I like the Bad Guys

By Travis Stahl

                There is a saying in sports that everybody likes an underdog.  That’s dumb.  I don’t always like the underdog; I rooted for the Detroit Lions to go 0-16 in 2008, now that’s perfection.  Another thing that makes no sense in sports, why does everybody root for the good guys?  That doesn’t make any sense either.  I might take a lot of heat for the team’s I like from time to time, but most times I really like rooting for the bad guys.

                Remember UNLV in the 1980’s and 90’s with head coach Jerry Tarkanian?  Everybody hated Tark the Shark because he was a “cheater.”  I loved UNLV and watching the Runnin’ Rebels play.  Yes, Tark probably cheated, a lot of coaches did.  People who love good hard-nosed basketball never gave UNLV credit for the defense the team played.  The Rebels were unfairly labeled as an offensive power house but it was really the team’s ameba zone defense that suffocated opponents.

                My favorite NFL team of course is the Dallas Cowboys.  I always say hello to a Cowboys fan I might see out in public wearing a Dallas shirt or hat.  Most people across the football universe hate the Cowboys, and I know it is likely because of owner Jerry Jones.  But come on, how can you hate Dallas?  The Cowboys are America’s team, at least 50 percent of NFL fans should be required to root for Dallas, especially when the team plays a division rival.  Nobody likes the Giants, Redskins or Eagles.

                I’m not going to claim that I have a favorite baseball team; I don’t watch the sport enough to call a team mine.  But if there was a team I had to align myself to it would be the Yankees.  Yes, NY buys championships by outspending other teams in Major League Baseball.  Nobody realizes though that the Yankees have one of the best farm systems in the country and consider themselves a complete organization.  And they are.  The Yankees are pure class.

                The world of sports is not all about the good buys that ride in to save the day on a white horse.  Look at how popular the Raiders were under the leadership of Al Davis and he was the original outlaw.  Rooting for the bad guys is fun; it goes against the norm and is the purest form of rooting for the underdog.

Racing is a Family Tradition

By Travis Stahl

                Do you ever tune in to a NASCAR race or an Indy car event and wonder, “how did the Unser family get started in this?” or “how long has the Petty family been in racing”?  We ask these questions because it seems remarkable to most people that an entire family can be involved in a sport together for such a long period of time.  The reason it seems so strange to most people is because they haven’t lived it.  My family has been involved in racing midgets for three generations and from my earliest memories to present day racing has been a part of the Stahl family.

                My grandpa Neil Stahl was the first of our family to become involved in racing midgets.  Back in the 1950’s, my grandpa and Jimmy Taylor built their cars themselves.  It wasn’t very sophisticated but I would imagine they had a hell of a lot of fun.  My grandpa and Taylor (and a few others) built a midget track at Tri-Lakes to accommodate all the drivers from the area.  The track was located across the street from the Lion’s Club building before they built a new track just north of Stalf Road.

                Growing up I can remember my dad Mike’s earliest cars with 125cc Suzuki’s.  My dad raced on the midget track on asphalt at Logansport.  There really wasn’t any doubt what my brother Wes and I would do when we grew up.  We loved going to Logansport and watching dad race, it was part of what our family was supposed to do.

                But then racing died out for a long time.  Not many people were racing in this area and asphalt tracks began to die out.  The pavement was eventually replaced by dirt tracks and in the mid-90’s my brother and dad built a car for Wes to race.  Wes started out in the 400cc sportsman class and two years later I joined in.  It was the most fun I’d ever had and the most proud moment of my life the first time I got in a car and went out on the track.   The old sportsman class was what racing was supposed to be about.  It was a collection of 20 to 25 guys that bought their motors at the junk yard, strapped them on a car and went to race.  When you were done you got out of your car at the end of the night you drank a beer with the other drivers and laughed about how much fun you just had.

                Within two years dad had another car to join the family circus.  My cousins Josh Ross and Blane Culp were also racing at Logansport and Peru and eventually our cousin Trent Perry joined in as well as our uncle David Stahl.  At one point at Peru there were seven members of the Stahl family racing at Peru.

