Reaching For The Lance Briggs Jersey

At one point, ten years ago, it was socially acceptable for a grown man to wear a jersey while going about his everyday life. Not so in 2011. Jersey-wearing has been relegated to either the paying fan in attendance, or (usually football) fan taking in the game at a bar. I'm not sure if I'm alone in this assumption, but I tend to judge people based on the jersey they're wearing. These assumptions are wide-ranging and are based on anything from the player's persona to the age and make of the jersey. For example, a LeBron James Heat jersey warrants a 0 on the 1-10 Respect Scale from me, whereas a Detlef Schrempf Sonics pre-1995 logo change jersey warrants a 10.

I have an issue with men who wear the jersey of a player who has long since played for a particular team. To this day, I spot Cade McNown, Kyle Orton, and Muhsin Muhammad jerseys around Chicago-area bars. I'm sorry, you may be the world's biggest Greg Olsen or Nathan Vasher fan, but those Bears jerseys no longer have any business being worn out in public. There's a few exceptions to the former player rule. First, if a player is retired and his best years were spent with the team on the jersey then it's OK to wear. However, if this former player also spent the twilight of his career, struggling to stay on with a few other teams, these jerseys are unacceptable. If Green Bay fans want to forgive and forget and dust off the ol' Brett Favre number 4, then that's fine. Brett Favre Jets and Vikings jerseys should remain in the back of the closet collecting dust.  Jerseys of a franchise's all-time greats are also acceptable in my book. You'll see a smattering of 34s, 51s, and 89s at Soldier Field this year. It's good to pay homage.

When considering which player's jersey to purchase, I have six simple rules:

1) Don't be fooled by the fan favorite that somehow is beloved even though he sucks at playing his sport. Tony Campana and Brian Scalabrine are better examples than any Bears player.
2) Stay away from the big-contract guy your team just snagged away. This is more of an issue in basketball or baseball where contracts are guaranteed and player productions sometimes falls off once they receive their payday. Julius Peppers is a good football counterexample.
3) Beware of the one-year wonder. These are sometimes hard to identify, but a good bet is on a guy who was drafted in the late-first or second round of the NBA draft, a closer, or a Pro Bowl special teams player.
4) Make sure the player in question will be with your team for at least three more years -- there's nothing worse (in the jersey purchasing world) than ponying up 80+ dollars for a jersey of a player who is traded or leaves as a free-agent a year later. It is almost impossible to predict trades, but age, production, contract situation, team needs, and how close or far away a team is from contending are good indicators. If there's even a hint of a player testing the free-agent waters, hold off on his jersey purchase.
5) If a player how gotten into even the slightest bit of off the field trouble, reevaluate the jersey purchase. This is the hardest point to adhere to, mainly because an athlete's character is often misunderstood or overblown to move along a slow news day.
6) Under no circumstances should you buy a LeBron James Heat jersey.

Lance Briggs is the only NFL jersey I have ever owned. I always wanted an NFL jersey to wear on Sundays. As luck would have it, my girlfriend and my anniversary was/is a week before the start of football season. She needed a gift idea and I was more than happy to suggest a Bears jersey. I wrote last year about the general lack of excitement surrounding the Bears before the start of the season. At the time, Briggs seemed to be the only Bear worthy of a jersey purchase.

I proudly wore my Briggs jersey during every game last year. Little did I know, I broke rule number 5 on my list. Lance Briggs hasn't had any pressing off the field issues -- unless you want to count the time he crashed his Lamborghini on Edens Expressway and left the scene under mysterious circumstances. It's kind of amazing this didn't draw more ire than it did.

Briggs does however have a reputation for being a bit of headcase. After being hit with the franchise tag in 2007 to prevent him from becoming a free-agent he demanded a trade, and, among other things said, "I've played my last snap for them. I'll never play another down for Chicago again." The Bears caved and Briggs received a 6-year deal worth up to 36 million before the 2007 season and is currently looking for a new deal.

