New Thing #334: Voting For A Friend's Video

Have you seen these commercials during NFL games about why people love football? I know I have, but they didn't make huge impressions on me at the time.

There was some woman who was a Jets fan who battled breast cancer, there was some little girl who participated in Punt, Pass, and Kick I think, and if I'm not mistaken there was one with Condoleeza Rice.

Well, apparently, people submitted their videos in the hopes of winning a trip to the Super Bowl.

And now the contest is down to ten finalists.

And I have a suggestion for which one you should vote for.

Please.

I have a friend named Rob who currently works at NFL Films.

We met more than a decade ago when we worked together at a Boston TV station, spending countless dinner times together watching and talking sports before frantically slapping together highlights before our respective 10pm and 11pm sports broadcasts. (Countless might be an exaggeration. We didn't work together for all that long. It was probably something like a couple of hundred. If that.)

We became fast friends, and even though we didn't work together for a terribly long time, we've stayed in pretty close touch in the years since we last worked together.

It's notable, because I'm not too great about keeping in touch with people. But Rob is one of the nicest people I know.

It helps, too, that we have a ton in common, and so whenever we text or talk on the phone, even if something seems to come out of nowhere we're pretty much on the same page.

I tell you all this because the last time I talked to Rob was a couple of weeks ago as he was driving to Harlem. (I think that's what he said - the phone connection was terrible, and we wasted the good connection talking about Andy Dalton's completed Hail Mary to A.J. Green. It's what we do.) He was working on a piece for this NFL promotion, and you can see the work he and other producers did at togetherwemakefootball.com.

And then while you're there you can vote for Rob's piece, on Khordae, because he asked me to spread the word about it, and he never asks for anything, so I'm glad to help him out.

It's easy - I voted already, and all you have to do is submit an e-mail address when you click on 'Vote'.

Rob pointed out that Khordae's story might not have been the most compelling on the site. But I watched a few of the others. They're all well done…but none of them are terribly inspiring. (I liked the 74-year-old football player…but with all due respect, I'm sure he can pay his own way to the Super Bowl.)

All I needed to know was whether or not Khordae was as good a kid as he seems in the video. Rob confirmed that the boys and their dad were good people, and great for him to work with.

Rob - a good person who was great to work with - knows what he's talking about in that department.

So do me - and Rob - a favor and vote for Khordae.

Thank you.

New Thing #289: McHale's Bar & Grill

When I planned my Sunday in New York to watch football, there were a couple of parameters we needed to work around: -The place we went to had to be near 53rd Street and Avenue of the Americas, which is where the bus drop off and pick up happened

-The Jets game would need to be featured prominently, with the rest of the football games available to watch

-The place needed to be relatively affordable.

I thought we'd be drowning in choices in that section of midtown.

But when I got off the bus, it took longer to find an appropriate place than I expected.

Finally, I found McHale's Bar & Grill.

My brother gave me some good advice - he didn't have a specific place to recommend, but he did say I'd fare better heading down towards 8th or 9th Avenue rather than spots close to Times Square.

So, getting off the bus with as much time to spare as I had on Sunday, I was able to scout the area for a place.

I popped into a couple of places around 10am, as the staff was getting ready for the day. It was one thing, I discovered, for them to offer the Sunday Ticket...and another to see for myself whether or not they had enough TVs to show the games. McHale's came as close as anything to offering what I was expecting in my mind. (And, I realized later, New York City - well, Manhattan at least - is not well suited for a large TV screen layout. Most of these places go up, rather than out, meaning their multiple TVs are spread out among multiple floors.)

McHale's is on 51st Street, right off 8th Avenue. Downstairs there's a bar with a few TVs. Upstairs is another bar with a larger selection of screens, including a big screen they lowered from the ceiling to show the Jets.

Turns out, it's a popular spot for lunch for the matinee-going Broadway crowd. (The Gershwin, where Wicked plays, is right across the street.) But that didn't interfere with our game-watching experience. We had the Jets on the big screen and one of the TVs behind the bar, with the Browns-Lions game on another TV and the Eagles-Buccaneers game on another. (There's also a back room where the Packers and Vikings games were on, but they were out of our sight in the other room.)

It wasn't all of the games simultaneously like I was dreaming of, but like I said yesterday, that probably allowed me to be more social with my friends, which is a good thing. (And a lot of Sunday's games didn't go my way...so it's better I was only seeing the occasional score on the crawl rather than watching them fall apart play by play.)

The food was OK...not great. (The highlight was a brussels sprouts with bacon appetizer.) The beer selection was fine.

But the best thing about our day was the fact that we could stay there for seven hours and not once did I feel guilty about taking up a table or the need to move on. (Part of this was due to a somewhat inattentive waitstaff. But that was OK with me on Sunday.) When I tried to find places in Boston where I could watch the Jets (before football on my phone!) I always worried about taking away a prime viewing spot or a television the bar wanted to use for a different game.

