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I am not a fan of the new logo and uniforms.  ASU is behind a lot of schools when it comes to traditions as it is.  I am very disappointed that you would trash our school colors and logo in a disgusting attempt to move some more merchandise.   I found the videos hyping the change to be offensive as well.  The message of “We’re changing, deal with it, you’re just whining because you can’t handle change” didn’t help me feel all warm and fuzzy about the new Nike State University designs.  I’m sure there are people on Eugene who think that football jerseys with tread plates on them are super cool, but the rest of the country thinks they’re a joke.  I’m not happy about my favorite team moving into the same category.

The thing is, I can handle change.  In fact, I could even get behind the addition of black to the jerseys if they weren’t so stupid.  Being Freaky Metal Kid, my closet is full of black shirts.  I’d love to have some Sun Devil gear in black, but this new stuff is no longer recognizable as Sun Devil gear.  ASU colors are Maroon and Gold.  That’s the name of the fight song.  The lyrics of “Maroon and Gold” include a line “Fight for the old Maroon (and Gold!).”  The black jerseys are noticeably lacking in Maroon.  Color-wise they look like Iowa Hawkeye or maybe Missouri Tigers jerseys.

They could have been ok.  In fact, you got one right:

The volleyball jersey has maroon and gold on it!  Softball looks fine too, although it doesn’t seem like a departure from ASU jerseys I’ve seen before.  If the black basketball and football jerseys correctly used maroon numbers with the gold trim, then everything would be fine.  It would still be possible to recognize them as Sun Devil colors.

After the colors, there’s of course the Sparky problem.  Sparky, the Sun Devil, is a unique and easily identifiable image.  Anyone who watches college sports can see Sparky and know that he represents the Arizona State University Sun Devils.  There are no others like him.  There are some other teams of devils out there, but none that would be confused with Sparky’s Sun Devils.  The pitchfork is not nearly so recognizable.  First off, ASU’s nickname isn’t the Pitchforks/Tridents.  When someone sees this logo, an obvious first thought is “Who are the forks?”  Secondly, there IS competition in this area.  Sun Devils and Blue Devils are different enough, but I don’t like how much this new logo reminds me of the UCSD Triton logo:

I think the new ASU version is actually a little worse because of that mysterious stuff on the handle.  Are those flames?  Seriously, what the heck? Again, I can accept change.  I understand that ASU has used multiple logos on the helmets over the years.  The idea of putting a pitchfork on there rather than Sparky actually makes sense to me.  The players are Sun Devils, so you decorate Sun Devils with pitchforks rather than images of other Sun Devils.  Sure, that makes enough sense.  Sparky doesn’t have to be the primary logo on the helmet.  He does need to be the logo everywhere else though.  Arizona State Sun Devils should be represented by a Sun Devil logo, not a flaming fork.
It is my hope that this will all go away.  It did once before.  Remember this accident?

That goofy disaster of a uniform lasted one season before our players went back to dressing respectably.  I really hope the same thing happens again.

Sincerely,

a fan of Sparky

More than a recap of the game, which you can get anywhere, I wanted to mention how impressed I was with Camp Randall Stadium and the fans it contained.  My friends and I showed up to the game, wearing our best Sun Devil gear, shouting and cheering for ASU.  There were no confrontational responses.  Nobody shouted at us, harassed us, or threw things at us.  We were frequently welcomed with polite greetings and handshakes by Badger fans who generally said something like “Welcome to Wisconsin, I hope you enjoy the game.”  It’s sad, but that is not at all the greeting that I see at Sun Devil Stadium where people are more frequently rude and vulgar.  Since that’s where I’ve experienced most of my live college football, I expected a hostile response as I showed up to Camp Randall in the opposing team’s colors.  I was very impressed when I found that I was completely wrong.

