nelson departed, as did, for the next decade, winning teams. Karl came along and the Bucks started winning, but then a 2001 trade Karl lobbied for destroyed the team’s chemistry, and so Karl left.
Since Karl’s departure after the 2002–03 season, the Bucks have had three playoff seasons, each of which ended with first-round playoff losses. The 2011–12 season was the second in a row with no playoff berth. For the past decade, the Bucks have changed general managers, coaches and players — T.J. Ford, Michael Redd, Andrew Bogut, Richard Jefferson, John Salmons — with no lasting effect.
In addition to the Bucks’ on-court failures, the Bradley Center, which was a palace when it opened, now is one of the oldest arenas in the NBA, and, as is usually the case, nearly impossible to upgrade to 21st-century standards. (And little money to do so, since the Pettits’ generous gift didn’t include any funds for capital improvements.) Ironically, the Milwaukee Arena, which the Bradley Center was supposed to replace, is still in operation as the home of UW–Milwaukee basketball and Milwaukee’s most successful sports franchise, the Wave.
Even when I saw a game at the Bradley Center a few years after it opened, it was obvious that unless you have seats in the lower section between the basketball end lines (where our seats were not), the view is not very good. In retrospect, as demonstrated by the Kohl Center on the other end of Interstate 94, the Bradley Center probably should have been designed with basketball sightlines instead of hockey sightlines, given that the Bucks draw much better than the Admirals, which were owned by the Pettits. The Palace at Auburn Hills, where the Detroit Pistons play, opened the same year, but it appears to have been designed better, given that the Pistons are fine with it. (On the other hand, the Power Balance Pavilion in Sacramento opened the same year, and, yes, the Kings want a new arena.)
Thanks in large part to their arena situation, the Bucks (which are Milwaukee’s second NBA franchise, the first behind the Hawks, who moved from the Tri-, now Quad, Cities of Iowa and Illinois to Milwaukee on their way to St. Louis and then Atlanta) are considered one of the lowest-value franchises in the NBA. (Forbes magazine estimates the average NBA franchise value at $393 million, but the Bucks are estimated at $268 million, dead last in the NBA.) That makes them a tantalizing target to be sold and moved to a market that wants the NBA back, like Seattle (whose Sonics are now the Oklahoma City Thunder) or Kansas City (whose Kings, formerly shared with Omaha, are now in Sacramento). Kohl was about to sell the team to Michael Jordan in 2003 when Kohl changed his mind.
One reads a lot of sentiment along the lines of if the Bucks want an arena, let them pay for it. Well, thanks in large part to this state’s perennially poor business climate and in large part to the greatly increased expense of pro sports franchise ownership and operation, this state has no one who comes immediately to mind rich enough (not to mention civic-minded enough) to step in for Kohl and buy the Bucks and/or step in for the Pettits and build another arena for the Bucks, the Admirals, the indoor-soccer Wave, and the Marquette Warriors/Golden Eagles. Who replaced the Seligs as owners of the Brewers? Californian Mark Attanasio, who thankfully appears to be committed to keeping the Brewers in Milwaukee. There is no guarantee that there’s another Attanasio to keep the Bucks in Milwaukee.
The Bucks are a case of economic and political realities crashing into each other. By the standard of pro sports economics, yes, the Bucks need a new arena. For proof, look at the fortunes of the Brewers after Miller Park and the Packers after the early-2000s Lambeau Field renovations. (Or, for that matter, the football Badgers after the Camp Randall Stadium renovations.) Today’s sports arenas are built to extract the maximum amount of revenue from ticket-buyers and the maximum amount of money from spectators. The Bradley Center’s shortcomings are the reason why the Bucks are at the bottom of the NBA in franchise value.
On the other hand, thanks in large part to having the fourth highest state and local taxes in the nation, there is great resistance to using tax dollars for a new Bucks arena. Looking at the Comments section in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel‘s editorial on a replacement arena proves that. (For one thing, unlike the Packers and recently the Brewers, the Bucks have not marketed themselves outside greater Milwaukee.) Milwaukee’s non-vibrant economy under Mayor Tom Barrett (who wants to foist his definition of economic development on the rest of the state, but that’s another subject) and its leadership, if you want to call it that, of the state’s social pathologies makes some think spending money on an arena represents misplaced priorities.
If you think about it, though, the 0.1-percent sales tax increase to fund Miller Park is about as non-onerous as a tax increase gets, and the benefits of having a ballpark in which games are guaranteed to be played regardless of weather are undeniable. I have a hard time believing 47 percent of Brown County residents voted against the 0.5-percent sales tax increase to fund the renovations for the stadium of the most recognizable thing in northeast Wisconsin. And in both cases, the sales tax increases are designed to sunset when the stadiums are paid off. Tax increases should be opposed when they’re (1) not needed, (2) funding wasteful or inappropriate government spending, and/or (3) designed to be permanent, or as permanent as anything in politics.
If the Bucks leave Milwaukee (and reading this makes it hard to think that won’t happen), 42 Bucks home games go away. That means a drastic cut in Bradley Center jobs, less business for downtown Milwaukee restaurants (which means less sales tax revenue from same), less business for Milwaukee hotels from visiting teams (which means less room tax revenue from same), and more than a dozen high-income Milwaukee-area residents who won’t be living, buying things and paying taxes in the Milwaukee area. There’s also the media attention that Milwaukee gets every night on cable TV and every day in newspapers and online because of the Bucks that won’t be happening without the Bucks.
All of that is the future of Milwaukee without the Bucks.
If you needed any sign that pro football has passed Major League Baseball as the national pastime, check your favorite media outlet this weekend for its coverage of the NFL draft.
Training camps won’t open for three months, and the first games of the season are 4½ months away. Baseball has been under way for a month, and the NFL draft — players who may or may not even play in the NFL — will be on center stage. Not baseball, not the NBA playoffs, not the NHL playoffs.
Baseball is a great sport that is poorly run. The NFL is the greatest professional league in the history of sports. Even when baseball does something attempting to be innovative, it never seems to come off as well as MLB management thinks it should. Nearly as many fans hate interleague play as like it. (And with the Houston Astros moving to the American League to create two 15-team leagues, there will be an interleague game every day starting next year.) Baseball expanded its playoffs in 1994, but notice how many empty seats you see at Division Series games.
At the risk of sounding like Rex Harrison in “My Fair Lady” (“Why Can’t a Woman Be More Like a Man?”), to stop its popularity slide (baseball arguably is now the fourth most popular sport behind the NFL, the NBA and stock car racing), baseball needs to be run more like the NFL where appropriate. The challenge is to fix the things wrong with baseball while keeping what’s right about baseball.
Obviously there are some insurmountable differences between the NFL and MLB. One reason for the drama of the NFL season is that it is just 16 games long. It’s hard to say one game is of critical importance when that one game is one of 162 baseball games in a season. The NFL also moved playoff games to night a decade ago because bad weather makes football more compelling to watch. In bad weather, baseball either isn’t played or is a miserable experience to sit through.
Consider this: NFL games are almost always sellouts, because games that do not sell out do not get televised in the home team’s TV market. Having 81 home games gives teams the chance to sell more tickets, and fans who don’t go to games don’t buy food, drinks and souvenirs in the ballpark, and taking more money out of fans’ pockets is what the new stadiums, including Lambeau Field and Miller Park, are designed to do.
In 2011, four baseball teams — Philadelphia, Boston, San Francisco and Minnesota — sold 99 percent or more of their available tickets. (That comes from multiplying their stadium capacity by 81 home games. The Phillies actually sold 104 percent of their available tickets.) Two more teams — the Cubs and Brewers — sold 90 percent of their tickets, which would be similar to playing at Lambeau Field with 7,000 empty seats. On average, MLB teams sold 69 percent of their available tickets. Four teams — Seattle, Florida, Toronto and Baltimore — didn’t even sell half of their available tickets.
Baseball’s problem starts at the top, with its commissioner, former Brewers owner Bud Selig. Obviously Selig deserves credit as an owner for getting the one-season Seattle Pilots moved to Milwaukee, and for campaigning to get Miller Park built. Selig also has made worthwhile changes as commissioner, merging power formerly in the two leagues into the commissioner’s office in areas like umpiring. Baseball appears to be better marketed than it used to be (and the Brewers formerly were the worst), although MLB marketing still doesn’t hold a candle to the NFL.