And I know I shouldn't feel that way, but certain places ended up making me feel that way.

To its credit...that never happened on Sunday at McHale's.

New Thing #288: Eleven Hours In New York...To Watch Football

I've done quick trips down to New York City before. Once, in college, a friend of mine convinced me to take a 7am Greyhound, spend a Saturday in the city, and then be on a 7pm bus back to Boston.

Then, in the past few years, I've done round trips in a car (or on a train) to go to a Jets game.

For years, though, I've been trying to figure out a way to get down to New York just to watch football with some friends.

And this year, Columbus Day weekend provided the best opportunity yet for that.

A couple of things came together to allow me to do it:

One is that my wife was able to clear her weekend of tutoring, which is usually a slight impediment to my football watching on Sundays. Another is that for the first time in my life I had a weekend where I could have gone to the Jets game - they were home against the Steelers - but my dad no longer has the season tickets. And the last is that I had friends who were available and willing to sit in a bar for seven hours-plus.

I took the LimoLiner into the city - it's great because it picks up in Framingham, 5 minutes from my house, and I could leave for a bus at 6:30 on Sunday morning without disturbing my family. That got me into the city at a little before 10.

I was able to do a few things in the city before I met up with my friends (more on that later this week), and then we sat and watched football from about 12:30 until the end of the Patriots game, at about 7:30.

I was not the only person who had the Sunday round-trip idea. (And it was successful enough that it won't be the last time I do it.) On the trip back I saw a couple of other familiar faces from the trip down earlier that morning.

But there were also some frustrating co-travelers.

I have to admit - it wasn't the best day of football. While I loved seeing and talking to my friends (and the fact that the football was not great certainly contributed to me being a better social presence because I paid less attention to the games), the Jets lost, I did not have a great day with my picks for my pool, and my fantasy league performance was not good either.

So I guess my patience was thin when it came to some of the other people on the evening bus.

A group of older ladies had the first couple of rows - they were clearly returning from a ladies day out type of thing. When an older gentleman walked on in a Patriots hat, they made a comment about the Pats game. "Good game," or something like that. (It's an interesting sports dynamic on a bus between New York and Boston. I was probably the only one heading to New York that morning exclusively for football reasons, but I never felt like the only Jets fan. Not that it came up. But on the way back, going to Boston, there was more of a "New York sports fan feeling like an outsider" vibe going for me.)

Anyway, the guy kind of rolled his eyes at the ladies and did kind of a guffaw or something. (I now realize maybe he thought they were New Yorkers teasing him.) I realized he didn't believe them. They repeated themselves, and he tried to convince them he saw the game and knew how it ended. "Brady threw an interception," he said, showing that was the last part of the game he saw. So the guy he was traveling with looked at me, and I said, "Brady threw a touchdown pass with 5 seconds left."

In a blatant show of gender bias, the second older guy turned to the hat-wearing guy and said, "No, they won. This guy says they got a touchdown with 5 seconds left." The male knows football.

So we've established these were clearly Boston fans who were not all that diehard. This was further proven when the attendant taking care of us on the bus, approaching the Massachusetts Turnpike, offered to turn the DirecTV on the bus to FOX.

"Don't bother," one of the women with the Patriots hat guy said. "They're getting killed."

I popped on my phone, expecting to see an 11-0 or 11-1 score in favor of the Tigers. It was 5-1.

As you probably know by now, that very inning the Red Sox rallied to tie the game, which they later won.

It was a great day for Boston sports fans...not a great day for this Jets fan.

But I'm proud of this: I didn't give up on the Jets at any point on Sunday. Heck. I haven't given up on them in 35 mostly terrible years.

New Thing #282: Watching A Stadium Changeover

I know this is a little late by now, but you know how I love ballparks - I have to write about this. On Saturday night, the A's played a playoff baseball game at the stadium they share with the Raiders.

Because it requires 24 hours for the stadium to be changed from baseball into football, the Raiders game on Sunday was moved from a 4pm eastern start to 11:35 that night.

Everything went off without a hitch, with both teams picking up wins to boot.

But the stadium changeover is by far the most fascinating part of this story for me.

When I was a kid and I went to Shea Stadium to see the Mets with my dad, he would always explain to me how the stadium would be transformed for a Jets game. And I never understood it. I just could not wrap my head around it.

Because the orange seats - the lowest level - would apparently swing out, and I just never could figure out where exactly they went and how far they swung. My mind just doesn't work that way.

This video is the closest I'll come to being able to envision what that Shea Stadium football setup looked like - although I think the setup in Oakland is different, because I think the end zone at Shea went from home plate to center field. (I'm not 100% sure about that, though.)

