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Before I get to the body of this post, I would like to take the opportunity to let you know that this is a Unitel Power Post, sponsored by Jewelry Creations of Dover and with special thanks to Margarita’s. We’d also like to thank our local fishery for providing our first goal fish, and take this opportunity to give away a 10 percent off coupon to the Tea Times Inn in Conway to everyone sitting in sections 120, 121, and 122. And students, if you’re sitting in section 112, row H, seat 10, you have just won a piece of pizza from Wildcat Pizza. Wildcat Pizza, where wildcats eat.

Oh, the University of New Hampshire. I’ve been attending hockey games at the “Whit” (UNH’s Whittemore Center) for just about four years, and they always make for an amusing evening. Saturday evening’s BU-UNH tilt, however, had to be the most amusing of them all.

Maybe it was the constant giveaways and sponsorship of every aspect of the game. Every ten seconds, the announcer was giving out something, anything, be it a coupon to an entire section, Timberland gift certificates, a trivia giveaway for a computer – it never ended. They broke the bank with this game.  At one point, someone among my trusty seatmates – which included Pin Lady, who is like, my fandom idol - exclaimed, “At this rate, no one will leave empty handed.” In addition, every single power play was sponsored by Unitel, and involved a spiel by the announcer that lasted half of the power play.

Or maybe it was the Mexican Blanket Race, sponsored by a restaurant appropriately named “Margarita’s.” Students dragged each other in “Mexican” colored blankets, wearing sombreros, around the ice, while the Mexican Hat Dance played.  I don’t know if it was so much offensive as it was…horribly misguided? A train wreck? I just stared at the race, which took place during the first intermission, in awe.  Who the heck came up with this idea?

Or maybe it was the announcer asking the student section if they “bleed blue.” I turned to my partner-in-crime (the fiance) and said, “Isn’t that a serious medical condition? Like, you aren’t getting enough oxygen?”

Or maybe it was the DogPound members behind me in the long line to get up the narrow, steep concrete steps to go over the bridge to get to the narrow, steep concrete steps to the parking lot who changed the lyrics to Hey Baby to, “Heeeey, hey baby/I wanna know/why you don’t make wider stairs.”

Or maybe it was that we all watched Kieran Milan turn into Johnny Curry. For one of the first times since March 2006, the Terriers one a game solely due to goaltending. Was it the win that I was happy about as we shivered in the car as we waited in the long line waiting to get out of the parking lot? No, it was that, like the first time I came up to Durham with my then friend from work and his 16 year old brother back in March 2005, BU had a great goaltender that could save them when they were being covered by defenders like black ice on in the parking lot and penalized like a jailbird. And as my now fiance, future brother-in-law and I huddled in the car and waited for the line to move and the car to warm up enough to turn on the heat, the goaltending was all we spoke about, just like that first time.

So if you are looking to kill time this Saturday and want to learn more about what is sure to be a fun, offensively powered lacrosse match-up, check it out.

My favorite Dolph-fan called me Monday evening. (You may remember him from that entry about the NFL Draft a while back.) He was distraught. Over twenty-four hours after the Miami Dolphins lost to the rookie quarterback led Baltimore Ravens in the wild-card playoffs, and he still wasn’t okay with how his season ended.

After a few minutes of him telling me about a play in the third quarter that had gone awry, one that could have definitely changed the tempo of the game, he paused, looking for an encouraging word.  I didn’t know what to tell him.  I’ve been there before – as a Steve Young fan in the late 1990s, there were many early playoff exits that I just wasn’t okay with, and nothing anyone tried to console me with in the days following would make me better.  I usually didn’t recover until I would go on my self-imposed Steve Young hiatus for Lent in mid-February.  (This did include me thumb-tacking a sheet over my bedroom wall shrine to Young.  To adolescent me, this was more of a sacrifice than giving up anything else – giving up my lust of a Mormon quarterback to fulfill my Catholic religious obligations.)

So what was I going to tell the Dolph-fan? “Give up Chad Pennington for Lent?” The Dolphins shouldn’t be hanging their heads. They went from finishing the 2007 season 1-15 to winning the AFC East the next. Sure, having Bill Parcells on your side never hurts – I’m convinced that he could lead a Pop Warner team to beat an NFL team in the Super Bowl just merely by being involved.  But Dolph-fans shouldn’t stay crushed and depressed. So much progress was made, and if they hadn’t suffered some very key injuries at wide-out the last half of the season, I am sure we would have seen a different result this past Sunday.

