My Challenge to MTSU

In recent years student attendance has been up tremendously at Football games.  As a matter of fact, every game this year has had a nearly full student section.  Sadly the same cannot be said for basketball.  To be frank, the basketball attendance last year was embarrassing.  There was one sellout, which was against UT, and and a good quarter of the crowd was wearing orange. The biggest crowd of the year besides UT was a double header for Mardi Gras night and more people were there to dress up like hammered fools (some weren't "dressing up" for the hammered part) than to support their team.  In our biggest game against our biggest rival against Western Kentucky we had 20 people in the student section. This year, let's change that.

We have a Men's team budding with potential, one with one of the best players in the conference in Desmond Yates.  "Boogie" was the pre-season player of the year last year but was slowed by nagging injuries and was stuck playing out of position all year because of an injury to Theryn Hudson.  This year Theryn is back and Boogie is healthy.  By the end of the year King Boogie I could not only be that, the homecoming king, but also MTSU's all-time leading scorer.  On top of Boogie, Theryn, Calvin O'Neil, and a few other returning players (including Montario Haddock who I think will have a breakout year) are some new editions that I'm incredibly high on.  Last year was a struggle at Point Guard after Nigel Johnson got hurt.  Nigel graduated and the man taking his place is one of the most exciting players in the Sun Belt.  James Washington is quick, fast, can shoot, and is highly intelligent.  Coach Davis plans to use his speed to the max, running constantly making for an exciting brand of basketball.  Someone who should benefit from this is fellow JuCo transfer Rod Emanuel.  Rod is a slick scorer with a sweet shot who should be the starting two-guard to open the year.

On the Women's side, we have one of the best players in the country in Alysha Clark.  If you haven't seen her play, what the hell are you waiting for?  She can do quite literally everything.  She can score inside and outside, she rebounds, and is a tremendous athlete.  She also is a versatile defender and a tremendous leader.  Speaking of tremendous leaders, Chelsia Lymon is an ideal point guard.  Lymon was the 08-09 Sun Belt Defensive player of the year and in the second half of the scrimmage Monday was a highlight real at the offensive end.  Jackie Pickel and Anne Marie Lanning are back and have greatly improved their games as all-around players.  Brandi Brown is also back and her shot is in mid-season form.  Emily Queen and Dana Garret should also contribute off the bench as they did last year and you can also expect Tina Stewart to see significant playing time.  All of these girls are tremendous players and even better people off the court.  They play a beautiful brand of basketball and execute it to perfection.

So here's my challenge: let's have at least a 50% full student section at every game.  I realize that basketball games aren't always as convenient to go to as football games, but filling up half of a section in a school with 24,000 undergrads isn't too much to ask.  We can do this people.  Coach Insell and Coach Davis are putting a good product on the floor.  Come watch. I was talking to Coach Insell recently and said how much fun I had going to practice and covering his program, he immediately interrupted me and said "No, no.  It's not my program.  It's our program."

Sports Are Weird

Sports are unique in oh so many different ways from any other form of business. Where else in the world do the workers (the players) make more than the managers (the coaches and GM's)? And in what other line of work do the managers get fired when the workers don't perform? But with the NBA trade deadline now behind us I would like to examine another quirk of sports: in no other line of business can you get transferred and not have a say in where you move and if you move at all?

Now I realize that people get transferred in business all the time. This occurred recently to a family friend of mine when the business he worked for merged with a Canadian business and thus he and his family now live north of the border. The difference between this situation and sports though is there are no other options. If the Johnsons had wanted to stay in Greenville (where I'm from) they could have. Joe could have taken a job else where with another company doing a similar job. However he liked the company he was with so he stayed and in doing so left. In sports that's not an option. When Shawn Marion was traded to Toronto he couldn't say, "No thanks, I really like the weather here" and stay in Miami to play basketball elsewhere in south Florida. He simply had to pack his bags and head to Toronto.

I'm very torn on whether I'm ok with this or not. On one hand you have the other people involved in this, the players families. Its hard enough for the players to go out on the road and devote endless hours to be the top players in the world while still being a good dad (or mom) at home. In the NFL it's slightly easier because teams are home during the week and only have 8 road game per year. However in the NBA and MLB, players are on the road for 41 and 81 games a year respectively. Add in travel days and off days where the team is just on the road and that's a lot of days away from home. Then there's the aspect we're actually talking about here and that's the trade. If a team trades a player he typically doesn't have warning it's going to happen and if he does he still typically doesn't know where he'll wind up. He can't go and find a house in his new home city, he has to continue playing. Thus the family typically stays in the old city for the time being and the player is now constantly away from his family.

Although that doesn't sit well with me, I'm still OK with the entire trade process for one reason: money. Athletes say it all the time about sports: it's a business. Moves are made for on and off the court reasons and neither one takes in to the account how much nicer the weather is in Miami than Toronto. Professional athletes get paid insane amounts of money and they know when they sign up to make that money that they have to sacrifice a few things, including some family time and stability. And since they agree to that, the concept of a trade is ok with me.

Plain and simple: sports are weird. There is no other business that is operated more in the public eye or any other business that is more accountable to its customers. We as fans love our sports and in turn love our athletes. We just sometimes forget that they're people. People, myself included, say they hate athletes all the time, most of whom we've never met. So let's try to remember that these people are in fact people. And when they get traded they're not merely business objects, they are living, breathing human beings who now must adjust to a new work place, new co-workers, and a new way of doing things. So Shawn Marion, I gotcha. I realize you're human. Oh and if you decide to take a side trip to Montreal, tell the Johnsons I say "Hi."