Sports

A NINER FAN’S SOB STORY: SEATTLE AND THE SUPER BOWL

I’m a dye-in-the-wool 49ers fan. The Steve Young-to-Jeff Garcia variety. I’m too young to recall Young’s world-beating performance against the San Diego Chargers in Super Bowl XXIX, so my first real Niners memory involves Jeff Garcia, Terrell Owens, and the greatest comeback bid in California sports history.

On the other hand, I grew up a diehard, tough-luck UCLA sports fan. I suffered through Karl Dorrell and Steve Lavin, and rejoiced in the fall of Pete Carroll and his plastic dynasty at the University of Southern California. My love for the Bruins remained even after I realized they had no proper school of mass communications (and when I moved to Texas in high school).

In 2010, Carroll decided to take his smarmy tactics from the college game to the pros, and I guffawed at the prospect of ol’ Pete in showery Seattle with a mediocre Seahawks team which had no ambitions for a division title, let alone a Super Bowl. But of course, my Niners were dumping a heap of you-know-what over the San Francisco Bay. (In an odd twist, I’m a Dodger fan, so I thoroughly despise the Giants. Remember, Candlestick Park housed them for over 40 years.)

The next season was promising. Out went Mike Singletary, who came with all the warm fluffiness of a military drill instructor. In came Jim Harbaugh, fodder for bad NFL lip-reading videos. The stars were aligned as Andrew Luck, Harbaugh’s well-groomed quarterback at Stanford University, was supposed to make the big jump to the league in 2011. While Luck didn’t, his ex-coach found a way to whip a talented yet undercoached team into shape. Championship-level talent, mind you.

Somehow, a coach managed to nudge much-maligned quarterback Alex Smith up a level (or two), from “unproductive bust” to “game manager extraordinaire”. The Niners rode their feel-good momentum into a 12-win season and a stupid/unlucky Kyle Williams fumble away from the Super Bowl – a date with the New England Patriots. I cursed Williams all week long. My father – himself a Niners supporter, through thick and thin – was genuinely disappointed.

Meanwhile, in Washington State, Carroll had quietly been laying down the foundation for a Manchester City-like spinaround on football supremacy. Its genesis was the Marshawn Lynch run of the 2010-11 playoffs (recall that Lynch was a waiver-wire pickup, and the Seahawks were 7-9 hosting a game against the defending champion New Orleans Saints). Although there was a hiccup in the process — the 2011 ‘Hawks had the same record as 2010 and missed the playoffs courtesy of the Niners — Seattle began to boil over as a real challenge to the uprising 49ers out West.

Meanwhile, let’s connect the Luck story over to Peyton Manning. At the same time Seattle and San Francisco were reconstructing themselves into football powerhouses, the mighty Indianapolis Colts watched their franchise icon, good old No. 18, undergo neck surgery — twice — and jeopardize their fortunes for an entire season. (“Suck for Luck?” Perhaps.) They were rewarded with the right to select Luck, the Stanford alum, with the first pick in the 2012 NFL Draft. Meanwhile, Manning had seen the last of his days in Colt blue and was sent out to pasture (no pun intended) with the Denver Broncos.

The Niners fan in me was incredibly pumped for the 2012 season, especially with the watch parties my friends held in college. Through those social events, I watched San Francisco nearly crumble when Alex Smith was hurt, and watched San Francisco rise again when we found out Colin Kaepernick was way better than expected. He was the catalyst of a surprisingly dominant run to the Super Bowl, where the 49ers fell to the Baltimore Ravens and sent Ray Lewis out dancing. (Beyonce and the lights did nothing to alleviate my pain.)

Too bad, there was more pain on the horizon.

The Seahawks were getting … better under Pete Carroll. The ol’ college coach was still as energetic and fiery as he was in college, but somehow that energy that no one believed could work for a professional football team translated into something bigger. The Seahawks got new jerseys, new colors, and a new attitude. They traded for a quarterback and ended up starting their third-round pick instead (and watched as he blossomed into a star). They even finished 11-5 in 2011 and were a few plays away from dancing with the Niners in the NFC title game.

Then 2013 happened.

The Niners were wobbly and inconsistent; the Seahawks were loud, proud, and soaring. San Francisco won 12 games to Seattle’s 13, including a big loss on the Hawks’ home field. (Cue the whole “12th Man” nonsense.) Once the playoffs rolled around, the Niners had awoken! They spent all of January dismantling the Packers, shushing the Panthers, and sending a message to the football-viewing public that the San Francisco 49ers were for real. (Cue the whole “Candlestick Memories” nonsense.)

People still ask me about the final play of the Niners-Seahawks game, which all but sealed it for the Legion of Boom as the NFL’s most feared defense. And everyone grins at me when they bring up Richard Sherman’s blood-boiling diss of Michael Crabtree, Red Raider turned 49er, in the postgame interview after the NFC title.