I understand the lack of guaranteed contracts combined with football's inherent injury risk places players in a difficult situation. They feel they should be compensated relative to what the next guy with similar production is getting. They can be cut or suffer a career ending injury at any time, lose guaranteed millions and most people won't blink an eye. There's a sense of urgency from NFL players to get paid NOW, and there has to be. I understand, but how many contract squabbles are too many?

To tie everything together, since I believe everything comes back around, I wonder: how will people judge a man in a Lance Briggs jersey? Not warmly, I presume. Especially if Briggs' contract talk, or lack thereof, seems to have an impact on the season. Briggs has not played a down of preseason football due to injury. Just as the man wearing the LeBron James 6 navigates his way through life constantly being shot sideways glances, I too am prepared for a potential Lance Briggs backlash. If wearing his jersey means I'll be looked at as a whining, insecure, money grabber who needs to be coddled and reaffirmed of his place in the world, then so be it. The jersey fits, after all.

Pack It Up, Pack It In. Let Me Begin.

"Jump Around" is the most well-known thing about Wisconsin football, even more so than anything they've done on the field. At the end of each 3rd quarter the PA system blares House of Pain's 1992 hit and the student section at Camp Randall jumps around. ESPN and the BTN love it, Brent Musberger loves it, and the non-student sections love it; sometimes choosing to join in, looking foolish amongst those seated in their area, or just reminiscing about the glory days of their college youth. Wisconsin away crowds even take Jump Around on the road, adding to its lore in the process.

As a youngster watching on TV, I too was entranced by the sea of red jumping around. It looked like the fun, free, drunken good time college is supposed to represent to the people who either never went, or are buying their time in high school. When it came time to pick a school, Jump Around had no bearing on my choice. It didn't hurt though that before looking into anything academic, Jump Around was the only fully formulated thought I had of the school. Turns out, Jump Around is indicitive of the football program at large.

I didn't win football season tickets my freshman year. Each student had to enter a lottery, and a few thousand were selected. Sophomores, juniors, and seniors were guaranteed tickets if they wanted them. As the ever-so pessimistic 18-year old me expected, I didn't win and was forced to watch from my dorm. My freshman Saturdays usually consisted of waking up at 10:58, sometimes working off a hangover, and watching every game. This was OK until my roommate (who did win tickets) came home and told me about the pregame parties, short skirts, keg stands, and postgame parties. Occasionally he'd mention something about the game. His presence reminded me how low I still was on the totem pole.

Sophomore year rolled around and I finally had those tickets. I received them in July and cobra-clutched those things until school started. This was it, my first game as a season ticket holder, and almost as important, my opportunity to be a part of Jump Around. Wisconsin led Western Illinois 20-3 at the end of the third quarter. Neither team scored in the third quarter.*

*Had to look up these details. Most definitely didn't remember them.

The build-up to Jump Around was incredibly exhilarating for a first-timer. First, they played an animated race between the letter of each student section (apparently they still do, as evidenced by the above video from last year), while each student held up four fingers to signify the start of the fourth quarter. Then the distinct, DOO (pause), DOO, DOO, DOO lead in to the song.

Watching from afar or on television, Jump Around appears to be a coordinated, synchronized effort. I was shocked to notice a few things. First, half the students don't even jump, they just appear to be jumping. They're really bouncing up and down because they either aren't athletic enough or too drunk to jump. Also, there's not much room to land if you do choose to jump, so jumping more than two inches isn't the smartest thing to do anyway. People do fall over, in fact, quite often. They tend to get lost in the sea of red, but falls happen. The only truly safe students are in the front row (meaning they likely bypassed pregaming to get there early), or about twenty rows up where there is a railing to hold on to while jumping.

I left that game feeling kind of cheated. Jump Around was fun, no doubt, but it wasn't nearly as impressive as an insider. This is how I feel about Wisconsin football. Using the year I started college to the present -- 2005-2011 -- as an example, Wisconsin had a pretty good run. Their 2005, 2007, and 2009 teams were good, their 2006 team looked better than it was because of an easy schedule, their 2010 team was really good, and the 2008 team was terrible. Those six teams amassed a regular season record of 57-17 with two Capital One Bowls and a Champs Sports Bowl victory. They lost four home games in this six-year span, and two of those came from the atrocious 2008 team. These are pretty good numbers for a Midwestern college football program not named Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State, or Notre Dame.

