I love time-travel movies.  Part of it is the thought of  ‘what might it be like’ when skipping ahead into the future.  The nostalgia of rewinding into the past definitely is fun.   Experiencing an ‘alternate universe’ always gets the brain thinking.  And those ‘fish out of water’ moments are either hilarious, painful, or both.  Though Martin Lawrence makes it work pretty well in this scene from The Black Knight.

While trying to remember of my favorite time travel movies, I came across this Top 50 Time Travel Movies Countdown.

So I might as well get further off my original game plan for this blog and list my own top 10.  Sorry Hot Tub Time Machine, but even letting the Browns beat John Elway and the Broncos couldn’t quite get you on the list.

#10         Frequency  (Dennis Quaid Hamm radios with his son with the 1969 Amazin’ Mets mixed in)

#9           12 Monkeys (Bruce Willis movie)

#8           The Time Travel’s Wife  (guilty pleasure confession:  I kinda like a good chick flick.  Especially one with Rachel McAdams!!!)

#7           Austin Powers—The Spy Who Shagged Me  (groovy, baby!)

#6           The Butterfly Effect (this underrated Ashton Kutchar flick makes ya think!)

#5           Groundhog Day (I read somewhere that supposedly Bill Murray’s character re-lived his day like 10,000 times since it takes about that long to become a master pianist!)

#4           A Christmas Carol (The 1970 musical Scrooge is my favorite version of this Charles Dickens classic)

#3           Terminator 2 (the special effects of this movie are still mind-blowing today!)

#2           It’s A Wonderful Life  (One of my top-5 all-time favorite movies. And confession #2—I cry like a baby when I watch the end alone.  I can just hold the tears off when I have to be a man around others).

And my #1 time-travel movie is….

I saw this as an 8^th grader in the summer of 1985.  I watched it as a father with my three kids in 2013.  They loved it.  And I watched it about 100 times in between.  Our hero, Marty McFly travels back 30 years in this timeless classic.  But you might not remember in the first sequel, Marty travels 30 years into the future—the mysterious far off time of 2015!  What was that world like?  A time of flying cars, floating skateboards, and—get this crazy vision—the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series!

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As I was taking in all of the sights and scenes in Dover Crater Stadium Thursday evening as the Tornadoes took on Team Canada, I wondered what Marty McFly would think of how high school football has changed in the last 30 years.

#1:  I thought Astroturf was only for the Astrodome and my grandpa’s back porch!

In the 80’s, the only place around with turf for high schoolers was the Akron Rubber Bowl.  And the turf back then was brutal—a heavy dose of carpet burns with a few blown-out knees sprinkled in.   Now, Dover, Phila, and a majority of Stark County schools have it.  And it is as plush and beautiful as your grandpa’s well-manicured front lawn.

I was fortunate to get to play on turf once in my 30 high school games.  This season, my alma mater will be playing only two games on grass!  But you know what McFly won’t see anymore on this newfangled turf?  This…

Or, more importantly, this…

#2  What’s with the uniforms?  Are they football players or soldiers?

30 years ago, you stuffed your knee and thigh pads in their pockets (the bigger, the better), put your hip and tailbone pads on a belt (or in one of those hand-me-down girtles), and if you were lucky, got to mix in a neck roll with your shoulder pads and helmet.  If you were a lineman, maybe you had a pair of forearm pads.  Everything was loose and heavy and old.

Like Tom Cruise in All the Right Moves…

 

Or maybe Mac Aljancic in All the Wrong Moves…

 From this background of this picture, it looks like some New Phila 1986 seniors did a number on the Dover Brickhouse wall!

By the way, Tom Cruise was a pretty good corner in that movie!  He needs to listen to his coach, though, and play the ball.  Browns’ corner Leon McFadden might want to try that as well.

Now let’s look at the 2014 uniform…

Everything is tight and sleek and modernistic.

Many high schoolers spend $400 or so on spikes, girdles, padded undershirts, chinstraps, facemasks, mouth guards, and socks.  Don’t believe me?  Just go to Dick’s Sporting Goods & bring a calculator.

And you gotta make sure everything you buy has either this…

Or this…

# 3          Shot gun every play?  Who do you think you are?

 

Roger Staubach?

The game has definitely changed at every level, especially high school.  Thirty years ago, it was a big night if a guy ran for more than 100 yards or passed for more than 150 yards.  Now, its not that unusual to see that in a half, and maybe even in a quarter.

