This blog has been a lot of things over the years. Of course, it’s also NOT been a lot of things over the years.  But, it has always strived to be fair.  If we criticize someone for absurd behavior, we’ll turn the focus on ourselves if we commit the same behavior.

I’ve probably made fun of fans of other colleges at some point, so I thought I’d use an example from Saturday’s Elite Eight Game to spur some debate and show I can be fair.

The setup: The Ballard Loft is a very UA friendly bar.  And Saturday the Seattle chapter of the UA Alumni Club gathered to watch the Cats vs UConn game.  I’d estimate there were at least 75-85 Cats fans upstairs.  Now, I don’t spend a lot of time with this group.  But suddenly all of the UW fans I usually watch hoops with lost interest in the NCAA Tourney.  (I can’t imagine why.)  And it was the biggest UA hoops game in the last 5-6 years, so I needed to surround myself with supporters.  Btw, this is what makes sports so great.  The ability to show up and have a common bond with total strangers.  But I digress.

So imagine this scene.  You have a crowd of 75-85 energized UA basketball fans, decked out in UA gear, drinking beers, watching the game, cheering when appropriate and feeling anguish simultaneously….. And you have one guy in the corner.  He has a pom pom.  Every time UConn has the ball, he is shouting “Defense, Wildcats Defense.  Defense, Wildcats Defense.”  Every time Arizona has the ball he runs through one of his pre-programmed 4 or 5 A-R-I-Z-O-N-A cheers.  He is desperate to have the other 75 of us join him, but we’re watching the game.  Now every once in a while, the group of 6 people in the back would start a cheer and everyone would join.  And Wanna Be Wilbur would beem as if the crowd was “finally getting it.”  Then he would start up again and we’d all ignore him again.  Rinse, wash, repeat for 39:00 of basketball.

The suddenly, with a minute left, Wanna Be Wilbur and his buddy actually turned on the crowd.  And I submit that this is why UA lost that game.  In a tight ballgame with everything on the line, as every other UA fan in the bar – hell in the country – nervously wondered what would happen next and frantically shared with each other what we though would happen, Wanna Be Wilbur started YELLING AT US.  He told us how bad of fans we were for not cheering with him.  He kept up with how lame UA fans were at this bar.  How he couldn’t figure out what he was doing with such lame people.  The poor schmuck seemed not to realize that we were in Seattle, about 1,200 miles from the stadium, and that no matter how loud we cheered, Derek Williams was NOT going to hear us.

If you were at the Loft on Saturday you saw 75 drinking, cheering, excited UA fans enjoying a great basketball game.  You also heard an incredibly annoying UA fan yelling at his colleagues for not joining his one man Pom Squad.  The annoying UA guy broke all fan protocols by yelling at other UA fans.  I’d make fun or Oregon, UW, WSU, Duke, or Notre Dame if they had a fan who pulled that kind of behavior, so I have to make fun of us as well.  

So my debate question – If you are at a bar watching your team play a game, are you less of a fan if you don’t chant and sing at the TV screen, even if one guy in the corner holding a pom pom is begging you to? I say there’s appropriate stadium behavior and appropriate bar behavior.  Objections?

One of the things I want to start doing in 2011 is travelling to more places that are off the beaten path and writing about them.  The first stop on the tour was Northern Arizona, including a town called Jerome, and a follow up hike in Sedona’s Boynton Canyon.

Jerome is an old mining town built on a hill.  It was a fairly populated place until the mine shut down, and then had as few as 50 residents in 1950.  Since all the houses were still in good shape, just abandoned, a bunch of artists moved up and took them over.  So now what you have is a kind of old ghost town with art galleries.

The notable feature of the town is that it’s built on a hill.  A few streets run back and forth through the town at different elevations.  So you don’t walk north, south, east, west as much as you walk up, down, left, right, navigating from street to street (which is actually the same street curving around) via a set of staircases.  For example, here are the directions you get when asking how to get from our hotel to a place to eat.  ”Go down the hill there.  When you get to Haunted Hamburgers, walk down the staircase about 100 yards north.  At the bottom of that staircase, turn left.  There’s one place down on your left.  If that doesn’t look good, walk down the stairs to the next street and you’ll see another place.”  We spent a little time in one of the most bizarre and enjoyable watering holes I’ve ever had the pleasure to sit down in, “The Spirit Room.”  There a bartender – who made her way to Jerome via Kansas City, LA and Lima, Peru – managed a single open room with a jukebox and a pool table.  River guides, large flamboyant Native Americans, 75 year old locals, confused tourists and some funny but odd young locals all took turns telling stories, dancing, whooping it up, and asking questions.  It was an odd crowd, but one you could appreciate.

We stayed in the biggest hotel in town, which turned out to be the old mining hospital.  The hospital shut down with everything else in 1950, and it was another 25 years before someone bought it and turned it into a hotel.  They say it’s haunted, and I believe it, because I had some pretty nutty dreams.

The next day we hit Boynton Canyon in Sedona. Now Sedona isn’t really off the beaten path for people who live in Arizona, but for us Seattlietes, I think it’s a fair to lump in there.  Plus, we were on some different trails for 4 hours or so and only ran across about 20 people.  

If you’ve not been to Sedona, it really is about the most beautiful place on earth to go for a hike, bring a philosophy book, clear your head and just marvel at everything around you. You just can’t get away from brilliant red rocks, stunning vistas, and changing scenery.  One minute we’re walking nextto a canyon wall, the next we’re at a vista, and suddenly we’re in an ice trail and I have a mild concussion from slamming my head on the ground.  Ok, maybe I’m exaggerating the concussion part, but I spent some time on my keister in the depths of that canyon. 

So overall: Jerome – an awesome place to get away from everything.  Boynton Canyon – like all Sedona trails, just a marvelous spot for walking and reflecting.  Get down if you can.  You won’t be disappointed.

I happened to be shooting pics at the UA/WSU game this weekend, on the exact play Nick Foles had his knee rolled over. When you zoom in on them, you see it unfold frame by frame.

Watch the left side of the defensive line. One of the lineman loses balance, and then seems to dive and roll directly into the knee. You can see Arizona’s #6 start on top and cut across the field making the pass reception. He’s already turning to run upfield by the time Foles gets hit.

From ESPN.com: 

Arizona is coming off one of its biggest wins in recent seasons, 34-27 against No. 9 Iowa.

The Wildcats were ranked for a few weeks last season, but before that it had been since 2000 that they last made the Top 25.

The last time they were ranked this highly in the regular season was 1998. Arizona finished that season No. 4 in the nation and was in the top 10 for the final six weeks of the season. 

From Arizona Daily Star

“Those are character-building drives,” UA coach Mike Stoops said late Saturday night. “Those are perception drives. Those are program drives.”

Bug Wright caught a 4-yard touchdown pass from Nick Foles with 3 minutes 57 seconds remaining to give No. 24 UA a wild victory.

The Foles-to-Wright connection capped a 9-play, 72-yard drive and put an exclamation point on a game that included a blocked punt, a blocked extra-point attempt, a 100-yard kickoff return and two interceptions returned for touchdowns.