I've seen plenty of the hockey to basketball changeovers - I've even seen baseball to hockey changeovers with the advent of the Winter Classic games - this is really the first time I've watched a baseball to football change.

There's so much to watch - I've watched it a few times. I'm shocked to see cranes involved. (And those stands they're assembling in center field don't look all that sturdy to me, if we're being honest.) I'm shocked, too, to see that they worked straight through the night. I thought a 24-hour turnaround seemed like it was too long for a changeover, but it really seems to take that long.

Now if only there was a time lapse video of a Shea Stadium changeover.

New Thing #265: A Stress-Free Fall Sunday

There's nothing like sitting around on a rainy Sunday doing nothing but watching football. Those Sundays are few and far between for me.

Either it's beautiful out and I feel guilty for staying in and watching the games, or the Jets aren't on TV and I have to figure out a way to get the free hours to leave the house to go somewhere to watch the game.

But that's no longer a problem.

I've already told you about 'Football On My Phone.'

I'm not going to rehash that - nor will I write much more about football after today (probably). But I do need to let you know today will be the first day I will be watching the Jets on my phone.

For the season opener they were on the local Fox station while the Patriots were on CBS. The next week they were the nationally televised Thursday night game.

Today there are just two games on local TV - the Patriots at 1 and the 49ers at 4.

So I'll be watching both of those games on TV, with the Jets on the phone late in the day.

And there's rain in the forecast, so I'll be able to sit and read the Sunday newspapers and then veg out without worrying that I should be taking the girls for a walk or to play outside or anything.

They can play inside and I can have a stress-free Sunday. (Provided I can get the newspapers inside the house before they get soaked through.)

I just won't be able to flip between the 4pm games on my phone, which is too bad. There are quite a few this week. But maybe I'll get my fill switching between the 1pm games.

I might even watch a baseball  game on my computer. David Wright is back in the Mets' lineup, and I haven't watched the Mets in a long time. And I just love David Wright. (He's been out 7 weeks. I might not have watched a full Mets game in something like 5 weeks.)

So that's where I'll be this Sunday if you need me.

Try not to need me.

Especially if you have news that might stress me out.

And if you happen to pass my house before I make it out to grab the newspapers, you can help make my Sunday stress-free by bringing those papers closer to the door and sheltered from the rain.

Thank you.

New Thing #258: Another New Fantasy Football Game

One of the first things I wrote about this year was fantasy football. And then one of the other first things I wrote about this year was fantasy football.

They were both playoff fantasy football games - and they were both fun ways to end last year's football season.

It was fun to play a different kind of fantasy football.

Well, a friend of mine e-mailed me with a new game to begin this football season, and at the last minute I decided to join.

Turns out I just can't resist a good stats-driven fantasy football game.

I'm in two fantasy leagues this year - this one I'm writing about today and another more traditional one - along with my picks pool, picking against the spread.

What's unusual about this year is that I'm not doing an elimination pool for the first time in a bunch of years, and for the first time in a few years I also don't have the fantasy league I've done with the guys I do a baseball league with.

But this pool fills some of those gaps.

It's traditional fantasy football - you pick a QB, 2 RB, 3 WR/TE, and then a defense. You pick a new slate each week. The catch? Once you pick a player, you can't pick them again the rest of the season.

It's an interesting strategic game, the strategy of which I haven't even begun to wrap my mind around yet. (The closest I've come to strategy so far is the chart that I created, which you see above. It'll at least keep me aware of the players I've picked.)

Since I made the decision to join so late, I kind of slapped together my Week 1 picks - I decided I didn't want to use any real stars yet, so I picked against the Oakland defense (which played better than I expected) and I guessed at a decent defensive performance with Miami (I succeeded) and filled in the rest of the gaps.

As the season goes on I'll employ more strategy, probably.

It's similar to a baseball picks league I used to run - it's all done by hand (though the guys in charge are working on a computer program to make it easier). As such, though, it's all guesswork during the day to as to how well your players are doing relative to other performances.

So far it's fun.

Another interesting thing about this football season is that I didn't make any season picks - that's the first time I haven't done that in possibly a decade-plus.

It's interesting - I sense that with my involvement in these games, and without the self-imposed pressure of my season picks, which may or may not subconsciously color the way I pick games and players - I might actually enjoy this season more as a football fan.

So far, as Week 2 continues today, I am.

New Thing #255: The Peter Schrager Podcast

If you're a football fan (and I'm sorry for this past week or so if you're not), you'll love this New Thing. My friend Justin texted me last week to tell me his brother had a podcast.

Now, this is not like if I started talking about the Jets and Mets and recorded it and my brother went around telling people his brother had a podcast.

No, Peter Schrager is fast becoming one of the most respected football guys in the business.

So if I hear that he has a podcast, I'll check it out...and I'm sure thousands of others have been doing the same thing.

