During the Super Bowl there was an advertisement/story released by the NFL highlighting Chester Pitts, an oboist who was working as a grocery bagger convinced one day by a San Diego State Football player to try out for the team. If you haven’t seen it, I think it’s a great spot because it brings classical music to an audience that contains a certain percentage of people who otherwise wouldn’t know an oboe from a clarinet.

I’m a bit surprised that Patty over at Oboe Insight hasn’t mentioned this in her wonderful blog, but a quick search didn’t turn anything up that I couldn’t find this over at the wonderful Oboe Insight. It was there and I apparently need to be more diligent with my searches!!

If you know me, or have been following along, you would know that my guilty pleasure is my obsession with the New York Giants.

The group of players that make up the 2007 Super Bowl Champion Giants (WOW!) has to be one of my favorite teams in my life as a fan. They have been resilient and have played with an infectious joy that has me as happy as I’ve been in a long time. My congratulations to the Patriots for an amazing season, but at the end, the Giants beat them playing the type of football that helped New England win their first Super Bowl against the Rams a few years ago. It was a complete and utter role-reversal for the Patriots and they paid for it in the end.

The story of the playoffs is a story of redemption and heart. The Giants lost six games this past season, four of them to the Cowboys, Packers and Patriots and beat those three in succession to win the title. It’s also the story of a coach who was almost fired and a quarterback brutalized by the media earlier in the season. They put it all together at the end of the season and pulled off a huge win. (It’s only an upset if you never believed, and I believed!)

Though it’s only a game and it’s only in the context of being a fan, I am positively giddy!!

Now I’ve got to teach in front of a NASM committee tomorrow! UGH!

Tomorrow afternoon, my beloved New York Giants take on the Dallas Cowboys in what promises to be an entertaining and likely disappointing (for me, anyway) football game.

It was announced that the Giants are scheduled to wear their Red Alternate jerseys for the game, no doubt to take advantage of the national television audience and perhaps generate a bit more income through the sale of this unusual uniform top.

If you believe what you read on the internet, the red alternate is quite controversial among fans of the team that carries the nickname ‘Big Blue’ but after looking at this poster of a charity game from 1930, it seems that the red jerseys were standard back in the the very earliest days of the organization, one of the oldest in professional football.

Over the course of my life, I have never really been much of a fan of baseball. I’m more of a football (both kinds) and college basketball guy. I have had two major dalliances with baseball fandom: once when I was a child, and once as a young adult.

As a child growing up in Connecticut, in the geographical “gray” area between the fans of the Yankees and the Red Sox, it was Fred Lynn, Dwight Evans, Jim Rice, Carlton Fisk and Carl Yastrzemski that fired my imagination. (It probably didn’t hurt that most of my relatives were Yankees’ fans… I have always been the contrarian.) The Red Sox were the team of my boyhood and have always held a place in my heart. I was delighted to see them win a few years ago, but am ambivalent about their World Series victory last night.

As a graduate student in Colorado, I had my second fling with baseball. I went through a period where I was obsessed with the game and the Rockies in particular. It was during the early 1990’s and was an exciting period for the new expansion team: They had a new stadium, tremendous support, and a lineup loaded with power hitters like Andres Galarraga, Dante Bichette, Larry Walker, and Vinny Castillo. I also had the opportunity to work as an usher at Coors field during that stadium’s opening season, which also happened to be the last, and only time until this season that the Rockies made the playoffs.

So this World Series left me with torn emotions. It was a win-win scenario, but also a lose-lose and strangely enough, I’m left feeling the latter.

Congratulations to both teams, you piqued my interest for 2 weeks. Now I’ll go back to ignoring the sport…

If you missed my July 4th post about the United States (youth) Soccer Team at the Under-20 World Cup after they dismantled Poland 6-1, check the news, because they beat Brazil (yes, Brazil) 2-1 to win their group and move on to the knockout rounds.

Brilliant!

Happy Independence Day!

Yesterday I had the pleasure of watching a group of young American soccer players beat Poland 6-1 in the FIFA Under-20 World Cup in Canada, headlined by a hat-trick by the previously hyped and now much maligned Freddy Adu. It was a good match in light of the dismal performances of the senior “B” team at the Copa America in Venezuela and restored a bit of faith that one day, this country will emerge from the nether regions of world football. I now hope that Adu and several of the other promising youngsters find their way to the European leagues where they can find meaningful experience in those well-developed youth systems.

Soccer wasn’t the only thing that caught my eye yesterday, because I had a bit of a chuckle at what I consider an ill-conceived bit of journalism, MSNBC has devised a “quiz” based on the actual test that prospective citizens take as part of their naturalization process. I’m sure it was meant to be a bit of light-hearted interactivity for American readers, the scoring chart with the pithy remarks was certainly meant to be humorous, but in my estimation, fall flat.

Thanks to a little bit of common sense and some basic knowledge of American history and civics, I didn’t miss a question, but then again, it was multiple choice.

MILAN, June 11 (Reuters) - Arezzo council have asked Italy’s soccer federation to investigate Juventus’s 3-2 defeat by La Spezia on Sunday which relegated their town’s club from Serie B.

So it appears that the Arezzo football club is set to be relegated to Italy’s third division after a combination of a poor season and a deduction of points following the Italian match fixing scandal that broke across the news last summer.

Though it’s really a reflection of my own ignorance about Italian news, this marks only the second time I’ve been aware of headlines that involve Arrezo.

Sadly, the team does not have a player named Guido, thus preventing me from making a joke about how I thought that they needed a hand with his left foot.

I was cruising the internet today and came across the story of Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Chad Johnson’s charity race against a horse. I understand that the race was for a good cause and I know that Johnson has never met a camera or a microphone that he didn’t like, but after being away from the American sports scene for over a month, I have to say that I find Johnson’s flamboyant orange and black track suit a bit absurd… M.C. Hammer and Vanilla Ice absurd, to be precise.

(Is it odd that I have no qualms about the nature of the race itself, but rather am amused by the apparel?)

If you read back a ways, you’ll remember me complaining when the University of Florida won the NCAA Championship in basketball last April. I should have never opened my mouth, not that it really matters.

It’s been more than three months since the World Cup and the NFL is in full swing so I feel compelled to make another sports post. I came across an article on CNNMoney.com that highlights The Blind Side, a new book by Michael Lewis (the author of Moneyball) that deals with a supposedly unkown aspect of the National Football League. Here is the beginning of the article:

Three years ago Michael Lewis helped change the way average baseball fans and front-office types alike felt about what made a ballplayer valuable.

Now he’s about to shake up the thinking of football fans with his new book, “The Blind Side.”

When I first read through that opening, I truly believed that perhaps Lewis had uncovered some aspect of the game that I had missed and was going to reveal a “dirty little secret” to all of us football fans. It turns out that the entire premise of the book is based on the high salaries of the men who play Left Tackle in the NFL. I’m willing to wager that all but the most casual of football fans already knew that tackles were among the highest paid players in the league. One more quote:

“I have talked to many NFL coordinators and coaches and when I said left tackle is the second-best-paid position, their response was, ‘No way!’” Lewis said.

Sorry Mr. Lewis, but I doubt it.

If you are a football fan, do you think I’m being fair to question the author on this? Do you find this surprising or even worthy of a book?