Length of time to get 2 wins:

• Sounders: 2 games [2-0]   (March 19 – March 28)
• Thunder: 18 games [2-16] (October 29 – November 29)

“Announced” Home Attendance, First 2 games:

• Sounders (61,071) : Game 1 – 32,523 (sell out +)  | Game 2 – 28,548 (sell out)
• Thunder   (37,299) : Game 1 – 19,136 (sell out)     | Game 2 – 18,163 

Number of Games it took to Win consecutive games:

• Sounders: 2 – Games #1 and #2 (March 19-28)
• Thunder: 41 – Games #40 and #41 (Oct 28, 2008 – Jan 16, 2009)

Number of days in First place since Opening Day:

• Sounders: March 19 to current (100% of franchise history)
• Thunder: Never

 Number of days in Last place since Opening Day

• Sounders: Never
• Thunder: Oct 29, 2008 to present (100% of franchise history)

I’ve been hoping / trying / working on writing this article for a week now.  But before I start, let me frame where my perspective comes from.

I’ve played soccer for decades – still do.  But until I lived a few months in England in 2005, I could hardly be considered a “soccer watcher.”  Sure I would be mesmerized by the World Cup, but I couldn’t tell you anything about the European leagues; and the MLS wasn’t even a consideration.

My days in Manchester turned me into a Manchester United supporter, and the education I received out there made me a permanent fan.  I’ll watch the EPL, DVR Champions League games, and head to the George and Dragon whenever I can for a big match.  That has NOT translated into any kind of MLS viewership, however.

Until now.

I’m going to admit that I’m on the MLS bandwagon.  I won’t pretend it’s anywhere close to England, Italy, Spain or German quality.  Not even France, Portugal, Netherlands or Scotland.  But I’ll now listen to arguments that MLS teams could compete and win in Sweden, Norway, Turkey and the other Tier 3 Euro countries.

And while the MLS may suffer in other cities, the ownership group here in Seattle has provided a nice blueprint for how to build a franchise and recruit a rabid fan base.  The remarkable thing is that when you boil it all down, it’s all super simple stuff any team in any league could do if they would just concentrate on who the most important person is in their organization.

That most important person to any team is “The Fan.”

Not Alex Rodriguez, Phil Jackson, Kobe Bryant, Mark Cuban or the Phillie Phanatic.  The most important person in the whole sports ecosystem is Joe Fan, the guy paying the bills.

Sounders FC understood that from Day One.  A few examples:

• Before the team was named, the ownership group suggested 3 names and let the fans vote.  It was between FC Seattle, Seattle Alliance and something else lame.  Instead, the fans wrote in “Seattle Sounders” which was the name of both the old NASL team (70’s) and the recent minor league team.  Thus, Seattle Sounders FC continued in the Northwest.  Fan 1, Marketing Dept 0.
• All season ticket holders were mailed a Sounders scarf for every Season Ticket they bought.  Not a stupid lame scarf with huge corporate sponsorship that ruins it.  But real team merchandise. Now 22,000 season ticket holders show up with their scarves.  Beautiful to see.
• Ticket prices are fair.  It’s not a bargain, but not a rip-off either. As fans, all we want is to feel like we’re being charged fairly, not held hostage.  Mariners – please take note.  (NBA – I couldn’t care less about you anymore, but you might want to learn this lesson soon.  Really soon.  Before you need to take another $200 million loan to bail your teams out.)  
• Small detail: The guy who sings the National Anthem “leads” the song.  He has a baton and serves the role of conductor.  He tells everyone to join in.  He sings at a tone we can all hit.  It just shows that we are there to be part of the experience, not to be performed to.  
• The supporters demanded their own section, and so right behind one of the goals is a giant general admission section where the crowd is drunk, loud, and out of control.  They lead the rest of the stadium in song.  They are nuts.  The Sounders took all the guys who would scare the casual soccer fan, and instead of limiting their fun, gave them an island where they all could be ridiculous and out of control together

All of this may seem subtle, but it’s really HUGE.  There is a completely different feeling when you are watching YOUR team, than when you are watching a bunch of players who play in your city for owners who see you as giant dollar bills. 

I’ll start posting some pictures of other little ways the team treats the fans with respect.  Because that’s what the MLS needs to do – show people that they are willing to work harder to provide a great experience than the other leagues will.  Even if you don’t like soccer, try to follow a little Sounder Mania.  It will be worth the ride.

I want to start this thought by stressing that I am fully respectful of the negative economic climate, and how hard it is for unemployed people to find new jobs in the current environment.  That being said, there’s a math problem that I am struggling with, and am going to suggest a loose idea for a solution, which I will be happy to debate the merits of.