Let me quickly catch you up on my football podcasts. For a year-plus I listened to the Rich Eisen Podcast. I figured the guy was on NFL Network, and if there was anyone who had the inside track on the National Football League, it would be him. Turns out I was right...but it also turns out that Rich Eisen is insufferable. I couldn't stand it. I'd listen and then complain.

Then I decided, I'll just stop listening. (This is a bigger step for me than you might realize. Or, perhaps after reading 9 and a half months' worth of reading about me, you're not the least bit surprised.)

Then Peter King started a podcast. That's what I listened to all last year, and it wasn't about him - it was about the football - it was perfect. This year it's the MMQB Podcast - I still listen to it.

After two episodes, the Peter Schrager Podcast is getting added to the list. In the first edition, Schrager had a good football talk with Pete Prisco and in the second one he spoke with Scott Fujita - a good storyteller - and Kevin Burkhardt.

The Burkhardt interview was awesome, talking about his rise through the industry to get to where this year he's doing play-by-play on TV for FOX NFL games. (As an aside: Burkhardt did the Jets-Buccaneers game Sunday. There were a couple of rough patches, but overall he and John Lynch were excellent. Here's how I know: When a broadcast is bad, I obsess over it. Case in point: Dick Stockton. Holy heck was he bad doing the Rams-Cardinals on Sunday. Hang 'em up Dick. Watching the Jets, though, I barely thought about the broadcasters. That's a sign they're doing it right.)

Back to the podcast: There's a really contagious enthusiasm in the way Schrager talks about the NFL - he strikes a real balance between being a fan and an analyst, as well as in the way he can really schmooze with his guests and also ask some pretty deep questions about them and about the game.

Justin and I often joke about the success of our younger brothers. I have to admit, though, that while I often heard Peter's name in various places, I didn't see his work all that much. (Which is becoming harder to do - he wrote a book with the Giants' Victor Cruz and soon a new one he wrote with OJ Brigance of the Baltimore Ravens will be coming out.) I just don't watch very much FOX Sports. (I'm working on doing more.) With this podcast, though, I now have the opportunity to listen to Peter without other elements of Fox that I might not care for.

So, finally, after all of these years of Justin supporting my brother's music, I can throw a little brotherly love back his way.

New Thing #254: Glickman

I had a free weekend of HBO this past weekend. I can't overdo it when one of these free weekends comes along.

I just don't have the time to binge watch a show like The Sopranos anymore. (Two Sopranos references in two days! It can almost challenge football's dominance this week!)

But if there's a show or a movie that catches my eye, I can either watch one or DVR it and watch it a little bit later - I have the time for that.

Thankfully, this documentary caught my eye - because I had seen an ad for it and I was psyched to watch it.

It's called Glickman - a documentary about Marty Glickman, who I remember primarily as the Jets broadcaster when I was little.

But his life was much, much more than that.

The first words you hear in the documentary are in Glickman's voice - "I don't remember ever walking as a young person. I always ran. It was just in my nature to run." I feel like I've heard this quote from him before...or maybe I read it. (Or maybe it was in the commercial for the documentary that I saw.) Regardless, it's a powerful quote.

Marty Glickman, above all else, was an athlete. Primarily, he was a runner. An Olympic-quality runner. Unfortunately, he was a Jewish American Olympic-quality runner in the 1930s. And the 1936 Olympics, when Glickman was 18 years old, were held in Hitler's Germany. And Glickman's American coaches - for what were later found to be Nazi sympathizing reasons - kept him from competing in those Olympic games. (It's somewhat chilling to see the video footage of the 1936 Olympics and all of the goodwill shown towards Hitler.)

I didn't know anything about Glickman when I was younger other than his voice. (When I placed a face to the voice it was close to the image you see above, which was featured in the documentary - that's how I remember Marty Glickman.) I think the first thing I learned about him later on in life was that he was really the first ex-athlete to become a broadcaster. He was really a pioneer in the field...a field about which I care a lot. Probably too much.

Glickman was an early sports broadcasting giant - calling the Giants, Knicks, Rangers, horse racing and any other number of sports and teams in addition to the Jets.

His voice means a lot to me - and it's featured prominently in this documentary. It's filled with passion and anger and sadness when he talks about how he was wronged in 1936 and when he talks about his biggest regret in life the following year. It almost has a 'gotcha' tone to it when he talks about how he realized no one was broadcasting basketball and took advantage of that to become the voice of the game. (And then prominent Glickman fans and proteges like Bob Costas, Marv Albert, David Stern, Larry King, and Mike Breen talk about the basketball broadcasting terms Glickman invented at that time.) He's frank when he talks about how he describes the games. It all reminds me of being in the car listening to Glickman's voice talking about the Jets. (And I didn't remember until the end of the documentary that his time with the Jets that I remember so clearly was actually post-retirement, when he came back to the Jets for a few years to finish his career.)

