Journey is one of my more shameful guilty pleasures. The video for "Separate Ways" caused too many bad influences in my childhood to count. This past NHL playoff season, of course, Journey’s "Don’t Stop Believin’" became an unofficial anthem of the Detroit Red Wings, both for the reference in the song to "a city boy/born and raised in South Detroit," and for its general message of not giving up, no matter how tough times have been in Michigan these past few years. I don’t know how many Red Wings fans stopped believing after that heartbreaker of a Game Seven, but I wasn’t one of them. However, I think it’s safe to say that I’ve pretty much stopped caring about the Red Wings. It was hard enough to get behind the team when it seemed to distance itself so far from its gritty roots — and I realize that this is just Mike Babcock and management adjusting to Gary Bettman’s vision of a new NHL — but with Chris Chelios getting dumped this offseason and the team bringing back Todd Bertuzzi, who I still say has no business in any hockey sweater right now, let alone one with the Wing Wheel on it, I just can’t see myself following the Red Wings that closely. I have too much on my plate as it is, and rooting for a team that no longer plays my kind of hockey just doesn’t make much sense any longer.
As it is, the NHL has just gotten too sanitized for my liking, and as much lip service as Bettman pays to how fighting has always been a part of the game, he seems to be doing his New York best to cause fighting to slowly disappear from the game, and I’m sorry, but hockey needs fighting like Paris Hilton needs a brain transplant. This business with the Phoenix Coyotes has been painful to watch as well, as seemingly every other NHL team and every other major North American sports league seems to be behind Bettman’s insistence that the team not be moved to a place where people might actually watch the games, namely Hamilton, Ontario. I have the feeling that Gary Bettman would move the Maple Leafs to Topeka and the Canadiens to Biloxi if he thought he could get away with it.
Speaking of sports, this past weekend I was in Columbus for reasons that don’t concern you. Friday night, when I was in my hotel room chilling out, I turned on the television and sure enough saw a University of Toledo football game. This is never a pleasant thing for me, because a lot of the tuition increases I had to put up with as a student there were thanks to the college paying ESPN huge sums of money to televise so many Rockets games, only to have ESPN stop doing so once the Rockets began stinking again. It also doesn’t help that last month I got a Rockets schedule in the mail, and even after adding gender identity to their non-discrimination clause, the college is still addressing mail to "Mr. Sean Shannon," whoever that is. (Then again, it also listed the 22nd of October as being on a Saturday. Remember, folks, this is where I got two degrees from.)
Anyway, this takes me to today, which was probably the most advertised Rockets football game in history, the start of a home-and-home series against Ohio State. (Speaking of Ohio State football, remind me never to travel to Columbus on the weekend of a big game ever again.) UT didn’t really advertise it much when they went up to play Michigan last year, but of course after they won — probably the second biggest victory in UT football history — they’ve been sending me e-mails every month trying to get me to buy a "Big Win in the Big House" t-shirt. Now, I can understand why this would be such a big thing for UT, but in one of the most senseless decisions I can remember the school making — which is saying a lot — they decided to play the "home" game of the series at Cleveland Browns Stadium. Isn’t the point of doing a series like this the revenue that can be gotten from having the Buckeyes here in Toledo? How much money did Toledo’s local economy lose from such an asinine decision? The worst part is that the only major highway from Toledo to Cleveland is a toll road, so everyone from town who wanted to go to the game had to pay even more just to get to Cleveland. Anyway, Ohio State — excuse me, THE Ohio State University (Goddess I can’t stand that) — shut out the Rockets, and will probably do so again down the road in Columbus next year. I’ll try not to be in Columbus that day, no matter what other fun stuff might be going on in the city.