Thus, there was only one point of solace I could share that would somewhat console the Dolph-fan.

“Look, it could be worse. It’ll be okay. At least you’re not a Bills fan.”

And with that, I think the Dolph-fan finally put things in perspective.

See, it’s after receiving emails like this from your local Bills Backers group that you feel like you’ve reached the lowest depths. There is no place worse than this state of mind in fandom. Even Detroit fans may have more hope than the overall sentiment put forth in the following message.

From the Bills Backers of Boston season wrap-up email, received January 2:

Hi everyone,

A season that started with so much promise ended in yet another disappointing finish.  And to top it off, Bills fans everywhere were insulted by the team that they love with the word that Mister Mediocrity, Dick Jauron, will be returning to coach the Bills in 2009.  With one simple press release, the 2009 season has been ruined even before the 2008 season has ended.

We all sympathize with Tony Bogyo, a member of our chapter since the good-ol days, when he said, “I have truly never felt so low as a Bills fan. I know what next season holds, and it isn’t pretty – it’s the same as what we’ve seen the past 3 seasons.” (Read his entire article on Bills Daily, here: http://www.billsdaily.com/articles/bogyo/2008/jauron.shtml).  No matter what happens in the offseason, the Bills will still be buried in the AFC East basement, their weak and spiritless coach defining their personality.

The Bills Backers of Boston will certainly be back next season, but will the fans?  Time will tell.

Well, don’t we all feel like jumping for joy after that missive.

Despite my initial reaction that this message was a tad on the melodramatic side, after more thought, I understood their point. How can you be a fan of a team that seems to be most interested in exploring depths of depression and incompetence unseen by any other professional sports teams in the history of professional sports teams? I think fans of the Washington Generals carry more hope in their hearts than those that the Bills’ collective fanbase now possesses. We have a quarterback of the future who shows a troubling propensity to injuries. We have a star wide receiver who admittedly only likes playing for the washed up backup quarterback.  Our offensive and defensive line corps are dropping like files. Our owner is elderly, a miser, and might think the year is 1969, not 2009.  His family has already stated that they want nothing to do with the team after he passes on.  We tried to showcase the team to Toronto, who rightfully turned their nose at the inferior product.

At least Lions fans get to scrap it all and start over. While I’m not ready to lay all of the blame on Dick Jauron, I would have been okay with the Bills firing the man my mom affectionately refers to as “Sketlator.” I think getting rid of him, along with Turk Schonert (despite his funny name), would have begun an overall shakeup of the team that may be needed.  As my father kept saying during my sojourn back to Western New York for the holidays, the players only like Jauron because Jauron doesn’t work them hard, doesn’t demand much of them, and was okay with their late season lack of hustle. I think the Bills needed to make an overall statement and send a message that, “The way that this season imploded was not okay.” And the best way this could have been done right away was by firing Jauron.

The Bills could still send this message.  They could make a splash in free agency and move for a big name quarterback, wide receiver or running back.  I love Edwards and Lynch, and don’t mind the wide receivers, but they aren’t the best in the NFL, so the Bills can justify bringing a big name in any of those positions on board. That might announce to the rest of the league that the Bills don’t want to be the next Detroit Lions.  That they’re sick of losing to the likes of the New England Patriots 5000 to 6. But my sneaking suspicion is that such a big deal is just not going to happen.

Let’s be frank about the whole Bills situation. The Bills can’t sign big name players without revenue, and the revenue is no longer there. The Bills are a small-market team without any money who  haven’t won in a long time. They don’t have many, if any, star players.  They can’t win their division. Their owner is a laughing stock because of his age.  The team lacks the keys to make money, and lack the leadership to make needed changes to the franchise. They are not taken seriously.  Thus, merchandise isn’t going to sell, season tickets aren’t going to sell, training camp activities aren’t going to sell, jerseys aren’t going to sell, individual game tickets aren’t going to sell, parking at the Ralph isn’t going to sell – this team will continue to make no money. As a franchise, what do you do when you have this scenario on your hands?