There's a bonus great story embedded in the documentary about Lou Zamperini, another one about how as broadcaster of the Giants Glickman beat some of the players in a footrace.

It's not the best-made documentary I've ever seen. (I'm getting old - sometimes just the very fact that graphics are too small and I can't read them is reason enough for me to get frustrated with a program. Also, I now call things "programs.") But it's a good sports documentary.

And, if you grew up like me, parts of its greatness lie in the sentimental reasons.

New Thing #251: Football On My Phone

I apologize in advance for all of the football talk over the next week-plus. It's a very exciting time of year for me.

Especially this year.

See, I'm the fan of an out-of-market team.

Years ago that meant I was destined to Sunday afternoons on my computer watching the prehistoric version of ESPN GameCast to try to figure out how the Jets were doing as the Patriots games aired on the local stations.

Over the years, though, my options have progressed such that I've alternately owned the Sunday Ticket on DirecTV or been able to seek out a place that does - watching the Jets either at home or a bar or restaurant anywhere within 25 miles of Boston.

This year, I should be able to watch the Jets from my home...or anywhere I happen to have my phone.

I'll have the Sunday Ticket again, but this time it's on my phone - and the story of how I got it is a good one.

I guess I should tell you first that the Jets are on TV in this area the first two weeks of the season. I had calculated this a while ago when I realized that they were going to be a FOX game and the Patriots on CBS...I long ago developed an ability to roughly gauge the chances of watching the Jets at home on local TV based on their schedule and that of the Patriots'.

But after that, by the time the networks recognize that the Jets are terrible, if I want to watch whether Geno Smith will progress into an NFL quarterback, I will need this Sunday Ticket more than ever to watch the Jets. (Or, more likely, to more closely follow my fantasy players.)

So let me tell you how all of this unraveled:

When I went to Florida the conversation with my friend Kevin turned to his Apple TV, and how I could use that to watch Mets games on my TV rather than my phone or computer. Then he told me that he heard about a deal where I could even watch the Jets.

Apparently, if you pre-ordered a special edition of the new Madden football game through Amazon, you could get a code to download the Sunday Ticket to your phone for the entire season.

There had to be a catch, I thought. Kevin thought so too. But we both separately looked up what had been written about the promotion, and it seemed legit. A couple of weeks later, I took the plunge and made the purchase. I bought Madden, which I will never play, and there was my login code. I downloaded the Sunday Ticket app, I entered the info, and there it was - football on my phone. (Including the Red Zone Channel and the opportunity to keep track of your fantasy players using the app!) (Also, it seems to be working OK right now...but there will be no higher anxiety on Sunday than about 12:45-1pm waiting to see if the video kicks in on time. Kevin is feeling the pressure too - he feels like I paid for it because of him, and if it doesn't work it's on him.)

I'm sure next year if this is a success (and I'm sure it will be) the price will be exorbitant or some part of this process will become more complicated.

But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Because for the 2013 football season, at least, I'll have all the games wherever I want to watch them.

It's basically all I've wanted in my entire football life.

And if the Jets miraculously turn out to be good this year, well then that's just all the better.

And I'll admit - the first time I saw the Manning brothers' "Football On Your Phone" commercial I didn't like it as much as some other people did. But now that I have football on my phone...well, my tune has changed. I think it's a kinship thing. Here that is, if you haven't seen it:

New Thing #248: No More Season Tickets

The NFL season opens tonight when the Ravens play the Broncos. I'll watch the game, of course, but for the 30th-plus year I'll really start caring on Sunday, when the Jets open their season.

This season will have a different flavor to it, though.

Not in the quality of play on the field - the Jets will stink, and unfortunately there have been way more of those types of seasons in my time as a Jets fan than the successful seasons.

No, it's the fact that for the first time in my life, my dad is not a Jets season ticket holder.

My dad has had Jets season tickets dating back to the 1960s. I've always been very proud of that fact. And I loved the fact that, less the tickets he'd give away each year, I knew that any game I wanted to go to, I could.

Of course, ever since I moved to Massachusetts it became a lot harder to go to multiple games a year. But if there was a home playoff game (there were a couple) or really important regular season game, I knew I could come home for it.

Not anymore.

But the truth of the matter is, it long ago stopped being convenient to get from Queens, New York to East Rutherford, New Jersey...and I learned to appreciate the benefits of watching NFL Football on TV rather than in person. (Though I still loved the atmosphere of a big game in a winning season at the stadium.)

And despite my dad being a loyal customer for more than 40 years, the Jets didn't treat him as such. There was more leveraging by the Jets over seating in the new stadium than there was appreciation towards long-time season ticket holders.