As an authority figure, however, Selig pales in comparison to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and NBA commissioner David Stern. Calling him a car salesman (he was the owner of Selig Chevrolet) is an insult because car salespeople have personalities. Selig is not dynamic as a public speaker, and he doesn’t come across particularly well in the media, unlike his NFL counterparts. (Goodell is the second commissioner after Pete Rozelle, who was the best commissioner in the history of sports. Rozelle’s training was in public relations.) Maybe Selig is great behind the scenes, but you have to lead in public too.
Baseball would be better off with a more media-friendly commissioner. But baseball would also be better off with a commissioner who didn’t come from ownership. (Rozelle’s two successors both worked for the NFL before becoming commissioner.) Owners run baseball much more so than owners run the NFL, and the NFL has unquestionably been run better than baseball over at least my lifetime, and probably before that. (When baseball owners disparage themselves as not the sharpest tools in the shed, you know you have problems.)
The biggest difference, and the biggest thing baseball needs to tackle, is competitive balance, where every team’s fans can believe that their teams can get to the World Series when they’re making their season ticket orders. There’s a difference between success due to your work (for instance, the St. Louis Cardinals) and being able to wave money around to buy who you want (the Yankees). When the baseball season began a month ago, several teams basically fell out of contention after Opening Day. Baseball fans are more fickle than football fans, in part because tickets are easier to come by with 81-game home seasons. But other the Cubs and Red Sox, whose ballparks have a lot to do with their appeal, most teams’ attendance is based on how the team does, or how the team did last year.
The genius of the NFL under Rozelle and a few influential owners was that they realized that the most important thing about the NFL is the game. When George Steinbrenner owned the New York Yankees, he was concerned about the Yankees, not the game; he couldn’t have cared less about the Brewers, Twins, Indians, or other small-market teams. (In contrast, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones will never become the commissioner of the NFL, thank heavens.) NFL owners figured out that their competition was not each other, but other ways to spend the entertainment dollar, even beyond other sports.
As a result, the NFL shares revenues more broadly than baseball. Both leagues share national broadcast revenue, but baseball broadcast revenue is more important, and more imbalanced, than in the NFL. (That directly affects what you will read in the next paragraph.) Perhaps the mix of revenues between home teams and visiting teams needs to be nudged more in the visitors’ direction to give the home teams incentive to get more fans in the stands.
The NFL also has a hard salary cap, which baseball has never been able to implement thanks to the desires of high-income owners to be able to buy winning teams. USA Today reports that as of Opening Day, MLB payrolls range from $197,962,289 (the Yankees) to $55,244,700 (San Diego). The Yankees’ payroll is so out of whack compared to the rest of the league that the average of those two payrolls — $126,603,490 — is exceeded only by the payrolls of Boston, Philadelphia, the Los Angeles Angels and Detroit. The Yankees’ payroll is 3½ times the payroll of the Padres. Guess which team has a better chance to get to the playoffs.
A huge difference between the NFL and baseball is that the NFL is unafraid to fine-tune its rules to improve their product’s fan appeal. The NFL started liberalizing its passing rules in the 1970s, and fan interest has increased steadily since then. Scoring is up, and yet games are not dragging past three hours unless the officials are flag-happy. In the past week, the NFL has considered eliminating kickoffs (because of injuries on kickoff coverage) and the Pro Bowl. Earlier this year, the NFL changed the regular-season overtime rule to match the postseason overtime rule, giving teams one guaranteed possession in overtime.
The last major rule change in baseball was the designated hitter, and whether you like it or hate it, it is ridiculous that half of baseball uses it and the other half does not. That is comparable to half of NBA teams using the three-point shot and the other half not using it.
Then there’s the issue of the slow … pace … of … the … games, particularly … in … the … postseason. The last game of the 1960 World Series, a dramatic 10–9 Pittsburgh win over the damn Yankees on a Bill Mazeroski ninth-inning home run, took 2 hours 36 minutes to play. In contrast, the shortest 2011 World Series game was 3 hours 4 minutes, and two of the games took more than four hours. (Which, in the case of 11-inning two-last-at-bat-comeback Game 6, was forgivable.) Games are dragging to the point where nine-inning postseason games run four hours, and yet baseball refuses to do anything to speed up the game. (Like, for instance, requiring umpires to use a standard strike zone instead of their own interpretation, or calling balls on pitchers who can’t throw a pitch within 10 seconds or strikes on batters who adjust every last piece of their own equipment out of the batter’s box. And speaking of umpires, notice that NFL officials are never accused of arrogance?)
To show how hidebound baseball is, the discussion for a few years has been whether to retain the 162-game season or go back to the 154-game season last seen in 1960. Yes, the world will change direction around its axis based on the fate of 10 days of the schedule.
The more radical move would be to significantly cut the schedule — say, down to 120 to 140 games over a season shorter by a month or more. Baseball is not meant to be played in weather more like winter than spring anyway. (Not a problem for the Brewers, but their first series at Wrigley Field was played in weather more suitable for a Bears game.) Imagine having the regular season over by the start of the NFL season, playing pre-World Series games in September, and then playing the World Series in early October. (The latter is how baseball was scheduled in the pre-League Championship Series days, when World Series games were played in the daytime and fans didn’t have to get out their football outerwear to watch.
A similarly radical move would be to take a page out of NFL scheduling. Instead of playing the same number of games against teams outside your division, baseball could rearrange itself so teams with the same divisional finish played each other more often. The better a team is one year, the more difficult (i.e. games played against good teams) the schedule would be the next season.
Baseball’s TV arrangement doesn’t exactly generate interest in the game either. The current TV contract places most of the regular season (except Fox Saturday games, which at least now are each Saturday of the season) and too much of the postseason on cable. A lot of homes still don’t have cable or satellite, which means fans got to see two series of the seven-series postseason, and, in Wisconsin, not a single Brewers postseason game on over-the-air TV.
Fox has been baseball’s exclusive over-the-air broadcaster since 2001. ESPN and TBS have carried games since 2007. In contrast, the NFL is on Fox, CBS and NBC, plus ESPN, and any ESPN game is carried on local TV in the teams’ markets. I’m not critical of Fox’s coverage (although announcer Joe Buck sometimes sounds disinterested), but I think baseball would be better served by having a second over-the-air network taking TBS’ place when TV contracts expire after the 2013 season. Either that, or playoff games broadcast on cable should be locally telecast since most fans don’t have access to postseason tickets.
There is a difference between doing things way they always have been because that’s the right way to do it, and doing things way they always have been because they’ve always done it that way. There is a difference between respecting tradition and being glued to tradition. The NFL is the former, and Major League Baseball needs to be less of the latter.
The WIAA Board of Control approved an executive recommendation Tuesday to move its girls basketball state tournament to the Resch Center in Ashwaubenon for the next two seasons while keeping its boys state basketball tournament at the Kohl Center in Madison through 2020.
The decision comes a little more than two months after the WIAA Board supported an executive staff recommendation to enter into a five-year deal to play the tournaments at the Resch Center.
The WIAA, however, left the door open to continuing to host its state boys and girls basketball tournaments on the University of Wisconsin campus, an opportunity UW took advantage of by guaranteeing the dates the WIAA was looking for.
That is an unusual decision, to say the least. The WIAA girls and boys volleyball tournaments are in separate locations, but boys volleyball was a non-WIAA sport for several years. It’s almost as if girls basketball returned to the old six-on-six days (for those unfamiliar, three players on each half of the court, last seen in Oklahoma and Iowa), or, like Michigan, decided to play in the fall instead of the winter.
The plus for the girls tournament’s moving to Green Bay is that the smaller Resch Center might provide a better atmosphere for state games than the cavernous Kohl Center. (Another high school basketball fan in the household begs to differ with that assertion.) The minuses remain the fact that Green Bay is farther from the state’s population and geographic centers than Madison, and the difference in atmosphere between the Lambeau Field neighborhood, which is on the opposite side of Green Bay from UW–Green Bay, and the UW–Madison campus. And there remains the question of whether the TV stations that cover the state boys tournament will cover the state girls tournament in the same way when the two states will require complete set-up and tear-down of equipment one week apart.
