‘Carry On’: Why an ESPN Producer Left Her Job

I’m not sure why this didn’t publish when I wrote this a few weeks back but I’ll do it now unedited.

This story is already a few weeks old but if you haven’t yet, take a moment today to read this wonderful story, watch the entire video (about a 20 minute segment) or do both. It is about an ESPN producer who covered a story in 2009 about two friends (one blind, the other without both of his legs) but then never let it go as she decided to leave ESPN to be an integral part of the two kid’s lives.

Probably the best line of the entire for me was “the one with no legs, being carried by the one who could not see.”

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ESPN Passport: The Games I Have Attended

Anyone who knows me knows that I love stats. One of the more underrated sports related stats website has to be ESPN Passport. It is an awesome service provided by ESPN that allows you to archive all the sports events you have been to (and even watched from home) and spews out stats about how the teams have done in those games. They show a win-loss record, active winning or losing streak and how the teams have done at home and on the road in the games you saw them play. Over time, they have added medals which you can earn if you attend events and the team goes on a winning or even a losing streak.

Full link to all the stats available here on Google Drive.

Here’s a look at some of the stats for my events: (Note: I only log the games that I have attended in person)

I am certain that I missed a couple of games that I attended in person but of the 38 games I have logged in so far, there are 10 teams that I have never seen lose (3 of them I have seen on more than one occasion):

New York Mets: 3-0, 2 games at Citi Field (vs. Yankees and Chicago White Sox) and one at Rogers Center
Seattle Mariners: 2-0 (both in the same stadium but once when it was SkyDome and one as Rogers Center)
West Virginia Mountaineers (CFB): 2-0 (both at High Point Solutions Stadium)

The following teams are 1-0: Houston Astros, Cincinnati Bearcats (CFB), Fresno State Bulldogs (CFB), Buffalo Sabers, San José Sharks, Miami Heat and Syracuse Orangeman (CBB).

The most frequent teams that I have seen are by far the Toronto Blue Jays and New York Yankees:

Toronto Blue Jays: 6-9 record, 5-7 at home and 1-2 on the road (all road games at Yankee Stadium)
New York Yankees: 8-5 record, 5-3 at home and 3-2 on the road (all road games at Rogers Center)

List of Arenas with record of home team in brackets:
SkyDome/Rogers Center (5-7)
Old/New Yankee Stadium (5-3)
High Point Solutions Stadium (3-4)
Citi Field (2-0)
Izod Center (2-1)
Madison Square Garden (1-1)
Air Canada Center (0-1)
Rutgers Athletic Center (0-1)
TD Garden (0-1)
Citizens Bank Ballpark (0-1)

Stats by Sport:
Major League Baseball: 23 games
NCAA DI Football: 7 games
National Hockey League: 4 games
National Basketball Association: 3 games
NCAA DI Basketball: 1 game

Finishing off with the medals page, I have six in total which include easy ones like checking into your first event, posting comments and attending a game on a holiday. However two cool ones that I have is “Zero Hero” which is attending a game with a shutout (I just got at the Mets/White Sox game) and “Doubleheader” which is attending two games in one day. I got that one on October 27, 2007 by watching a college football game between Rutgers Scarlet Knights and West Virginia playing a game at noon and then heading over to Madison Square Garden to see the Toronto Maple Leafs and the New York Rangers play at 7pm.

 

Keeping In Touch

Anyone want to play a game of tag?

 

Also in an unrelated note, yesterday was the 20 year anniversary of the famous Jimmy V speech. If you have never seen it, or haven’t seen it in a while go take a look below:

Bracket Update: Round 1

Through day 2 of this March Madness, I still have a couple of brackets which are doing pretty well. I have different brackets on ESPN, Yahoo! Sports and Facebook. I’ll break each one down but the best of the 3 is a tie with ESPN and Yahoo! Sports both having 26/32 correct picks and then Facebook only one game behind at 25/32 but that might be the one in the best shape.

A couple of things to note before my review:

  • With round one now complete … the ESPN.com Tournament Challenge looks like this:
  • Approximately 4.8 million completed brackets were submitted.
  • There are no brackets that are completely correct.
  • There are 3 brackets that have missed only one game.
  • There are 95 brackets that have missed two games.
  • There are 1,111 brackets that have missed three games.
  • Most brackets, on average, have missed 10 games.

    Click ‘Read more‘ to read the rest of review of my brackets. Continue reading “Bracket Update: Round 1”

No Dispute About Defensive POY

There is no argument in my mind about who should have been this year’s NFL Defensive Player of the Year and that was Charles Woodson who did end up getting 28 of the 50 votes with New York Jets’ Darrelle Revis coming a distant second with 14.

According to the ESPN.com article, “the versatile Woodson tied for the league lead with nine interceptions, returning three for touchdowns, and was a key to the Packers’ turnaround on defense. His role in Green Bay’s performance — second in the league in overall defense, first in interceptions (30), takeaways (40) and turnover margin (plus-24).”

Following the Packers all year long certainly made it obvious that he should win even though the local Revis came on strong towards the end of the season shutting down key #1 receivers but this is an award for the entire year, not just the first half or the second half of the season.

One thing to notice from today’s announcement was Rex Ryan’s reply and standing up for his player. He said, “a number that I think is interesting is eight.  No, that’s not the amount of touchdown passes Green Bay gave up against Arizona.  That’s the amount of touchdown passes we gave up all season.  The biggest reason for that is Darrelle Revis.”

The Jets’ coach has a big mouth but he always backs his team and doesn’t hold anything back. You can respect that in a coach but no way was he winning the award this year. This year it belonged to Charles Woodson.