The sports marketing tendency when you have a mess of a team like this on your hands is to gimmick the heck of of the games. Let’s give out Governor Rod Blagojevich bobble-heads. Let’s offer to pay a lucky fan’s mortgage. Everyone bring your disco records and let’s blow them up.  Sometimes, these gimmicks work.  You’re looking at the girl who attended a North Shore Spirit minor league baseball game to get a Doug Flutie bobblehead (it was for my father, I swear.)

But after a while, your intended audience wisens up, no matter what they may have initially fell for. To be blunt, if you are putting out garbage on the field, ice, or court, there’s only so many ways you can pretty it up and spray perfume on it before people notice that it’s garbage. The marketers around the Bills are going to start having to gimmick around the team to make them somewhat viable.

Thus, I fully expect to get all of these coupon deals and buy one-ticket-get-one-ticket free offers from the Buffalo Bills braintrust next season.  I expect Rian Lindell to greet my unsuspecting mother at many a Tops.  And you know what? We’re not going to fall for it.

We’re the Buffalo Bills. We’re led by Dick Jauron. We’re quarterbacked by Trent Edwards. Our owner is Ralph Wilson. And that’s the football equivalent of my mom telling my grandma while bouncing baby me on her knee back in 1982, “We bought a house. But it has no closets, no yard, no driveway, bad plumbing, and only one bedroom.”

So Dolph-fans, put your chin up. You’re a million times better off than us.

Cross posted from the new …On Being a Sports Girl

Ryan Gentry is a devoted Boston sports fan, despite relocating several years ago to Southern California. The co-founder of up-and-coming sports fan wear company CPR Gear, Gentry saw a need for fan wear that was hip and spoke to the intense nature of New England sports fans. He founded CPR Gear – “The Heartbeat of New England” – in 2008, and his line has attracted all sorts of attention from several teams and many fans. CPR Gear may stand for “Celtics, Patriots, Red Sox,” but Gentry is quick to point out that the Bruins and all other teams are included as well – his line represents more of the devotion and dedication of New England fans as a whole, rather than individual teams.

I had a great phone conversation with Gentry a few weeks back, and he agreed to be one of my first “Five questions with…” subjects. Here’s the interview!

Kat: Why did you found CPR Gear?

Ryan: I always wanted to have something to do with sports in New England. I’ve been a personal trainer for fourteen years, but haven’t had the chance to work with any of the professional sports teams. A friend and I had been toying with the idea (for the line) for a few months, and my son’s birth was the impetus for the creation of the company.

I wanted to pass onto him that being a New England sports fan is more than loving a team – it’s like a religion or family. Players always change, but the one thing that always stays the same are the fans. They are always there. Being a Boston sports fan is a real uniting factor – I have been in Machu Picchu and have met people with Red Sox gear on, and have been able to spark a conversation with them because they were wearing their Sox gear. I have been in a bar in the Caribbean and made a connection with the owner because he too was a Boston sports fan from my hometown of Lawrence, Massachusetts.  You can make a lot of connections with complete strangers because of the devotion of Boston sports fans all over.

I started to type a creed of what it means to be a Boston sports fan taking all of that into account, and that is what appears on the inside tag of all of our shirts. The acronym “CPR”  is just the acronym – there’s no slight intended to anyone, because at the end of the day, it’s about all New England sports, including Olympic and college athletes.

CPR Gear’s Boston Bruins women’s t-shirt – I’m giving one away (see the end of the interview!)

Kat: Like you, I am a fan of my hometown teams away from home. Living in California, how do you stay connected? Do you take pride in keeping up your devotion living so far away?

Ryan: I absolutely have more pride (living away from New England.) I can’t stand not being at home when big events go on in Boston sports. I rarely get to see any of the Boston sports teams live – I will go down to Anaheim to see the Sox, LA to see the Celtics, and sometimes I get to see the Patriots. I rarely get to see the Bruins here in California. When one of my hometown teams are playing here in California and I get to see them, it feels like one of those nice early spring days – you get all excited.

When New England teams are playing outside of California, I’ll go down to Sonny McLean’s to connect, which is a big sports bar for all Boston fans. At one point, I definitely went there once a week for four years.

Kat:  You talk about a “go to” shirt on your web site – your favorite shirt, the one you must wear to watch any of your favorite teams. What is your “go to” shirt now? What was it growing up?