Someone once sent me a link to a YouTube video of highlights of one of my brother’s football games from 1992.  What I found interesting is that the fans were going nuts on plays that gained 10 yards.  Now, that’s just another play.  Kinda like riding the Gemini at Cedar Point.  Those high hills (and thrills) don’t seem so high as they did 30 years ago.

And ust about every school runs the spread offense with the shot gun and 4 or 5 receivers.  Makes those ground-oriented wishbone, wing-T, and power-I offenses look like watching a silent movie.

#4   Am I at a football game or a Las Vegas show?

Off the field, entertainment in McFly’s days was pretty limited outside of the band’s halftime show.  You could mix in some cowbells, an airhorn or two, cheerleaders chucking little plastic balls into the stands, and maybe crawling under the bleachers to find some lost treasures.  And on a big night, you might get this…

I couldn’t help but use this again.  I don’t know who it is, but Isn’t this an awesome picture!!!

What do we have nowadays?  A sound system and music play list that would make even the best disco DJ envious.

And I thought you had to be in the NFL to run through one of these inflatable football helmets…

Here is a picture of Crater Stadium’s scoreboard in 1988…

Pretty flashy stuff!!! it has a Pepsi logo, and even the down and distance!!!  Side note to this photo: this was the first night that my wife and I saw each other.  Well, kind of.  I am betting that as Dover JV cheerleader, she glanced at me on the field at some point.  And being a teenage boy, I’m sure I took a moment to check out the opposing cheerleading squad during warm-ups.  Especially a fox like this…

Little did we know that destiny would bring us together 4 years later at Muskingum College!

Back to our topic.  Here is the 2014 version…

A Video screen on a scoreboard at a football game?  The only way McFly could watch a video in his day was with one of these…

Marty would be overwhelmed with all of these advancements.  It would be like Disney World to him.  But for us 2014’ers, it would be no big deal.  If fact, all these bells and whistles might even lose the battle for our attention much of the night to one of these…

What a Monday night for local sports fans.  We all excitedly tuned in to watch one of the most highly anticipated NFL preseason games in recent memory.  And what happened?  It turn into a typical expansion Browns’ game.  As in watching an offense that is more likely to put a viewer to sleep than a three-plate Thanksgiving meal. A just to put the cherry on top, viewers were treated to a BREAKING NEWS ticker on the bottom of the ESPN TV screen stating that Ohio State QB Braxton Miller has been injured and is likely out for the year.

Before you start thinking about jumping off a cliff or eating a quart of ice cream to drown your sorrows, remember this guy…

 

Feel a little better now?  Good enough to do an autopsy of the Monday Night Massacre?

Let’s examine the Buckeyes first.  Short term, this is pretty close to being a season killer.  Last season, OSU could have weathered this storm.  They had a great back-up in Kenny Guiton. More importantly, though, they had an All-American running back in Carlos Hyde with a senior-laden offensive line in front of him.  All of those pieces are gone now, putting a much greater burden on heir-apparent red-shirt QB J.T. Barrett.

But sports fans always look at things rationally (wink-wink), and if you put on these goggles, you will see that this injury actually could be a blessing in disguise.  Braxton Miller has practiced very little since his initial shoulder injury in the Orange Bowl.  In spite of the accolades of being the two-time Big Ten Offensive Player of the Year, his quarterback skill set had great deficiencies.  He is a great runner, but is very limited as a passer both in accuracy and in reading defenses.  He has had no chance to improve his deficiencies, and would have likely been an even more limited passer due to his initial lingering injury.  Opposing defenses would have surely loaded up the line of scrimmage to limit his runs.

If all goes well, and he heals completely, he will have the time to develop to the next level as a signal caller to help the Bucks in 2015 and his draft stock in 2016.  And maybe one of his back-ups will catch lightning in a bottle this fall and the Scarlet and Gray can ride an awesome defensive line and a mediocre Big Ten to a National Championship play-off berth.

And now, ladies and gentleman, let’s hear it for your Cleveland Browns!!!!!!  At quarterback, #6, hometown hero, Brian Hoyer!!!  Or, if you prefer a little more sizzle and spice on your plate….