So as another season gets underway, there have been elements that have made it not just another season. Usually by now I've put my magnetic schedule on the fridge, gone through the yearbook for the upcoming season, and checked out some kind of free gift - all perks of the season ticket holder. (Even though it was my dad's account, I'd get all the spoils.) I know from Twitter that this year I missed out on a fleece blanket.

This year, there was none of that.

My dad and I have talked about taking advantage of not having to use the upper deck season tickets this year and buying some nice seats to one game - spending a little more on a game to sit closer to the action, but spending nowhere near what he would have spent on tickets to all the games.

So that might happen at one point this season.

There will definitely be a different kind of season ticket to this year's Jets games. And I'll be telling you about that New Thing later in the week.

New Thing #247: Drafting From My Phone

Probably 12 or 13 years ago I was one of the suckers who paid to play fantasy sports. I knew fantasy baseball was free elsewhere, but I thought I was getting a better deal on ESPN's site for however much I was paying for our league.

I only played on that platform for a year or two, but that was definitely a year or two I could have been playing for free.

Since then, I've used Yahoo!, with maybe one ESPN (now free) exception.

And this year, I'm playing on ESPN again with some folks from work.

But that's not what's new...the New Thing I want to tell you about is that I drafted part of my team from my phone!

I had seen the ESPN football app recently when I was looking quickly through the apps. I thought about it only in terms of editing my lineup - it never occurred to me that I could draft my team using the app.

But about a half-hour before the draft a friend of mine texted to say that's how he was doing the draft. So I downloaded the app to check it out.

As soon as I logged in to the app, I was booted from my computer - it wouldn't let me be signed in from two different places. So I disconnected the app and went back to the computer - I had the first overall pick and I didn't want to screw things up with the new technology.

But I knew, with a snake draft and the first overall pick, that I would have a lot of time in between my picks to play around with the app, so I came back to the app in the later rounds to try out the draft.

The computer makes little noises when someone is drafted from your preferences list, and when it's your turn to draft.

The app made the same noise when someone was drafted from my 'queue,' but as far as I can tell it didn't make a noise when it was my turn to draft. It also made no noises when other people drafted. And I couldn't find where the draft history was.

So you have to pay close attention to the picks as they happen because they only show at the top of the screen and there aren't really any noises to draw your attention to a new person making a pick.

Other than that, though, it was pretty much the same experience on the phone as the computer. You had the countdown of how long there was for the pick to be made. You had the ability to sort available players by position. You had the chance to check out your list of preferred picks.

It's just, on the computer it's easier to navigate between all of those things. On the phone, it was harder to keep track of everything.

I made my last four or five picks from the phone, which was enough to just get a taste of the experience.

I wouldn't want to conduct an entire draft from the device...but it's good to know the option is there if I ever needed it.

New Thing #235: Gainesville

If you're keeping score at home (and I know you are) you know I mentioned Tampa, St. Petersburg, and Jacksonville this week. "When," you're probably asking yourself, "will John tell us about Gainesville?"

Well, today's the day.

But before I launch into my Gainesville experience, I need to give you a little history.

Because my time in Gainesville was literally a dream come true.

I have no idea why, but I have recurring dreams about two sports-related places: the football field at the University of Florida and Mile High Stadium. (Maybe it's Invesco Field at Mile High - I can't remember if the dreams go back as far as the Broncos' original stadium.)

In the Florida one I walk out from a corner end zone and look up at the sea of seats. In the Broncos dream I'm sitting way up in the stadium - like, second-to-last-row-type seats, and I'm with some family members.

So when I knew I was visiting Gainesville, I knew I'd want to swing by the football stadium. My friend Kevin was way ahead of me - we'd be visiting the stadium, he said, because that's about all there is to do in Gainesville.

When we walked to the stadium I was disappointed because the outside looks nothing like my dream - it's kind of like a brick outer facade. That's what you see above. Then we walked in.

We emerged at one of the corners and walked down towards the field. It was kind of surreal because other than a different type of seating it was very, very similar to my dream. It also didn't stretch as high into the sky as my dream. But I certainly felt familiar with the place.

I think two things about this whole weird experience. I would like to think I have some kind of second sight (is that what it is? ESP? Or just being weird?), but I think:

1) Both the University of Florida and the Denver Broncos are orange and blue, just like the New York Mets. So maybe that aspect about them and their respective stadia (plural for stadiums?) stand out to me and work their way into my subconscious.

or

2) Later that afternoon, reverting back to our college days as we do often when we're together, Kevin and I sat down to play some video games. Our choice was the version of NCAA Football that he had. As soon as the game started loading up, it occurred to me that I probably dreamt about Florida Field so much because I played this game so much years ago and it was drilled into my head. The more I think about it the more sure I am that this is the case.

