Sunday night’s NFC Championship game was one of the most entertaining games I’ve seen, but:
Adrian Peterson, obviously, has some serious fumbling issues. I love watching him play, and he runs angry, but I’m afraid he’s going to fumble his way to the bench if he keeps it up. Plus, Chester Taylor has proved himself as adequate enough to spell AP.
Adrian Peterson lost six fumbles during the regular season — and two more in the NFC Championship game.
Those overtime booth reviews really slowed the game down. I know both the NFL and MLB have taken steps toward giving officials/umpires more tools to ensure correct calls are made, but at what cost? I’m not sure an NFL game needs to last four hours. That said, the popularity of the NFL seems indestructible.
As I wrote in today’s paper, I found myself rooting for Brett Favre for the first time in my life. Hard to believe the 40-year-old has never missed a game.
The Kankakee Community College basketball teams are currently having banner seasons. The men’s team is 20-2 and ranked No. 13 while the women’s team is 19-1 and ranked No. 4. Perhaps we’ll be bringing home some national tournament hardware this season.
Since being eliminated from the 2005-06 NCAA Tournament, the University of Illinois men’s basketball team is 29-30 in Big Ten Conference play and 0-2 in the Tournament. Now, after a loss to Northwestern over the weekend, the Illini are in danger of missing the Big Dance again. Is it time for a coaching change?
I have lots of random sports thoughts, most of which are never developed enough to produce a full story/blog post on their own. But sometimes I think they are good enough to be voiced. I’ll let you be the judge of that, but here’s what I’m thinking about right now. Mostly basketball thoughts today:
• I was curious what kind of impact veteran boys’ basketball coach Joe Gura would have at Bishop McNamara Catholic High School. He coached at the lower levels last year before taking over the program’s varsity team this season. Senior point guard Derek O’Connor is a nice player and the Irish played well enough to beat Herscher on Friday, a game I watched at Olivet Nazarene University. So far, Gura’s results have been good: The program that hasn’t had a season over .500 in 10 years is off to a 3-1 start. I like that the coach is stressing defense, too.
• I was sad to see Roger Burlison, the former basketball standout, passed away over the weekend. Burlison played at Bradley-Bourbonnais Community High School and Kankakee Community College before moving on to Belmont University in Tennessee. I’m working on a column about Burlison for the Weekend Edition.
• It seems like a teachers’ strike is possible in the Kankakee school district. A strike would certainly have an effect on Kankakee High School’s athletics: If students aren’t in school, after-school athletic contests can’t be played. It happened at Ottawa Township High School this year. If the teachers strike, what does this mean for the annual Kankakee Holiday Tournament, scheduled to be held the week following Christmas? We’ll know more in the coming days.
Tonight I’ll be in Wilmington for the Wildcats’ high school football season opener against Manteno.
Wilmington, ranked No. 5 in Class 3A, has to be considered the favorite. The Wildcats topped Manteno 40-6 last year, and playing at Wilmington — especially on opening night — can be daunting for any team.
Even if Manteno loses, it could be a valuable experience for the Panthers. The game should be a good measuring stick for coach R.J. Haines’ team, which might not face a better team all season.
Today, the USA Today published its All-USA boys’ and girls’ high school track team. Of 101 athletes to make the team, just two were from Illinois — Mahomet Seymour senior Danielle Bunch (49-10.5 in the shot put) and Lincoln-Way Central freshman Lukas Verzbickas (8:53.98 in the 2 miles).
Considering the number of high schools in Illinois, two seems like a low number. Is there any significance to this?
I wonder if spring weather in the Midwest has anything to do with it. Our typically cold, wet springs certainly affect high school and college sports like baseball. College baseball teams in Illinois has less success than teams from southern states, and fewer pro prospects come out of the Midwest. And while many of the track athletes on USA Today’s list are from states like California, Texas and New York, Wisconsin, Indiana and Michigan has just one representative each.
I realize each state’s population is a contributing factor, too, but Illinois’ population is the fifth-highest in the U.S, Michigan is No. 8., and both Indiana and Wisconsin are in the top 20.
Any ideas about Chicago Bears training camps stories with a local angle? Do you know someone who is somehow involved with the camp? Which types of stories would you like to see in The Daily Journal? We’re only two weeks away …
The Chicago Bears will be here in about three weeks. But will we be saying that at this time next year?
Recently, The Daily Journal has reported that Romeoville — Lewis University, in particular — is trying to lure the Bears’ training camp away from Olivet Nazarene University.