Listen to the studio analysts, football and basketball, and they'll tell you how underrated the Wisconsin program is. They'll tell you they do nothing but win, but they do it under the radar. Compare Bret Bielema's resume with more well-known coaches and it will stack up nicely. The problem is and always seems to be with a Wisconsin team, is they can't win the big game. Last year would have been Wisconsin's first Rose Bowl win in over a decade. They were a better team than TCU and choked. I don't have enough space to run down the list of men's basketball NCAA tournament failures.

This is why Wisconsin football is like Jump Around. Watching Jump Around from across the stadium looks like the students are impressively jumping a foot in the air in unison. A .770 regular season winning percentage from a team that doesn't attract 5-star talent looks like a great achievement. But once you step foot inside Jump Around or look at the Bowl Games Wisconsin has either lost or failed to qualify for, you'll see neither are as great as they appear.

I attended all fourteen home games in 2006 and 2007. 14-0. I jumped around a the end of the 3rd quarter all fourteen times. Strangely, even after thinking I was "over it" each time, I found myself looking forward to the next Jump Around. Such is the case with every Wisconsin football season, especially this season. Is this the year they finally get it right and win the Rose Bowl? I don't know, but I'm sure they'll look good doing whatever they do.

On Momentum In Sports

There's an old adage in baseball that says something like: "All things even out over the course of a season." If an umpire misses a close call at first in favor of the runner, then at some point during the season, the same pitcher will eventually be the beneficiary of a blown call. If a hitter is robbed of a base hit by a nice defensive play, one of his later hits is bound to fall due to a defensive lapse. If a career .300 hitter -- still in the prime of his career and unaffected by any external factors such as injuries has a poor week and bats .150, he's almost certain to have a week where he bats .450, and so on.

The belief in this theory is calming because it gives meaning to the chaos that is baseball. But it's also kind of unsettling in the way that predetermination is unsettling. A hitter can go on a cold streak and unless his name is Adam Dunn, he's eventually going to snap out of it. We know this. Sports remain interesting because we don't know when these particular cold streaks will occur. In the regular season, each player has the opportunity to rake their way out of them -- but in the playoffs, a cold streak can cost your team the season, and there's no opportunity for redemption.

We call these dips and ascensions momentum, and they apply to individual players and entire teams. Momentum is an accepted term in the sporting lexicon. We point to particular moments in a game when we can say "the momentum shifted," and we say teams on winning streaks are in the process of "building momentum." Psychologists have studied perceived momentum in sports for almost forty years. They've developed complicated formulas* and studied specific teams over the course of a season and their results suggest fans and players place too much of a premium on "momentum" as a critical factor to decide a game, season, or in-game situation.

*To me, at least.

However, this doesn't stop us fans and players from believing in it. In 1981, mathematician Robert Adler coined the term "psychological momentum," as the tendency of an effect to follow a similar effect. Positive psychological momentum predicts that success would increase the probability of further success, whereas negative psychological momentum predicts that failure would increase the probability of further failure. Through a process known as the momentum chain, an athlete is more likely to perform well when he or she has been successful in the past.

So while momentum has very little mathematical bearing on all of these previously discussed outcomes, it does have a huge effect on the mentality of an athlete. Basically, if an athlete believes they have momentum, they're more likely to succeed. If they think they don't have the momentum, they're more likely to fail.

I began thinking of momentum today after Tottenham dropped the second match of the Premier League season 5-1 to Manchester City. This coming after a 3-0 loss to Manchester United in the first match of the season. Tottenham are now 0-0-2 with a -7 goal differential and currently sit at the bottom of the table. City and United are the two best teams in the Premier League, so it's likely Spurs would have been smacked around regardless of when they played them. Still, I can't help but think about the timing of this Premier League season. Spurs were supposed to open the season at home against Everton -- a likely win. Three points heading into Old Trafford to start the season probably wouldn't have shifted the outcome in either match, but it would have saved them from becoming bottom-dwellers for the time being. I worry this could have some sort of long-term psychological effect on the players. Losses to United and City seemed inevitable, but I can't help but think having them occur at some point during the middle of the season would have been better. It's in all in the head, it's all in the head...