Beyond the field, Kevin was right. There wasn't a ton in Gainesville. But next to the field were the football offices, and on the ground floor of that building is a great little museum - not even a museum. A display center. In glass cases are Florida's three national championship trophies, displays of national championship teams and award-winning players, and the three Heisman Trophies won by Florida players. (The Heisman Trophy is much, much larger than it looks on TV.) This was very cool.

We also poked our head into the track/swimming/basketball facility, which was neat. And we stopped by the bookstore and I bought some University of Florida souvenirs for my girls.

But none of that quite reached highlight status of the trip for me.

After all, I've never dreamed of stepping foot in those places.

New Thing #204: The MMQB

I have a vague memory that years ago I read Peter King's 'Monday Morning Quarterback' pretty regularly. Don't ask me how I forget something like that, but there was a time in my life that I dove headfirst into anything sports-related...and I guess it all gets jumbled up in my mind.

But for whatever reason, it had been years since I read Peter King's Monday column...until last August or so.

I began in the off-season, carried right through the regular season, stuck with it in the post-season, and then dropped off again.

But with football season fast approaching, I need to get back to it.

And just in time, there's a brand-new website for it.

I know Peter King has his critics (man, everyone on Twitter is a critic of everyone), but I love what he does. I think, deep down, I stopped reading him because I wanted to be him with my work the past nine or so years. Without, you know, the intense reporting and all-around knowledge.

The sheer volume of King's work every Monday is probably what impresses me the most...but is also the number one reason that I can't commit to reading it all the time. I kind of need a rest from it...and sometimes I just don't have the time to dedicate to reading it.

So that all was when King's column appeared on Sports Illustrated's website. For a year or so now King has been talking about an affiliated but separate website that he's running - themmqb.com.

It debuted on Monday, as NFL camps set to open up.

And as you can imagine for someone who felt overwhelmed by a column, the site is a little overwhelming. There is so much content.

But it's good content.

It's all football, all the time. (I think my dream would be someone like Buster Olney developing a baseball site like this.) And I'm not all that into football right now - I'm still 100% baseball-focused...but I couldn't get enough of the site on its first day.

There was King's regular 'Monday Morning Quarterback' column, an entry from Greg Bedard (late of the Boston Globe, who I really grew to like in his 2-and-half years covering the Patriots here...he went from dumping heavily - often - on the Jets to becoming a really well-rounded writer...although he was probably always a well-rounded writer, he didn't always show it) about the way the Patriots go about business no matter what is happening off the field, and Jenny Vrentas with a pictorial of Larry Fitzgerald's off-season travels and another article about the Dolphins. My favorite was the first of what will be a regular feature - 3 at 3 - in which some football-related figure (or high-profile fan) answers three questions at 3pm daily. Monday's was Joe Namath. (Wednesday's will be Rex Ryan! UPDATE/CORRECTION: I forgot...Rex Ryan will actually be doing the '10 Things I Think I Think' segment. I think it's Wednesday, but I'm not sure. Also another good segment, by the way.) The accompanying picture of Namath is one of the best old-time NFL still pictures I've ever seen.

I read all of the content in the above paragraph. That still leaves a bunch of content on the table that I didn't read. I'm going to have to pace myself, and figure out a way to get past my desire to dive into something like this website 100%. My instinct is to read everything put on the site. But I know I won't be able to keep that up.

I'm going to need to settle into a routine and figure out which articles I'm going to read. And when. (That's another thing - there are updates with new stories every few hours on the site.) And next month King will start up his podcast again, and he wrote Monday that there will be other site-related podcasts.

It may seem daunting, but I'm sure I'll figure out a way to face down this adversity and make the best of it.

I am a Jets fan, after all.

________________________________________________________

A couple of notes about the beginning of a new site like this:

-I went to the site over the weekend, when the domain name had been released but before it was supposed to have content. I thought it was interesting that this high-profile venture starts out just like any regular joe's website:

-And then there was this - I typed mmqb.com into my browser early Monday morning - some Mondays during the school year I would read Peter King over breakfast because I wouldn't have another chance all day. I figured I'd try that with the new site. And this is what I saw:

It looked spottier than I expected, but I figured they were working out some bugs, so I clicked what I thought was King's article and I got this:

I'm embarrassed to admit I thought it was for real. At no point did I even come close to considering paying money for the content, but I was furious. "How can they go from offering this content for free at SI.com to making people pay this much for it! That's terrible business! Who's going to pay that?!" Then I took a breath. I realized that I had never heard this was going to be a site that charged money. I went to Twitter and it didn't look like, from there, the site was up yet. So I waited. And later that morning I saw the real thing unveiled.

But I wonder if anyone who is slightly more gullible than me - enough to pony up money immediately - fell for the fake site.

New Thing #34: A New Super Bowl Matchup

I'm going to enjoy Super Bowl XLVII. First of all, I enjoy most Super Bowls.

I like things organized by Roman numerals.