Ryan:  Right now, it is a Patriots Vince Wilfolk jersey. You do not see a lot of Wilfork jerseys in New England, let alone in California. I really like him as a player. I also have a green Red Sox jersey that I wore during every important game in 2004. Growing up, I had a green Celtics shirt with all the 1980s players and numbers on it that I wore all the time. And then, I had these solid white Celtics warm up pants – 1980s style. They probably would be considered atrocious now!

Kat: CPR Gear has some awesome women’s fan wear, both in traditional team colors and in pink. What has been the response? With all the criticism around the “pink hat” fans, why did you choose to design some pink shirts?

Ryan:  Fan wear for women needs to be less cheesy. For the longest time, women were regulated to too oversized crusty jerseys that just didn’t fit their shape and were not flattering. CPR Gear is making shirts that are more refined and stylish, and that fit people, particularly women, well.

As for the pink question, before we designed the line, we polled women in Boston about what they were looking for in this line. Many voted for pink, so we included pink shirts in our line. But we have traditional team colored items for women as well.

The entire line is higher quality than normal fan gear. The t-shirt fabric of is a very high quality, very vintage and soft. The design isn’t loud. You can wear the shirts to dinner before or after the game without looking out of place. We are looking to make more of a lifestyle brand – fan wear that could go anywhere. I think women will appreciate that.

Kat: Where will you be taking the company in 2009?

Ryan: We will continue to sell CPR Gear online. I like the online aspect – it is like you got a shirt custom made just for you. You know you can’t just get these shirts anywhere.  We may expand into boutique stores, because of the lifestyle nature of the brand. This will help reach out to local Boston die-hard fans. I recently had a chance encounter with Jonathan Kraft (son of Patriots owner Robert Kraft) and gave him some shirts, and hopefully something may come of that. I hope to keep getting the word out and spreading the fan base, and uniting the Boston sports community.

Thanks, Ryan, for the fun interview! I definitely enjoyed our phone conversation. CPR Gear has graciously provided me with three of their shirts from their women’s line to give away to my readers. I’ll give them away to those of you with the best comments surrounding the following question – What is/was your go-to sports fan wear item? You must comment on this post at www.sportsgirlkat.com in order to be eligible.  Comment before Wednesday, January 7, 2009 at noon Eastern time to have your answer considered to win!
]]> http://katherinehas.wordpress.com/2009/01/03/five-questions-withryan-gentry-of-cpr-gear/feed/ 1 Kat womens-hockey-main1 http://katherinehas.wordpress.com/2009/01/03/%e2%80%a6on-being-a-sports-girl-rotating-header-image-bu-du-for-denver-cup-championship-on-saturday-night/ http://katherinehas.wordpress.com/2009/01/03/%e2%80%a6on-being-a-sports-girl-rotating-header-image-bu-du-for-denver-cup-championship-on-saturday-night/#comments Sat, 03 Jan 2009 06:00:45 +0000 Kat http://katherinehas.wordpress.com/?p=542 Continue reading →]]>

A note to all my BU Hockey fans – Denver won their game against Holy Cross in a five round shootout (!), and thus we will get some BU television love Saturday evening at7:35pm Mountain time, 9:35pm our time, on CN8 (which thankfully hasn’t completely closed up shop yet.) They’ll be carrying the Fox Rocky Mountain feed, so be prepared to hear much Pioneer-centric love.

BU qualified for the championship game by beating RPI 6-2 in tonight’s early game. Jason Lawrence had two power play goals, including the game winner. He likes game winning power play goals, in case you haven’t noticed from his stats this season.

Cross posted on the new …On Being a Sports Girl.
]]> http://katherinehas.wordpress.com/2009/01/03/%e2%80%a6on-being-a-sports-girl-rotating-header-image-bu-du-for-denver-cup-championship-on-saturday-night/feed/ 0 Kat http://katherinehas.wordpress.com/2008/12/30/five-questions-withthe-hockey-volunteer/ http://katherinehas.wordpress.com/2008/12/30/five-questions-withthe-hockey-volunteer/#comments Tue, 30 Dec 2008 05:35:44 +0000 Kat http://katherinehas.wordpress.com/?p=540 Continue reading →]]> Join me over at the new home for…On Being a Sports Girl, as I interview Adam Sherlip, aka the Hockey Volunteer. Adam will be traveling to India in January to teach hockey in the Himalayans. Impressive, right? Join me as I talk to Adam about his motivation, challenges and future plans.

