Category: Chicago Blackhawks

The Sports Census Maps

On By Frank the TankIn Big Ten, Chicago Bears, Chicago Blackhawks, Chicago Bulls, Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox, College Football, Illinois Fighting Illini, Major League Baseball, NBA Basketball, NFL Football, NHL Hockey, Sports3 Comments

If you’re one of the three regular readers of this blog, it’s probably readily apparent that I’m a big sports fan.  What you probably don’t know, however, is that I’ve also always been a dork about maps (when my family took road trips when I was younger, I used to collect maps from as many states and cities as possible) and census data (for whatever reason, population and socioeconomic demographic statistics have always fascinated me – I could pore over that stuff for hours on end).

So, when I ended up finding the CommonCensus Sports Map Project, which has put together maps of the geographic distribution of sports fans of teams in Major League Baseball, NFL Football, NBA Basketball, NHL Hockey, and college football, I was predictably sucked in.  Granted, the data is based upon those who vote in the accompanying poll, so it’s not scientific, but it looks as if though the sample size is getting large enough where there is a pretty accurate view of who cheers for what sports teams across the country.  (Note: be sure to also check out the separate “United Countries of Baseball” map discussed on Strange Maps and Deadspin.)

Here are some observations from a look at the different CommonCensus Sports Maps:

(1) The teams that I like are pretty popular in general in terms of total votes.  The Bulls are the #1 NBA team, the Bears are the #3 NFL team (after the Patriots and Cowboys), Illinois is #9 out of all NCAA Division 1-A football teams, and the Blackhawks are the #4 NHL team (maybe there is hope for hockey in Chicago when Bill Wirtz finally relinquishes his throne).  Not surprisingly, my White Sox are the exception as the #15 MLB team out of 30.  If I were a “Cox” fan, I might be enthralled with the Cubs’ #2 MLB ranking (after only the Red Sox), but since I’m not, I just have to shake my head at how the severe the nation’s lemming epidemic is today.

(2) The baseball map is the most fascinating since it really shows the regional rivalry lines.  Growing up as a Sox fan on the South Side, I honestly had no clue how seriously people in Downstate Illinois take the Cubs-Cardinals rivalry until I went to college in Champaign.  I think that most Cubs fans that grow up in the Chicago area look at the White Sox the way, by comparison, Yankees fans look at the Red Sox (just complete and utter disdain for the other team and their fans) while the Cardinals are more like the Yankees’ view of the Mets (really strong dislike).  There are some individual exceptions to this (i.e. the Cubs fans that always love to claim that “they just don’t pay attention to the Sox at all” or the contingent that merely uses Wrigley Field as a happy hour spot before hitting the other bars in Wrigleyville) , but that seems to be the general rule in Chicagoland.  That changes when you get towards the center of the State of Illinois, where I could see clearly that the feelings between Cubs and Cardinals fans are a lot more intense, showing that proximity breeds contempt.  As you can tell by the baseball map and drilling down into the statistical breakouts, the state pretty much splits between the Cubs and Cardinals just south of the U of I campus, with the Cubs also taking most of Iowa and Indiana.  White Sox Nation is relegated to the space bounded by Madison Street, I-80, I-294, and Michigan City (we like to keep our club nice and exclusive).

(3) For college football, the Chicago area is not surprisingly dominated by Illinois, Notre Dame, and Northwestern, followed by other Big Ten teams plus Northern Illinois.  Most of the figures pass the smell test with the exception of the SEC schools along with ACC counterpart Florida State, who seem to be severely underrepresented in terms of votes at this point in time.  I would make a joke that the Confederacy is just moving on from 8-track players, but Arkansas State and East Carolina actually have significantly more votes than Tennessee, Alabama, LSU, and Florida State.  Any sports fan with any semblance of the college football world would know those figures must be inaccurate.  The CommonCensus project coordinators ought to take a look at this because those numbers from the South are completely out of whack with all of the other regions of the country.

(4) In terms of the NFL, the Bears take most of Illinois as expected, although I thought that I’d see a bit more Bears dominance in the northern part of Indiana since there’s a lot more entrenched history there compared to the Colts (much like the baseball Cardinals were the favorite team for generations of southerners prior to the Braves moving to Atlanta).  Still, the Bears appear to be one of the few teams that has a substantive fan presence in nearly every major market (with the exception of Green Bay, Wisconsin, of course).

Anyway, I find all of the data and corresponding maps extremely fascinating.  I recommend for everyone to take the time to vote in the poll so that the quality of the results can continue to be improved.