Following the initial pleasant entrance, the fans continued to demonstrate how much better they are at being fans for the rest of the game.  The stadium was full.  It was nearly solid red (unattractive to me, but impressive).  The Wisconsin students sang, clapped, and danced with fantastic enthusiasm.  Several amusing variations of the wave went around the stadium.  The upper deck shook noticeably when House of Pain’s “Jump Around” was played over the PA and the entire building did exactly what the song suggested.  Late in the game, when Sun Devil Stadium  bleeds “fans” regardless of score, Camp Randall was still full.  During the game, a part of Wisconsin’s band came up into the ASU section.  They were initially greeted with boo’s, until Sun Devil fans figured out they were playing “Maroon and Gold.”  That’s very cool.

After the game we stuck around for the 5th Quarter.  It featured an extra twenty minutes of the band playing and dancing on the field and fans singing and dancing in the stands.  They again played ASU’s fight song.  I was reminded on several occasions that this post-game party happens after every game whether the Badgers win or lose.  It was very fun, and I’m totally jealous. When we made our way out of the stadium and began walking down the road towards State Street we ended up walking parallel to the marching band.  The band was still playing and dancing as they marched with police escort down the road.  It was entertaining the whole way.

When all was said and done, it was the most fun I think I could ever have during and after an ASU loss.  Wisconsin fans made me feel welcome at their big football themed party and I really hope that they are treated appropriately when they come to Tempe.

Thanks Badgers,

Freaky Metal Kid

The important thing though is that Fedor, the unbeatable Russian fighting robot,  lost to a guy who was dropped by the UFC.  Fedor had only one loss on his record, which everyone discounted because it was stopped due to a cut and it was also avenged in the rematch.  On the other hand, most of his wins did not come against top level fighters.  It was thought for some time that the guys fighting for the PRIDE organization in Japan were far superior to the heavyweights in the UFC.  For a time, that may have been true, but the new crop of heavyweights in the UFC have shown that the PRIDE fighters are not on top anymore.  Fedor’s most notable wins in PRIDE were against Mirko Cro Cop and Antonio Rodrigo “Minotauro” Nogueira.  Cro Cop was expected to come in and clean up the UFC heavyweight division, but has instead been mostly an embarrassment.  He’s lost multiple fights and even his wins were unimpressive.  Nogueira has faired better, but was stopped by Frank Mir and Cain Valasquez despite having never been never lost by TKO in PRIDE.  While Fedor’s old resume highlights were getting tarnished in the UFC, he stayed outside fighting UFC rejects.

Somehow people still saw his nearly perfect record and decided he was unbeatable.  This is a ridiculous leap to make, both because of his habit of ducking top competition and because there are too many facets or as some say “too many ways to lose” in MMA.  Fedor actually seems like a nice guy and he is a good fighter, but I’m inclined to root against anyone labeled as “invincible.”  Guys who can’t lose have lost too many times in MMA.  Other fans and “experts” will scoff at the idea of certain fighters losing, and anyone who suggests a vulnerability is derided as not understanding the sport.  B.J. Penn has been hailed as one of the top pound for pound fighters in the world.  People (including B.J. himself) seemed to think that there were no lightweights who could really compete with him.  It didn’t take that long before Frankie Edgar came in and boxed his way to B.J.’s belt.  Lyoto Machida was untouchable and had never lost around.  He was supposed to hold the light heavyweight belt for years.  Almost immediately Shogun took it from him.  GSP has already been clobbered by Matt Serra.

I hope that with the fall of “The Last Emperor” we can see him as “the last unbeatable fighter.”  Nobody is unbeatable and to call anyone unbeatable is stupid.  Anderson Silva looks pretty tough now, but it isn’t hard to imagine someone beating him with wrestling and taking his belt.  If he continues to fight he will lose.  GSP will lose.  Brock Lesnar will lose.

–Blarg!

– Blarg!