If you have yet to update your RSS feeds and the like, please do so that you will not miss out on any of …On Being a Sports Girl. The new …On Being a Sports Girl – new domain, new design, same old Kat.

While I will continue to cross post some of my posts here, the brand new …On Being a Sports Girl is ready at http://www.sportsgirlkat.com.

I reccomend that you update your bookmarks and check out the site early and often.  I have a lot of things planned – giveaways, exclusive interviews, and the like – and you will want to check it out as much as possible!  Consider this new site a holiday present to you – you asked for more SportsGirlKat, and I obliged!

Thank you to all of my readers, and here’s to more sports discussion in 2009!

When the new site is fully ready, I’ll be sure to let you all know.  As always, thank you for your readership!

Let Rochester become a member of "The Eh Team." (T-shirt available at Noisebot.com)

Last Sunday, Western New York let you borrow the Buffalo Bills for a game. You gave them the Rogers Centre, a dull and lifeless home. They, in turn, gave you a dull and lifeless football game. I apologize for the unproductive exchange. Maybe when we have a quarterback, a new coach, and uninjured defense, this will go much better.

Because you were probably pretty bitter at the inferior goods we sent to Toronto, you decided last Monday to express interest in purchasing the Buffalo Sabres. Not all of you exactly, but the CEO of the best thing to come out of Canada since Tim Hortons Coffee, Research in Motion (RIM), which manufactures Blackberries. (I love my Blackberry like a second cat.) If they were for sale, RIM’s CEO reportedly is interested in buying the Sabres with a stipulation that some of their home games be played in Hamilton, Ontario.

Well, Canada, it seems that you are interested in all things Western New York. So do I have a deal for you.

Take us all.

There it is. I said it. If you want to take Western New York’s beloved but consistently downtrodden football team, and you want to take their lovable but manic depressive hockey team, then why not take all of Western New York.

I understand your argument that this might better us more than it betters you. My Western New York family would get universal health care, stricter gun laws, most likely better education, CBC, TSN, the better version of NHL Network, and even more Tim Hortons. You would get a lot of boarded up factories, Garbage Plates, and the ugly side of Niagara Falls. However, you would also get the two sports teams you desire, Wegmans, buffalo wings, and the Record Archive guy you already love so much. You would get the booming beer manufacturing business of Rochester (trust me, it pains my born-and-bred Bostonian fiance that his Sam Adams is brewed in Rochester, NY), the new MAC football champion University of Buffalo Bulls, and arguably the best stadium in Triple A baseball, Frontier Field.

You would have your coveted NFL franchise, and JP Losman could easily become the CFL quarterback he’s always deserved to be (especially after today’s heartbreaking loss to the Jets that I don’t want to talk about.) You would have an additional NHL franchise, one that especially hates southern US teams – well, at least the Dallas Stars – and you wouldn’t have to move them out of Buffalo to make them Canadian.

Listen, Canada – I realize you have your own problems at the moment. This might not be the best time for you to annex a giant piece of land from the United States. But once you get your own governmental problems worked out, I think you should talk to President-Elect Obama about the idea. He’s a politician, meaning he won’t care about Western New York, and will probably okay the deal five minutes into the discussion. And Governor Paterson won’t care – he likes to pretend Western New York is a plague anyway. He’ll be happy not to feel guilty about everything he’s not doing to help the region.

And then I’ll really be able to say I’m originally from Canada, instead of having to explain why I act, look, and speak like a Canadian without the actual citizenship. I could say, “Well, I am originally from Rochester, Ontario, Canada. That’s why I say aboot, get a headache when I go more than two days without watching hockey, and have a natural ability for ice skating.” Rochester, Ontario, Canada has a nice ring to it.

My home region is practically Canada anyway. Just make it official. Come on, Canada – whadya say?

There are times where I write a piece and think, “Hmmm, maybe I should have kept with that Sports Information and Communication major I had early on in college.”  This HLOG piece is one of those times.  I hope you all enjoy it.