No Really, You Go Ahead And Blow Your Own Foot Off. I’ll Be Here In The Corner, Doing A Lot Of Nothing

On May 6, 2009, I sat in this room, in front of this computer, and wondered about the meaning of my team winning a big game when it had been both outplayed and the beneficiary of at least one notable close call.  In that instance, Andres Iniesta hit a 93rd minute winner past Petr Cech to send Barcelona to Rome.  Iniesta’s shot was Barca’s first on target in the match.  The Blaugrana trailed for most of the encounter and had to stave off numerous close encounters, including a pair of one-on-ones between Didier Drogba and Victor Valdes and four penalty appeals of varying quality.  In the end, Barca were the inferior team, but went through anyway. 

In the aftermath, I came to grips with the fact that there are more ways to succeed in a football match than by dominating possession and creating chances.  For one thing, a goalie making big saves is not exactly luck.  You would think that I would grasp this fact given that I have played goalie since age ten, but after the game, I had to remind myself that Valdes performing to keep Barca in the match counted just as much as Messi or Eto’o creating and finishing chances at the other end.  For another, a team keeping its concentration in adverse circumstances is important.  Barca could have gotten frustrated with Chelsea’s defensive approach, with the penalty that they were denied in the first leg, and with the general unfairness that their perfect season was about to end without the most coveted prize available.  Instead, they kept plugging away and then Iniesta foreshadowed his World Cup-winning strike with the goal that made the treble possible.

Tonight, I’m in the same position.  Michigan just won the Sugar Bowl, capping an 11-2 season that, with one notable exception, is as good as any I’ve experienced since enrolling in Ann Arbor in September 1993.  By conventional metrics, Michigan had no business winning the game.  The Wolverines were outgained 375 to 184.  The Hokies ran 24 more plays and were 1.4 yards better on a per play basis.  Michigan’s two touchdowns were both Jeff Bowden specials, with Junior Hemingway playing the role of Greg Carr.  Michigan’s first field goal in regulation came from an insanely lucky deflected pass to a previously-ineligible receiver.  The Michigan defense was stout in a number of respects, especially in the red zone, but they gave up a season’s worth of third and longs to a team without an especially good passing game.  In the end, Michigan benefited from a close reversal of a Hokie touchdown in overtime (the right call, I think, but very close) and then an ignored false start on the winning field goal (although it’s not as if Virginia Tech can claim that Michigan gained any sort of advantage from Brendan Gibbons starting, stopping, and then having to start again).  Notre Dame in the late 80s, Tennessee ‘98, and Ohio State ‘02 all came to mind; this was lucky.

All that said, the ability to avoid blowing off one’s own foot is a skill in college football.  If we have learned anything over the last few days after seeing kickers repeatedly spit the bit, coaches turtle up in end-game situations, and players of all shapes and sizes make mistakes, it’s that avoiding big errors is important.  Michigan had one turnover and 24 yards of penalties.  They didn’t miss a field goal.  They didn’t call a stupid fake punt on fourth and one when their running game was cooking.  Fitzgerald Toussaint didn’t take a 220-yard loss on first and goal.  They neither roughed a punter to prolong a drive, nor watched the drive end by not knocking down a pass on 3rd and 17.  Feel free to shoot me in the face for sounding like a Tressel acolyte, but playing mistake-free football can atone for a lot of sins.

Likewise, just as Barca’s persistence at Stamford Bridge was a skill, so was Michigan’s performance tonight.  They came in with their star left tackle limping around.  They then added an injury to their Rimington-winning senior center who makes all of the calls for the line and who relies on mobility to make up for a lack of size.  A group of players who remember total collapses like Illinois 2009 and Ohio State 2010 showed that they don’t roll over anymore.  Virginia Tech dominated most of the first half, but the defense made stands in the red zone and then the offense had a brief flurry to turn a 6-0 deficit into a 17-6 lead.  When the Hokies pegged them back to 17-17 and then 20-20, Michigan stood up in overtime and won the game.  Add persistence to “didn’t blow our own feet off” to the list of skills that this team used to make up for the fact that they couldn’t block or make a stop on third and long.

In a way, this is how the 2011 season had to end for Michigan.  At the end of the Rich Rodriguez era, Michigan was a great offfense and then a smoking heap of wreckage.  The defense was unconscionably bad.  The special teams were barely above that level, most notably because the Wolverines could not kick a field goal.  Michigan did dumb things like not knowing that a blocked field goal is a live ball.  The turnover rate was terrible.  This year was a palate cleanser in every way.  In the end, Michigan won a game despite the offense being completely stymied.  The Wolverines won by being good on defense, very good on special teams, and smart enough to avoid the mistakes that killed their otherwise superior opponent.  In 2010, I looked at box scores and said “we have to be better than what the scoreboard says.”  At the end of 2011, I say “according to that gleaming Sugar Bowl trophy headed to Schembechler Hall, we are better than what the box score says.”  

