Commiserating with St. Louis & San Diego (and loving Spidercam): While We’re Waiting…

Happy Wednesday, Blawg Pound.

First, a melancholy note of compassion to fans of the St. Louis Rams and San Diego Chargers.¹ It appears that both franchises will relocate to Los Angeles — the Rams are going for sure, and the Chargers will likely follow. That sucks, and if you’re a Clevelander, you know exactly why. In case you missed it, current San Diego resident Kyle Welch wrote about the Chargers’ place in San Diego yesterday — and did so quite well. Like him, I was but a pup when the Browns moved away. Like him, I didn’t really get it. But like him, I got it enough to realize that something was going on.

An excerpt:

There would be no more Browns games. I remember being sad, and not because there wouldn’t be any more Browns games (again, I didn’t even comprehend the fundamental concept). But I was sad because everyone else was sad. The evening news broadcasters and the fans walking out of Municipal Stadium and my family — everyone was sad. And that made me indescribably sad, even though I really had no idea what the hell was happening.

People had genuine feelings about the whole thing. Many were sad, while others were angry. The younger you were, the less sense it made. I remember my mom, who had never had much use for sports, offering to drive me to a save-our-Browns-type rally downtown. I think it was a weekday, possibly after school. I remember being surprised by the offer. Mom has always tolerated sports and understood if not propagated the importance they hold and the niche they fill, but she would sooner stick her head in the oven then be caught dead in the Muni Lot on a Sunday morning.

But here she was, asking her youngest, her eight-year-old boy, if he wanted to go downtown and try to save his favorite football team. Again, I had precious little idea what was actually going on. But in retrospect, her willingness to take me there explains better than anything else how messed up it was that the Browns were taken away from Cleveland. My mother, who is quite content never going to the city,² came up with the idea of schlepping a kid with an attention span the size of a Raisinet downtown — because something was going on that merited doing so. I politely declined then, as downtown was at least a million miles away in my mental map. But damn if I don’t remember it now.

The Rams and Chargers moving sucks for the kids, but it sucks for the adults, too. Tom Friend wrote a beautiful story for ESPN about a man named Blake Talbot. Blake Talbot is 100 years old. He bought Chargers season tickets in 1961, back when they were in the AFL. In the ’70s he watched Lance Alworth, among his first heroes. Later he watched Dan Fouts and Kellen Winslow, Junior Seau and Natrone Means, LaDainian Tomlinson and Rodney Harrison, Antonio Gates and Philip Rivers. He kept the tickets until 2013, when he passed them on to his daughter. Now, the Chargers are (likely) moving.

From Friend’s story:

“At my age, I realize there’s not much I can do about it,” he says, sounding defeated. “I hated to see this happen ’cause I thought they belonged in San Diego. They were our team, like your high school’s team. But you have to accept the facts in life. People will go where the money is, you know?”

…

He kept renewing even though many of the friends he used to tailgate with had passed away. He kept renewing even though he was now in his 80s and 90s and didn’t drive anymore. He would take the trolley, alongside the fans who were drunk and the fans who cursed and the fans who painted their faces and the fans who picked fights. But Blake and Jean Talbot would always be there, dressed to the nines, sitting on their 48-yard line year after year.

This is what I was going to lead this column with before more pressing matters intervened: I was not expecting to watch much, if any, of the college football title game between Alabama and Clemson. I haven’t been into football as much as years past — I wrote about my distaste for the NFL while I was all grumpy — and I’ve steadily been drifting away from college ball as well. There are a few reasons for my falling out of touch with the college game. I’m not sure how to rank them, or how much weight each carries, but in no particular order:

• It’s become weird for me to watch a bunch of guys way younger than me. I’ll come to terms with that as I age further — it’s either that or swap out sports for C-SPAN — but something about it gives me pause. I suppose jealousy is at the heart of it. Here are these 18-, 19-, 20-year-old kids out there living the dream and taking steps toward million-dollar career, and here I am…not. That’s terribly petty, I know. I have no justification for it.
• My alma mater, the esteemed Miami University, is hot garbage on the gridiron. They went 11-38 while I was there. There was one 10-win season the year after I graduated, a 2007 Browns sort of anomaly, but they’ve gone 5-31 over the past three seasons. They suck.
• I follow and generally pull for Ohio State, but it isn’t quite the same. I recognize that, even as I have considered the Buckeyes my team for most of my life, they really aren’t mine. Womp womp. (And once OSU finished up their game with Notre Dame, I mostly tuned out bowl season.)
• All the crap with the NCAA and rules violations and investigations and coaches making $5 million while players make $0 million and blah blah blah. It’s tiresome.

Didn’t I feel like a dolt, then, as the Tigers and Crimson Tide put on a show so good that I had to check it out. It was the perfect game for a casual fan. Clemson quarterback Deshaun Watson put up 478 total yards, better than Vince Young’s 467 in the classic 2006 Rose Bowl between Texas and USC. Bama running back Derrick Henry³ went for 158 yards and three touchdowns. Clemson wide receiver Hunter Renfrow, who looks almost tough enough to crack the PGA Tour, caught two touchdown passes — in the first quarter. It was a cracker of a ballgame from the jump.

There were plenty of options to watch, thanks to ESPN’s so-called Megacast. There were 14 different options to watch via TV or stream. There was a Spanish broadcast. There was a Pylon cam, which had at least one starring moment. There was a student section cam, which I’m confident will incriminate someone before it’s all said and done. There was a special film room and a mock replay booth and something called a “command center.”

The best choice, however, was the Spidercam, the remote-controlled aerial camera. The camera itself is held above the field by a system of cables, and pans and tilts and zooms all over to follow the action. It often started plays with a view from behind the offensive line, such that you could see the holes opening for a running back or throwing lanes opening for the quarterback. It’s the closest you’ll get to watching a game from a helicopter above the field. Best of all? There was no commentary. Just the sounds of the stadium: the crowd, the game, the sidelines — and it was all unbleeped! (Can you believe kids are cussing these days?) If you’re the sort who laments all the bells and whistles that come with big-game broadcasts, it’s the production for you.

Last, a David Bowie tune, “I Say to Myself.” I’m a sucker for the early work of most any act who started out playing sweet rock ‘n’ roll tunes in the sixties, and Bowie fits the mold. He went on to play a hundred different styles in a thousand different faces, but some 50 years ago he was just another guitar-playing lad from London. I don’t expect we’ll see another one like him.

1. One could argue that the fans in St. Louis deserve less compassion since the Rams moved there from Los Angeles in 1995. Call me a bleeding heart; I still sympathize. [↩]
2. My mom visited my apartment in Ohio City for the first time a few months back. It was her first time on the west side in I don’t know how long. Remember that bomb threat on the freeway that put traffic at a standstill for like three hours? Yeah, Mom was stuck in the middle of it, for the full duration. As if she needed another reason to stick to Lake County. [↩]
3. Do you realize how freaking big that guy is? 6-3/240. Yeesh. [↩]