Bears and Bulls Back That Ass Up and Land-o-Links for 12/18/2006

On By Frank the TankIn Big Ten, Chicago Blackhawks, Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox, College Basketball, Illinois Fighting Illini, Land-o-Links, Major League Baseball, NBA Basketball, NFL Football, NHL Hockey, SportsLeave a comment

tank-johnson-mugshot.jpg

The Bears survived and pulled out a game that should have never been close yesterday against the Tampa Bay Bucs.  However, there were a couple of consolations from the medicore performance aside from the obvious fact that the Bears have clinched home field advantage throughout the playoffs.  First, Sexy Rexy was back in form throwing for over 300 yards along with with 3 TD passes.  Second, and more importantly, no matter how weak the Bears might be with a decimated front line as a result of the losses of Tommie Harris and our honorary Cincinnati Bengal Tank Johnson (more on him later on), the NFC is so craptacular that we might back right into a Super Bowl berth.  There’s no shame in this, considering that 2006 has seen the St. Louis Cardinals getting hot at the right time and winning the World Series after barely making the postseason representing the truly awful National League and the Miami Heat clinching an NBA championship coming out of the miserable Eastern Conference.  By the way, have you looked at the NBA East standings lately, particularly the Atlantic Division, which might obliterate the 2005 NL West’s title as the worst division in sports history?  It’s as if the entire conference caught Isiah Thomas Disease (additional thoughts on him later, too).  As a result, “Back That Ass Up” is my motto for the Bears and Bulls this season.  Anyway, here are the links for the day:

(1) Chicago Has Cubs, Bears, Bulls, AND Blackhawks (ESPN.com) – Linda Cohn, for all intents and purposes, is a solid broadcaster.  However, in the course of pointing out that Chicagoans ought to be paying a little more attention to the success of the Hawks since team legend Denis Savard came on board as head coach, she herself should perform some due diligence after neglecting to mention that other professional sports team in Chicago – you know, the one that won the World Series last year.

(2) Guns, Drugs, Tank and a Death (Fleece the Pig, Flog the Pony) – As Frank the Tank, I had been thinking about getting a Tank Johnson Bears jersey for awhile, particularly since he spells out his name “Tank Johnson” in its entirety on the back.  At this point, though, I’m going to have an easier time finding a “Ron Mexico” Falcons jersey.

(3) We’ll Keep Looking Both Ways (Chicagoist) – The City of Chicago is going to attempt to advance the notion that pedestrians do, in fact, have rights.  I don’t think this is going to go over well.

(4) Knicks – Nuggets Brawl (YouTube) – Footage from the fight between the Knicks and Nuggets at Madison Square Garden on Saturday, including the ill-advised punch thrown by Carmelo Anthony.  I’m still in search of video from Isiah Thomas’ instant classic postgame press conference where he was complaining about how Denver kept its starters in at the end of the game when they had over a 20-point lead.  He’s right on the money: putting in your starters to play against the Knicks at anytime is just not a fair match.

(5) Turnovers Will Be Critical vs. Mizzou (Mark Tupper Weblog) – The Illini have got all of their starters back, but they’ll need to cut down on the turnovers in the Braggin’ Rights Game tomorrow evening.

And finally…

(6) The Great Leprechaun Hunt (Minneapolis Red Sox) – I don’t care how busy you are today.  You absolutely positively MUST watch this video.  You’ll thank Minneapolis Red Sox a million times for finding such a gem.

(Image from Scout.com) 

Frank the Tank’s Slant 1st Anniversary Extravaganza: The Top 15 Posts of the Year

On By Frank the TankIn Big East, Big Ten, Chicago Blackhawks, Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox, College Basketball, College Football, DePaul Blue Demons, Illinois Fighting Illini, Major League Baseball, Music, NBA Basketball, NFL Football, NHL Hockey, Politics, Random Thoughts, Sports, Television5 Comments

birthday-cake.gif

It’s difficult to believe, but the first two posts on Frank the Tank’s Slant were put up for posterity one year ago today. Since then, you’ve witnessed a steady stream of bloviations from me along with Land-o-Links (my device to comment on numerous items from around the web that don’t warrant full-fledged posts), classic music videos (with a heavy emphasis on old school hip-hop and monster arena rock), and maybe even a different take on the world of sports and news every once in awhile.

Despite becoming a fairly active blogger, I’m not one of those people that believes that blogs will completely turn the media landscape on its head. In my mind, there’s still an important role for “old media” such as newspapers and television to look at events and issues without the colored commentary that inherently accompanies blogs). However, I do think that blogs give the opportunity for yeomen such as myself to stake out places in this flattened world that were previously only the domain of an exclusive media elite while also finally providing exposure to some of the best writers anywhere, including those Slant readers out there that blog themselves.

So, in honor of the first anniversary of Frank the Tank’s Slant, here’s a look back at my 15 favorite posts from the past year, ranked in ascending order, that range from thoughts on the world of sports to political election strategies and television scheduling with some updated comments and observations:

(15) Football vs. Football: College or Pro? (August 16, 2006) – A point-by-point comparison of college football and the NFL, with me giving the college game a slight edge. Of course, I noted that this was a debate comparable to deciding “whether it was more shocking to find out that Liberace was gay versus Lance Bass – if there’s any answer at all, we’re definitely splitting hairs here.” At the same time, I have a zealous hatred of the current BCS system, which has been outlined on this blog a number of times.

(14) Demons Dog the Irish (January 9, 2006) – Regular readers can easily observe that I’m a devoted and frequent writer on the happenings at my undergraduate alma mater of the University of Illinois, but this post featured a rarer instance when I focused on the basketball program at my law school alma mater of DePaul in the wake of my attendance at its inaugural Big East game against rival Notre Dame.