Being the salty 49er and ex-UCLA Bruin fan that I am, I proclaimed upon high temples that there was no way possible the Seahawks were going to defeat mighty Peyton and his vaunted Bronco offense. He threw 55 touchdowns; who bets against that? He had a receiving corps; who bets against that? He had Red Raider lovers slobbering over Wes Welker; who bets against…THAT?

Well, I looked foolish on Sunday. Manning looked slow, old, fragile and confused. The Seattle Seahawks looked menacing, unforgiving, and kept the pressure coming. They were relentless. They scored 43 points to Denver’s eight. I got to hear about the 12th Man and Pete Carroll’s resurrected coaching legacy and USC and dominance and Jim Harbaugh is a crybaby all night long.

I saw the evolution of football as it was: defense still trumps offense, Peyton Manning can never be the greatest quarterback of all-time, and I probably should stop being so jealous and start being more appreciative. For the 49ers, their time is coming. I can see it. Next season will ring anew.

But I’m still not putting Tom Brady over Manning.

Yet.

Philip Arabome is a sophomore journalism major from Long Beach, Calif. He’s also lived in Houston, but he says that’s irrelevant. He doubles as the Sports Director at KTXT-FM in Lubbock and is the host of the Walk-Off. He also writes for RaiderPower.com (but you subscribe to that site, sorry). Follow him on Twitter: @PhillyBeach93

Defining Michael Young

Originally posted on gwtalksdfw.blogspot.com

Selflessness. Of the many cliché words we use in defining the careers of our favorite athletes, “selflessness” was the first word that came to mind when I heard Michael Young was finally hanging them up. In our current state of professional sports, you could look back and argue that he became somewhat of a unicorn. Think about it. How many times do we see prominent athletes demanding trades or transferring from schools because they’re too prideful to agree with coaching and management that they need make a position change or take a lesser role for the betterment of their team?

From 2004 until his final year as a Ranger in 2012, fans watched Young make position changes three times, play all four infield positions in 2011 and 2012 serving as a designated hitter almost double the amount of games he played at any defensive position during that time, all while he was being shopped around in trade talks every offseason after 2008. When you look at it that way, it starts to make a little sense why he might have become a defensive liability from an advanced metric perspective, particularly after the move from shortstop to third base. I realize he didn’t handle that move as cheerfully as the others, because in that case he did request a trade, but can you really blame him? The guy had just come off a 2008 season in which he won a Gold Glove at shortstop and combined with Ian Kinsler to have one of the best single seasons by a shortstop second base defensive tandem in Major League history. How would you handle a move like that at your job?

Forget defense for a minute, though. The word most commonly associated with Michael Young’s career is undoubtedly “consistency,” this pertaining to him as an offensive player. As a hitter, Young recorded at least 150 hits every season from 2002 to 2012, six of which were 200-plus hit seasons (2003-2007, 2011), and he’s retiring as a career .300 hitter. However, it appeared to me that he became a victim of his past successes in 2012 as many Rangers fans–or “Post-Cliff Lee Trade” fans as I like to call them—began acting like spoiled children when he didn’t produce the usual cookie-cutter numbers he had in his previous nine seasons, failing to understand that an off year for Young is a benchmark for an average Major League hitter.

Nowadays around the water cooler, your basic baseball card stats hold no weight in arguments regarding a player’s production, and scientifically speaking, it’s indisputable that Young had a down year at the plate after being deemed the club’s “super utility” Designated Hitter in 2012. Hell, you could even say he hurt the team considering he posted a negative WPA (win probability added) that year. But what amazed me in 2012 was the amount of backlash he received from fans. If you followed Twitter closely during games that year, nearly every time he struck out, flew out, or grounded out, there were fans expressing this growing sentiment that he had received more credit than he was due and that the perception of him being a “veteran leader” or “classy ballplayer” was the only reason he continued to see the field, in spite of his declining offensive production. The reason it shocked me so much was because he had just put up one of the best years of his career at the plate in 2011 as he led the league in hits (213), posted a .338/.380/.474 slash line, and finished in the top eight in the American League MVP race. I’ll even go so far as to say that he was the unsung hero for the Rangers when they made the postseason in 2011 as he had to fill in at third base for Adrian Beltre after a hamstring injury caused him to miss 37 games, during which he posted a slash line of .354/.399/.469, 21 RBIs, and a .645 WPA. Yet the increasing resentment of him in 2012 made it seem as if none of that ever happened.

From a personal standpoint, the final word I would like to affix to Michael Young’s career is “unorthodox.” Growing up a lifelong fan of DFW sports, I often like to make comparisons of Michael Young and Dallas Mavericks power forward Dirk Nowitzki. I could bore you with numerous reasons as to why I do this—trust me, it’s a completely different article in itself—but I’ve always been awestruck by how they’ve managed to take the most difficult aspects of their respective sports and turn them into the prominent reasons they have had such successful careers. Dirk is continuing to play out a Hall of Fame career that has been defined by an indefensible, off-balance one-legged fade away that had never been seen before. NBA players take off-balance shots all of the time, but there has never been a player make a career out shooting them the way Dirk has. And even as more and more players attempt to mimic it, we may never see it again.