The Ship Comes In

Braves & Birds Ballot - Week 14

Rank	Team	Delta
1	LSU Tigers	--
2	Alabama Crimson Tide	--
3	Oklahoma St. Cowboys	--
4	USC Trojans	2
5	Oregon Ducks	2
6	Virginia Tech Hokies	5
7	Stanford Cardinal	3
8	Oklahoma Sooners	-3
9	Houston Cougars	--
10	Wisconsin Badgers	-2
11	Boise St. Broncos	3
12	Georgia Bulldogs	4
13	Michigan St. Spartans	-1
14	Michigan Wolverines	1
15	Arkansas Razorbacks	-11
16	South Carolina Gamecocks	2
17	TCU Horned Frogs	-4
18	Kansas St. Wildcats	-1
19	Nebraska Cornhuskers	2
20	Baylor Bears	4
21	Notre Dame Fighting Irish	-1
22	Texas Longhorns	--
23	Clemson Tigers	-1
24	West Virginia Mountaineers	--
25	Florida St. Seminoles	--
Dropouts: Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, Penn St. Nittany Lions, Virginia Cavaliers

SB Nation BlogPoll College Football Top 25 Rankings »

My apologies if I betray my orientation as a Southern college football fan a little with this post, but I was zoned in on the Michigan game at noon, then the 3:30 games were all blowouts and Mrs. B&B and I went out during the evening timeslot.  I have a meta-SEC premise that I'll get out later in the week, but for this morning, please forgive me if my attention heads north...

Please lord no - If Michigan would have lost that game, then I would have been asking the following question: my five-year old has not seen a Michigan won over Ohio State in his lifetime; now, I'm seriously wondering if the event will happen before his bar mitzvah.  There was a sense in the later stages as Michigan continued to struggle to contain a heretofore terrible offense that the Bucks' dominance over the Wolverines was not just a matter of having better teams.  When they are better (2005, 2007-10), they win.  When the teams are even (2006), they win.  When they are worse (2004), they win.  There was a major potential for "if not now, when?" as a legitimate question if Michigan would have lost a home game when favored by eight points against a 6-5 Ohio State team that had lost two straight and had a freshman quarterback, a green defense, and a lame duck coaching staff.  Thus, the feeling after the game was exhilaration tempered by a major feeling of relief.  It was not quite the unfettered joy that Dawg fans felt after beating Florida in 1997 or that Vol fans felt after beating the Gators in '98.

Oh, wide open - Also causing the major feelings of relief: Braxton Miller missed open receivers down the field on a number of occasions, most notably on the Bucks' last possession when DeVier Posey had a good two steps on J.T. Floyd for what would have been a truly soul-crushing touchdown.*  Michigan has seen good receivers this year - Michael Floyd, B.J. Cunningham, A.J. Jenkins, and Marvin McNutt all come to mind - without major damage.  Posey was a different proposition, which raises a few possibilities.  One is that Posey is a step above those other receivers.  (The corollary to this theory would be that Ohio State could have been an 8-9 win team with Posey on the field this year.)**  A second is that Michigan was not fully prepared to deal with Ohio State because they had so little film on the Bucks' offense with Posey in the mix.  A third is that Michigan could handle mobile quarterbacks and they could handle top receivers, but they couldn't handle both at the same time.  (Illinois technically has both, but they were in offensive freefall by the time they played Michigan.)  If the third is indeed the case, then maybe Brady Hoke and Al Borges need to think through the offensive transition that they envision for Michigan over the next several years.  They just finished the season second in the Big Ten and 19th in the nation in yards per play running an offense that is not their preferred mode of attack.  How much more conventional should they need to be?

* - The last time Ohio State played in the Big House, the Bucks won 21-10 and the margin would have been larger if not for Terrelle Pryor missing an open Posey behind Floyd.  That game convinced me that Floyd did not have the speed to play corner at a high level.  Floyd has played much better this year, most notably in a superlative performance against Illinois's A.J. Jenkins, but Posey abused Floyd on Saturday, just as he did two years ago.

** - Another pet theory: bad wide receivers don't get criticized as much because their failures happen off the screen.  With just about every other position on the field, it is obvious when a player fails to perform his role.  This is not the case when a wide receiver doesn't get open.  Thus, we might not have fully appreciated the struggles of teams like Ohio State and Florida this year.  We put the blame on the coaches, the quarterbacks, the offensive lines, and just about every other factor other than "the receivers can't get open and thus, the passing game grinds to a halt."

Feeling conflicted? - As I watched Ohio State suddenly unearth a functional offense, I wondered how Ohio State fans feel about Jim Bollman.  For most of the year, one of my little pleasures in life has been following the Twitter feeds of Buckeye bloggers as they deal with what seemed like one of the worst-schemed offenses in modern history.  All of a sudden, with his job gone with the wind, Bollman unleashes a diverse, dare-I-say threatening attack that takes advantage of the entire field.  The Buckeye reaction had to be similar to that of Michigan fans who watched the 2007 Capital One Bowl against Florida.  In that instance, Michigan deployed the spread passing attack that should have been the team's approach since, oh, I don't know, 1998 and marched up and down the field on Florida.*  The feeling had to be a combination of happiness with "where the f*** was this for most of the past decade?"**  If I had a nickel for every time Chris Spielman said something to the effect of "Ohio State hasn't shown this all year," then I would be as rich as Urban Meyer.***

* - The common thread in both games: Greg Mattison was the opposing defensive coordinator.