Mathematicians would chalk up Tottenham's start to bad timing, similar to a great hitting slumping in the playoffs. Psychologists are concerned with the mental makeup which produces the perception of momentum. The math stays relatively consistent. The brain is anything but that. Where is Adam Dunn when you need him?          

5-0! We're Going Out To Eat Tonight!

It's easy to get excited about Tottenham's 5-0 victory to kick off their 2011 campaign. Especially when what was supposed to be their inaugural match against Everton was cancelled due to (protesters? / rioters? / hoodlums?) threatening to burn all of London down. Just playing the game seemed like a miracle. But it was just the first match, and it was the lowly Europa League, and it was against a Scottish side called Hearts. The match, which was comfortably in hand within the first half an hour didn't tell us anything about Spurs we didn't already know. However, there were some encouraging things to take away.

Jermain Defoe appears to be fully recovered from his hamstring, groin, ankle, and whichever other injuries were plaguing him last season. Harry Redknapp predicted a breakout from Defoe this year and today's match strengthened his claims. Although take what Redknapp says with a grain of salt. He's the same manager who said he wasn't going to play his main players in the Europa League qualifier because the team needed to concentrate on the Premier League and all that. We see how well he stuck to that script, although his decision was probably aided by the cancellation of the Everton match. Defoe was the most impressive Tottenham player. He scored the second goal, hit the post on what would have been an amazing third goal, and delivered some excellent passes. I can't praise Defoe too much because he beat up on a leaky defense, but his team needs him to return to the goal-scorer of two years ago and he looks like he's becoming that player again.

Oh, how I missed you Gareth Bale. Bale missed the last month of the 2010 season with an ankle injury. Back injuries had been nagging him all year. He scored the fourth goal of the match, and showcased his patented runs on the left side all night. He brought me right back to San Siro, where we, but mostly Maicon, saw him grow up before our eyes. Just seeing him on the pitch was important, and the fact that he played well was only  icing on the cake.

Winning 5-0 in the first leg is an enormous advantage, especially for a team as injury-taxed as Tottenham. Redknapp now has the option to rest his main players in the second leg in preparation for Manchester City at White Hart Lane. Teams like City and Manchester United are deep enough to throw their reserves out their for the early qualifiers and still come away with victories. Tottenham doesn't have that kind of depth, so locking the first qualifying round up after the first leg is extremely beneficial for them. It's going to be interesting to see how Redknapp handles the Europa League matches going forward. Tottenham is currently the best of the lot and will still be one of the top teams after some of the Champions League sides drop down (welcome aboard, enjoy your short stay in Europa, Arsenal). Does Redknapp chase a Europa League trophy and compromise the Premier League season? I doubt it. He probably would have played the reserves tonight had the Everton match not been cancelled. The good thing, at least for the time being, is Tottenham's reserves can beat most of these teams in the early rounds. Despite this, an early exit from Europa and a 5th place Premiership finish seems all-too-Totttenham.

Lost in the overwhelming positive attitude emanating from Scotland is what I like to call the Heurelho Gomes problem. Gomes started in goal and fortunately was only tested four times. Even then he was shaky and looked downright confused on corners. He made numerous bad challenges and wasn't able to hang on to a routine ball that led to a corner. Gomes erratic goalkeeping cost Spurs last year, most notably in the second leg against Real Madrid. Redknapp brought in former Aston Villa and US National Brad Friedel, presumably to start, and still has Carlo Cudicini on the bench. Both seem to be better options at this point. Why Redknapp stuck with Gomes is anyone's guess. His goalkeeping didn't cost Tottenham against an inferior opponent, but it will in the Premier League.

As tempting as it is to fall over in excitement over an early season blowout, it's important to keep things in perspective. Hearts aren't very good. The real test will come Monday against Manchester United. Let's see if Spurs can lose by less than three before scampering to the rooftops and screaming "5-0, 5-0, 5-0," to the people on the streets.