My feelings towards college sports have been taking a beating lately.  There have always been lingering issues that I’ve been able to mostly look past.  It’s always been messed up that NCAA football and basketball are huge money generating activities based on the efforts of kids who are forbidden from seeing any of that profit.  It’s a bad deal for a lot of them, but some have been especially screwed when they were declared ineligible to play due to really asinine interpretations of the rules.  I’ve heard enough about “student athletes” being an oxymoron or a myth.  The highest paid people at these “institutions of higher learning” are not top shelf researchers or the premier educators, but football coaches.  That seems off.  I know there are separate budgets and sports draw in their own donations, but it was strange to see ASU add new, fancy, multimillion dollar scoreboards to Sun Devil Stadium and Wells Fargo Arena when at the same time they had to eliminate programs, lay off instructors, and let other support staff go.  All that said, I’ve put all of that aside because of the things listed in the top paragraph.  I’ve had so much fun as a fan that I rationalized my way around the less appealing aspects.

Now the bullshit outside of the games is starting to spill too far into the games themselves that it’s getting harder to ignore.  I’ll start by mentioning the BCS.  I won’t say much about the BCS because that’s been covered enough.  It’s not fair.  Polls are not fair.  Nobody ever says about their sport, “I like watching teams compete directly with rules to objectively determine the winner, but it’d be better if they just had some judges to pick who is the best, like in figure skating.  Hell, they could probably judge teams that haven’t even played each other!”  Along with not really determining the best team each season, the football post season gets worse every year as they continue to add bowl games that nobody needs to see.  Yes, now every kid gets to play in a bowl game, but playing in a bowl game doesn’t mean anything anymore.  It only counts to make the BCS bowl games, and if the system doesn’t like you (Boise State, Utah…), you’re not invited no matter what you do.  At least the regular season is still really fun right?  Well, not as much.  They’re trying to ban that.  The really touchy “celebration” penalties were bad enough the past couple of seasons.  Washington got totally hosed against USC because Locker had the audacity to flip the football over his shoulder when he scored a late touchdown.  Apparently they’re ramping it up further this season so that if a player appears too happy on his way into the endzone, they can actually take his touchdown away.

Still, up through this much, I still feel like a fan.  I’m still excited for the next season…  And then there’s the talk about expanding the NCAA Basketball Tournament.  In my mind, the tournament, composed of 64 teams is perfection.  It’s my favorite event in sports.  Yeah, they added the 65th team, which was confusing and stupid, but not a huge deal.  A few 15 seeds have won games (including one against #2 Arizona, haha suck it Wildcats!), but no 16 seeds have.  To me that means they have exactly the right number.  They’re bringing in a few more teams than have a shot to win any games.  Any teams that haven’t made a convincing case to be one of the 64 best, don’t belong anyway.  We can say with certainty that the best teams (and them some) get invited.  They want to ruin the perfection because the NCAA doesn’t give a shit about kids or about sports.  They want to squeeze more money out of it.  I have always said college football needed to be more like college basketball when it comes to the post season, but instead it’s going the other way.  To me the NCAA is saying “Fuck sports, give us more money.”  With both of my favorite sports having their post seasons corrupted into nonsense, I’m feeling kinda down about it.

Then comes the conference expansion talk.  Apparently the Pac 10 wants to add a whole bunch of teams.  This is clearly part of a systematic plan to ruin sports for me.  They’re going down the list.  “Ruin the championship competitions?  Check.  Get rid of actual cheerleaders (ASU’s fault)? Check.  Get rid of the traditions?  Check.”  Throwing tortillas got banned already, they’ve tried to stop students from rushing the field before, and our stadium doesn’t fill up very well these days.  Looking back up at my list, it seems like I can cross a bunch of things off while the case against being a fan continues to grow.  I don’t see any legitimate reason for the formation of a super conference.  To me it’s the same money grabbing BS as the rest of it.

As someone who has spent a lot of time and money being a sports fan, it really bums me out to think that maybe its time to just walk away from it.  Wouldn’t I be better off doing something productive rather than watching other people physically exert themselves?  Isn’t it silly to keep spending money to watch “amateur” athletics?  As a Green person, how stupid is the whole production from a sustainability perspective?

It was a lot of fun and I don’t really want to be done, but I feel like I might be getting close.

– Blarg!