(13) The Yellow Rose Bowl of Texas: My BCS Bowl Picks (December 26, 2005) – I absolutely nailed 3 out of the 4 games right down to a “Penn State will win but not cover” prediction while being comforted that no one that dates outside of his or her own family could have possibly bet money that West Virginia would have beaten Georgia straight-up in a virtual home game at the Georgia Dome. That initial success only a couple weeks after starting this blog emboldened me to make predictions on a regular basis in all of the major sports, which have turned out to be all completely wrong and boneheaded.

(12) Non-Stop TV Seasons Need to be Adopted Everywhere (April 24, 2006) – With ABC changing the scheduling of “Lost” this year, it seems as though the television networks are beginning to heed my calls to get out of its “sweeps feast vs. non-sweeps famine” cycle. They’re about a decade too late to stem the tide to alternative forms of entertainment, but it’s a start.

(11) No Need for an Apology from the Daily Illini (February 14, 2006), The Daily Illini Needs to Apologize for Something Else (February 15, 2006), More Thoughts From Minneapolis Red Sox and Frank the Tank on the Daily Illini (February 16, 2006) – A trilogy of posts on the controversy that surrounded the Daily Illini’s decision to print the Danish cartoons that were the impetus for deadly riots across the Muslim world. The “More Thoughts” post is one of my favorites as the product of a back-and-forth email discussion between my buddy Minneapolis Red Sox and me, particularly since it revealed some surprising views from the “Siberia, Minnesota” writer as a former newspaper reporter.

(10) Springtime for Kiper on Broadway (April 28, 2006) – My pre-NFL Draft thoughts that explained why I love the event so much and predicted the eventual decision of the Bears to trade out of the first round. The follow-up post after the draft had a scathing criticism of the Bears’ moves, but I have since admitted that I was completely wrong, particularly about special teams sage and my new man crush Devin Hester.

(9) Frank the Tank’s Great All-You-Can-Eat Buffets of Chicago (July 14, 2006) – All-you-can-eat is all-that-I-need.

(8) Big Ten from Eleven to Twelve? If There’s No Luck of the Irish, Bring in More Orange (March 5, 2006) – The types of posts that I enjoy writing the most are about wonky sports business and law subjects. At least from my perspective, while there are multitudes of people in the blogosphere that break down the games on the field on a daily basis (and do it very well), there’s a dearth of perspectives on the off-the-field matters, so I attempt to fill that gap from time-to-time. On the particular subject of big Ten expansion, I’m from the camp that the conference should only expand to 12 teams if it means that it’s maximizing its national footprint, which means the 2 real choices for the conference are either Notre Dame (unparalleled in terms of national exposure) or Syracuse (a strong East Coast counterpart for Penn State). As a result, I pass this post along everytime I hear suggestions for Pittsburgh (market already covered by Penn State), West Virginia (an even smaller market), or Missouri (besides the practical matter of whether it would worth it to secede from the Big 12, Illinois already covers the St. Louis market).

(7) The Bears Are Who They Thought They Were! (October 17, 2006) – This was written on only a couple of hours of sleep since I was completed wired after the Bears’ Monday Night comeback against the Cardinals. Regardless of my writing, the YouTube clip of the uncensored Dennis Green press conference is going to be the subject of mutiple NFL Films specials years from now.

(6) The Mason Midmajor Myth (April 6, 2006) – At the time that this post was written, my Billy Packer-esque sentiment was about as popular as, well, Billy Packer himself. However, I still believe that George Mason’s run to the Final Four was the peak of the midmajors as opposed to the start of any trend. We’ll see how this college basketball season will play out.

(5) The Lonely Libertarian: A View From a Disaffected Republican (November 10, 2006) – A rare post from me that was dedicated solely to politics (and I explained exactly why I haven’t written much about the political arena despite my deep interest in the subject). The output here was a bit long-winded yet long overdue as a result of a whole lot of pent-up frustration. Simply put, if the Republicans don’t pay attention to people such as myself, they’re going to lose even more ground in 2008 than they did in this year’s midterm elections.

(4) Chi-Town vs. Motown: Rivalries Across the Board (July 19, 2006) – After the sports business posts, my second favorite broad topic to write about is the nature of rivalries. The analysis of the Chicago-Detroit rivalries was something that I brewed over for months before I finally got down to writing it since there’s much more involved than just a single major rivalry between two particular teams such as the Bears vs. Packers.

(3) Hoosier Fleecing: A Q&A with Frank the Tank on the Eric Gordon Debacle (October 16, 2006) – The most widely read post that I’ve had on this blog to date due to links from Deadspin and numerous other sites from across the blogosphere along with continued interest in the story. As you can probably tell, the emotions were extremely raw at the time. Even though I’ve clamed down a bit, Satan’s Spawn, er, Kelvin Sampson, is going to need to wear some SWAT team gear if he wants to survive his visit the real Assembly Hall in Champaign on January 23rd.

(2) The Best of Both Worlds: A Modest Proposal for a College Football Playoff That Keeps the Bowls (July 28, 2006) – As long as the BCS school presidents continue to support the current bowl system, this post will stand the test of time. My college football playoff proposal wasn’t necessarily the most original idea (I’ve seen variations of the playoff/bowl hybrid before), but I did want to set forth a system that would give incentives for the BCS conferences to implement it as opposed to the standard calls for an NCAA Tournament-style format, which the powers that be will never go for. In the wake of this year’s Michigan-Florida debacle, it’s time to get this done.