** - Bollman and Mike Debord can both defend themselves to a certain degree by pointing to the personnel available to them in their swan songs.  Debord finally had a healthy Chad Henne and Mike Hart in the bowl game, while Bollman finally had Posey and he also had Braxton Miller with a year's worth of experience.        

*** - Despite the complaints of some Michigan fans, I still like Spielman as a color guy.  For example, on Michigan's last touchdown, he noticed immediately that Michigan was using a formation that they had not used all year.  The fact that Spielman clearly watches lots of film to prepare for calling a game should not stand out, but it does.  Unfortunately, the rest of ESPN's broadcast was not up to Spielman's standards...

Talk about the game, please? - For those of you who didn't watch the game, let me set the stage for you.  Michigan and Ohio State are playing in a game that ESPN hypes as one of the great rivalries in all of sports.  Future star Braxton Miller has just led the Bucks to a touchdown to draw his team to within three at 37-34.  Michigan, wearing the albatross of a seven-game losing streak to its arch rival, has the ball with about seven minutes to go.  It's at this point that the guys in the production truck decide that it's time to put up a graphic on Urban Meyer's resume and Dave Pasch dutifully starts talking about the possibility of Meyer going to Columbus.  He's doing this in the fourth quarter of a very close rivalry game!  If ever there were a time to not go with your filler, this is it!  ESPN had clearly prepared to discuss Meyer and they were going to use their graphic, come hell or high water.  The producer was like the captain of a ship who decides "well, we're coming into port and we haven't had a chance to fire our harpoon gun at a whale, so let's fire at this family of four eating ice cream on the dock as we pull in."  And the stupidity of ESPN's decision is amplified by the fact that Pasch and Spielman called a game with Meyer last week and didn't ask him anything more than "are you going to Ohio State?"  So ESPN doesn't ask anything more than softballs to its own color guy and then they decide to explore his potential decision in the closing stages of an exciting, competitive game.  Bravo!

My Top 25 Believes in a Healthy Chest

Braves & Birds Ballot - Week 4

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Alabama Crimson Tide	--
2	Oklahoma Sooners	--
3	LSU Tigers	--
4	Boise St. Broncos	--
5	Stanford Cardinal	--
6	Wisconsin Badgers	--
7	Texas A&M Aggies	--
8	Arkansas Razorbacks	--
9	Oklahoma St. Cowboys	--
10	Florida St. Seminoles	--
11	Oregon Ducks	--
12	Nebraska Cornhuskers	--
13	South Carolina Gamecocks	--
14	South Florida Bulls	--
15	Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets	--
16	West Virginia Mountaineers	--
17	Florida Gators	--
18	Virginia Tech Hokies	--
19	Baylor Bears	--
20	Clemson Tigers	--
21	Texas Longhorns	--
22	Illinois Fighting Illini	--
23	Mississippi St. Bulldogs	--
24	USC Trojans	--
25	Auburn Tigers	--

SB Nation BlogPoll College Football Top 25 Rankings »

With apologies to Mr. Osato from You Only Live Twice, this season is starting to round into shape.  The top five on my ballot fell together nicely.  I suppose that one could quibble with Alabama being the #1 team in the country despite the fact that its marquee win isn’t as good as those of LSU or Oklahoma, but I started the year with the notion that Bama is the best team in the country and I haven’t seen anything to disabuse me of that notion.  Put the Tide on the field against the Tigers or Sooners and I think that Saban/Smart’s defense would strangle either one.  Alabama and LSU really look like mirror images of one another.  After a season in which the SEC was dominated by high-powered offense, led by Auburn showing that a team can win a national title with an average defense, the elite teams in the conference look like mirro images of one another: deep, athletic, well-schooled defenses, paired with physical running games and game manager quarterbacks.  It’s a Tony Barnhart wet dream.  Jarrett Lee versus A.J. McCarron can take him back to John Lastinger against Randy Campbell.

However, my pick for the other half of the national title game is lnot exactly looking strong on the defensive side of the ball.  What the hell, Brothers Pelini?  Seven returning starters on a defensive unit that finished seventh nationally in yards per play allowed and you allow 38 points on 6.2 yards per play to Washington?  At home?  The week after you allowed 29 points and 5.5 yards per play at home against Fresno State?  That date in Madison in two weeks is not looking good for the Huskers.

And speaking of the Midwest, in case you’re wondering, the answer is yes, I did enjoy filling out a ballot that did not include Michigan State, Notre Dame, or Ohio State.  My only regret from the weekend is that aesthetically speaking, the Miami-Ohio State game would have been better if it were in the Orange Bowl.   

An NBA Owner Provides

And he does it even when he's not appreciated, or respected, or even loved. He simply bears up and he does it. Because he's an owner of a local basketball team.









The Hawks have been purchased by Gus Fring! I can hardly contain my excitement! I've been in a major Breaking Bad phase this summer as Mrs. B&B and I have ploughed through the first three seasons and asked ourselves the same question that we asked last summer when we were catching up on Mad Men: what took us so long? I have been ruminating on an "SEC Coaches as Breaking Bad characters" post (Gus is obviously Nick Saban, Bobby Petrino is Tortuga, Les Miles is Tuco, Houston Nutt is Saul Goodman, Mark Richt is Walter White [with 2007 Evil Richt as Heisenberg], etc.), but now, Atlanta Spirit has saved me the trouble by selling the team to a Latino restauranteur.* If only Alex Meruelo were from Chile instead of Cuba. Josh Smith might want to keep an eye out for boxcutters in the dressing room if he keep hoisting up 21-footers early in the shot clock.