While it’s not nearly as unprecedented as Dirk’s signature “Flamingo Fade,” Michael Young’s uncanny ability to hit to the opposite field is comparable when considering the level of difficulty and the fact that both have had consistently prolonged success. Ask any physics professor what the hardest skill to master in all of sports is and I can almost guarantee nine out of 10 will say hitting a baseball, because in order for it to work, two round objects have to make contact squarely. Casual fans, feel free to take a moment to wrap your mind around that if you need to. Now pair that with the fact that hitting to the opposite field is the most difficult aspect of being a successful hitter, and you should have a little more appreciation for Young’s craft when you consider that this is where he made his money in the league. His production never came from the long ball, but he managed to make hitting hard line drives into right center field the staple of his offensive proficiency. So to reiterate, Young’s mastery of a skill you rarely see a player find consistent success with for a sustained period of time is just one reason why I love to compare him to Dirk, besides my bias for all things DFW.

As a Rangers fan, if you took a true “Seamheadian” approach in your analysis of Michael Young’s career, I get it, science and sabermetrics don’t come to his defense, even though he was ranked as a Top 40 hitter from 2003 to 2011 according to WAR. But you don’t go about owning franchise records in runs, hits, doubles, triples and total bases by being a mediocre player, especially when your franchise has featured prolific hitters like Ivan Rodriguez, Juan Gonzalez, and Rafael Palmeiro. Sure, Young was a poor defender at different times during his career. This may come as a newsflash, but Derek Jeter has been one of the worst defensive players in the league for more than a decade. (How many Yankees fans have you met calling for his head?) Sure, Young had a couple of spats with management, but did he ever put himself ahead of his team by failing to comply? Like I said earlier, I will always acknowledge the sabermetrical aspect of baseball. Personally, I love studying sabermetrics. They’ve created a new cult of baseball fans and it’s been tremendous for the game. But at some point I think fans need to see beyond the numbers with Young when it comes to evaluating him and appreciate the fact that he served the game the right way for more than a decade, realizing that he’ll be one of the last “good guys” to come through professional sports. And let’s face it, I can sit here and continue to attach more adjectives about how I view Michael Young’s career, but what’s the point? It’s more for me to type when I could just tell you to go Google the damn Boy Scout Law.

Of course I’m sad he’s calling it quits, but I can’t blame him. Look at all he’s accomplished in his career. The batting titles, the All-Star Game appearances and MVP, and all the club records he holds in Texas. Look at all the awesome memories he gave Rangers fans that starved for a competitive team in the mid-2000’s before helping lead them to the franchise’s first ever postseason series victory and back-to-back American League titles. The only thing he had left to do was chase a title on a contending team, and the only team knocking on his door with the intentions of making him a starter was the Brewers. Sure, Young won’t be inducted into the Hall of Fame, and you can always point to science when debating his value. But after watching him play the game the way he did for 14 years with his exceptional combination of versatility and durability, I stand firm in my belief that if you had a team full of competitors like Young, they’d likely contend year after year.

Gerald White is a senior Business Marketing major from the Dallas-Fort Worth area. He also maintains a personal blog. Follow him on Twitter: @GeraldWWhite

Super Bowl 48

In Super Bowl XLVIII, America has the fortune of watching two different quarterbacks. One is a living legend, putting up remarkable numbers; the other is an “undersized” QB that has taken the NFL by storm and has become a potential star in the league. There should be no shortage of great QB play.

The two running backs are miles apart as well. Marshawn Lynch, a.k.a. “BeastMode”, has been one of the best runners in the league since he was drafted out of Cal, and Knowshon Moreno looked like a draft bust until this year and has proven to be a formidable foil to Lynch. #24 will make Skittles rain and Moreno just might make it rain from his eyes.

However, the true match up is not the #1 offense v. the #1 defense (despite it dominating the headlines), but rather the Broncos defense v. the Seattle offense. In past match ups of the top offense v. the top defense, the majority of the victories go to the defense. So, this means the Broncos will have to win on defense, and the Seahawks have to win on offense.

So, if Seattle can stay the dominant balanced team that they have been all year, it will be “Sleepless In Seattle” tonight. If Peyton Manning plays like #18 is supposed to and the defense plays well enough along side, then Matt Stone and Trey Parker will be making Super Bowl references all next season of South Park. Either way, a fantastic game is expected.

Are you ready for some football?!

Shane Carter is a junior journalism major from Bastrop, Texas. He is also the co-host of The Walk-Off, which airs Tuesdays at 5 p.m. on KTXT. He also hosts the show’s related podcast. He is not on twitter or any other kind of social media besides Facebook.