(1) The Paranoia of Illini Nation (December 15, 2005) – This was the issue that spurred me to begin this blog and was my first real substantive post. Even though the Eric Gordon reference is obviously now dated, it’s still my favorite piece of writing as it combines my emotional love for the Illini with an attempt to step back from the proverbial chip on the shoulder that seems to plague our fan base.

I hope that you enjoyed this look back on the recent past and get ready for a sophomore year that hopefully won’t have a slump!

The Windy City vs. The Big Apple: Examining The Rivalries

On By Frank the TankIn Chicago Blackhawks, Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox, Major League Baseball, NBA Basketball, NFL Football, NHL Hockey, Sports1 Comment

jordan-ewing.jpg

While Chicagoans hold their greatest vitriol for the Packers, we can take solace in the fact that no matter how the Bears perform, we at least get to live in what we consider to be the greatest city in the world as opposed to Green Bay. As I’ve noted before, Chicago has across-the-board pro and college sports rivalries with all of the teams in Detroit, but anyone that’s ever lived in the Windy City would never willingly move to the Motor City. (Granted, any that’s ever lived anywhere would probably not willingly move to Detroit.) There’s really only one town that Chicago is constantly comparing itself to in terms of life in general: New York City. Chicago has always competed with New York in terms of sports, pizza (as a certified pizza connoisseur, I have a deep respect for the thin slice that you can fold over, but there’s nothing that compares to the deep dish), the arts, comedians, writers, mobsters, politicians, financial markets, skyscrapers, rappers, and pretty much everything else.

Since New York holds an unparalleled place in the world’s psyche along with carrying a whole lot more sizzle, though, Chicago has a bit of an inferiority complex with its East Coast rival as displayed in the “Second City” moniker, albeit the harping about New York here is not nearly as acute as the afflictions in Boston and Philadelphia (I’ve seen firsthand how neurotic those people are towards NYC). In the age of geographic alignments of sports leagues and divisions, Chicago-New York matchups don’t take on the gravity or frequency today as they did compared to even only a decade ago, yet there’s still some glamour associated when the two largest sports fan markets in nation meet up on the field, court, or ice. (Don’t waste my time, L.A. “fans”.) Thus, in honor of the Bears’ being in the midst of two consecutive trips to the final resting place of Jimmy Hoffa, here’s a ranking of the Chicago-New York sports rivalries from top to bottom:

(1) Chicago Bulls vs. New York Knicks – Obviously, the first thing that comes to mind are the heated battles in the early-1990s between Michael Jordan’s Bulls and the Pat Riley-led Knicks, who were essentially the Bad Boy Pistons minus basketball skills other than hard fouls. While the Bulls got the best of the Knicks more times than not with several dispositions in the playoffs and Jordan’s “Double Nickel” game at Madison Sqaure Garden from his 1995 comeback (years ago, the late Gene Siskel wrote this nice retrospective on #23’s top performances at MSG) , I’ll still go to my grave believing that the MJ-less Bulls of 1994 would have made it to the NBA Finals that year if not for the egregious phantom foul call by Hue Hollins on Scottie Pippen in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals. (Only the 2000 Illinois-Michigan football game could compare in terms of me being violated by an officiating crew – Illini fans know what I’m talking about.) Outside of just those ’90s games, these two NBA franchises are amazingly intertwined in terms of players and coaches with Phil Jackson, Charles Oakley, Bill Cartwright, Jalen Rose, Eddy Curry, Jamal Crawford, Antonio Davis’ crazy wife, and, of course, John Starks (at the time of that signing, Jerry Reinsdorf obviously felt that he didn’t piss off Chicago fans enough by bringing Albert Belle into town) just off of the top of my head. Plus, Isiah Thomas was nice enough to give us the draft pick that turned into Tyrus Thomas along with the chance to grab Greg Oden next year in what could turn out to be the NBA version of the Herschel Walker trade between the Cowboys and Vikings. This rivalry is certainly in a down period with Zeke’s historic ineptitude, but I’m sure that it will rise again in the near future.

(2) Chicago Cubs vs. New York Mets – This was one of the top rivalries in the National League before the divisions were realigned following Major League Baseball’s expansion in the 1990s. The Wrigley Field Bleacher Bums were among the most frequent users of the “Dar-ryl” chant against Darryl Strawberry while the most infamous Cubs moment this side of Steve Bartman was the black cat running in front of Ron Santo at Shea Stadium in 1969, which subsequently led to Chicago’s historic collapse to give the Mets the pennant. In fact, when the Cubs challenged a proposed realignment during the 1980s that would have sent them and the Cardinals to the NL West when there were still only two divisions, the Tribune Company cited the team’s rivalry with the Mets as the main factor. (The fact that West Coast road games would start at 9:30 Central Time on WGN was only a minor consideration, right?) While the two teams have suffered a number of of poor seasons over the past decade, the eventual three-division realignment is what really took a lot of the steam out of this rivalry. Still, there seems to be a bit of mutual disdain between the two clubs and fan bases that isn’t quite there with my White Sox and the Yankees (as I’ll explain later).

cubs-black-cat.jpg

(3) Chicago Bears vs. New York Giants – A classic old-time NFL matchup that, in my opinion, the league ought to be scheduling every year the way they currently have the Colts-Patriots annual tilt or the 49ers-Cowboys games from the past. Seeing that these are marquee teams with national fan bases from the two largest media markets in the NFL, it’s a no-brainer on paper. There’s a substantial amount of history between these two franchises, particularly in the pre-Super Bowl days when the clubs met six separate times for the NFL Championship (which is still the most any two teams have met in the title game including Super Bowls). Of course, the most memorable Bears-Giants moment from my lifetime, however, was the infamous whiffed punt by Sean Lendetta in the 1985 NFC Divisional Playoff Game (if anyone has found footage of this on YouTube, please let me know) that the Bears returned for a touchdown en route to 21-0 shutout.