The Wisconsin State Journal in Madison described the decision as “Solomonic.” (Which seems to be a word similar to “impactful” or “proactive,” which is to say it’s not really a word. But whatever.) It’s obvious, though, that Green Bay got something less than half a loaf — two years of the lesser of the two basketball tournaments in terms of media attention, attendance and business impact, as in $3 million for the girls tournament and $6 million for the boys tournament.
Moving the boys tournament to the Resch Center was not a desirable option for the WIAA.
Associate director Deb Hauser was worried the facility would not be able to accommodate the amount of fans that the Kohl Center can, and in turn would have to turn them away.
The boys tournament last month attracted anywhere from 12,000 to 13,000 fans for certain sessions, and Hauser said the Resch Center likely could only accommodate approximately 9,300 fans per session.
The girls tournament does not attract as many people, which should ease any of those attendance concerns.
“It would be a challenge for us to fit our boys tournament into the Resch Center,” Hauser said. “This year our tournament grew, and that’s significant. When you begin to turn people away, that becomes difficult. Really, the capacity is a key part of this.”
It wasn’t the only key.
“We would have had to modify our TV schedule had we chosen to move the boys, because we would have needed to move people in different ways to accommodate the fans,” Hauser said. “We use the end zone areas for our student sections. There wasn’t enough seats at the Resch to put two schools side-by-side. We would have had to have additional time to clear and do single sessions and modify our schedules.
“Just a lot of logistic tournament issues that were of pretty serious concern.”
That is a strange issue to suddenly come up now. The Kohl Center has never been filled since state moved there, while some tournament sessions at the UW Fieldhouse (generally involving Madison-area teams) were sold out. So why consider moving the tournament at all if you’re concerned about not being able to sell all the tickets you’re capable of selling? Using Hauser’s logic, the Packers should expand Lambeau Field by the size of their season-ticket waiting list.
I haven’t been to Bukolt Park (which, for those who have never been there, is on the Wisconsin River) since the 1989 summer tournament, one of my favorite sports stories. (Imagine a team that finished 9–11, with its pitching rotation screwed up because of fickle summer weather, nonetheless not only getting to state, with a freshman pitching his first varsity game in the sectional final, but getting to the state title game.) I suspect Bukolt Park is nowhere near as nice as Fox Cities Stadium, the site of the spring baseball tournament, or even most college ballparks. And with most of the summer baseball teams now in the Milwaukee area, moving makes sense.
The unfortunate part is that summer state is being significantly scaled back, from eight teams to four, and from seven games over two days to three games on one day. Summer baseball swelled briefly after the WIAA’s merger with the late Wisconsin Independent Schools Athletic Association, but despite, I believe, having a similar number of teams as with the aforementioned ’89 team (which needed three teams to get to state), the WIAA decided to chop summer state in half.
I’ve had the argument with high school coaches for years over whether baseball should be a spring or summer sport. I understand the importance of American Legion teams where they exist. (Have I mentioned yet that Ripon won both the WIAA Division 2 and American Legion Class A state titles last year?) That contrasts with the reality of the Wisconsin spring, where during usual springs few days are suitable for baseball, including the days on which baseball is played, despite the fact that the season runs later than it originally did. Last spring sucked weather-wise until the postseason began. Ripon’s two sectional games were played in, of course, 90-degree weather.
Baseball should be played in weather that makes you more concerned about heat exhaustion than frostbite.
Unlike last year, it is not both Good Friday and Earth Day, but Good Friday also is the Brewers’ season-opener.
Because I am a Christian, I am not going to the Cardinals–Brewers game this afternoon. (I also don’t have tickets to today’s game, or any other Brewers game, but that’s not important right now.)
The Brewers had a great 2011, winning the National League Central division and falling two wins short of the World Series. I hope you enjoyed 2011, because 2011 will not be exceeded or even matched in 2012. The baseball playoffs are expanding from eight teams to 10, but none of those 10 teams will be the Brewers.
This message hasn’t gotten through to the Brewers, according to MLB.com:
The return of pitchers’ fielding practice and baserunning drills will mark the end of a strange winter marked by the departure — as expected — of slugging first baseman Prince Fielder via free agency and the news — very unexpected — that National League MVP Ryan Braun was appealing a suspension under MLB’s Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program.
Just like that, what should have been a celebratory offseason turned sour, with fans lamenting Fielder’s loss and wondering for months whether Braun would be on the field for Opening Day. Manager Ron Roenicke instead tried to focus on the positives awaiting his second season and said in no uncertain terms that the Brewers aim to contend again in 2012.
“We love our team,” Roenicke told a crowd at “Brewers On Deck,” the club’s winter fanfest. “We think we had a great year last year, we changed some things, we have some different personnel this year [but] we think we have a great ballclub this year.”
“Great” does not describe a ballclub that neither has Fielder nor adequate replacements for Fielder. (Which is not a criticism of the Brewers’ deciding to let Fielder leave. The money Detroit threw at Fielder was not as much a problem, on a per-year basis, as the fact that a National League team cannot expect to get production from an overweight first baseman for the next nine seasons, since there is no designated hitter in the NL for portly players of decreasing defensive range.)
The offensive replacement is new third baseman Aramis Ramirez, who was a terrific acquisition for the Cubs in 2003, but that was nine years ago. Ramirez had a good year (.306 batting average, 26 home runs, 93 RBI, .871 OPS) in 2011 for a bad team in an easier park for home runs than Miller Park, and at 35 he isn’t getting any younger. Given the fact that Ramirez played for a character-challenged team (which is nicer than to use the word “gutless,” as in the Cubs’ 2003 El Foldo to Florida in the National League Championship Series) and is supposed to replace the previous clubhouse leader, well, feel free to indulge your inner skeptic.
Ramirez is also a right-handed hitter. The departure of Fielder, the team’s all-time leader in on-base percentage who is second only to Robin Yount in career home runs, means the Brewers have no left-handed power in their lineup. (Lefty centerfielder Nyjer Morgan had four home runs last season. Four.) One reason Braun has played at near-MVP levels is because Fielder was behind him, and the same could be said about Fielder with Braun in front of him. It’s been somewhat surprising that a team with just two legitimate power hitters did as well as the Brewers did in 2011. That will not be repeatable in 2012.
Replacing Fielder as a fielder is former phenom Mat Gamel. It is hard to understand why the Brewers think he can replace Fielder given the fact that his Class AAA manager, former Brewer Don Money, said last year that Gamel doesn’t act like a professional. (There was an incident in a previous spring training where Gamel so offended the actual professionals that they set up his locker in the parking lot.) It is telling that Gamel had no significant role for a team pushing for a championship, despite having been in the Brewers’ system for several years.
Gamel isn’t the only strange staffing decision this season. The Brewers have five outfielders — Braun in left, Morgan and Carlos Gomez in center, and Corey Hart in right, plus Japanese pickup Norichika Aoki — for three outfield positions. One concludes that Hart was uninterested in moving to first base, which could have hidden his decreasing defensive skills. Hart is an unusual case anyway — fast, but not good enough in on-base percentage to bat lead-off, and with some power, but not to make him a high-level power hitter.
Ramirez cannot help but be better at third than Casey McGehee, and if new shortstop Alex Gonzalez is just average, he’ll be an improvement from Yuniesky Betancourt, who had the second worst on-base percentage among regular starters, yet was a terrible defensive player at the infield’s most important position. Despite some head-slapping defensive lapses, I’ve always liked second baseman Rickie Weeks, and he was having a great season until he got hurt in July. Besides Fielder, the player the Brewers will miss will be infielder Jerry Hairston Jr., a tremendously versatile player who played at second, short and third due to injury or ineptitude.