 

Well, so far, it hasn’t quite played out like we had hoped.  For Hoyer, the knee injury he suffered last fall was both an enormous curse and blessing.  A curse, of course, because it took away an opportunity a full season to develop as an NFL starting QB.  For him, though, it may have been a blessing, since it limited the sample size to study him.  Remember that even though he was 2-0 as a starter, in the one game, he threw 3 interceptions vs. the lowly Vikings.  More games may have exposed his limitations.  I liked how Hoyer played last year, but I believe that he is, at best, another Kelly Holcomb.  Hot in spurts, but not a long-term solution.

And Manziel is the mumillion dollar question…can he live up to his enormous ESPN media hype and become a franchise quarterback?  I admit that I have always been addicted to chasing the hope of a franchise QB like this guy chases archeaological treasures…

 

Tim Couch…  Charlie Frye…  Brady Quinn…  Colt McCoy…   I proud to admit I never bought into this guy…

Johnny is our latest prophecy, and feel pretty hopeful in spite of his mediocrity so far.  He took some more bullets last night for his flipping the bird to a national audience.  Not a smart move, but I think it’s being overblown.  I don’t think it shows he was rattled.  I think Manziel is definitely a guy that loves to play with swagger and ‘dialogue’ with his opponent.   Any of you that are athletes know guys that thrive on that.  If the Browns want him to succeed, they need to tailor their game plan to fit his swashbuckling ways.  That’s a tough choice for an NFL coach to make though.

After two very disappointing pre-season games where neither QB has staked a claim, Browns coach Mike Pettine is lucky he has no hair to pull out of his bald head.  But I won’t lay the blame solely on the QBs.  Neither have had the opportunity to make many easy throws where they had good protection and clearly open receivers.  QBs need a few of those to get some rhythm going.  The Browns’ O right now has about as much rhythm as that country boy in Footloose.  Or maybe me at my 7th grade dance.  And having a bunch of week-old stale bananas for wide receivers along with a west-coast offensive game plan as bland as a rice cake has not helped the cause.

The media is calling for Pettine to declare a starter so the offense can get solid repetitions to develop consistency.  Does the rookie coach cave to conventional wisdom?  He has preached competitiveness and mental toughness throughout camp, though, so I think his gut is telling him to wait one more game for someone to earn the crown.

Coach Mike, I say follow your gut another week.  Though another week of this could have fans puking their guts out!

To see Part 1 of Two-A-Day Can Feel More Like Two-Uggh-Days, click here

NEGATIVE:  Conditioning

For some reason, football coaches have this idea that you need to be in top physical shape.  So in most practices, you run.  And run.  And run some more.   40-yard sprints.  Gassers.  Up-downs (also known as grass drills).  Burpees.  Ladders.  If you were lucky, you had a coach that really hated conditioning as a player (likely a lineman?), and thus, treated conditioning as a necessary evil, just doing it to get it done.  The less fortunate ones drew a coach that moonlighted as one of these…

As both a player and coach, I always saw conditioning drills as much more than getting into physical shape.  Coaching-wise, my  thought is that if design your practice properly, players should be getting most of their conditioning in regular football drills during practice.  The less standing around, the better.  I see conditioning at the end of practice as much more valuable for mental conditioning.  Are you tough enough to fight through the pain in the final minutes of practice so you can do the same in a game?  The teams and players that maximize their potential excel in this area.

NEGATIVE:  Summer is about over, and school is about to start

Do I need to explain that one?

POSITIVE:  Summer is about over, and school is about to start

I DEFINITELY need to explain that one.  Even though I have been a teacher for over two decades now, I still realize that a most teen males (I am gonna give a ballpark estimate of 99.9%) favor the joy-boy life of summer over time in the classroom.  But being a part of two-a-days means being around a large group of your peers.  That’s one meal kids haven’t had much of since school let out in late spring.  For current teenagers, it might not be as much of a big deal since they live in a world of texting, Instagram, Facebook, Vines, You-Tube, and Pinterest.  (BTW, when I get into tech discussions/rants with my students, I like to mix in the Pinterest with everything else just so I can hear them say “My mom is on Pinterest!  Not me!”)  But I am betting that these newbies enjoy being back in the teen stampede just as much as us old schoolers did back in our high school days.

NEGATIVE:  wearing all that equipment

It’s wet in the morning.   And hot in the afternoon.  Wearing equipment head-to-toe definitely does not mix too well with those weather hurdles.  Let’s start with the helmet.  It’s hot.  Even worse, it’s tight.  Your forehead hurts, your temples are pounding, your finely coiffed mullet (or other hairstyle of choice) is getting a bad case of ‘helmet head’.  And then there is the joy of getting pimples under your chinstrap!  I seem to remember that usually being about an epic three-week battle of acne vs. Clearisil.

