some people don't like lacrosse (cuz they have no lives)
from the New York Press:
LACROSSE IN THE CITY
Will a famously obscure sport be able to prosper in the Big Apple?
By C.J. SULLIVAN & DAVE HOLLANDER
QUESTION: Is lacrosse ready for prime time in Madison Square Garden?
SULLIVAN: Unbeknownst to most sports fans, there are two lacrosse major leagues in operation. Major League Lacrosse (MLL) has teams playing in venues throughout America and Canada this summer. This lacrosse league has two Tri-State area teams represented by the Long Island Lizards and the New Jersey Pride. The other league—the National Lacrosse League—starts in the winter and plays indoors. They just announced that a franchise will be open in New York for the 2007 season and they will play half their home games in Madison Square Garden.
Dave, how does this happen? How does a sport slip by us? Is the Garden ready for this ancient game? Do we even need a lacrosse league—never mind two of them? I know three things about lacrosse. Native Americans invented it, NFL legend Jim Brown loved it and excelled at it in college, and the Duke Lacrosse team is in hot water over an alleged rape. The game—from what little I’ve seen—is cool, but I don’t know if it’s really watchable. Once in awhile I like watching bocce, but that the MLL Championship game will be televised this August on ESPN2 is just amazing. Is the summer season this slow?
Come January, I am willing to give this sport a chance at the Garden. Given the bad play of our Knicks, I’m open to anything. We will cover opening day for the New York franchise this January, and we will see if this sport is ready for prime time.
HOLLANDER: I’m not buying it. Who wants to see a bunch of Wall Street guys who keep in shape four times a week practicing at Chelsea Piers? These guys are not professional grade. They are above average athletes who lacked the athletic superiority to play the major sports at the highest levels so they chose to be “lax men.” To bestow these sport-o’s with television exposure is absurd and potentially dangerous.
The last thing these frustrated frat boys need is an ego stroke telling them they actually matter. You think what happened at Duke is an isolated incident? Give these yahoos some limelight, and you’ll have copycat versions of the “Reade Seligmann Invitational” popping up all over
the country.
Lacrosse is not a minor sport like the WNBA, MLS or the PBA. It’s an insignificant sport. I don’t know why people continue trying to foist lesser competitions onto the American consciousness when we’re doing just fine with what we have. Just because it’s embraced by all those who can’t play baseball, basketball or football but wish they could doesn’t elevate it to a sport we should watch on TV. Subjecting cable viewers to a lacrosse match would be even more tedious than enduring that big anti-climactic yawn otherwise known as the World Cup.
More than anything else, lacrosse reminds me of that annoying kid in the college dorm whose entire identity consisted of always clutching a lacrosse stick and constantly doing that creepy spasmodic stick-twirling thing with his wrists, often pretending to keep the ball in the netting. Let’s televise someone beating that kid with his own stick. Then I’ll pay-per-view.
SULLIVAN: While the two of us have been snoozing, a new lacrosse mania has been sweeping the globe. Never mind the New York franchise—which still doesn’t have a name but I would propose the New York Sticks—this week the 2006 International Lacrosse Federation (ILF) is holding their World Championships in London, Ontario. The United States just whipped Japan to move into the semi-finals. Did you know that lacrosse is the national sport of Canada? I would have answered hockey, but hockey is lacrosse’s answer to what do Canadians do when ice hits
the land.
The ILF has been holding World Championship tournaments every four years since 1967. The United States has won nine out of 10 of these Championships. Nine out of 10, Dave! We are the Boston Celtics, the New York Yankees and the Manchester United of the lacrosse world and not a word of this in any paper but New York Press. While the world chased a ball with a lacrosse stick, sportswriters everywhere slept. Lacrosse is the new soccer. Soon kids everywhere will be beating each other senseless as they post up for a shot on goal. Forget your college memories and get on board, Dave! This is the new “it” sport. Do not get left behind.
HOLLANDER: Blame it on Canada, eh? My fiancée is Canadian and not once has she said, “Honey, let’s see if there’s some good lacrosse on TV tonight.” Do they play “matches” or “games” in lacrosse? By the way, the only reason lacrosse is Canada’s national sport is because it’s the first thing white, French explorers copied from the Montreal Indians. That was the first in a long line of successive
moves leading Canada toward nation-
al blandness.
Let me tell you something: New Yorkers will recoil from “prime time” lacrosse faster than Andrea Merkel from a George W. Bush shoulder rub. It’s not a city game. Urban kids can’t buy all that expensive equipment—the sticks, helmets, pads, goals, condensed rubber ball. It costs a small fortune.
Rather, lacrosse is the province of suburban kids. What do you do when you don’t have the ability to compete with athletically superior kids? You find a sport you can afford, and they can’t. Then you tell everyone that it’s “cool” while kids who have real talent become so bored by it, they just leave you alone. Now you’re the star.
This is the whole problem, man! This is why baseball is dying in urban America. Sports marketing savages have convinced kids that you’re not really playing sports unless you buy a shitload of their products and play in official, organized leagues. Thirty-five years ago, kids in this city only needed broom sticks, Spauldings and a street. They bought less equipment and played more games—without supervision. And, there were twice as many of them in professional baseball.
It must be a sign of the apocalypse when a grit and concrete Bronx boy like you gets googly-eyed over a cul-de-sac hobby like lacrosse. Don’t do it, C.J. Put down the press release from the National Lacrosse League. Back away from your Selectric.
I did note the New York lacrosse team’s fan contest to name the local franchise. I like team names that capture the truth of a sport, and how it relates to the host city. You want to somehow express a team identity that resonates with its fan base. Try this one: The New York “Bridge and Tunnel.”
Volume 19, Issue 30
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some people don't like lacrosse (cuz they have no lives)
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