Stuck in the Middle with Bruce

The Super Bowl, in earlier days, was as much about consumerism as it was about football. With the largest TV audience of the year watching, the network airing the game could charge millions of dollars for a 30-second spot. And the companies who were paying these top-dollar rates spared no expense to put the WOW

This should be an interesting matchup (but actually, it really wasn’t)

I haven’t cared about the Super Bowl in a long time, but I’ll probably never get away from watching it. And this year, there’s the truth of an old saying that will be tested out: “Age and treachery will overcome youth and skill.” On the Age side is Tom Brady, who could become just the

The political lesson of Super Bowl 47

Seven years feels like a long time ago, in some ways. For example, my newly 21 year-old daughter was still in elementary school early in 2013. So much has come and gone in her life (and in all our lives) that it’s sometimes hard to remember what happened, much less learn any lessons from those

Why I’m taking a knee today

If you wanted to be somebody at my high school (which no longer exists, by the way) you had to be on the football team. There were other sports teams and activities, but the attention that was given to the football team made many of my classmates put in the time and effort that were

Go Cats!

Northwestern didn’t belong in the Big Ten when I was on campus in the late 1980s, at least not in the two sports that most people pay attention to. That didn’t change how I felt about the school, but it was hard to routinely be embarrassed by all of the other schools in the Big

Being somebody

Last night I saw my daughter perform onstage with the rest of her classmates. They performed “In the Heights” and it was a one-shot performance at the end of the school year. She goes to an arts school because she grew up loving Disney musicals and Glee and Wicked and High School Musical. She’s performed

I spent the 80s in purple

Prince died today, at the age of 57. Coming on the heels of the deaths of David Bowie and Glenn Frey already this year, I didn’t think there would be any more meaningful musical deaths for some time. Apparently I was wrong in that belief. This one really left me stunned. The high school I attended

Year 6, begin!

  I started writing this blog in the summer of 2011, which means this is my sixth year of putting words and pictures here for posterity to look at some day. In 2015, my blog was viewed in 82 countries, and on every continent except Antarctica. The number of viewers has never interested me very

Down goes Brutus!

In 2013, I was in the stands in Evanston when Ohio State came to town. I got up at halftime to stretch my legs, and was taken aback by all the trash talk I heard from Buckeye fans about the stadium where the Wildcats play. In their minds, apparently, having a big stadium makes them

Win Win

It’s a beautiful fall day as I sit down to type out a few words on my smartphone. Blogging gives me a chance to spend a few minutes getting thoughts down, before the moment changes and the feelings are lost. and this is a moment that I want to preserve in some manner. The arrival

It was a good day for omens

Saturday morning, Evanston, Illinois My daughters are both ice skaters, which makes practice ice a reality for me, several times a week. On Saturday morning, as the rest of the world is sleeping in, my older one gets to the rink at 5:30 AM. It seems like a cruel joke to play on the old

The everyday game

Today I got to meet some fans of the game I love. In everyday life, I’m not always very talkative. In truth, I’ll take writing over speaking every time. But when the subject is baseball, that’s a different story. I could talk about baseball all day long. In the process of talking about the game

Changing college sports as we know them

Today–March 26, 2014– is the 35th anniversary of the Magic Johnson/Larry Bird title game in the NCAA tournament. I remember watching that game as a ten year-old kid in Springfield, Illinois. It was broadcast on NBC, instead of on CBS. There was no three point stripe, no shot clock, and no possession arrow. The NCAA

There’s nothing more American

The Coca-Cola commercial that was aired during the Super Bowl this year had it exactly right. America is beautiful, because people from all over the world have always come here. They bring their languages and their customs and their foods and their traditions with them, and they hold onto them because it’s what they know

Blowin’ your mind like we knew we would

Super Bowl Sunday, 1986 was certainly the high point of my senior year in high school. I knew that graduation was four months away, and going off to college would happen a few months after that, and then life would all be different. And that’s exactly what I wanted, to be honest about it. But

Some writings from this month

Yesterday was the first time that I’ve had a piece published on ChicagoSideSports this year, but I’ve also been active on ThroughTheFenceBaseball and on FiveWideSports. I haven’t promoted them the  way that I would like to here, but I’m grateful to have a chance to share some of my thoughts with those in the online

Four years and a lifetime ago

I remember it well, that New Year’s day in 2010, when Northwestern played the Auburn Tigers in the Outback Bowl. It was the first bowl game of the day, and I was ready for it with a mountain of alcohol. It was rare for me to start drinking before noon, but this was a big

Sweet Home Ditka-go

It’s Mike Ditka’s city, and I just happen to live in it. Last Spring, I celebrated Chicago’s annual season of hope by writing out a list of all the reasons I could think of for why Chicago was not only a baseball town, but the best baseball town in all the land. It was a

Football season ends today

I haven’t cared about the NFL for a very long time, probably since Mike Ditka was coaching the Bears. So I take my football in smaller doses, usually at the college level. This year, it has also included my high school alma mater, for the first time since I graduated high school. Life can take

After the purple sunset

October 5 seems like such a long time ago. On that date, I had high hopes for Northwestern’s football team, which was unbeaten and ranked in the national polls. I had written an exuberant piece for Five Wide Sports a few days earlier, about how it wasn’t 1989 anymore for the two sports teams I

If ever I want to start drinking again…

…I’ll just watch this instead. It ought to do the trick. Is there any way that something like this happens without alcohol being involved? I sure hope not. And the gif version of this (shown below) is pretty interesting, because it cuts out all of the post-crash commentary. That by itself is a good reason

A story I was glad to tell

The reason that I write anything on the internet, whether it’s on this blog or anywhere else, is because I love to tell stories. I also like sharing ideas that pop into my head on occasion, but it’s the storytelling that really sustains me. And over the past couple of days, I’ve been able to

The downward spiral continues

After still another painful defeat for Northwestern’s football team yeserday, I wrote something about it for FiveWideSports. I thought this was going to be a special year, but not in the way that it has been so far. I’m pretty sure nobody saw this one coming, actually. But there’s just two more games, and then

You gotta have fun

My writing output in this space has fallen off a bit lately. Some of that is because ideas are getting sent to other places, and some of it is that baseball seems to animate my writing somewhat. I recently gave myself three months off from writing forThroughTheFenceBaseball, because I torture myself enough thinking about and

da Coach makes da call

There’s something about this that’s so Chicago. 8 of the 9 ESPN football analysts picked the Packers on Monday night in Green Bay, but not Coach Ditka. Is it any wonder that we love him so? Da Bears!!!!!