1) We have roughly 9.0% unemployment.  One problem with unemployment rules seems to be that you are required to find a job with a “company” rather than starting something on your own.  From my vantage point, I’d rather see someone laid off from a failing company use his/her brains, talents and drive to have the ability to try to build their own sole proprietorship rather than go through the fruitless exercise of applying for jobs they aren’t qualified for at companies that are laying people off.  Why are we forcing people who were failed by the corporate environment to try to force their way back into the corporate environment?  They should be given credit for making positive strides in the building of their own entrepreneurial efforts.  

2) Why is so easy to get your benefits?  I’ve been told by multiple friends who are in this position, that getting an unemployment is way too easy.  A few clicks on a web page, and the money is direct deposited in their account.  One potential reasons people get laid off is that their skills don’t always map to today’s employer needs.  Why don’t we make people come in and train for their check?  Let’s make unemployed people more skilled.

3) Along these lines, why can’t unemployment be renamed or re-classified, so that it’s not a check for $300 a week for doing nothing, but a check for $300 a week to do 15-20 hrs of work for the state?  Maybe that work can include time for resume writing, interviewing and other job seeking activities.  But really, if the state is paying them, why can’t we treat these folks as part-time employees.  It may take some creative management, but shouldn’t we be looking for smarter solutions to today’s problems anyway?

Conclusion: Lumping #1,  #2 and and #3 together solves the biggest questions everyone will have, which are, “What company are the people in #1 going to build, who is doing the training in #2, and what will these people in #3 do?”  Well why can’t the unemployed Spanish speaker speak Spanish 101, the unemployed Graphic Designer teach Photoshop,the unemployed accountant can teach Small Business Startup, and the unemployed woodworker teach Home Repair?  Doesn’t this solve a lot of problems at once – educating the unemployed, providing valuable services, and giving people a much needed boost fo self-worth?

I’m sure my ideas are naive and utopian, but shouldn’t we ask for something more from our unemployment tax dollars than just hoping WAMU starts hiring again?

(edited)

So, for a second, let’s philosophize about what the death of the Seattle PI really means on a variety of levels.  

1) In an industry that is losing money, losing readers and has been becoming more and more irrelevant since 1995, someone finally decided to put the P-I out of its misery.  Shouldn’t this have been considered an option years ago?  

2) We will hear arguments that having only one paper will decrease the quality of the journalism.  Really?  Many people believe the quality of journalism has already diminished.  Especially in print.  Examples:  

• Not one journalist of the 1000’s getting paychecks, investigated Bernie Madoff, AIG or the mortgage meltdown BEFORE any of it happened.  How?  
• The day before election day Christine Gregoire said Washington’s budget is in surplus.  The day after election day, it’s $9 Billion in the hole. No one asks any questions.
• Baseball reporters chose to ignore all reporting on steroids, protecting the people they are supposed to be reporting on.
• Reporters are so used to regurgitating press releases that there is a web site called HelpAReporterOut.
• Reporters became so clueless as to how to write online, we had to come up with a Social Media Press Release to make it possible for them to pull quotes out and link to online sources.

Anyway, the point is that “professional” journalism already seems a shell of itself.  People are smart enough to know that reporters know one thing and are writing something else.  There are still ones we really respect, but on average, I think we have less faith in the quality of the investigation.  Losing the P-I is an effect, not a cause, of journalistic depreciation.

3) The world is digital.  I see the stats that say something like 90% of people have cell phones. Which means 1 out of 10 people DON’T.  How?  Why?  I don’t care how old you get, you need to at least accept that technology advances.  For the price of one year of printing the New York Times, they could give every subsciber 2 Amazon Kindles.  

4) First go the papers, next the local TV news guys?  Does a station really need to pay someone $2 million a year to read a teleprompter?  Or do you invest $2 million is creating micro-blogs and ways to provide niche news to a captive audience without the restraint of a 30 min newscast?

5) Closing the chasm between “news” and “blog.”  Suppose I go ever Interlake High School football game, and write about them on my blog?  Anyone who hass “Interlake High School” in a Alert or Feed reader would get my blog post.  Do we need an intern from the Journal American to be there as well?  Why shouldn’t the JA just promote my citizen post instead?  

6) But there’s something nice about holding a paper on a Sunday morning.  Really?  Getting your hands smudged?  Having it blow around in the wind?  Squinting to see the font?  The annoying ad folded onto the front page?  News that was 12-18 hours old? I know there is a comfort factor in reading a piece of environment damaging, dirty, 12 hour old, static piece of paper.  But holding an iPhone at the same Coffee shop on the same sunny day is also a satisfying experience.