                As it is with most situations though, money became a factor.  What was once possible to achieve with $1,500 now cost $15,000.  Racing became more about how much money you could put in to a car to win, not about how much fun it was.  Races often times turned in to who had put the most money in to their car, not who the better driver was.  I sold my car and have been out of racing for five years.  My brother still owns his car but has not been on the track for five years either.  Dad is still racing occasionally and Blane, Josh and Uncle David still drive all the time.

                There was one time my brother was having trouble getting his car to handle right on the track so we loaded it up and took it to grandpa’s to ask for help.  As we pulled in to the driveway he was sitting in a lawn chair in his garage.  The first thing he said to us as we walked up to him was “You got too much weight on that tire over there.”  He knew what was wrong with the car before we even told him what it was doing.

                Racing is the most fun I’ve ever had and I still miss the anticipation of coming out of turn four knowing they’re about to drop the green flag.  There is no feeling like that.  It would be nice someday to be able to get back in to racing, I would like to pass that on to my girls some day.

Forget About Running Backs in Fantasy Football

By Travis Stahl

                Fantasy football used to be so simple at draft time.  First, you drafted a running back, any running back.  Then with your second pick, you considered another position, but knew what you really had to do and selected another running back.  As the NFL has changed (as we discussed a couple of weeks ago with fantasy quarterbacks) fantasy football has changed.  Fantasy football is no longer a running back league; it’s now all about the quarterbacks.  There are few running backs worth drafting highly so you need to be smart at draft time.

                Other than Arian Foster, LeSean McCoy and Ray Rice is there another running back you could confidently take in the first round?  Adrian Peterson is hurt and won’t be in top form until at least the middle of the season and Darren McFadden is always hurt.  Frank Gore is 108 years old (No really, I looked it up) and Reggie Bush is on a horrible team.  Any running back you draft, regardless of what round you take them in, is going to be a risk.

                Chargers back Ryan Mathews has been hurt in each of his first two years but he might be the safest pick outside of the top three.  Mathews catches a lot of passes out of the backfield and is very young.  After Mathews the next best pick might be Jamal Charles of Kansas City.  Charles is also coming back from injury but his knee blew out really early in the year last season and he is on schedule to be 100% to start this year.  Matt Forte of the Bears and Marshawn Lynch in Seattle are worth taking as a second running back, but not worth a first or second-round pick.

                If you are in a keeper league in which you get to protect players definitely put yourself in position to take Cleveland rookie Trent Richardson or Tampa Bay rookie Doug Martin.  It’s always a good idea to draft at least one rookie running back so that you have them for years to come.  Plus, these two are going to be really good as both backs are capable of catching the ball out of the backfield.

                So many teams use two running backs now it’s hard to take one or the other.  Stay away from Buffalo backs Fred Jackson and C.J. Spiller; both are going to get the ball an equal amount so neither is going to put up big numbers.

                Running the ball is not important any more in the NFL so don’t take a running back in the first round if one of the top three is not available.  You have to take a quality quarterback first and fill in with running backs later.  Fantasy drafters that fail to adjust to the pass-heavy NFL will find themselves out of the playoff picture.

It's All in the Ping-Pong Balls

By Travis Stahl

                Do you know what the best part of the NBA draft is?  It’s ping-pong.  Or, more specifically, ping-pong balls.  The NBA draft is blah.  But the draft lottery, with all the ping-pong ball drama, now that’s exciting.  And, I’ll go more step further with the NBA draft lottery, I like it.  I know it doesn’t make any sense and it goes against the greater good of competitive balance, but I still like the NBA draft lottery.

                Prior to the 1985 NBA draft it was becoming pretty evident there were teams across the league that were “tanking.”  Teams were coming up with new and innovative ways to rack up losses in the hopes of earning the worst record in the league to earn the right to draft Georgetown center Patrick Ewing.  The NBA did not like all the losing on purpose so it instituted the lottery.