Growing up I memorized all the Super Bowl records, because it's such a manageable championship - there have only been 46 of them, and it's not a series - it's just one game.

Stats accumulate in single-game fashion - it's very relatable.

But I especially like new Super Bowl matchups.

And that's what we have on our hands this year.

Self-plug - back in early September I picked the Ravens to beat the 49ers in Super Bowl XLVII. I'm a little proud that I had the matchup right, but the way I got there and the way the season actually unfolded were way different. Embarrassingly different. So this isn't like when I picked the Giants over the Rangers in the 2010 World Series back in March of 2010, with careful analysis. This was more like a lucky guess.

And partly it's the result of me picking a matchup that has never happened before.

See, I love the new matchups. I kind of obsess over them. If it's a repeat matchup in a championship game or series (like last year's Patriots-Giants game), I feel like we wasted a season. (Interestingly enough, one of this year's Super Bowl entrants is one of the most frustrating Super Bowl teams. It's the sixth Super Bowl for the 49ers, but two of those came against the Bengals. The Bengals! Of all teams to have to end up with a Super Bowl repeat matchup...because they're so unlikely to get back 15 more times.)

Anyway, this year when the playoffs began, I was so convinced that Denver would be the AFC Champion that I wrote off a new matchup. They had played Green Bay, Atlanta, and San Francisco, and I didn't think Seattle was going to make the Super Bowl, so I thought this would be a lost year. Then the Ravens pulled the upset and the whole picture changed.

So here we are, Ravens-49ers, and a new matchup in the books. (Actually, crossed off on my chart. Yes. There's a chart.)

And for the record, I'm changing my pick from the pre-season:

San Francisco 24, Baltimore 17

I like the Baltimore Harbaugh more than the San Francisco Harbaugh...but I like the San Francisco team more than the Baltimore one. So I'm picking - and rooting for - the 49ers.

New Thing #6: Playoff Fantasy Football Part 2

Sorry for the back-to-back sports posts, but I went a little overboard with the post-season football pools. And that's kind of new.

But what's really new is the playoff pool I decided to join Saturday morning.

Unlike the one I wrote about yesterday, this one requires you to pick 12 players - one from each of the playoff teams - and it's one set team for the entire post-season:

2 QBs, 3 WRs, 3 RBs, 2 TEs, a kicker, and a defense.

You get pretty traditional fantasy points for those positions, and then participants also pick the playoff games for extra points. This one, unlike the one I wrote about yesterday, is for a little bit more than just pride. This, combined with the fantasy league I wrote about yesterday and the spread/over-under pool I'm in, gives me quite a rooting interest in the NFL playoffs. I was pretty excited to watch the Saturday games...and I'm already looking forward to Sunday (depending on when you read this). It's been a while since I've cared this much about the playoff games without the Jets involved. We'll see how long that lasts.

For your information, here's the team I picked, so you can root for me:

QB: Tom Brady, Peyton Manning

WR: Randall Cobb, Reggie Wayne, Julio Jones

RB: Frank Gore, Marshawn Lynch, Alfred Morris

TE: Kyle Rudolph, Jermane Gresham

K: Justin Tucker

DEF: Houston

Thanks for your support.

New Thing #5: Playoff Fantasy Football

I used to be crazy about fantasy sports. Ridiculously crazy. Stats, records...I immersed myself in it.

I still get into it, just not with anywhere near the same level of intensity.

I'm still willing to try some fun new fantasy twist.

Thus, this year's foray into NFL.com's Playoff Fantasy Football.

It actually wasn't my idea.

My friend Kevin (I'll introduce him further at another time...I'm sure he'll pop up again multiple times over the course of the year) sent around an e-mail to a few of us who play fantasy baseball together suggesting we sign up. It doesn't take much more than that to convince me.

What's striking about this game (actually called "Fantasy Playoff Challenge"), though, is how different it is from anything I've attempted before. You get somewhat traditional fantasy points from each player, but the longer they are on your team the more the points are worth. So you kind of get double-rewarded for picking players who last deep into the playoffs. And if the player has a bye in the first week, you still get double points in his first game if you have him the first week. (Hence the gamble I'm taking at QB and TE...I still think the 49ers are going to the Super Bowl, and I don't know if there's a better tight end out there than Gronkowski.)

And I am sure that I know nothing more here than the others in the mini-league, which is why I have no qualms about publishing my roster here.

I don't want to get too deep into sports details here on you, but I'll wrap up with this: I've done playoff pools (and I'm doing one this year), I've done fantasy football before where you pick a team and stick with that team straight through the Super Bowl, but I've never done it like this. And there's nothing at stake here other than pride.

I'm excited about trying out a new fantasy sports activity. And with the Jets missing the playoffs for the second straight year, it's good for me to have as many possible things to root for in the post-season that distract me from that fact.