If it happened, I think most fans would overlook the economic impact this would have on the community. Sure, you’d miss seeing Jay Cutler and Brian Urlacher, but T.J.’s, the popular bar across the street from ONU, would, too.
To my knowledge, there hasn’t been a study done to quantify the Bears’ impact on local businesses in their eight years here. But when the Bears were in Platteville, Wis., the University of Wisconsin did a study. It says the camp injected nearly $1.5 million of new money into the county’s economy — and that was based on a yearly attendance of 42,000, about half of Olivet’s attendance.
I’m sure there are differences in the Platteville community and our community, but it’s reasonable to believe that if the Bears left Bourbonnais, we’d be measuring the loss in the millions.
6-16 thru 6-21 | Boston, New York, Washington D.C.
I apologize for this post not being as timely as it should be. Our Internet access during the second part of our trip was spotty at best, and I’ve been swamped with work-related thing since we’ve been back.
In Monday’s paper, I wrote a column summarizing what I learned from the trip. I’ll paste that below.
Boston was my favorite stop on the trip. Fenway Park is by far my favorite park. So much history, and the fans areinto the games and into the team without being obnoxious.
Visiting New York City for the first time was a cool experience, but I couldn’t see myself living there for any length of time. Too many people, too crowded, too expensive. New Yankee Stadium is just OK … I expected more for $1.5 billion. Citi Field, on the other hand, was impressive. I like the design. The press box experience was cool, too.
Didn’t stay in D.C. for very long, so we didn’t get a chance to do much sightseeing. The Nationals’ stadium, also brand new, was very nice, but no one goes to the games. Very few people there for a Saturday night, and when the game went to extra innings, half of those in attendance left. They missed Willie Harris’ 12th-inning, walk-off home run!
Right now, I’m working on a few baseball tour stories for the paper. Anything specific you’d like to read about?
Here’s Monday’s column:
Last week, some colleagues, friends and I returned from what was my second baseball road trip in three years. While I have a hard time imagining a better vacation, eight games and two halls of fame in 10 days — all while traveling the East Coast six deep in a rusty van on its last legs — makes for an exhausting expedition. I felt like I needed a vacation from my vacation.
However, after spending last week recharging my batteries and getting caught up at work, I feel like I’m back in the swing of things. Over the next week or two, we’re going to be writing about our experience. In the meantime, though, here are a few things I learned during our travels:
• The Residence Inn in Cleveland must have the best free breakfast east of the Mississippi.
• The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, also in Cleveland, didn’t live up to the standards I had set. I did see the late Michael Jackson’s glove, but the museum seemed a bit unorganized, and I was mad they didn’t allow pictures.
• The fine people of Pittsburgh don’t mind if half your van’s exhaust falls off in the middle of their streets. They also don’t care much about the Pirates, especially the day after their Penguins won the Stanley Cup.
• They sound like the greatest thing since sliced bread, but the all-you-can-eat bleacher seats at PNC Park aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. Call me the morning after you eat three hot dogs and nachos with cheese, and I’ll tell you I told you so.
• Toronto is a very clean city with very few fans. And the few that go to Blue Jays’ games are very quiet, like they are in church, rather than at a ballgame.
• The Rogers Centre’s chicken gyro, which can be found at the right-field grill, is something to write home about.
• My Visa card applies a service charge when you use it to pay with another currency. It’s small, but it would have been nice to know before crossing the border.
• Border patrol asks a lot of questions.
• You need to make a trip to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., ASAP. No excuses.
• Fenway Park in Boston is by far the best park I’ve visited.
• The portrait on a bottle of Sam Adams beer is actually Paul Revere, not Adams, according to a tour guide on the Freedom Trail in Boston.
• Our hotel in Boston, the Boston Hotel Buckminster, was where Chicago White Sox’s Chick Gandil agreed to fix the 1919 World Series.
• New York City is crowded and smelly. And expensive.
• The New York Yankees’ new $1.5 billion stadium — the most expensive stadium in the world, says Wikipedia — is just OK. You couldn’t see half the field from our bleacher seats (before we moved behind home plate). Pass.
• The New York Mets’ new stadium, on the other hand, is great. The overhang on the right-field bleachers, a la Tiger Stadium, is a nice touch.
• Despite a brand-new, top-notch stadium, no one goes to Washington Nationals’ games.
• Somewhere in Delaware, we passed what appeared to be a headquarters for Sallie Mae, the student loan company. Perhaps if she didn’t have all my money, I could go on road trips like this more often.