* - Because a sample size of one tells me that people from Southern California can be prickly about analogies made for rhetorical or humorous purposes, let me make clear that I am not accusing Meruelo of being a psychopath like Gus Fring, nor am I making the claim that his other business interests include an industrial cleaning facility with a meth lab in the basement. I heard Pizza Loca and immediately thought of Pollos Hermanos.

As far as my actual opinion of the purchase, it sounds good. Anything is better than the irretrievably broken Atlanta Spirit. The Hawks might get some local goodwill as a result of a new ownership face. They can certainly use the boost after a disappointing year at the box office. I have little time for the idea that team ownbership requires one face. The Braves' solid performances over the past two years on mid-level payrolls illustrates that corporate ownership can be just fine. Conversely, the people who claim that they wish that the Braves had an Arthur Blank-style face of the franchise might consider that Jerry Jones and Dan Snyder are also the faces of their franchises. That said, Atlanta Spirit was a disaster, so Meruelo is a welcome addition. As long as he has the money to run the team without cutting corners, then I'm happy. The story that he started with one pizza restaurant when he was 21 and turned it into a business empire speaks well to his acumen.

Hopefully, that acumen has identified the Hawks as a neglected asset. For most of its history, the franchise has struggled to convert its place as Black Hollywood's home team into butts in the seats. Atlanta remains a good basketball town and a very good NBA market without being crazy about the Hawks. The roster is fairly good, outside of the colossal disaster that is Joe Johnson's contract. If Jeff Teague's playoff burst is not ephemeral, then the Hawks have a good starting lineup, a notch below Miami and Chicago, but not too shabby. The team lacked depth last year, which is a problem that an emotionally invested owner with a checkbook can remedy. Also, if a new labor deal has retroactive effect to erase (or at least ameliorate) insane agreements like the Johnson deal, then Meruelo will be in great shape. Mike's services will not be required.

A Centerfielder Who Gets On Base!?! Where’s the Fainting Couch!?!

Frank Wren came towards the trading deadline with a team in dire need to a centerfielder who can hit.  The Braves have trotted out two players at the position during the year: Nate McLouth, whose production at the plate is average at best and who is a below-average defender in center, and Jordan Schafer, who cannot get on-base, but does add good defense.  Faced with an obvious weakness and armed with a deep farm system that is both a blessing and a curse at the trading deadline (a blessing for obvious reasons; a curse because potential trading partners know what the Braves have and therefore demand a higher price, not unlike trying to scalp a ticket with hundred-dollar bills peeking out of one’s pockets), Wren addressed the team’s need by fleecing the Astros for Michael Bourn.  Bourn gets on-base, he is one of the best base-stealers in baseball, and he is an above-average defender at a premium position.  For the first time since Rafael Furcal was playing for the team, the Braves have a true leadoff hitter.  And given Fredi Gonzalez’s insistence on playing fast guys in the lead-off spot, regardless of whether they can get on base, it’s critical that the Braves have a guy who fits the bill.

The reaction to the trade has been uniformly positive.  Here is David Schoenfield explaining that Bourn is a better player than Hunter Pence if we use wins over replacement as the measuring stick:

FanGraphs.com and Baseball-Reference.com calculate WAR in different ways, but both rate Bourn as the more valuable player since 2009:

FanGraphs WAR, 2009-2011
Bourn: 13.3
Pence: 9.9

Baseball-Reference WAR, 2009-2011
Bourn: 11.8
Pence: 6.4

The differences in value primarily come from different methods in evaluating fielding (FanGraphs likes both players' defense better than B-R).

You don't have to agree with or even like the WAR statistic. It's just a tool -- a very good one, in my opinion -- in evaluating player performance. I think the main confusion or disagreement comes in understanding the position importance. Bourn is compared to other center fielders; Pence to other right fielders.

For example, here are Bourn's 2010 and 2011 average/on-base percentage/slugging percentage lines compared to the average National League center fielder:

Bourn 2010: .265/.341/.346
NL CF 2010: .260/.329/.406

Bourn 2011: .303/.363/.403
NL CF 2011: .267/.336/.417

And here's Pence compared to the average National League right fielder:

Pence 2010: .282/.325/.461
NL RF 2010: .264/.334/.443

Pence 2011: .307/.355/.468
NL RF 2011: .265/.338/.437

That's a bunch of numbers, but it translates to: Bourn gets on base more than the average center fielder. So despite his lack of power, he's still a productive hitter for the position (more so in 2011). Pence is hitting better this year but overall he's about league average or slightly above for his position.

I was going to look at these numbers, but Schoenfield crunched them for all of us.  Braves fans should be very familiar with the premium placed on players who can both hit and run enough to play centerfield.

Here is Jayson Stark listing the Braves as one of the winners at the trade deadline:

They lost out on Pence. They got outbid on Carlos Beltran. The best bats on the market were dropping off the board. So the pressure was mounting on the Braves this weekend, not just to keep up with the Phillies and Giants, but to make a move that made a real impact.

