As a kid I loved all sports. I spent most of my time outside, playing football, baseball, basketball, street hockey and soccer. We would have large games of tag (which we would call
chase) where we'd have 8-10 kids on a team hide like an army of ninjas in the local woods and the other team had to find the whole group to accomplish their mission. Those were truly wonderful days.
I can remember how much I loved to play football in the field across the street from my our house. We loved to play after it rained. The more mud the better. I still can hear my mom yelling to take off my shoes before I entered the house and left a trail of dirt bombs across the kitchen floor.
I also followed professional sports and at one time couldn't be
stumped on most any variety of sports trivia. I was a
NY Giants fan. Really I liked
Fran Tarkenton. I don't think the Giants won anything when I was a kid much to the joy of my
Dallas Cowboy fan friends). Hoping to maybe someday win something, and really liking the
Purple People Eaters, defensive line Carl Eller, Gary Larsen, Alan Page & Jim Marshall) I became a
Minnesota Vikings fan. I didn't consider myself a flip-flopper or whatever, I just followed Tarkenton when he was traded.
The rest of my fanatacism was rooted in New York with the
Knicks, Rangers and
Yankees. I was lucky enough to go to lots of
Mets games in 1969. What a year. My cousin was a
Cincinatti Reds and fan we went to most Reds/Mets games and some others. I remember Johnny Bench hitting a home run so high I thought it would touch the sun.
After Tarketon's retirement, I came back as a Giants fan and I was very happy of course in 1986 and 1991 for their wins then.
New Haven (I grew up in West Haven) is located right between New York and Boston so we have lots of fans representing both areas. The
New England Patriots joined the NFL in 1970 and I have some friends (mostly those I met later at
UConn who live in northeast CT) who are diehard Pats fans.
I feel a bit bad for the Pats. It must be hard to get so close to perfection and have it melt away in the last minute of the season. There will be comparisons to Bill Bruckner and the Sox (ouch). But I don't think that's really fair.
The end of the 2008 Super Bowl game was truly amazing. Eli Manning is sacked, no wait a minute he's still on his feet, he's throwing...and Tyree catches the ball on his head! That's just insane! Sports history in the making! The throw to an open receiver in the end zone seemed almost anti-climatic.
In recent years (ok, for a lot of years) much of my hard-core sports fanaticism has been redirected to both business and family pursuits. I play more
John Madden than getting my clothes dirty on the field.
I am a continual student of advertising and most years I watch the Super Bowl to see the commercials. This year I had some interest in the game too. I was so glad I watched.
I didn't expect this post to be so sports oriented even though I started writing about the Super Bowl. My observation was meant to be in regard to the commercials or the lack of them.
As always, we had plenty of Anheuser-Busch, and Coke, Pepsi, Bridgestone Tire, GoDaddy and even a Proctor and Gamble.
Conspicuously absent were bank and financial commercials. No Chase, no BOA, no VISA, no Capital One, no Merrill Lynch. There were two e-Trade commercials and that was it. After the recent couple of business quarters it seems ad budgets for banks have been lightened.
I've been writing lately with regards to buying fundamentals for real estate property. I still believe the timing is perfect to buy. Right now we see super low interest rates as an entry point. The banks have lost money in recent time. They are regrouping, but need to loan money to stay in business. So there will be some adjusting within that industry.
My guess is the financial community is a bit like the Patriots of late. They flew so close to the sun. They had record years and profits and have been at the top of their game, almost undefeated. But now this will be a building year, a year of regrouping. So we'll watch for some new plays. Some new talent. Definitely some creative thinking.
The Super Bowl lets us live large and watch heros and history in the making. So now we think of this year's game and we know that if we're playing, anything can happen. Ya gotta believe! As we focus back on the lives most important, those in our everyday game, we remember that we are making history every day. And every now and then we catch the ball on our head.