Let’s not forget the rest of the ensemble.  Shoulder pads, girdle pads, pants and pads.  They all get a fine coating of sweat, dew, and dirt that rubs against your skin day after day.  A dermatologist’s delight!

POSITIVE:  wearing all that equipment

Let’s face it.  You feel like a real man wearing the full football gear.  Every year, I found it amazing how much bigger, tougher, and more imposing kids look once they suited up.  They really transformed!  And back in the day, if you really wanted to look like a beast, you sported one of these…

A NECKROLL!!!!

If you notice, Mr. Buckeye, Chris Spielman, is also sporting the classics 70’s/80’s forearm and elbow pads.

Trivia time.  Who was the 1980’s NFL QB that wore a neckroll?

STEVE GROGAN!!!

Of course, the most important piece of equipment choice is what face mask you are gonna get.  They have been getting pretty outlandish lately…

This NY Giant must have a 24-hour alarm included with his mask.

Back in the day, you described your mask by the all-star NFL player that wore it.  Here are a few classics…

The Roger Staubach

The Larry Csonka (gotta love the bull ring)

If you were a lineman in the 70s and early 80s, do you remember this one?

(minus the Mohawk pad Willie Lanier wore, of course)

I think just about every perimeter player in the 80’s wore one of these two (I copied my hero, Bernie!)

And if you were super tough, you went with this look…

Joe Theismann was no wimpy kicker!!!

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That was pretty much it in terms of equipment style choices back in the old days (if your coach even gave you a choice).  It’s a bit different now.   Just walk into a Dick’s Sporting Goods store.  A player can spend a few hundred bucks easy on gloves, spikes, and various protective gear they wear under the pads.

 

There are plenty of more positives (like Gatorade & one-on-one passing drills) and negatives (how about that stupid tackling drill when two guys lay on their back until the coach blows his whistle and then one tackles the other.  Pretty realistic game situation drill, huh?)  to two-a-day practices.  And even if the bad heavily outweighs the good for you, there is one moment that makes it all worthwhile…

 

 

Follow the author on twitter:  @macaljancic

You can also e-mail him:  macaljancic@yahoo.com

As we enter mid-August, high school football players are almost two weeks into the annual pigskin tradition of two-a-day practices.  Having survived 15 seasons of two-a-days ( 7 years as a high school and college player as well as another 8 years as a high school coach), I decided to create my list of the highs and lows of this rite of passage into football manhood.

POSITIVE:  WE GET TO HIT!!!

Football can be a very physical, violent game.   Hitting (both blocking and tackling) is THE key element to to the sport’s identity.  Players spend  their off-season lifting weights as well as doing speed and agility training to put themselves in peak physical condition.   All that time and sweat invested finally comes to fruition when the pads come on in early August.  The work is done.  Now it’s time to hit!!!   Whether it be individual, group, or full team scenarios, there’s plenty of ‘chum in the water’ for the football sharks to get their fill of the frenzy of hitting.  (gotta get my Shark Week plug in there).

NEGATIVE:  WE HAVE TO HIT 🙁

For a football player, not much beats the feeling of laying a good hit on an opponent.  On game day, that is.  The adrenaline rush of playing in a game seems to fuel the appetite for the physicality of the gridiron.  Practices, though, are a whole different matter.  Sure, there are some players that love to hit all the time in practice.  They usually fall into three categories:

1. 1.  The bigger, stronger guys

2.   The crazy guys

3.  The big and crazy guys

I fell into none of those categories, and I am guessing a good number of players have felt the same way.  Tolerate the practice hitting to get to the fun of the game hitting.  We don’t mind a little bit of hitting.  The problem is that when you try to give pain, you usually also receive pain.  Sore heads, smashed fingers, monkey bubbles on the forearms, bruised ribs, tender knees, and rolled ankles are just part of the list of side effects of blocking and tackling.  For some reason, the NFL doesn’t read off these side effects at the end of a game like the end of one of those Viagra commercials!  And I was fortunate enough not to have to be an offensive or defensive lineman.  Those poor guys have to pound on each other the whole practice!