Enter Michael Bourn. Take a guy who has a .354 on-base percentage, add him to an offense whose leadoff hitters ranked 26th in baseball in OBP 'til he showed up and see what happens.

Now consider the lineup-changing effect of Bourn's 32-SB wheels (injected into a roster that had swiped 42 all year). And, finally, add in his top-of-the-charts defense. And this was a monster of a deal, especially considering the Braves were able to make it without giving up any of the elite pitching prospects they had balked at trading for Beltran or Pence.

If Bourn fits in and does what he was imported to do, said one scout, "this team is going to be dangerous."

Now, it bears mentioning that Stark has both the Giants and Phillies listed as winners at the trade deadline.  Thus, by improving the team, the Braves essentially stayed in place relative to two other prime contenders in the National League.  That said, the Braves paid less of a price than the Giants and Phillies did, hence the plaudits for Frank Wren.

And speaking of that price, here is Keith Law savaging the Astros and salving the consciences of Braves fans that the team gave up too much ($):

Bourn's best tool is his glove -- he covers a ton of ground in center and is one of the league's best half-dozen or so defenders at the position. At the plate he has almost no power, but despite that can at least foul off better fastballs that beat most zero-power hitters, and he draws enough walks to keep his OBP up over .340; his OBP of .363 this year would be third in Atlanta's lineup. Bourn is probably worth more than a win to the team during the rest of the regular season, but this move looks like it's more about improving run prevention in the postseason while reducing the number of automatic outs in Atlanta's lineup by one. He's under control through 2012, solving one position for the team for next year as well.

The return for Houston, however, is shockingly poor -- quantity over quality, to say the least -- and can't do Ed Wade any good in extending his status as GM beyond "lame duck." It makes me wonder if Houston had a ranking of Atlanta's top 25 prospects but looked at it upside-down.

Again, the merits of the deal won’t be felt so much this year – the Braves are better, but the Giants and Phillies also added outfielders who can hit – but rather over the coming years when the prices of the three deals in terms of prospects come into full view (assuming that the general consensus of the value of the minor leaguers traded by the three contenders turns out to be correct).

Here is R.J. Anderson of the Baseball Prospectus noting that the deal will increase the Braves’ already-excellent odds of making the playoffs and it will also have the knock-on effect of reducing the odds that the team will pick up Nate McLouth’s 2012 option ($):

With that in mind, Bourn is going to solve two problems for Atlanta. The first is obvious, as he will take over center field on an everyday basis. The Braves have not received much production out of the position from Nate McLouth or Jordan Schafer this season, and along with the other options they’ve run out there, they have a cumulative line of .241/.322/.324. As for the Braves leadoff hitters, they have hit .254/.306/.365 this season but somehow have managed .320/.389/.443 to open games. There probably isn’t much to that discrepancy other than selective sampling breeding some weird results, and Bourn should be an upgrade overall.

Bourn will not qualify for free agency until after next season, so this isn’t the typical rental situation. The guy who stands to lose the most in Bourn’s acquisition is McLouth as he will concede playing time and now stands even smaller chance of returning next season—although his play and the looming team option valued at over $10.5 million were doing a nice job of eliminating that possibility on their own. Barring the Braves doing something silly, like demoting Jason Heyward, McLouth figures to slide into a reserve role once he returns from the disabled list.

The Braves held an 87 percent shot at the postseason prior to today’s trade; look for those odds to increase and for Bourn to appear in the playoffs for the second time in his career this October.

The only downside will be for headline writers, who will now have to pick between bad “Brave New World” puns and even worse “Bourn[e] Identity” puns.

An American Culé in London

So I'm back, with my ears still ringing.

Why I Went



I've been a member of FC Barcelona since 2007, but in that time, I haven't been to a game. (Insert standard reference to wife, kids, and job.) The only Barca match I had attended before Saturday was on September 9, 2001, the home opener against Rayo Vallecano. I had proposed to my wife in the city two days before, so my political capital was high. This was not a good period for the club, as they had finished fourth the previous year only by virtue of one of the all-time great clutch goals:



and they would finish fourth again. The match was a harbinger of a pedestrian season, as the team drew 1-1. The result flattered Barca, as their goal was an own-goal by Rayo and Rayo also managed to hit both posts with one shot late in the game. Before Saturday, that was the sum total of Barca matches that I had attended in person.

As a member of the club, I get e-mails on a fairly regular basis regarding the process for applying for home and road Champions League tickets. Typically, when I get the e-mails, I forward them to my Delta employee brother to ask about flights, he responds, and then I invent a reason not to go, usually because it would involve missing 2-3 days of work. When I got the e-mail about applying for tickets to the Wembley Final, I finally grew a pair. The fact that the game was on a Saturday instead of a Tuesday or Wednesday helped. I was aided by asking three different friends “how much would you pay to see your favorite team in a championship game?” and received a uniform response of “$1,000.” I was also aided by my saint of a wife telling me that she supported the decision because, as she put it, “you work hard and it’s not like you spend a lot of money on clothes.”

