There is no truer proclamation of fandom than purchasing a spanking new jersey with your favorite player's name on the back. But these purchases are fraught with peril. A player can be traded at the whim of capricious management. A player can turn out to be a one-season sensation. Or a player can have his personal life take an unfortunate turn.
A commitment has been made. Do you store the jersey in a forgotten corner of your closet? Or do you stick with the jersey and wear it with pride?
The dudes behind Straight Cash Homey are hoping for the latter. Amir Blumenfeld and Ethan Trex are documenting unfortunate jersey choices on their humorous photo blog. Their mission is to turn "life into a random jersey scavenger hunt."
We giggled as we browsed through the site, and we knew we had to find out more about the men behind this mission. Amir and Ethan were nice enough to join us for a chat about undercover photography, awful jerseys, and crummy players forever immortalized on the backs of fans...
Hey guys, who hatched the idea for Straight Cash Homey?
Ethan: Amir. Next question. No, Amir had the idea to make it a blog, but we'd been playing around with the idea for a couple of years. We'd call each other when we saw a jersey that was funny.
Did you guys take pictures of jerseys and send them back and forth to each other?
Amir: Yeah, mostly camera-phone pictures. Then eventually real pictures.
Ethan: Our next plan is to advance to doing paintings and then shipping them to each other. Read the full profile...
Filed under: Sports, Fashion, Uniforms, Yahoo! Picks Profiles
So many sports sites are all about stats and rules. Base percentages, offsides, penalty shots, shootouts, championships won and lost, blah blah blah. Or it's boring old "my team's better than your's, no it's not, yes it is." Luckily, one web site stands head and hockey stick above the rest. The NHL Tournament of Logos focuses its energy on the jerseys and the fancy insignias upon them.
We're talking graphic design here, sports fans! Colors, stripes, lettering, giant As, and huge music notes. This hockey season, the league is moving to a more-fitted style of jersey called the "Rbk Edge," so jersey news abounds. But even without the "edge," this blog takes on history like the original Bruins and Maple Leafs logos. You'll also find wacky concept art for baggy uniforms that will never be. And every week, people vote in battle of the logos, which pitts one team's logo against another's or challenges old logos with new ones from within the same team. Now you can take that trash talk to a whole new designer level.
Filed under: Sports, Blogs, Hockey, Graphic Design, Uniforms
If sports fans don't have something to grouse about, they're not happy. When it comes to the NFL, fans find plenty to complain about. Lawbreaking players, egotistical coaches, and phantom penalties are just a few of the topics ripe for ripping. But one mundane matter sacks the rest when it comes to seething anger. Namely, the capricious choices of the networks as to which game(s) you'll be watching in your local market.
Local network affiliates have bewildered fans for years with their game selections. One man is using the power of the Web to shine a light on their practices. J.P. Kirby is an enterprising engineering student at the University of New Brunswick, and he's been putting together NFL TV Distribution Maps on the Internet since 2005. His maps have attracted a following among pigskin devotees and are a must-check for football fiends each and every week during the season.
We chatted with Mr. Kirby via email and picked his brain about TV, football, and his favorite announcers...
Hey J.P., how did you come up with the concept for the NFL distribution maps?
I've been lurking around various football message boards for quite a few years now and I often saw people whining about how they showed Game X in their hometown over Game Y. I wondered if there was an easy way to find out where each game was going—there wasn't. Curious, about midway through the 2002 season I went to one of those TV listings sites and looked up each station and filled in a crude map. I did that a few more times in 2003, for most of the season in 2004, and turned it into a full website in 2005. Read the full profile...
Filed under: Sports, Football, Television, Yahoo! Picks Profiles
With Baseball-Reference.com, Sean Forman has erected a massive temple of baseball knowledge on the Web. We make our daily pilgrimage to his site to check on box scores, stats, and the always engaging Stat of the Day blog. But that's just a tiny slice of the statistical smorgasboard Sean has prepared.
Wanna know who the league leaders in triples were in 1975? Check. Stats from the 1932 World Series? Check. Or Joe DiMaggio's career numbers? Check. By this time, you get the picture. Baseball Reference is devoted to hardball and the site packs a sweet swing for anyone who loves the National Pastime.
Sean was good enough to chat with us about baseball, stats, and why he left the world of academia for a career at the helm of baseball's most comprehensive site...
Hey Sean, when did you start Baseball Reference (BR)? What was the impetus?
I started it in February of 2000. I was a big baseball fan and there weren't any encyclopedias on-line at the time, and I liked web design, so I decided to start one myself. Read the full profile...
Filed under: Sports, Baseball, Yahoo! Picks Profiles
Rowing alone across the Atlantic Ocean might be enough of a feat for some people to retire on. But not Roz Savage. This irrepressible adventurer (and blogger, speaker, and writer) now has her sights set on a Pacific voyage, too.
Currently, the weather has Roz cooling her heels in San Francisco. But as soon as things clear, Roz and her boat, the Brocade, are shipping off for Australia, via Hawaii and Tuvalu.
When she does, her web site will track her closely. Already, it boasts a wealth of information on her nutritional needs, the technology on board the Brocade, how she will generate power, and her daily tech routine. (As well as her general mood about being stuck on land right now.) Once Roz ships off, she will row 12 hours a day and follow that up with daily blog and video posts, podcasts, and text messages.
When we caught up with Roz, she told us what she thinks of the Internet, why her phone bill is $2,000 when she's at sea, and what sites inspire her most...
Roz, we so admire what you're doing—and we're crossing our fingers that Mother Nature gives you the go-ahead soon.
Thank you! I had hoped to depart this Sunday, but in our stoplight system the yellow/green areas have just turned to red, so I may be on these shores for a while yet.... Read the full profile...
Filed under: Sports, Women, Environment, Yahoo! Picks Profiles
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