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NEGATIVE:   The early bird gets the worm

The typical high school male likes to stay up late and sleep in late.  Waking up at 7 am for football practice kind of messes up that ideal schedule.  II was never a napper as a kid, but I became one soon after entering the world of two-a-days

NEGATIVE:  the early bird gets the worm…in wet grass

At 8 am, a beautiful dew glistens across the lush grasses of Ohio…

And then you have to sit down and stretch in it.  Not as refreshing as one might think for a hot August morning.  As a player, you just feel wet and musty.  And that feeling seems to stick with you for the rest of the day ( I guess that is another perk to having artificial turf as more and more schools do).   Even as a coach, you come in from practice, and take your shoes and socks off to see a pair of bright white shriveled up feet…

It took me until a few years of coaching to have 2^nd set of socks and shoes for the afternoon.  Speaking of which…

NEGATIVE:  it’s hot out!

Going out for afternoon practice is a rude awakening.   Morning temperatures are pretty comfortable.  But afternoon practice is just hot.  And when you factor in that your body is sore and tired from them morning session, the temperature feels VERY HOT!!!

POSITIVE:  it’s fun to chuck the ball around!

Football is a fun sport.  Most of us are introduced to it throwing the football with dad.  One of my early traditions with my boys was to throw passes to them as they jumped into the couch as we watched a Browns game.  We had to get some enjoyment out of those painful Sunday afternoons!  Kids then graduate to backyard football.  I will let you into a secret about backyard football.  99.9% of the time, no one lines up to be an offensive lineman and block all day.  It’s about passing the ball, catching the ball, and either trucking or juking guys out on your way to the end zone for a touchdown dance.  My preference was do the Billy ‘White Shoes’ Johnson…

When you get to high school two-a-days, the joy and freedom of backyard football is gone for the most part.  Well, except for seven-on-seven passing drills, or as some call it, ‘perimeter’.  No linemen involved, except for maybe the center snapping the ball and blocking an invisible man (maybe one of those ghost men from a nearby baseball game?) Offense runs pass plays, and the defensive backs and linebackers try to stop them.  Pretty darn fun.  I was a quarterback and safety, so it was both a blast to throw the ball around (as long as you didn’t throw an interception and get an earful from the coach) and do my best Ronnie Lott imitation on defense trying to intercept the ball.  It is also fun to coach as well!  On the flip side, I did a couple of years coaching teams that ran the wing-T offense.  Working on blocking the buck sweep properly over and over scores just a bit lower on the joy meter.

STAY TUNED FOR PART 2

Follow the author on twitter:  @macaljancic

You can also e-mail him:  macaljancic@yahoo.com

 

 

“The grass is greener on the other side.”  “A bird in hand is worth two in the bush.”  Those age old bits of wisdom often apply to the personnel decisions of various Cleveland sports teams.   I can think back to the mid-1990’s when the Indians decided that Jared Wright’s potential was worth more than Pedro Martinez’s present performance.

When it comes to trading the present for the future, the Indians have had the their hits.  How about this one:  Bartolo Colon to the Montreal Expos for Grady Sizemore, Cliff Lee, and Brandon Phillips.  To clarify for the kiddies, the Expos were a Major League team about a decade ago. They have also had their misses:  do you remember the aforementioned Cliff Lee being traded to the Phillies for Carlos Carrasco, Lou Marson, and two other busts?  The NFL doesn’t have those present vs. potential trades very often.  It is usually trading high draft picks for future picks.  They appeared to score big by giving up Trent Richardson and his 3.3 yards per carry for the Colts 1^st round pick.  That pick eventually led to this guy…

A few years ago, however, the Brownies also traded out of the chance to pick star wide receiver Julio Jones, and eventually ended up with this guy…

That leads us to the Cavaliers current unofficial trade with the Minnesota Timberwolves.  It appears that they have jumped on the Love Train, picking up All-star Kevin Love, who is probably considered one of the top 10 players in the NBA right now. Love averaged an amazing  double double of 26.1 points and 12.5 rebounds per game last season.  Pretty nice feathers to put in the Cavaliers’ cap!  He is also considered one of the top outlet passers in the game, which could possibly bring back some vintage Magic Johnson’s Showtime days with Love airmailing passes to Lebron James and Kyrie Irving.

The one problem with this and every trade, though, is that you have to give something to get something.  It’s not like charming your grandparents into giving you whatever you want!  So according to various reports, the Cavs are going to give up the #1 draft picks of the last two drafts, Andrew Wiggins and Anthony Bennett, as well as next years 1^st round draft pick.  Bennett had an awful rookie year, but he had some major health issues prior to the season that hampered him throughout the year.  I think he will bounce back and be a solid player.  Wiggins, though, is the true gem in this package.  He has the potential to be one of the few elite players in the league.  The key word here, though, is potential.  There have been high picks in recent drafts whose athleticism could be compared to Wiggins—Derrick Williams and Harrison Barnes come to mind– that have not blossomed as once was predicted.  But Wiggins is rated higher than most recent picks.