I was also motivated by the historical implications of the match. For Barca, this was the chance to make their definitive case as one of the greatest club sides of all-time. Three Champions League titles in six years is no small feat, especially when no team as repeated since the creation of the Champions League from the European Cup in 1992. Winning the third of those titles against Manchester United – the kings of England – at Wembley would be a colossal exclamation mark at the end of a season that was preceded by the nucleus of this Barca side winning the World Cup and included the famous 5-0 win over Real Madrid that kicked the “greatest team ever?” discussion into high gear. Additionally, the number of players and coaches involved made this a target rich match in terms of telling my grandkids “I saw this guy live”: Sir Alex Ferguson, Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes and Edwin van der Sar in their final games,* Wayne Rooney, and the Ferdinand-Vidic pairing on one side; Pep Guardiola, Gerard Pique, Carles Puyol, the Xavi-Iniesta fulcrum, David Villa, and Leo Messi on the other. As a history major who still has regrets over my decisions not to go to the Braves game that turned out to be Randy Johnson's perfect game, as well as the 1996 Michigan-Ohio State game in Columbus (I sold my ticket thinking that Michigan was going to get slaughtered and that anyone wearing maize and blue would be drawn and quartered), this was too much to pass up.

* – The first Champions League Final I ever watched was Ajax 1 Milan 0 in the 1995 Vienna Final. Van der Sar was the goalie for Ajax in that match and the announcer (JP Dellacamera, I think) made a point of noting that he was young and would be nervous playing against a Milan side that was in fully dynastic mode. Van der Sar had a nervous moment or two in the first half, but settled down and ended up with a clean sheet against the defending Champions League winners. There was a nice closing of a circle that van der Sar played in the first Final that I watched and then his final match was the first Final I attended.

The Lead-up



Being a risk-averse person who had spent $120 on a ticket that I described as once in a lifetime and who was also lucky to have gotten the right to buy a ticket (96,000 of Barca’s 175,000 members applied for the 16,000 tickets available to members, which means that I won a one-in-six bet),* I was on the train to Wembley three hours before the match.

* - One nice thing about Barcelona: every member has an equal chance to get tickets to big events like Champions League Finals. Most clubs would reserve their allotments for season ticket holders. Barca has a democratic structure, so all members can apply. I suppose that a guy who went to 15 games at the Nou Camp this year could be annoyed that someone like me didn't go to a game all year and then got to go to the Champions League Final, but I watch the games, I buy the jerseys (or at least I did before the new sponsor), and I click on the links. Surely I count for something. Barca's structure does have its downsides - the public tapping up of players during elections is one obvious examples - but there are a lot of upsides to a club owned by the members.

The experience was great. Barca and United fans were bantering in a friendly manner the entire time. For the entire day, I didn’t see one verbal altercation, let alone a physical one. Maybe the language barrier between the fans helped, or maybe there is a level of respect between the fans that was accentuated by the verbal bouquets being tossed back and forth between the players and managers during the week. The United fans were singing their song about going to Wembley:



And the Barca fans were just grinning at our good luck to be playing at Wembley again.*

* – Being a Barca fan is a little like being in the Eagles. We have about six songs and we sing them in concert in a rotation. It’s not hard for a non-Spanish/Catalan speaker to pick the songs up quickly, especially thanks to a helpful video from BarcaLoco:



After my wife, my brother, Johan Cruyff, and Lady Luck, I have to give thanks to BarcaLoco because without this tutoiral, I would have looked like even more of an idiot than I already did as a non-Spanish speaking Barca fan. In contrast Being a United fan is more like being in Dylan’s band. There are dozens of songs and you never know which one is going to be sung. “Hey, it’s Mascherano, let’s sing the song about shitting in your Liverpool slums! No, not the one about Scousers not having job, the one about shitting.”

I noticed more Barca fans in the street headed toward the game and surmised that the United fans would be in the pubs until shortly before kickoff. This played out in the stadium, as the Barca end was full and singing well before the United end. Similarly, I saw more Barca fans on Friday when I was tooling around London, but I chalked that up to the fact that Barca fans would be more likely to see the tourist sites (Tate Modern, Tate Britain, and the British Museum, in my case) than United fans who have probably been to London on dozens of prior occasions.

The Match



Needless to say, the match lived up to billing. Barca put on a signature performance, better than their performance against United in Rome two years ago. (Interestingly, Guardiola said after the match that when he rewatched the Rome Final in the preparation for this match, he wasn’t overly impressed by his team’s performance.) Brian Phillips did a great job of describing the effort:

Barcelona’s performance in the second half is going to be talked about in hushed tones for a while, and deservedly so. The most impressive thing, to me, was that they won by doing exactly what they wanted. Matches at this level tend to be decided, if not by penalties, then by lucky bounces (Xabi Alsono getting his penalty rebound in ’05, Inzaghi deflecting Pirlo’s free kick in ’07), sudden breakthroughs (Iniesta in the World Cup final), goals squeezed in after a scramble in the box. Yesterday, though, each of Barcelona’s forwards scored from open play, with each of their midfielders contributing an assist. They had 63% of the possession and 12 shots on target (to one for Man Utd—Rooney’s goal). Messi scored in England, even if it was in London on a Saturday night. Valdes didn’t have to make a save. They played exactly their game, and their game worked exactly the way it’s supposed to, and the second-or-third-best team in the world was basically powerless to frustrate them. If soccer is about realizing a collective intention against the limitations imposed by the game and the resistance imposed by the opponent, then Barcelona epitomized soccer yesterday. Forget the backlash, your anti-mass-media skepticism, conspiracy theories, blog rage, and Heineken. If you love sports you were lucky to watch that.