**
Four members of The Daily Journal’s sports staff — Caleb Benoit, Steve Soucie, Becky Slingerland and Allan Scarabello — and a couple of friends are journeying on a 10-day East Coast road trip that features stops at as many Major League Baseball stadiums as possible. They are documenting their travels as they go on this blog. Unless, of course, they end up in prison, where there is likely no Internet access. You can also follow them on Twitter @calebbenoit.
Internet access has been spotty, but we’re able to get a connection here, outside of Cooperstown.
Finished up in Cleveland on Friday by going to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Overall, I was a tad disappointed. I thought there would be more “stuff,” like artifacts. I also thought it would be more interactive. Wouldn’t that be the perfect place for some kind of Rock Band-like exhibit where you and your friends could strap on some real instruments and make some music? Just a thought. And why was there no Led Zeppelin memorabilia to be found? That said, it was worth the trip. Some of my favorites included John Lennon’s handwritten lyric sheet for “All My Life” and Frank Beard’s fuzzy drums from ZZ Top’s Afterburner tour.
We left Cleveland in time to make several stops in Pittsburgh, including an old, out-of-service stadium that, according to trip historian Steve Soucie, was the site Negro League games when the teams couldn’t play at Forbes Field. Speaking of Forbes Field, a portion of the outfield brick wall still stands in the middle of the University of Pittsburgh’s campus. Soucie also tells us that Babe Ruth hit the final home run of his career at Forbes.
We also lost part of the van’s exhaust and dragged it past Carnegie Mellon before running it over. That was classy.
At PNC, we sat in the all-you-can-eat section of the outfield. Three hot dogs and an order of nachos with cheese later, I realized that eating simply the food is free isn’t always the best idea. And while sitting among a bunch of Tigers fans, the Pirates dominated.
That night, I drove until 4 a.m., when we finally arrived in Toronto. Few fans actually came to the game on Sunday, but the roasted chicken gyro from the market in right field was pretty good. The Marlins were also pretty good and sent most of the Blue Jays’ fans home early.
Becky Slingerland then brought us back across the border and into New York. We stayed in Utica for the night, then took off for Cooperstown this morning. This was the second time I’ve visiting the Hall of Fame — but my first time at the Hall’s research library. I could spend an entire week in there. I pulled the files for several players, including Lou Gehrig, my favorite player of all time, and Josh Gibson. I even ordered reprints of a couple rare photos I liked. If you’re a baseball fan and enjoy the history of the game, you have to make it to Cooperstown at least once.
Off to Boston tomorrow morning. Still unable to post photos …
**
Four members of The Daily Journal’s sports staff — Caleb Benoit, Steve Soucie, Becky Slingerland and Allan Scarabello — and a couple of friends are journeying on a 10-day East Coast road trip that features stops at as many Major League Baseball stadiums as possible. They are documenting their travels as they go on this blog. Unless, of course, they end up in prison, where there is likely no Internet access. You can also follow them on Twitter @calebbenoit.
Lesson No. 1: conversion van + downtown Cleveland + construction = not a good start to the trip.
The headache, however, was short-lived. After a few laps around Cleveland, the first stop on our trip, driver Allan Scarabello was finally able to find parking lot that could accommodate the size of our van.
Progressive Field, formerly Jacobs Field, is just a few blocks from our hotel. Our seat were down the right-field line, just on the foul side of the foul pole, which provided a pretty good view one the sun ducked below the huge scoreboard about the bleachers in left field.
On ’80s night, the host Indians topped the Cardinals 7-3, but the two highlights were Albert Pujols’ home run — a screaming line drive into the bleachers — and the postgame fireworks show, which was shown against a backdrop of “Sweat Dreams (Are Made of This)” and “Jump.” The fireworks were impressive. Souc also enjoyed the Duran Duran videos shown on the big screen.
For some reason, my laptop won’t recognize my digital camera, so I can’t post photos from the game tonight. Hopefully I can figure it out by the time we get to Pittsburgh tomorrow.
**
Four members of The Daily Journal’s sports staff — Caleb Benoit, Steve Soucie, Becky Slingerland and Allan Scarabello — and a couple of friends are journeying on a 10-day East Coast road trip that features stops at as many Major League Baseball stadiums as possible. They are documenting their travels as they go on this blog. Unless, of course, they end up in prison, where there is likely no Internet access. You can also follow them on Twitter @calebbenoit.