To believe that the Brewers will be able to come close to matching 2011, you have to believe that the Brewers will be as good offensively without Fielder as they were with Fielder in 2011. That’s because their starters not named Yovani Gallardo and Shawn Marcum weren’t as great as advertised last year, and because of the Brewers’ dubious defense, which has improved in one position (shortstop) and may have gone backwards at another (first base). I suppose you could argue that with Zack Greinke, Marcum and Randy Wolf entering their final guaranteed contract years, they will want to do well for their next payday, but that doesn’t mean they will. The Brewers still have Francisco Rodriguez for the eighth inning and John Axford for the ninth, but they’re counting on Jose Veras to replace both Takashi Saito and LaTroy Hawkins to pitch the sixth and seventh when the starters run out of gas. And other than K-Rod and the Ax Man, the rest of the bullpen returnees aren’t that good.
You also have to believe that the rest of the NL Central won’t be better than last year. St. Louis (90–72) demonstrated that it really is how you play at the end of the season that counts, and they had a capable replacement already on the roster for the departed Albert Pujols. Cincinnati (79–83) will be better, and some see promise in Pittsburgh (72–90). Chicago (71–91) and Houston (56–106) can’t possibly be as bad as they were last season. And the rest of the NL still features Philadelphia, Atlanta, San Francisco and Arizona, with Washington possibly emulating the Reds in the up-and-coming department. The Cardinals exposed the Brewers as a team that wasn’t as good as its 96 regular-season wins would make you think.
The Brewers also do not have history on their side. The Brewers have won consecutive playoff berths exactly once, 1981 and 1982. Their pattern is to have contending seasons (1987, 1992, 2008) and then crash back to earth the next season. There is a lot of trade bait on this team, particularly in pitching, should the Brewers be out of the race by midseason. There are too many examples of teams that overachieve in the first seasons of new managers (for instance, the 1987 and 1992 Brewers, or the 1984 and 1989 Cubs) to make you not wonder if that better explains 2011.
Opening Day is great for optimism, because everyone is undefeated. (Except this season, given that some teams have already started.) I see this season like the Packers’ 2007 season, when a hideous NFC Championship interception closed the window of Super Bowl opportunity. The Brewers’ best chance at their second World Series in franchise history ended last October.
The online museum chronicles the state’s broadcasting past, beginning with Beloit College’s radio experiments in 1908 that became 9XB, and 9XM, which became WHA radio in Madison in 1922, the state’s first licensed radio station. Radio history buffs will find that WIAO radio in Milwaukee, which became WISN, is the state’s oldest continually licensed radio station. (Those who appreciate irony also will see that in 1925, The Capital Times started WIBA radio in Madison, now the home of conservative talkers Rush Limbaugh and Vicki McKenna.) They’ll also see the state’s oldest TV station, WTMJ in Milwaukee, started as WMJT (“Milwaukee Journal Television”) on channel 3.
My favorite part, though, is its newest section, dedicated to great moments in Wisconsin sports on the air. The first known play-by-play (probably not in the form we recognize today) was of a 40–15 UW basketball win over Ohio State Feb. 17, 1917. The Packers and UW football have been on the air since the late 1920s.
Early highlights such as the 1952 and 1963 Rose Bowls and the first two Super Bowls intersperse newsreels and a bit of play-by-play. (The site doesn’t have the 1963 Rose Bowl play-by-play of NBC’s Mel Allen, then the longtime announcer of the New York Yankees.) There is also video (but only narration) of UW’s March 1962 upset of number-one-ranked Ohio State, led by Basketball Hall of Famers Jerry Lucas and John Havlicek.
The Glory Years Packers are well represented, beginning with the 1961 NFL championship, which you can see here too:
The Packers clips end with Super Bowl XXXI. I assume Super Bowl XLV will eventually get there.
The happy synchronicity is that the advent of electronic files coincides with the dramatic improvements of the fortunes of the Packers and Badger football and basketball (last night notwithstanding) over the past 20 or so years. A look on the museum site and on YouTube show plenty of Packer and Badger highlights from the ’90s, ’00s and ’10s. Reel-to-reel and 2-inch videotape from earlier decades make highlights more difficult to store, but then again between the ’60s and the ’90s the term “highlight” can only be applied loosely to most Packer and Badger seasons.
Two of the clips demonstrate the vagaries of the broadcasting business. The baseball section features Cecil Cooper’s two-run single that won the last game of the 1982 American League Championship Series, sending the Brewers to their first (and only so far) World Series.
The clip is from ABC-TV’s coverage, not the Brewers Radio Network. WTMJ radio has been the originating station for the Brewers network nearly every year since the Seattle Pilots headed east in 1970. But in 1981 and 1982, radio rights shifted from WTMJ to WISN. And in the custom since Uecker became the Brewers’ lead announcer in 1980 (and probably before then), the Brewers’ number two announcer, Dwayne Mosley, called the game-winning hit because he called the third, fourth and seventh innings. (As have Uecker’s other partners, Lorn Brown (who preceded Mosley), Pat Hughes (who succeeded Mosley), Jim Powell, Cory Provus and now Joe Block.) Mosley also got to call the final out because Uecker was in the Brewers’ clubhouse for the postgame celebration.
The other is the clip of the 1994 Rose Bowl, called by WTMJ radio’s Brian Manthey and former UW quarterback Randy Wright. Calling the Badgers’ first Rose Bowl in 31 years and their first Rose Bowl win was undoubtedly the highlight of Manthey’s and Wright’s UW careers. It also was the last game of Manthey’s and Wright’s UW careers, because broadcast rights shifted from WTMJ to Learfield Sports after the 1993 season. Learfield hired Matt Lepay (who had been doing UW basketball for WTMJ) and Mike Lucas to do both football and basketball.
My favorite part of the site so far (because history projects are always in the “so far” mode) is the UW men’s hockey section, particularly the 1973 and 1977 national championships. The hockey Badgers were the first UW men’s teams in my memory that, to put it bluntly, didn’t suck. The 1977 team arguably is the best in UW history, with four All-Americans — forwards Mike Eaves (yes, now the UW men’s coach) and Mark Johnson (yes, now the UW women’s coach), defenseman Craig Norwich and goaltender Julian Baretta — and a 37–7–1 record.
You have to play the clips of UW’s overtime Frozen Four wins — 35 years ago today, the semifinal win over New Hampshire 4–3 42 seconds into overtime …
Ready for that faceoff coming up, Mike Eaves and Alley and now Alley is saying something to, uh, or check it, over to Murray Johnson is out there now … and off the draw a SHOT AND A GOAL! Mike Eaves got the draw and he put it in the net! Mike Eaves got the draw and he put it in the net off the faceoff! The Badgers win it in overtime at the 9:18 mark! And the Badgers are out on the ice!
… and one night later the championship win over Michigan 6–5 23 seconds into overtime …
Mike Eaves in the faceoff circle, and the puck is dropped, Alley tried to pick it up, it’s loose along the boards. Alley down in the corner along with Mike Eaves and Tommy Ulseth. Here’s Ulseth skating in behind the net, Tommy tried to stuff it, a shot, knocked down, it’s loose AND A GOAL! THE BADGERS HAVE WON IT! Steve Alley got the winner! Steve Alley got the winner and the Badgers have won the NCAA! On the rebound the Badgers have won the NCAA! The Badgers are out on the ice, [team physician] Doc Clancy, and the fans! The Badgers have won their second NCAA, at the 9:37 mark of the overtime!
… to hear the undisguised joy in announcer Paul Braun’s voice. Unlike other parts of the country, Wisconsin sports listeners want announcers who actually sound like they want their teams to win. Announcer impartiality never became popular in the Midwest, and certainly not in Wisconsin. Braun called the Badgers’ 1977, 1981, 1983 and 1990 national championships, and now calls Badger games on Fox Sports Wisconsin. And during his radio days, listeners never had a problem figuring out which team had scored.
My other favorite is the Braves’ 1957 National League pennant-winning home run by Henry Aaron, called by the Braves’ Earl Gillespie:
The pitch to Henry Aaron … a swing and a drive back into center field! Going back towards the wall! It’s back at that fence! And is it gone or not? It’s a home run! The Braves are the champions of the National League! Henry Aaron just hit his 43rd home run of the year! … Holy cow!