(A couple of notes on this past Sunday’s Bears-Giants game: (a) Rex Grossman has certainly been on and off, but I don’t believe that it compares to the schizophrenic play of Devin Hester. The Bears punt returner seriously either fumbles/muffs/runs backwards for a loss or takes it all the way back to the house – there’s seriously no in between. I was cursing his performance all game, which he thereupon ran back a missed field goal for that tied for the longest play in NFL history, which is amazingly held by another Bear in Nathan Vasher. Hester’s like the Kirsten Dunst of football; and (b) The way that Eli Manning was shell-shocked to the point where he threw an interception right back to Bears in the series after that Hester touchdown, thereby sealing the game, cannot be much of a comfort to Giants fans. Rex was on the ascent by the end of the third quarter after playing a horrible first half while Eli got progressively worse as the night went on.)

(4) Chicago White Sox vs. New York Yankees – I always like to compare the Yankees with the Michigan Wolverines in terms of rivalries since, just as everyone in the Big Ten considers Michigan to be a huge rival, all of the American League teams circle the New York games on their respective schedules. However, Michigan really only considers Ohio State, Notre Dame, and Michigan State to be rivalry matchups, while the Yankees limit their emotions to the Red Sox and Mets. The point here is that White Sox fans (and I am most definitely one of them) might put a great deal of importance on the games with the Yankees, but I know well enough that this feeling certainly isn’t reciprocated. This was certainly different in the 1950s and 1960s when the Sox and Yankees were perennially battling each other for the AL pennant (with the Sox on the short end every time with the exception of 1959), yet in this age where the two teams rarely play more than six games per year due to the unbalanced scheduling in baseball, it’s unlikely this matchup is going to be much of a rivalry again unless they start meeting in the postseason on a regular basis.

(5) Chicago Blackhawks vs. New York Rangers – I’ll freely admit that I know little past the basics of hockey, but, as I’ve mentioned before in my Modest Proposal to Save the NHL, I do have to take issue with the fact that the NHL has essentially ignored its “Original Six” rivalries ever since they stopped using those wacky names for conferences and divisions. Thus, in the infinite wisdom of league schedulers, the Blackhawks and Rangers played each other only once last year and will play against one another only one time this season. Instead, Hawks fans get to enjoy plenty of tilts with the Columbus Blue Jackets (at least when they aren’t being blacked out on television in Chicago). So, this once great matchup sadly barely registers anywhere anymore.

And finally…

babe-ruth-called-shot.jpg

(6) Chicago Cubs vs. New York Yankees – This isn’t a rivalry at all other than being baseball fans’ (if not everyone’s) universal benchmarks for failure and success and a Fox executive’s wet dream of a postseason matchup, but it’s an opportunity to remind Cubs fans that Babe Ruth’s alleged called shot came at Wrigley Field against the Chicago National League Ball Club in the 1932 World Series. Ahhh… it’s great to be a White Sox fan.

(Images from SportsWall, Cubbies Baseball, Baseball Myths)

Chi-Town vs. Motown: Rivalries Across the Board

On By Frank the TankIn Big Ten, Chicago Blackhawks, Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox, College Basketball, College Football, Illinois Fighting Illini, Major League Baseball, NBA Basketball, NFL Football, NHL Hockey, Sports8 Comments

Dennis Rodman. Ben Wallace. John Salley. Magglio Ordonez. Al Simmons. Chris Chelios. Erik Kramer. Bobby Layne. All of these prominent sports figures from past and present have one thing in common: they have played for teams in both Chicago and Detroit during their careers. Chicago sports teams might have individual rivals from cities other than Detroit such as the Green Bay Packers and St. Louis Cardinals that are more pronounced. However, Chicago and Detroit are linked by having geographically defined and historic rivalries in every sport across the board whether it’s in the professional or college (when taking into account the Big Ten plus Notre Dame) ranks. Not even New York vs. Boston (they have the pro sports covered, but you couldn’t pay enough money to the average person on the street to watch Rutgers play Boston College in anything on the college front) or Los Angeles vs. San Francisco (L.A. doesn’t have an NFL team while the Bay Area only has a quasi-NBA franchise in the Warriors) have sets of sports rivalries that run as wide and deep as Chicago vs. Detroit. With the important series between the White Sox and Tigers (the Sox took game 1 last night after a marvelous performance by Jon Garland) occurring this week, here’s my ranking of the top Chicago vs. Detroit rivalries taking into account history and present fervor:

1) Bulls vs. Pistons – As I’ve stated before, the Bad Boy Pistons were the first team I ever had pure hatred for during my childhood. During the late-1980s and early-1990s, this was the most heated rivalry in all of sports with annual nationally televised Christmas Day matchups at the old Chicago Stadium and inevitable meetings in the NBA Playoffs, coming to a peak when the Pistons walked off of the court after being eliminated by the Bulls in 1991 without even acknowledging Michael Jordan and his team. The rivalry subsided when the Bulls, during their 1990s dynasty, eventually found new foils in the Knicks and Pacers and then the Pistons rose back to dominance after the start of the new millennium right when Chicago went into the cellar. However, with Ben Wallace defecting from a Motown fan base that loved him to go to Chicago out of all places (the basketball equivalent of Johnny Damon spurning the Red Sox for the Yankees), these two franchises are going to be rekindling that old hatred this season and beyond.

jordandumars_030311.jpg

2) Notre Dame vs. Michigan – Michigan fans will tell you that while Ohio State, without question, is their biggest rival, they save their harshest vitriol for the Irish. At the same time, even though Domers count USC as their most important game of the season, there’s a certain respect for the Trojans in contrast to the pure hatred for the Wolverines. Notre Dame and Michigan are the two winningest programs in college football history with fight songs that are beaten into everyone’s heads, whether or not they care one iota about these teams, from birth. When you add in the pompous fans on both sides, the only thing comparable to this game is watching the Yankees play themselves in an intrasquad game: you hope there’s a way that both teams can lose. Regardless of how much I might hate these teams, the college football season really doesn’t start until Notre Dame plays Michigan in September.

(Sidenote: I really wish I could put Illinois vs. Michigan on this list, but I’ve learned over time that the “rivalry” is completely one-sided with my Illini brethren. Now, the most emotionally scarring sports moment that I have ever witnessed at an event that I actually attended was the 2000 Illinois – Michigan football game, where the Illini had the game stolen by the Big Ten referees who, with less than four minutes left in the game with Illinois ahead, incorrectly called a fumble by Illinois’ Rocky Harvey when he was actually down and then seconds later inexplicably didn’t call a fumble on Michigan’s Anthony Thomas when he dropped the ball when his knees weren’t anywhere near close to the ground. Michigan would go on to score the winning touchdown on that drive. The errors were so egregious that the Big Ten issued an unprecedented apology to Illinois a couple of days later and spurred the conference to begin using instant replay. What happened in Champaign that Saturday evening wasn’t a case of heartbreak a la Illinois losing in the 2005 NCAA Championship Game. Instead, it was probably the only time I’ve ever felt completely violated after watching a sporting event. To say the least, my disdain for Michigan peaked at that point.

However, when I went to law school at DePaul, the two undergraduate schools that matriculated the most students there by a substantial margin were Illinois and Michigan. Everytime I spewed my anger toward the Maize and Blue, my Michigan alum classmates were sincerely and genuinely perplexed. They had absolutely no feelings toward playing us whatsoever. In fact, a number of them upon moving to Chicago even started cheering for Illinois when they weren’t playing Michigan. They simply didn’t think about us at all as any sort of rival – we might as well have been Northern Illinois. While learning about this apathy was initially even more enraging from a personal standpoint, it also made me realize that Illinois vs. Michigan was a fictional rivalry and we, as Illini fans, look pretty petty into making the matchup into something more than what it actually is. This is now so apparent across the Big Ten that the Michigan Daily even had an article a couple of years ago examining how much we hate them in contrast to their ambivalence toward us. From that point on, I decided that if I was going to hate a team that really wasn’t a true rival of the Illini, I’d redirect more of my sports rage toward someone outside of the Big Ten: Duke. Of course, that’s not to say that I won’t continue to drop “Muck Fichigan” lines at every opportunity.)

3) Bears vs. Lions – In 1934, the Detroit Lions began their tradition of playing on every Thanksgiving Day by matching up against the Chicago Bears. When examining longevity and frequency, only the Packers are bigger rivals to the Bears than the Lions. While in terms of sporting excellence this rivalry has seen better days, the Bears and Lions are, year-in and year-out regardless of records, the most important franchises in their respective cities. So, as we wait for Matt Millen to put together an offensive formation that features one quarterback and ten wide receivers, we can appreciate the history between these two NFL teams along with the passionate fan bases that they bring to the table.

walter-payton-1978.jpg eddie-payton-rookie-card.jpg

4) Blackhawks vs. Red Wings – As I mentioned a few weeks ago, this rivalry once would have been the clear and undisputed #1 on this list. However, this matchup is looking more like Illinois vs. Michigan as opposed to Bulls vs. Pistons with every inept team that the Blackhawks trot out on the ice. Still, there’s incredible history here, from their mutual status as Original Six franchises to the Bobby Hull vs. Gordie Howe boxing matches.