Conclusion:

I’m sure there are 10-20 more things to think about on this issue.  I’ll miss the P-I the same way I miss Cheers, Seinfeld, $4 Spring Training Tickets, $.99/gallon gas, my 8th grade classmates at St. Paul’s and the real Ken Griffey roaming Center Field in the Kingdome.  But the world changes – usually for the better – and we either adapt with it, or get stuck behind.  There are some people that will never go digital, and who will have the way they go about their day extremely disrupted.  For them I feel bad, I guess.  To a point.  But it’s also an opportunity to force these people out of yesterday’s static world and into the benefits of today’s digital society.  

Really?  How much work did you put into this….Your marketing guys must be pure genius.

A few things collided in my brain this week, and I think it’s time we admitted they probably are inter-related in some way.

Phelps

First off, Michael Phelps gets busted for smoking marijuana in October.  The country flies into outrage.  After all, why should a 20-something year old, who just accomplished the greatest feat in Olympic History, in a room full of other 20-somethings who admire him, sit down and do what they do?  The nerve.  And if the guy who has more Olympic Gold Medals than anyone on earth can do so AND smoke marijuana, should it really be illegal?  Is there really someone saying, “Well you know, if he didn’t smoke dope, he’d probably be able to be a brain surgeon as well as Olympic Gold Medalist.”  

The part that kills me now is that because of the photo, the county sheriff has had to haul in 7 people at the party and the guy who owned the bong, even though that guy wasn’t even there.  You want to talk about a guy born under a black cloud.  A guy who lives at the house DIDN’T get to party when a superstar randomly dropped by.  But someone did grab his bong out of his room so said superstar could smoke from it.  And then when he tried to sell it on eBay for $100k, he got arrested.  

A-Rod

On the other side of the spectrum, there’s the guy we just KNEW was up to something, but could never figure out what.  His breakup with Jeter was odd, getting caught with a stripper was odder, and being friends with Madonna was just plain bizarre.  But it turns out all he was doing was taking steroids with 103 other players from 2001-2003.  

And do you wonder why not one team has sued any players for breech of contract?  Think about it.  A guy has a monster year.  You sign him to a 4 year, $40 Million deal.  Then the Mitchell report comes out and spooks everyone off the juice.  Now your $40 Million guy goes clean, and falls back to 15 HR a year.  Well if you didn’t know he was on roids before you signed him, then found out he was on the list, wouldn’t you sue and renegotiate back to what a 15 HR guy should make?     

Dow <8K

So we have illogical drug laws, cheaters playing and reporting about our national pastime and we honestly ask ourselves, “So how did our economy get so bad?”  Obama supporters are already wondering and asking why they haven’t received a blank check in their mailbox to cover all their expenses in 2009.  People think a national bank should be set up where every citizen who asks can get an ATM card to withdraw whatever they want.  Then there are all of these CEO’s who managed to get the government to give them big piles of money, and are now faced with the choice of taking a 80% pay cut and digging their company out of bankruptcy, or taking a 100% pay cut and resting on the beach in Costa Rica.

Here’s what I don’t get about the $900 BILLION stimulus package.  Obama is out their pounding his fist saying, “We must do this today or our people will be bankrupt.”  The Republicans are out there saying, “Some of this makes sense, but I don’t get how $300M for STD testing stimulates the economy.”  So, why can’t we agree on about $250 Billion that makes the most sense, shoot it into action and then argue about the next chunk?  Any Senator who says they won’t approve a $100 Billion for construction and infrastructure projects unless the raises for Special Ed teachers are approved, is obviously gorging on pork.

Summary

So are these unrelated?  I just think it shows a complete lack of logic in the whole structure.  A guy making $25 million a year cheats, affecting 800 other ball players, 75 million fans, the seasons of 29 other teams, and the advertising revenue of several networks.  And we seem to be upset that a guy who at most is putting three of his teammates at risk is able to smoke pot and still shatter Olympic records.  And we’ll continue to drop billions into pretending to fight marijuana, arresting people, running them through trials and then releasing them to probation, instead of spending that money to hire a teacher to explain why you shouldn’t buy a house with zero percent down, especially if you don’t have a job.  There has to be some logic somewhere.

Not sure why I found this so amusing….

These guys are doing a nice job of complimenting their Super Bowl buy with some additional Social Media content. Check out these “outtakes” from the eTrade Babies.

2 Twitter posts in one day….must mean something, right?  Anyway, proof of concept – I saw this on Twitter, posted by John Batelle.

http://tweetcongress.org/

Silly, but really why *shouldn’t* Congress be updating us in real time?

I don’t know why I find this amusing.  But Techcrunch, the sometimes snarky, often critical, source to get news about the technology industry, experienced a site crash today.  

This is only relevant since they consistently blast web sites and technologies when their servers break.  I wonder of they will explain what caused their own server issue.