From seeing the opinions of various sports writers  and NBA experts, it appears that the majority believe that this is a trade that the Cavs have to make.  Lebron probably has 3 to 5 years of elite play left in his body, and the Cavs cannot afford to waste those years waiting for Wiggins to develop.  Plus Love is a better fit as a stretch power forward.  Wiggins is a tougher piece to fit in the Wine and Gold puzzle since he somewhat plays the same role as Lebron and is not currently a strong outside shooter that can stretch the defense and better open up lanes for ‘The King’.

My only question about the trade is whether the Cavs gave up too much.  Any trade/acquistion, whether it be in pro sports, buying a house, or making a garage sale purchase (check out my garage sale blog), is about the leverage of supply and demand.  In the past May’s NFL draft, I thought the Browns fleeced the Bills, trading their #4 pick to Buffalo for the #9 pick as well as the Bills  1^st and 4^th rounders next year.  The key was the Bills were desparate to get Sammy Wadkins, and the Browns leveraged that beautifully.  Let’s just hope Wadkins doesn’t become the next Megatron and #9 pick Justin Gilbert doesn’t acquire a nickname like ‘Toast’.

Both that Cavs and Timberwolves have leverage in this trade.  Minnesota obviously have the Golden Goose to trade (it’s rare for a top-10 talent to be this available), and several teams interested to create a competitive marke.   The Cavs strength, though, was in Minnesota’s weakness.  They only have Love under contract for one more year, and he doesn’t want to be there.  He is basically on the clearance rack!  Unfortunately, the Cavs didn’t get one of these in the mail…

Not to get off track, but the only way to describe a Kohl’s 30% off coupon is to quote the Seinfeld character Kenny Bania…

Needless to say, 90% of my wardrobe is cutting edge Kohls’ fashion!!

Back to the Cavs.  I love getting Love.  But I think they got leveraged a bit too much.  I might have waited on the market and tried to give up Dion Waiters instead of Wiggins.  The problem with that is that you risk losing Love completely, or at least to mid-season.  And if you wait to the mid-season trading deadline, you likely pass up the chance to win a title this year since it takes a while to mesh new talent on the court.  I also question including next year’s #1 pick.  My only guess why they reasonably did that is to meet the complicated NBA trade rules which might require a third teams involvement.

But sometimes you have to pay a little extra to get what you truly want.  Let’s just hope that The Love Boat sails smoothly in the King James waters, and that next year’s contract renewal talks (the Cavs have financial leverage since they would be his current team) go just as well.

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Follow the author on twitter:  @macaljancic

You can also e-mail him:  macaljancic@yahoo.com

 

 

Most American sports fans feast on the seasonal meals of football, basketball, and baseball.  With the calendar just flipping over to August, we are just about to enter the all-you-can-watch buffet of pro and college football.  Hoops tends to pique our interest after Christmas, with big cravings in March and June.  Baseball welcomes spring and sunshine for all of us, continues to be a summer staple like peanuts and Cracker Jacks.

The question I have for you sports fans is this:  what is the next sport that you you would order for your sports plate?  The answer to that may depend on the house that you were raised in.

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For some of you, if I mention the number 43, you instantly think of the King, No, Not Lebron.  He’s #23.  I am talking about Richard Petty.  In  fact, a certain former Cavs all-star picked his jersey number to honor that King…

NASCAR fandom is usually inherited along with the ability to change a carborator and a 2002 Ford F-150.  The most I can do under a hood is jump a battery and add some oil.  Hold on a second.  I have added power steering fluid a few times.  Call me Mr. Goodwrench.  Needless to say, I was not born into a racing family.  I do read about it in the paper—Junior won yesterday, and Jeff Gordon is leading in points—but watching NASCAR is like eating spicy food for me:  I can only handle very small sample sizes.

Others of you may be hockey junkies, and can not only explain what offsides and icing are, but also recite the Canadian national anthem word for word.  I think I can pass the first two legs of that test, but I am no Puckhead.  Now if I grew up with an NHL team in Cleveland, I think it might be a different story.