5) Illinois vs. Michigan State – A continually growing college basketball rivalry that is based more on excellence as opposed to bad blood. When looking at the Big Ten over the past decade, these two programs have perennially been at the top of the conference, which makes their annual matchups that much more important. For the record, if I had to pick the one head coach in college basketball other than Bruce Weber that I respect and admire over everyone else, it would definitely be the Spartans’ Tom Izzo.

illini-msu030406.jpg
6) White Sox vs. Tigers – This season, these two teams are battling for supremacy in the American League. I’ve got to rank this rivalry at #6, however, because they have spent the last one hundred seasons as pretty lackluster franchises. It wasn’t very long ago that the Tigers were battling to avoid losing 120 games in a season, while the White Sox finally broke an 88-year World Series championship drought in 2005. If these two clubs can sustain some success over multiple seasons after this year, then we’ll have another true rivalry on our hands.

And finally…

7) Cubs vs. Tigers – This isn’t a real rivalry at all, but it serves me with an opportunity to remind my readers that are Cubs fans that your team (a) hasn’t won a World Series since 1908, when they defeated none other than the Detroit Tigers in five games and (b) hasn’t won a National League pennant since 1945, when they then lost to the Detroit Tigers in the World Series in the maximum seven games. The Circle of Life continues (as well as the Curse of the Billy Goat).

(Images from Pistons.com, Beckett.com, Beckett.com, FightingIllini.com)

Oh Lord, Stanley: A Modest Proposal to Save the NHL

On By Frank the TankIn Chicago Blackhawks, NHL Hockey, Sports7 Comments

Poor National Hockey League. The ratings for this year's Stanley Cup Finals have been breaking all kinds of records for futility, from losing head-to-head matchups with women's college softball and a baseball game that rained out (in St. Louis, a better than average hockey town, the ratings for game 1 were so low that it wasn't even registered by Nielsen) to narrowly avoiding the worst rating in the history of prime time network television on Saturday. (To put this size of this abyss into perspective, the Stanley Cup Finals on NBC on Saturday drew approximately 1.3 million viewers. In comparison, "Emily's Reasons Why Not", which was cancelled before the credits starting rolling on its only episode, drew 6.2 million viewers.) While it's not surprising that there has been low interest in a series featuring two small markets (one of them being Canadian) coming off of a shut-down season, it's pretty sad to observe the NHL and the proud game of hockey taking such a beating.

As my three or four regular readers have probably noticed, I haven't written more than the occasional blip about hockey. That's because personally, I've never been much of an NHL fan (I'll explain the reason for this later in this post), and therein lies evidence of a major problem: if a person, such as myself, who devotes the majority of his television time to watching sports events of all stripes can't sustain much interest in the NHL, the hopes to attract a larger audience beyond hardcore hockey fans will be almost impossible.

The thing is, my non-NHL fan status has nothing to do with an aversion to hockey as a sport overall. In fact, I'll grant anyone the argument that hockey is the most exciting of the four "major" sports to watch live. I've been to plently of Blackhawks games (back when they actually fielded teams consisting of players that weren't Canadian Junior League rejects) along with being an Illini hockey regular and loved every moment of those experiences. Even more importantly, EA Sports NHL Hockey is neck-and-neck with Madden as the best sports video game for Playstation 2. (Sidenote: Back in college, my buddy Danny M and I made the greatest create-your-own athlete in the history of video games, which was a hockey player named "Ass Whooper". To give you a mental picture of what he looked like, he was essentially Shaq on ice skates. We actually got the Whooper to check a referee through the glass in the middle of a game, which was certainly the pinnacle of my video gaming career.) It's a fast-paced game with tons of hitting – what's not to love, right?

The NHL's problem over the past few decades, though, is that it has been a poorly run from the top league level all the way down to local franchises. While David Stern has been a brilliant commissioner of the NBA to turn that league into an international phenomenon and the NFL has had great stewards in Pete Rozelle and Paul Tagliabue (the entrenchment of baseball in the American psyche has allowed Major League Baseball to survive under the ineptitude of Bud Selig), the NHL has suffered from terrible vision and leadership from Gary Bettman, which is the death knell for a league that doesn't have the built-in interest of basketball, football, or baseball.

Therefore, here's my plan for what the NHL needs to do in order to even have a chance in this fragmented sports world:

1) Get Back on ESPN Somehow – This might not even be possible as ESPN has figured out that cheap softball and poker programming is killing the NHL in the ratings. Still, as long as the NHL doesn't receive exposure from the Worldwide Leader in Sports, where the lack of games on the ESPN family of networks has trickled down to only cursory coverage of the league on SportsCenter, it's going to continue to die a slow death. Coverage on OLN, which is in approximately 30 million fewer homes than ESPN, is not going to work for if the NHL ever wants to be considered a "major" sport again.

2) Sell the Franchises in Chicago and Boston to Owners That Care – The Blackhawks and Bruins are two Original Six franchises dripping with history and tradition and located in huge media markets that have fanatical sports fans. They ought to be the teams that the NHL can count on to bring more attention to its product. Yet, they have been saddled with quite possibly the two worst owners in all of sports with Bill Wirtz in Chicago and Jeremy Jacobs in Boston (when ESPN.com called upon readers to write in letters regarding the worst owners in sports, Jacobs and Wirtz were respectively the #1 and #3 vote-getters).