I never met Earl, but I know his brother, nephew and great nephew, who coached or played for Ripon College. So I guess I feel a bit of an affinity for Earl’s work. (In part because for a number of years I was the unofficial Gillespie family announcer.)
The reality of such moments calls to mind Rudyard Kipling’s line from “If,” “If you can keep your head about you when all about you are losing theirs …” Since a radio announcer is the listener’s eyes and ears, the play-by-play guy can’t merely scream with abandon like the fans behind or below him, nor can he shut up and let the pictures speak for themselves, since there are no pictures. The play-by-play guy also may be competing with his partner (in Braun’s case, I believe it was Phil Mendel, the Dane County Coliseum public address announcer, a UW professor and a real character), which can be a problem for announcers that call slightly behind the action. (I have some experience in that.)
There are a couple of inaccuracies. The word “categories” is misspelled. (There’s a joke somewhere about broadcasters not needing to know how to spell.) The 1961 Packers clip starts with Chris Schenkel, the Giants’ announcer, before Lindsey Nelson (the listed announcer) comes on. (Schenkel, an Indianan, had a deeper voice than Nelson, a Tennessean.) A few announcers aren’t listed (Jim Simpson and Curt Gowdy of NBC on Super Bowl I)
It would be cool to see clips of the announcer most linked to the Glory Years Packers, CBS-TV’s Ray Scott. (Who was only seen on road games in Green Bay because NFL games were blacked out in home markets until 1974.) And one always wants to see and hear more, of course. The site could augment its UW basketball and football files with, in chronological order, a wild finish and a monumental upset both called by the late Jim Irwin.
Some high school basketball clips would be interesting, too. Two words: Lamont Weaver. Two more words: Sam Dekker:
And this really needs to be added to the 2006 hockey file:
(It’s too bad announcers Brian Posick and Rob Andringa weren’t more into their work that night, isn’t it?)
But the collection of history is always a work in progress. In order to maintain such a site, you need to have actual clips, and then you have to get the rights to use them. The first is often harder than the second; I suspect the reason you haven’t seen radio snippets of the Curly Lambeau/Don Hutson Packers is because they probably don’t exist. And there should be few ’70s and ’80s Packers and Badgers highlights because, well, there were few ’70s and ’80s highlights. (In 1988, for instance, the Badgers and Packers were a combined 5–22.)
The site is certainly off to an entertaining start.
At 7:35 p.m., La Follette tipped off against Stevens Point for the WIAA Class A boys basketball championship, before a packed UW Fieldhouse and a statewide television audience.
I played in this game. Trumpet, to be precise.
This was during a period in my life when it seemed as though all was right with the world, even though I probably didn’t appreciate that at the time. I was doing well (though not well enough according to my parents) in school, specifically enjoying three classes, Wind Ensemble, Journalism and Political Science. I was making the grand sum of $3.35 per hour busing tables at Bridgeman’s Ice Cream Parlour and Restaurant for 15 or so hours each week. That earned me enough money to put gas in the 1975 Chevrolet Caprice my mother and I shared, and go out on dates with my first girlfriend.
La Follette in the early 1980s was known as a basketball school. The Lancers won their first state championship in 1977, when they proved the adage that how you finish the season is much more important than how you start. La Follette had finished the regular season 10–8, with more than their share of close losses among those eight losses. But thanks to seemingly never missing shots from the field, the Lancers defeated Milwaukee Tech 55–48, Neenah 46–43 and Eau Claire Memorial 65–48 to win their first state title, setting state tournament records for shooting in the process.
Three years later, La Follette went back to state, led by Craig Anderson, who ended up playing basketball at Iowa. La Follette beat Oak Creek 59–54 but lost to Big Eight archrival Janesville Craig 60–52 in the semifinals. (La Follette and Craig split their two regular-season games, with the Lancers winning at La Follette on two free throws with five seconds left.)
Two years later, La Follette was part of a three-way tie for first place in the Big Eight Conference. (Which now has 10 schools but the same name, but never mind that.) The 1981–82 Lancers featured players I knew, some former boys volleyball teammates of mine. (I played basketball at La Follette for a few weeks as a freshman until I figured out that basketball wasn’t my sport. I played volleyball for two years until I figured out that wasn’t my sport either.)
Upon seeing this photo of Coach Pete Olson, one of my sons asked why he was mad. I had to tell him that this was pretty much the way he always looked.
The team was coached by La Follette’s original boys basketball coach, Pete Olson, who is held in such high regard today that he has his own Facebook page, though he probably doesn’t know he has his own Facebook page. (For Olson to know about Facebook would require that he first be dragged off whatever lake he’s fishing.)
The Lancers won their first regional game easily, then had to endure a nailbiting 64–62 win over Stoughton in a game I couldn’t go to because I had to work. Since high school games weren’t on the radio in Madison, I didn’t find out the result until fans from the game started coming in and remarked what a great game it was.
That nailbiting experience didn’t compare to what happened six days later, with La Follette hosting West in a sectional semifinal. Looking up the Wisconsin State Journal story on the game revealed my incomplete memory of the game. I had thought all these years that La Follette had trailed by nine points with 2:30 remaining and scored the last 10 points to win. The truth was more harrowing — La Follette trailed 59–51 with 90 seconds left. In the era before the three-point shot, that’s a four-possession lead unless you can compel your opponent to foul you while you hit a basket.
Helpfully, a three-point play by fellow Class of ’83 member Brad Thering cut the lead to 59–54. Rick Olson, over whom college basketball coaches were salivating because of his shooting range that started in the parking lot outside the gym, stole a pass and scored to cut the lead to 59–56. Right in front of the La Follette band, then, a West basket was disallowed for a foul on the rebound. Two more free throws by former La Follette White freshman teammate Steve Amundson cut the lead to 59–58.
By this time, the noise in the gym, which started incredibly loud, was in danger of knocking all the stuff on the walls, including the 1977 state championship megaplaque, off the walls. People were actually crying in the gym from the intensity of the moment, seconds from having your season end or getting a chance to go to state. The La Follette’s band’s contribution to the scene was frantically playing the school fight song (an original creation of La Follette’s first band director) and “You’ve Said It All,” the unofficial ban on which magically disappeared for the postseason. Our band director, who never got excited for games and saved his yelling for his band (as with all band directors), was barking at an official he apparently knew.
Mike Todd, who led West with 22 points, and La Follette’s Tom Luksich traded jumpers to set the score at 61–60. Derrien Jones hit two free throws to push West’s lead to 63–60, before Amundson rebounded his own miss to cut the lead to 63–62 with 17 seconds left. Then Scott Hogan (who had the same piano teacher with me) stole the ball and was fouled with 11 seconds left.
The people who seemed least bothered by all this were the La Follette players. Olson had specific rules for his team — short (by ’80s standards) hair, wear hats outside, and be in bed early. He also wanted his players to play on an even keel. There were none of the histrionics you see in high school games today upon big plays or fouls being called on incredulous players.
So as the walls in the gym were bowing outward from the pressure inside, Hogan stepped up to the free throw line, his career 11 seconds away from ending. Just when you thought the gym couldn’t get any louder, Hogan hit his first free throw to tie the game. Just when you thought the gym couldn’t get any louder, Hogan hit the second free throw to give La Follette the 64–63 lead. Five seconds later, a West player was called for traveling.
The fact that Luksich missed a free throw a few seconds later was academic because West had no time to do more than heave the ball in the general direction of the other basket. I doubt anyone heard the buzzer, because the floor instantly filled with screaming, celebrating La Follette fans (including one trumpet player who jumped onto the floor and then had to fight to get back into the band to, you know, play), dancing around dejected West players, whose season and in several cases high school careers ended abruptly.
The scene was wild enough for Don Lindstrom, a Wisconsin State Journal sportswriter who had previously covered approximately 11 million basketball games, to comment thereupon:
“I thought we had lost it,” yelled La Follette Coach Pete Olson amid postgame bedlam. “We worked so hard but I never thought we could do it. These kids are amazing.”
I saw Olson (who was my gym teacher that semester and my freshman year — the first teacher to ever give me an A for gym because he rewarded effort, so I decided to give effort) not long after the game. It was the first time I had ever seen him smile.