There are other sports that might be your favorite flavor:  tennis, MMA, and the current flavor of the month, soccer, come to mind.  But for me, the next go-to sport would be golf.  I covered some of my upbringing of chasing the little white ball in this previous blog of my one great golf moment, as well as this one about 7th grade summers.   My dad put this in our side yard when I was sixth grade…

But I never really golfed at all on a real course before that.  But my dad was a golfer—he even became the golf coach at Aquinas after doing the football thing for a while—and my mom’s family were golfers as well.  I grew up with golf on the TV on some Sunday afternoons.  My dad especially loved watching the Masters with the greenery and Georgia Azaleas in perfect bloom.  My earliest TV memories were watching my hero, Jack Nicklaus, win the 1980 U.S. Open as a 9 year old, and then seeing Tom Watson’s miraculous chip-in defeat The Golden Bear the next year.  As I got into my teens, I would usually tuned into each of the four majors to see who would achieve golf immortality, and still do to this day.  I saw many of Greg Norman’s crushing losses, Tiger Wood’s powerful wins, Phil Mickelson’s ups and downs, and even Jean Van De Velde’s epic collapse.  I unfortunately missed Nicklaus’s famous 1986 Masters  win due to a spring afternoon full of driveway basketball.

For all this fandom, I had never been to a pro event.  So this past week, I got the itch to take my two sons up to Akron to watch the pros play in the Bridgestone Invitational.  Kids get in free, so it was already a win in my book.  When I told Drew and Ethan of my game plan, they  didn’t quite break into cartwheels.  I grew up in an age of 4 TV channels, which meant very  limited entertainment choices.   The channel list has grown a little since then, while also including X-Boxes, I-pods,  and various other hyphenated technological breakthroughs.

Thankfully, I got them into the car without too much of a battle—I think I may have promised some eats to sweeten the deal.  We got there and paid $5 to park in someone’s front yard.  A change of pace from a Browns’ parking lot!  BTW, do NOT park on the street for a Browns’ game.  (Just wanted to preview an upcoming November blog)

Upon entering Firestone Country Club,  I wasn’t quite sure of our game plan.  Then I saw Phil Mickelson & Sergio Garcia walking to the 1^st tee.  Might as well follow some big names!  That is one huge perk of having one of the World Golf Championships in Akron.  The field is limited to about 40 of the world’s top golfers.  There’s no Willis McGahees or Jack Hannahans or Damon Jones  to watch hack around the course.

We watched Phil and Sergio as well as the group right behind them.  Matt Kuchar & some Irish guy.  I think his name was Rory. Needless to say, I was in golf heaven watching those guys.  Strike that ‘needless to say’—if you aren’t a golf fan, I actually need to say that Rory McIlroy is currently the world’s best player and the other three are huge golf names.  My boys weren’t quite as exhilarated as I was.  Drew knew of Phil and Rory.  Ethan kept asking, ‘Who’s Phil?’  I was impressed with the steady and strong golf play.  The boys’s main highlight was watching Kuchar hit two straight chips that landed short and rolled right back to his feet.  Ethan’s main entertainment was using his foil hot dog wrapper to make action figures.  Gotta give him an A for creativity!

As those four were finishing their round (they played the front 9 after the back 9), we decided to follow some new groups starting the front 9. First came Jim Furyk and Jason Day.  Pretty big  names.  Phillip Rivers level.  Next up were Justin Rose and Ricky Fowler.  I rate that pair as an Eli Manning.  Batting 3^rd:  Bubba Watson and Adam Scott.  Let’s give them a Drew Brees rating.  Batting clean-up:  Martin Kaymer and….

TIGER WOODS!!!!!

Our first Tiger spotting was after he hooked his drive a complete fairway to the left of where he was going.  After seeing that, I mentally bestowed upon him the honorary  title of ‘Aljancic brother’ for the clueless driver play that my two younger brothers and I like to incorporate into our own game.  We were standing in between Tiger and the fairway he should have been in.  After hitting a brilliant second shot to the green, he walked directly at us to the main fairway.  He came within a few feet of us, and he had his game face on.  Drew was impressed with his intensity.

We followed the those groups for an hour or so, and then decided to call it a day.  On our way home, I decided to keep with the day’s theme of trying new things when we stopped to get something to eat.  We pulled up to the drive-thru of…

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Upon sampling the merchandise, the boys reached the consensus that the 67 cent sliders were vastly overpriced.   Well, at least they made the golf taste a little better!

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