Without question, Bill Wirtz is the biggest reason as to why I never became more than a less-than-casual Hawks fan. While I have been watching multitudes of White Sox, Bears, Bulls, and Cubs games for as long as I can remember, I was never exposed to Hawks games in my formative years. That's simply because I couldn't be exposed to them even by accident. Not only do the Hawks, to this day, not broadcast its home games on television under the guise of "protecting its season ticket holders" (funny, having 162 Cubs games over-the-air on WGN didn't exactly hamper their season ticket base), but they were one of the first franchises in any sport to completely move all of their local broadcasts to cable. That wasn't good for me since my family, like the majority of families up until the late-1980s, didn't subscribe to cable at all. Therefore, the only hockey games I ever saw on television up until I was a teenager were the NHL All-Star Games, which featured no checking and 17-14 scores.

Adding on to that is when the Hawks finally looked as though it would breakthrough in the early-1990s with stars in their primes such as Jeremy Roenick, Ed Belfour, and Chris Chelios (peaking with a Stanley Cup Finals appearance in 1992), Wirtz did everything in his power to drive those players away. As a result, the Blackhawks have made the NHL playoffs only once since 1998 (this isn't even counting the fact that they haven't won the Stanley Cup since 1961, which is the longest championship drought of any franchise in hockey). Not only that, this is in the midst of the diluting of NHL going through expansion overkill, which brings up the following point.

3) Contraction of the NHL Back to True Hockey Cities – Back in the day, the Blackhawks would play the Original Six teams along with the Blues and old North Stars (when they were in Minnesota) for a majority of their games throughout the season. Now, as opposed to having a schedule filled with dates against the New York Rangers and Toronto Maple Leafs, Hawks fans get to see plently of insomnia-curing tilts with Columbus and Nashville.

Back in the early-1990s, the fashionable thing for all sports leagues to do was to look southward and westward for fast-growing markets as expansion and relocation targets. I'll grant that there were a number of open markets that were too large for the NHL to ignore, such as the San Francisco Bay Area, Dallas, and Atlanta. However, the league's obsession with new-wave warm-weather towns such as Nashville, Raleigh, and Tampa led it to abandon a number of cold-weather towns in Canada and, for a period of time, Minnesota (an absolutely crazy move since Minnesota is the only place in the United States where its residents' obsession with hockey is on par with Canada – the North Star State is to hockey as Indiana is to basketball) that were passionate about hockey. What looked like great moves to growing markets turned out to be a removal of the game from the areas where people care about it the most.

From my view, there are six teams that should easily be axed: Columbus, Nashville, Carolina, Tampa Bay, Florida, and Anaheim. We could probably cut it down even more, but I believe that the remaining 24 teams keeps the most desirable markets, franchises, and rivalries.

4) Realign, Forget About Geography, and Bring Back the Wacky Names – The next step after contraction is realignment. While geography ought to still be a factor in placing teams in conferences and divisions, the NHL should bring back an important part of its history. Despite the fact that Chris Berman annoyingly insists upon calling the NFC North the "Norris Division" every single freakin' week during the NFL season, the pre-1993 NHL names for its conferences and divisions which gave no references to geographic locations were a unique aspect of the game that should have never been eliminated.

Here is how I envision a new NHL:

WALES CONFERENCE

Adams Division: Montreal, Boston, Toronto, Ottawa, Buffalo, Atlanta (gets the nod over Florida only because of Lil' Jon)

Patrick Division: New York Rangers, New York Islanders, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Washington, Pittsburgh

CAMPBELL CONFERENCE

Norris Division: Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, Minnesota, Colorado, Dallas

Smythe Division: Los Angeles, San Jose, Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, Phoenix (the Coyotes need to stick around as long as Wayne Gretzky has a stake in that franchise)

5) Reemphasize Rivalries by Returning to Unbalanced Schedules and the Divisional Playoff Format – It wasn't too long ago that the Blackhawks-Red Wings rivalry was considered to be the fiercest and most important intercity rivalry on the Chicago sports landscape – even more than Bears-Packers or Cubs-Cardinals. These days, however, a random Bulls game against the Grizzlies attracts more attention than what is arguably the NHL's greatest rivalry. A large reason for this occurring (besides the Blackhawks supremely sucking at the same time that the Red Wings have been putting together championship teams) is that the NHL made the decision at the time that it renamed and realigned its divisions geographically that teams would play "balanced" schedules that pared down the number of intradivision games along with eliminating the divisional semifinals and finals from the first two rounds of the playoffs and going to a straight seeding of all teams in each conference irrespective of divisions.

So, we now have a situation where the best thing that the NHL had going for it – great rivalries – is now deemphasized to the point that it's hardly registers any interest to the average sports fan anymore. Therefore, I'm proposing that the NHL brings back unbalanced schedules where each team would play those outside of its division only twice (once at home and once on the road) while having the rest of its schedule filled with intradivision matchups. This would then make it fair to also go back to the divisional playoff format, where rivalries truly come to fruition. Imagine if the Bears played the Packers or the Yankees played the Red Sox in the playoffs every season. That's essentially what the NHL used to have and it could have it again.

The NHL should give up on its hopes that it will ever come close to the NFL, Major League Baseball, NBA, college basketball, college football, or NASCAR in terms of national interest. There's absolutely no reason, however, for such a historically-rich league to get beaten in the ratings by fishing shows, the WNBA, and John Stamos TV pilots. The sports world will be a lot better off if the NHL can get back on its feet to be a respectable league once more.