The sectional final game against Big Eight rival Sun Prairie the next night wasn’t as exciting or as well played. (And again not witnessed by me — damn work.) But La Follette beat Sun Prairie to get its third state berth in six seasons, and the second in my time at La Follette.
I remember looking at the state tournament bracket and thinking that things were working perfectly, and in more ways than one. In those days, the Class A quarterfinals were Thursday afternoon and evening, with the winners playing in the semifinals the next afternoon or evening. So the La Follette band headed to the Fieldhouse for the second afternoon quarterfinal against Milwaukee North, after the first quarterfinal between Brown Deer and Lake Geneva Badger. That meant no school Thursday afternoon, which meant my difficult algebra-trigonometry assignment due Thursday afternoon would be due Friday instead. (In 1980, because La Follette played in the evening session, we didn’t miss any school to go to the games, though Thursday and Friday ended with pep rallies instead of classes.)
La Follette beat Milwaukee North 65–61, which postponed the algebra-trig assignment to Monday. I thought that La Follette had lucked out as well because Brown Deer, which seemed like the better team in their quarterfinal, lost to Badger 50–48. Whether my assessment was right or not, that’s how it worked out, because the Lancers beat the Badger Badgers (really) 62–57 to go to the state championship.
On the other side of the bracket was undefeated and number-one-ranked Stevens Point, which beat South Milwaukee 51–43 Thursday night and then, while an ice storm raged outside, beat Shawano 39–38 Friday night. I watched that game on TV, which was interrupted in the middle of the frantic fourth quarter by the dramatic announcement that roads were so bad that fans should not try to head back to Stevens Point that night.
The next morning, members of the La Follette baseball teams, who were having preseason practice, were running through the hallways of La Follette when to their surprise they reached the Commons and found it full of basketball fans … from Stevens Point.
The Fieldhouse wasn’t usually full for the Class A championship game because it was just one game, not two (which means only two teams’ fans, not four, were at the game), and because Milwaukee teams had won the previous three Class A titles, and even then Milwaukee teams did not draw well. On this night, the Fieldhouse was filled to capacity.
This was one of those rare occasions for which no media hype was necessary — the season-long number-one-ranked team against a team that featured the state’s best player, Rick Olson, who was unrelated to his coach. Olson was one of three Lancers who would play Division I sports; he went to Wisconsin, as did Tim Jordan to play basketball, while Amundson played at Western Michigan. Stevens Point’s Jay Laszewski joined Olson at Wisconsin.
Not only was it a media-hype-unneeded game, it was an exceedingly well played game. Without a three-point shot, both teams ran their offense but didn’t merely sit on the basketball. Defense wasn’t as physical as it is now, which makes the game more watchable.
The other thing that stands out is the game’s remarkable free throw shooting. La Follette was 12 of 12 from the foul line. Stevens Point was 15 of 16. (And the TV color commentator said “And we should break the thumbs of the player who missed it, right?”, to which his partner, Marsh Shapiro, also owner of the Nitty Gritty bar, replied dubiously, “if you say so.”)
La Follette led at the half and after three quarters, and then Stevens Point took the lead early in the fourth quarter. I don’t know why we should have been surprised given the game eight days earlier, but the fourth quarter was like one long heart attack as Stevens Point’s lead shifted between one and three points. The band alternated among playing, cheering intensely, and riding the roller coaster of good things and bad things happening on the floor.
After an Olson steal, La Follette tried to call time out while Olson was draining a wing jumper to give the Lancers a 54–53 lead with 2:26 left. (I’m guessing coach Olson was OK with not having the time out called when he wanted it.) Laszewski hit two free throws with 1:55 left to put SPASH up 55–54. Olson hit another to put La Follette up 56–55 with 90 seconds left. Two more Laszewski free throws put Point back up 57–56. Olson drained another long jumper, the last of his 24 points, to put the Lancers back up 58–57 just before the one-minute mark. Bill Gifford hit a jumper to put SPASH up 59–58 with 45 seconds left.
Remember Scott Hogan, who hit the two free throws to win the sectional final? Olson drove the lane but instead of shooting fed Hogan underneath, and the last two points of his career put La Follette back up 60–59 with 30 seconds left. And then with 18 seconds left, Stevens Point’s Todd Barnes threw a pass over Laszewski, giving La Follette the ball and the lead.
Olson dribbled the ball and then passed to Amundson, who was fouled with 4 seconds left.
Amundson hit his two free throws, the last of his 24 points. The final basket at the buzzer left La Follette up 62–61 and lit up the opposite end of the Fieldhouse.
The win obviously belonged to the players, since they had practiced for four months and played to get there. Their photos are on the west wall of the La Follette gym. And yet the rest of us felt like we’d contributed too, including the cheerleaders …
Sir Lawrence Lancer, nickname not Fighting Bob.
… and of course the band:
Band sweater? Check. Paint hat (a La Follette tradition since the ’77 state team)? Check. Sunglasses at night? Check. Thirty years later, you’re reading the writing of this La Follette Band trumpet player.
After the game, Olson (interviewed by Ken Syke) allowed as to how winning state was “darn close” to the thrill of catching a 24-pound muskie. “We aren’t that good, but we certainly made a lot of believers here anyway this week … because we’re so competitive and because our kids work so hard. It’s really something when you can reward kids for this kind of hard work.”
Olson also tweaked Shapiro in a question about La Follette’s staying in the man-to-man defense by replying that the Lancers did play some zone — “Shapiro must have told you that because I don’t think he can recognize a zone from a man-to-man.” To that, Shapiro replied “He’ll never get a 40-pound muskie on that lake of his in Boulder” Junction.
The game was followed by a wild impromptu celebration in the La Follette Commons, where the stranded Stevens Point fans had stayed one night earlier. That was followed by a party at my girlfriend’s house. That was followed by a more formal celebration the following Monday afternoon, pushing back the dreaded algebra-trig assignment to Tuesday, one week after it was due.
The La Follette band moved from playing at state to our Wind Ensemble tour to Chicago. (About Wind Ensemble tours, all I’ll say: What happens on tour stays on tour.) Those of us La Follette juniors who went to St. Dennis Catholic Church got confirmed shortly thereafter, followed by the happy teenage ritual that is the Junior Prom. La Follette seniors, including most of the team and my girlfriend, graduated. It was a full semester, to say the least.
I wonder if Pete Olson and his players and assistant coaches realized the impact they had on the rest of their school. Coming from a high school of 2,000, I can say that I knew most of the players, but I wasn’t friends with any of them. A school the size of La Follette has room for plenty of groups; mine was the band, followed by those who worked on the student newspaper, the Lance. (Which, as you can imagine, covered state very well, thank you. It was a good semester to be the sports editor.) But with all our separate interests, for one week, most La Follette students had one thing in mind, and you’re reading the culmination of it 30 years later.
In the years since this, I’ve announced the games of two state champion football teams here in Ripon, covered three other state champion teams, and covered other teams that got to state. Being in the media, you’re an outsider, of course, although if you’re the local media you’re an invited outsider.
Stevens Point players and fans have different memories of this game, of course. And yet they discovered, and I later discovered, that as painful as losing at state is, it’s not the worst postseason game to lose. The worst postseason game to lose is the game before the state tournament (and I’ve covered those too), because everything you’ve done and accomplished fell tantalizingly short of getting to every player’s goal, the state tournament, whether in Madison or anywhere else. Losing at state beats not getting to state.
I’ve witnessed how a school that gets to state — particularly a small high school — goes all out at state, and not just the players. And it always gives me fond memories of the days when it seemed as my entire life depended on the outcome of a game I was playing in. Playing trumpet, that is.
The irony for fans of basketball in Wisconsin of this summer-like weekend is that many didn’t get to enjoy much of the summer-like weather.
Unless, that is, they had a portable TV or were able to watch the cornucopia of basketball on a laptop or mobile device. (Of course, the weather was still nice enough Sunday night after all the hoop-la ended to write a blog on his laptop sitting outside … until his meowing cat kept interrupting him and his laptop ran out of battery.)