Alex Ferguson said that his team was beaten by "the best team we have ever played." Just like in Rome, Barca had a nervy first ten minutes when United were on them like a pack of wolves. Also like in Rome, Barca grabbed the game by the scruff of the neck after that, dominating possession and restricting United into a smaller and smaller defensive area. Unable to keep the ball, United started hoofing long balls to Rooney and Chicharito, which was an odd strategy in light of the fact that neither of their forwards are big guys. Route one to the Little Pea is never a good idea. Barca struck on 27 minutes and for six minutes, I was thinking that this was going to be Athens ‘94 (Milan 4 Barca 0; the beginning of the end of the Barca Dream team) in reverse. Then, Rooney scored out of nothing - a terrific goal that showed that he would not be out of place in this Barca side with his ability to pass and move - and the United fans let out an unholy roar from the other end of Wembley. Game on. For the next several minutes, it felt like I had to force myself to sing and cheer. You recognize why there are so many chants taunting a losing team for being quiet; it’s hard to muster the energy to chant when the game is going against you.*

* – I was struck by two aspects of the game that were especially pleasant after years of going to games in the US. First, because the game is non-stop, you don’t lose the emotional high from scoring. Nick Hornby is right; there is a quasi-sexual feeling to the release after your team puts one in the back of the net. It’s not quite like your team scoring a touchdown because the moment is more explosive. More importantly, the goal is followed by a celebration and then the opponent kicks off. There is no cold shower of commercial break-kickoff-commercial break. Second, there is nothing in the stadium to distract fans from the game. Wembley is as expensive and modern a stadium as there is in footie, but it has two video boards that would make a Texan guffaw. Those boards play a live feed of the game and occasional highlights. That’s it. No wrap-around boards with stats. No Kiss-cam or Tesco Price Check. The PA announcer does nothing save for announcing goals, cards, and subs. And keep in mind that the Champions League Final is the European Super Bowl, so if there were ever a chance, in the words of Mortimer Duke, to “get back in there and sell, sell,” this would be it.

If the 5-0 thumping of Real in November was the opening opening argument for Barca’s “best of a generation” case, then the second half of the Final was the closing argument. Barca quickly pinned United back and within 11 minutes, Leo Messi had put the Blaugrana ahead. 13 minutes later, David Villa scored with a wedge shot that would have made Seve Ballesteros proud and Barca spend the last 20 minutes passing the ball around, content that three goals would be enough. United didn’t muster a single shot on target in the second half. In the end, the Barca players were on another podium, receiving another Champions League trophy with the club’s name on it. Puyol’s decision to let Eric Abidal lift the Cup as captain was a nice touch, reminiscent of Andres Iniesta’s tribute to Dani Jarque after scoring the winning goal in the World Cup Final. As best as one can tell about celebrities with managed images, these Barca players seem like good guys.

In the end, it has to be said that United are a good match-up for Barcelona. For one thing, the Red Devils were so successful over the course of the year because of their depth, but in a one-off final, that depth doesn’t matter so much, especially when the teams have had weeks to prepare and and rested and healthy coming in. (The American sports analogy would be to a team with five great pitchers in the starting rotation, a strength that is somewhat pearls before swine in October.) For another, United are incapable of playing the negative, destructive style that gives this Barca team trouble. Jose Mourinho concluded that the way to handle Barca was to pack the midfield with defensive players, starting with an aggressive central defender (Pepe), and then to hope that a counter could produce a 1-0 win.* United do not have that personnel, especially with Darren Fletcher not entirely fit, and Alex Ferguson probably sees that style as incompatible with his team’s image (although United’s approach in the first leg of the 2008 semifinal against Barca came close). United brought a sterling defensive record to Wembley, but without a proper defensive screen, even a terrific central defensive pairing like Vidic and Ferdinand (a pairing that was a major factor in United not allowing a goal in the Champions League away from Old Trafford all season) bled three goals in 69 minutes before Barca made the “you’ve had enough” decision. All three goals came from the area in front of the back four that a screen of defensive midfielders would seek to control. The opener was eerily like the opener in Rome: Xavi/Iniesta breaks free from the center of the pitch, has time to pick out the final ball, and hits one to the right to a forward to finish at the near post. It’s to Ferguson’s credit that he tried to play his game and went down trying, but then again, it’s not his job to earn the plaudits of an opposing fan.