                The lottery is pretty simple; the team with the worst record in the league gets the most ping-pong balls in a hopper.  The second-worst team has the second most ping-pong balls and so on all the way down through the teams that didn’t make the playoffs.  The idea was that any team in the lottery had a shot at earning the top pick even if they didn’t have the worst record.  If you’ve never watched the draft lottery, there is nothing more hilarious than when the team with the worst record fails to get the first pick.

                Ask Boston how funny it is not to get the first pick.  In the 1997 draft the Celtics had the worst record in the league thanks in large part to the greatest tank job of all-time.  Boston went in to the lottery thinking it had Tim Duncan all locked up with the first pick but it was the San Antonio Spurs that won the lottery and got the right to pick Duncan.  The rest is history so they say for the Spurs.

                The key to making the lottery interesting is having a sure-fire No. 1 pick.  There has to be a player that ever team is hoping to draft like this season with Anthony Davis.  Every team in the lottery is licking its chops for the chance to put the Kentucky center on its team.  Charlotte had the worst record in the league this season so the Bobcats are hoping the ping-pong balls bounce there way Wednesday night.  It would just be Charlotte’s luck to miss out on the top pick.

                In years where the draft’s top player has been in question it makes the lottery less fun.  In the 1995 draft nobody really cared who got the top pick.  Golden State ended up taking Joe Smith at No. 1, but Smith was far from a lock with the top pick and his career reflected that.

                The draft lottery has been the one thing keeping the NBA draft afloat.  Too often teams draft players based on who is the top-rated player on the board, not how they fit in to their team.  That’s why there are so many players that fail to make it in the league.  At least the lottery mixes things up and tries to keep teams from losing on purpose.  After all, there really is nothing more fair than a bunch of ping-pong balls in a hopper.

Come Back 1980's Indy 500, We Miss You

By Travis Stahl

                Ah, the 80’s.  I remember them fondly as they were entertaining times to be a kid.  The NBA was awesome with the Lakers and Celtics battling for titles, the NFL was turning in to a giant with superstars like Joe Montana and Walter Payton and boxing was gaining in popularity with every Mike Tyson knockout.  The king of all sports in the 1980’s was still the Indianapolis 500.  Unfortunately, when you think about it like that, the 80’s seem like a long time ago.  The Greatest Spectacle in Racing has been anything but great for about 15 years and it’s not hard to figure out why.

                As sports fans, we crave recognition.  We want to identify with our favorite sports biggest stars by knowing who they are and rooting for them throughout their season.  Other than Jelio Castroneves, I could not tell you the name of another drive that will be in this weekend’s 500.  And I’m a sports guy.  Nobody, not one other driver.  Is Danica racing?  No?  OK, I stand by my statement, not one other driver in the field could I name.

                In the 1980’s fans of the 500 knew most of the drivers and their sponsors.  These were drivers we knew and company’s we knew.  Gordon Johncock was STP, Al Unser had Pennzoil, Danny Sullivan drove the Miller car and AJ Foyt had Copenhagen.  Big name companies that are recognized by the American consumer don’t sponsor Indy 500 cars any more, there’s no recognition for them.  As a result most cars are now sponsored by the ownership of the car or by companies like Symantec.  Does anybody in the room know what Symantec is or what they do?

                In the NFL, we know that after the Packers play the Bears they have another game the following week and its going to be reasonably entertaining to watch whoever they are playing.  What race is after the 500 in the Indy car circuit?  What are drivers racing for, is there a series championship?  How many races are there in the Indy car season?  We don’t know mostly because we don’t care.

                When the Indy 500 turned in to soccer NASCAR swooped in and killed it.  NASCAR evolved in to what Americans want in racing.  We want drivers we know with car sponsors we know and a point’s series that matters so that we can determine a champion.  As it stands the 500 has turned in to Mardi Gras mixed with European club soccer with a little bit of the Kentucky Derby and Indiana hillbilly on the side.

                I want the Indy 500 to be relevant again and after last year’s exciting finish maybe we are on the way.  It would be nice if the race could establish a nice base of young drivers that can attract big-name money to their cars.  We need the 500 to be important because of its status in the world of sports.