Saturday was the technically-still-winter version of the weekendsthis past fall when the Badgers were marching toward the Big Ten football title and the Packers were headed toward the best record in the NFL. (Which prompted a UW Marching Band alumnus to describe things appropriately: “Fear the beer!”) To wit:
The Badgers beat Vanderbilt 60–57 to clinch their second consecutive Sweet 16 slot, which has never happened before in program history.
UW–Green Bay, having been royally screwed by the NCAA women’s basketball tournament selection committee, had the last laugh by beating Iowa State 71–57 in Ames in the first round of the women’s tournament.
UW–Whitewater beat Cabrini 63–60 won the NCAA Division III men’s basketball tournament.
And on a non-basketball note, St. Norbert beat Oswego State 4–1 to win the NCAA Division III men’s hockey tournament.
Even no-longer-Wisconsinites did well. Indiana, coached by former Marquette coach Tom Crean, defeated Virginia Commonwealth, coached by Oregon native Shaka Smart. Milwaukee native Rick Majerus’ Saint Louis won one game before losing Sunday.
Proving that the weekend wasn’t perfect, Wisconsin lost the NCAA Division I women’s hockey tournament to Minnesota 4–2 Sunday afternoon, the second time UW lost the national championship after having one of its players, defenseman Brianna Decker, win the Patty Kazmeier Award as the nation’s best college women’s hockey playe.. On the other hand, the Milwaukee Wave, the best Wisconsin professional team no one’s heard of, beat Baltimore 12–10 in overtime to win the Major Indoor Soccer League title.
Almost lost in the college March Madness was the high school March Madness, the WIAA boys’ basketball tournament. The highlight of Championship Saturday was the finish of the Division 5 championship between Sheboygan Lutheran and Racine Lutheran:
After the awarding of the gold trophy, Dekker was named the state’s Mr. Basketball, an award determined before state. It’s a good think Dekker appears to like playing at the Kohl Center, since he’ll playing for the at-least-sweet-16 Badgers next season.
In the UW alumni band bracket, I have all four East Region teams (#1 Syracuse, #2 Ohio State, #4 Wisconsin and #6 Cincinnati), two of the South Region teams (#1 Syracuse and #3 Baylor), two of the Midwest Regiona teams (#1 North Carolina and #2 Kansas), and one West Region team (#1 Ohio State) left. All four Final Four teams remain, which is good.
In the Efficiency bracket, I have all four East teams, three Midwest teams (North Carolina, Kansas and #13 Ohio), and one each from the South (Kentucky) and West (Michigan State). I picked one 15-over-2 upset right (Lehigh over Duke), but not the other (Norfolk State over Missouri), which is why I’m missing one Final Four team.
The thrill of still having all four Final Four teams in one pool and three in the other, part of getting nine of the Sweet 16 correct (which means you picked at least 18 games correctly) is moderated by the fact that nine of 16 is a slightly better ratio than could be expected from flipping a coin 16 times. Which is why I wait until after the games to check my brackets, because the fire of a thrilling game is drowned by having the team you picked lose, if you take the brackets too seriously. (I’m tied for 22nd out of 40 with the Efficiency bracket, and I have 38 out of a possible 64 points in 1590624.)
The reality of won-or-done tournaments, of course, is that ecstasy can be replaced by agony one game later. UWGB plays Kentucky Monday at 8:45 p.m. on ESPN2. Wisconsin plays number-one-seed Syracuse in Boston Thursday at 6:15 p.m., with the great Verne Lundquist and Bill “Onions!” Raftery calling the game for CBS. Marquette plays seventh-seed Florida Thursday at 9:17 p.m., with Wisconsin native Kevin Harlan, Reggie Miller and Len Elmore on the call for TBS.
Yes, Wisconsin has made the NCAAs every year since 1997 and every year in coach Bo Ryan’s UW career. But this is an anomaly in UW basketball history; the 1947–94 desert of tournament appearances is more normal, and many of those tournament seasons featured a stay so brief one wondered why one bothered. That’s why, as with football this past fall, Badger fans need to appreciate what’s happening right now.
If you like basketball, this truly is the most wonderful time of the year.
Basketball fans watching on TV probably would prefer not just a previous-channel button on their TVs, but several of them, to go among CBS, TBS, TNT and truTV on the NCAA men’s basketball tournament as well as the channels carrying the state high school boys basketball tournament. The tournaments are best watched at a sports bar, where you can watch multiple TVs and thus follow all five games while enjoying your bacon cheeseburger and your favorite deep-fried carbohydrate product.
This time of year gives me flashbacks to one of the most memorable moments of my life, my high school’s trip to state my junior year, a point where it appeared to me as though all was right with the world. (More on that Tuesday.)
We owned the newspaper in Cuba City for a year and half, which coincided nicely with one of the Cubans’ several state basketball championships. (That came to mind because Lomira, which ended Ripon’s girls season Thursday, last went to state in 1993, where the Lions lost to … Cuba City.)
For those who wonder why a city 1,000 miles from Cuba is called Cuba City: The railroad station that became Cuba City originally was called Western, then was changed to Yuba. That lasted until someone pointed out that there was another Yuba not far from there. So the word “City” was added, and that lasted until someone pointed out the existence of Yuba City, Calif. So William H. Goldthorpe, postmaster, state representative, local band leader and 64-year-owner of what became the Tri-County Press (which is the merger of five newspapers in Cuba City, Hazel Green and Benton — we purchased the newspaper from his son), changed the name from Yuba City to Cuba City.
Cuban fans had a difficult decision to make Thursday thanks to questionable WIAA scheduling: Do they go to Madison for the state semifinal against Oshkosh Lourdes at 6:35 p.m., or do they go to Waunakee for the girls sectional semifinal against Deerfield at 7 p.m.? (The WIAA used to shift start times of pre-state games in cases of conflicts between a high school’s boys and girls games, but apparently can’t be bothered to do that anymore.)
Fortunately, the Cubans prevailed in each — the boys hammered Lourdes 72–27 while the girls beat Deerfield 58–48. So if you’re a true Cuban fan who is not staying in Madison, after gassing up the minivan in Cuba City or Dickeyville, you’ll be heading east on U.S. 151 back to Madison to see the Cubans play Whitefish Bay Dominican around 12:45 p.m. to see the Cubans try to complete an undefeated season and give Coach Jerry Petitgoue, the winningest high school basketball coach in the state of Wisconsin, his fourth state title.
(The Cubans also may have some kind of record when the Division 4 final tips off; Dominican will be the Cubans’ third consecutive private school opponent, after their sectional final win over Onalaska Luther Saturday and their state semifinal win over Lourdes.)
After the Cubans get their trophy (gold if they win, silver if they lose), Cuban fans will either celebrate their title or reflect on what a great season it was, but not for long, since they’ll have to jump back into the vans and head northward to Interstate 90 and the girls sectional final against undefeated Neillsville at Mauston High School at 7 p.m., while listening to the Badgers take on Vanderbilt in their NCAA game in Albuquerque at 5:10 p.m.
This scrambling around is hard on your schedule, but memorable after the fact. (One March Saturday in the late 1980s featured, in chronological order, (1) the state boys gymnastics championships in Madison in the morning, followed by (2) a girls sectional final in Reedsburg in the afternoon followed by (3) a boys regional final back in Madison that evening. Six years, three jobs and one marriage later, we topped that by, in chronological order, (1) my heading to Darlington for a girls gymnastics sectional, then (2A) to Monroe for a boys regional final while (2B) Jannan went to a different regional final, then (3) we met at Sauk Prairie for the girls sectional final.)
The Wisconsin State Journal’s Barry Adams senses a whiff of nostalgia in Madison’s unusually warm air, given that the state tournaments may be moving from Madison to Green Bay as early as next season:
You could win a state high school championship in any city in Wisconsin. All you need is the right facility. …
But you can’t replicate in Green Bay what took place Thursday with the WIAA boys state basketball tournament in Madison.
Just ask Maria O’Shaughnessy, 16, and Lacey McNaughton, 17, the student managers for the Drummond boys basketball team.
Prior to their team getting clobbered by Racine Lutheran, the juniors, who endured a five hour bus drive Wednesday to get here, feasted on french fries and chicken fingers in the concourse of the Kohl Center and talked about trips to East Towne Mall, Prime Quarter Steak House and Olive Garden. Friday, they plan to explore State Street in what is their first trip to the Capitol city since a sixth grade field trip.