* – In going to the game, I was interested to see the differences between my outlook - formed by watching every week on GolTV and reading Sid Lowe, Phil Ball, and Graham Hunter – and that of Barca fans who go to the Nou Camp every week and get their news from the Catalan sports dailies: El Mundo Deportivo and Sport. I was happy to learn that a white-hot hatred for Jose Mourinho united Barca fans around the world. The first chant on the escalator headed to the upper deck was “Ese Portugues, hijo puta es.” The guy in front of me kept singing “Jose Mourinho, hijo de puta,” regardless of whether the rest of the fans were singing with him. He also took great pleasure in calling his friends to sing that little ditty. The new chant that Barca fans sing is simply “por que, por que, por que, por que,” a dig at Mourinho’s rant after the first leg of the semifinal. (I wonder how Vikto Kassai’s “stop, or I’ll say stop again” homage to London bobbies, specifically as to Antonio Valencia’s repeated attempts at tackling, fits with the UEFA-Unicef conspiracy in Jose’s mind.) This guy liked the chant so much that he had it emblazoned on the custom t-shirt he made to honor the 2011 champs:



As the gate agent told me when I was boarding the flight home (subtly dressed in a Xavi jersey and a game scarf; why didn’t I paint my face and have “Cant del Barca” playing on a loop from my phone?), “football won.” This was a needed tonic for a game struggling through the obvious corruption of its global governing body. It was also important for a team that had disgraced itself to a degree with the play-acting in the first half of the first leg against Real. I’ll defend the histrionics to a degree as a rational response to a noxious strategy employed by the worst person in the world, but in the end, when your players repeatedly go to ground holding their faces after not being touched in that area, then something’s amiss. This game had none of that. Not much fouling, no surrounding the ref, no play-acting, no diving, no playing for penalties, and no surrounding the ref. Hell, Busquets only went down twice. If I were trying to get a friend on the fence into footie, I would not have shown him or her the matches against Real (although the fourth match [not coincidentally the one without Jose] was a pretty good one), but the Champions League Final would be a persuasive advertisement.

Play it Again, Sam

And no worries about having to give this one back because we paid Leo Messi's father $180,000.

What Happens when a Jump-shooting Team Makes its Jumpers?

This.  The Hawks just stole home court advantage from a team that finished a mere 18 games ahead of it over the course of the regular season.  Were the Hawks merely coasting for most of the regular season, knowing all along that they have an extra gear and that their season would be dictated by their performance in April and May?  Viva the meaningless 82-game regular season!

Just about every writer who previewed the series, friend and foe alike, saw doom for the Hawks, especially with Kirk HInrich injured and the Hawks therefore having to look to secondary options to defend the presumptive league MVP.  So naturally, Jeff Teague, the player buried on the bench by Mike Woodson and Larry Drew, turned in the best performance of his young career.  Here is Bret LeGree describing Teague’s performance:

Given his lack of regular playing time over the past two seasons, Jeff Teague should probably be graded on a curve. But he needn't be. The 44:37 he played, the 10 points he scored on 11 shots (that 8 of those 11 came inside of 15 feet certainly contributed to the diverse offensive attack), the 5 assists he earned against a single turnover and the 27 shots Derrick Rose needed to score 24 points (even though the Bulls, as a whole, scored just as efficiently tonight against the Hawks as they did during the regular season) should earn the second-year point guard a passing grade on merit.

Peachtree Hoops agrees:

Can't say enough about Jeff Teague. Man was balling tonight. Again I have to mention that his efforts defensively ensured that, not only would somebody actually stay around Derrick Rose tonight, but that Johnson and Crawford did [not] have to die trying. He was 5-11, 2 rebounds, 5 assists, and a single turnover. And he only committed 2 fouls in 45 minutes. Derrick Rose drove at him, on him, shot through and over him, and never got to the free throw line. That's worth mentioning. Honestly, could Kirk Hinrich done better?

Also singing from the same hymnal/siddur, Mark Bradley cites Teague’s efforts in the run late in the third and early in the fourth to put the Hawks in charge:

Teague, who’d seen nine-plus minutes against Orlando, had gone 32 of Game 1’s first 36 minutes and had held his own against Rose. And he kept going. He was the floor when the Hawks broke it open — yes, you read that right — to start the fourth quarter. Johnson was hitting everything, and Zaza Pachulia was doing his grunt work in the lane, but none of this would have matter had Teague not held it all together.

Said Drew: “He did just a phenomenal job in running our team. And I could see our players trying to keep him motivated and stimulated. We thought we could get into the lane and cause some havoc.”

By the way, what does it say that the Chicago quotes after the game all cover a lack of intensity by the Bulls and then Larry Drew says that the veteran Hawks had to keep their rookie point guard “motivated and stimulated.”  If you can’t be fired up for game one of the NBA quarterfinals, then when can you be fired up?  And frankly, a series in which the Hawks reach the Eastern Conference finals for the first time on the strength of a good performance from Teague will feel very strange.  It will lead to all sorts of questions as to where was he for the rest of his career, as well as a query as to whether the Hawks’ brain trust has an irrational fear of playing its first round picks. 

Anyway, let’s cross that bridge when we come to it.  The Hawks have won a second-round game for the first time in 14 years and they have a real chance to knock out the NBA’s #1 seed.  Joe Johnson played like a guy who deserved the max deal that Atlanta Spirit bestowed upon him.  Jamal Crawford was money.  Josh Smith made a jumper.  The Hawks are up in the series without a big performance from their best player (Al Horford) and without Zaza turning in a vintage irritant in residence performance.  In other words, Larry Drew could have counter-measures when Tom Thibodeau makes defensive adjustments to stop Johnson and Crawford.  This could be interesting.