“This is a big deal for us,” said Lacey.
“It would still be pretty amazing (in Green Bay) but nothing compares to Madison,” added Maria.
We won’t know until likely next month if the boys’ and girls’ tournaments are headed to the Resch Center in Green Bay but the atmosphere surrounding Thursday’s action was stunning, punctuated by unseasonable 80-degree weather.
Badgers recruit Sam Dekker can score 35 points in any gym, including the Resch Center, but the sparkling arena across the street from Lambeau Field simply can’t provide the options available in the state’s second largest city.
This is where food carts on State Street Mall, three blocks from the Kohl Center, sold an international selection of lunch fare including Indonesian, Jamaican and Latin soul food. Nearby, Michael Arms beautifully sang for tips while musicians up the street played drums and guitar. The outdoor beer garden at State Street Brats was full, and cafes had their street seating in full operation. There’s the Memorial Union, Bascom Hill and dozens of shops along State Street, which of course terminates at the state Capitol. All of this within a short walk from center court. …
But unless scheduling conflicts can be worked out at the Kohl Center, basketball fans next year will be chowing down hamburgers at Kroll’s West instead of the Nitty Gritty, learning about Lambeau and not the state Capitol and sipping microbrews at Titletown Brewing Co. rather than at the Great Dane or Capitol Tap Haus.
Tourism officials in Madison estimate the move would cost hotels, bars, restaurants and other businesses about $9 million in lost revenue. But it also would be a loss for state basketball players and fans.
Since I avoid directly discussing politics in this space on Fridays, I will refrain from suggesting that visiting the shrine of pro football is a more productive use of time than going to the nest of dysfunction and overtaxing, overregulating, overcontrolling, politics-as-a-profession-which-the-Founding-Fathers-never-intended state Capitol. The Cuban sprint from state to sectional would be at least more difficult, and perhaps impossible, with state in Green Bay because of its distance. As I’ve pointed out, while neither Madison nor Green Bay are close to the geographic center of the state, Madison is closer to the population center of the state than Green Bay. State trips to Green Bay therefore will be longer trips in an era of, if Barack Obama gets reelected, gas prices heading toward the cost of a two-game-session state tournament ticket. (That’s $10, by the way.)
There also remains the possibility that the state basketball tournaments won’t be on free TV after leaving Madison. The originating station for the network is in Madison, not Green Bay, and with two exceptions has carried state every year since 1970. Wisconsin is the only state where the complete state tournaments — not just the title games but the semifinals too, from Thursday afternoon to Saturday night — can be viewed on free TV.
Broadcasters rent, not own, equipment for events such as state tournaments, since they only happen a few times a year. But none of the four stations that have originated the state tournaments for nearly 40 years are in Green Bay. Quincy Newspapers, the owner of the stations, may see state as either too much hassle or not enough profit if they’re not in one of their own markets. Would Journal Communications, which owns WGBA-TV in Green Bay and WTMJ-TV in Milwaukee and operates WACY-TV in Green Bay, or Gray Television, which owns stations in Madison, Eau Claire and Wausau and is managing WBAY-TV in Green Bay because WBAY’s owner is, uh, bankrupt, pick up state? Call me skeptical. (No CBS station will carry state since CBS has the NCAA basketball tournament.)
Fox Sports Wisconsin, which carries other state tournaments, certainly could carry state basketball. But Fox Sports Wisconsin carries only the state football championship games live; all of their other high school state events are on tape-delay or online. (Online TV, the quality of which is dependent on your Internet connection and the speed of your computer, is a not-quite-here-yet technology.) And if Fox Sports carries state basketball, it can’t carry postseason college hockey, since unlike many markets, Wisconsin doesn’t have a second Fox Sports channel. And of course if you don’t have the right cable or satellite package, you can’t see Fox Sports at all.
Change is inevitable, but positive change is not. That may be the theme of this and next weekend in Madison.
Because I can laugh at myself, I present my two brackets for the NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament, which started Tuesday but gets going for real later this morning.
Which I guess makes me, according to the New York Times …
You combine favorites with underdogs that you carefully selected based upon their strength of schedule, assist-to-turnover ratio and the expert opinions of the other message board posters at UnhealthyHoopsObsession.com. Your bracket is the product of 36 hours of painstaking research; you took breaks only to rank players 300 through 770 for your nine fantasy baseball drafts. …
Data are your friends, perhaps your only friends. You understand that the purpose of a tournament pool is not to add zest to your basketball-watching experience or promote water cooler bonding, but to gain the 0.07 percent advantage over your co-workers that comes from turning a small diversion into a life-consuming chore. You believe co-workers admire your ability to steer all break-room conversations away from movies, family and life’s pleasures and toward Baylor’s R.P.I. rating. All the effort was worthwhile, however, when you finished tied for sixth in the pool in 2003, winning $56 and gloating for two days before beginning your research for the next year’s pool.
(The 36-hour estimate is about 18 times too long, and only that long because of my slow laptop. I don’t play fantasy sports other than imagining myself catching touchdown passes for the Packers or replacing Prince Fielder at first place for the Brewers.)
The first bracket, for a contest involving alumni of the University of Wisconsin Marching Band, was picked based on some concepts listed earlier this week from Luke Winn of Sports Illustrated.
This bracket is largely based on a composite of four national rankings Winn listed, with the higher ranked team winning. There are six first-round upsets in this one — #9 Connecticut over #8 Iowa State, #11 Colorado over #6 UNLV in the South, #13 Davidson over #4 Louisville and #10 Virginia over #7 Florida in the West, #11 Texas over #6 Cincinnati in the East, and #11 North Carolina State over #6 San Diego State in the Midwest. And I wouldn’t call it exactly daring to pick three number one seeds and a number two to reach the Final Four.
If a theme other than rankings dominates in this bracket, it’s the importance of defense. This bracket tends to discount the highly ranked teams not known for their defense, such as Missouri and Duke. Perhaps that explains why Wisconsin, which has been unusually inconsistent this year, and yet leads the country in points allowed per game, goes to the Sweet 16.
The next bracket is for a contest I’ve been in since I worked at Marian University:
This bracket was spurred by the statistics of offensive and defensive efficiency — points scored and given up, respectively, per possession. The efficiency statistic measures production taking out the effects of tempo. Basketball fans know that the faster tempo a team plays, the more points it will score and give up (exhibit A: Grinnell, perennially first in the Midwest Conference in offense and last in defense), and the reverse applies for such slow-paced teams as, well, nearly everyone in the Big Ten, particularly Wisconsin.
I simply matched the 60 teams (not including the eight First Four teams that played Tuesday and Wednesday) by subtracting their defensive efficiency from their offensive efficiency, and whichever team had the higher number was that game’s winner. Some would suggest defensive efficiency is more important than offensive efficiency, but I decided to weigh each the same.
This one has more fun upsets. If my formula is right, prepare to meet the Lehigh Mountain Hawks, which I have not just pulling off the fifth 15-vs.-2 upset in NCAA history, but reaching the South Regional final. I also have 14th-seed South Dakota State beating third-seed Baylor and then sixth-seed UNLV, 14th-seed Belmont beating third-seed Georgetown (and like Lehigh getting all the way to the regional final), another Davidson upset of Louisville, 12th seed Harvard beating fifth-seed Vanderbilt, plus 13th seed Ohio upsetting fifth-seed this weekend.
It is interesting to note that both approaches came up with three of the same Final Four teams — Kentucky, North Carolina and Ohio State — and the same champion, Kentucky. The Old Farts bracket has Kentucky beating Michigan State and North Carolina beating Ohio State, and then the Wildcats triumphing over the Tar Heels. The Efficiency bracket has Kentucky beating Missouri and Ohio State beating North Carolina, and then the Wildcats beating the Buckeyes.
It is also interesting to note that using either system with no rooting interest, Wisconsin beats Montana and then either Vanderbilt or Harvard to get to the Sweet 16. That demonstrates the value of defense, boring though it may be to watch.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 