Archive for the 'Sports' Category
March 19th, 2010 by Mike Redding
I have to get this out and posted ASAP! Because I only have so much time to celebrate.
I stared at the TV in disbelief.
My Alma mater just upset one of the top teams in the country. Ohio University… not Ohio State University. I attended both. But graduated from OU… not OSU. I’m fans of both. And by that I mean I cheer for the Ohio State Buckeyes and have intellectual conversations with my professors at Ohio University.
The Buckeyes are a generally competitive school in most athletic events. The Ohio University Bobcats are competitive in debate, band… and debate. In that order. We also had a wicked good Halloween Party. And that’s about it. You didn’t attend Ohio University to imbibe in the big-time sporting events. You went to football games to watch the Marching 110 at halftime. True story.
The most amazing thing that happened in my time at OU was not a big football or basketball win. It was a power outage. The whole campus and town went black one warm spring night. Everyone came outside. EVERYONE! As thousands of students slowly converged on the college green guess who showed up? The Marching 110! Students danced and laughed and had a blast! And the Marching 110 played on.
It was an incredible night. No looting. No assaults in the dark. Just the marching band surrounded by thousands of students in the dark playing and dancing. I’ll never forget it. That is what Ohio University is about. We never made it to NCAA Basketball’s Big Dance. We held our own dance.
So to see the Bobcats hand a beat-down to Georgetown, well, I didn’t know what to think. I still don’t. I didn’t even know we had a basketball team.
I just knew I had to write this now! Saturday will be here in a snap.
Cinderella lives! (tonight)… MR
February 18th, 2010 by Mike Redding
Just watched the Men’s Half-Pipe! Sean White is every bit of his own hype and then some. WOW!
I’m truly enjoying this Winter Olympics.
Torino, Italy. I took this shot looking west across the city with the Italian Alps way off in the distance.
Which is not to say I didn’t enjoy Salt Lake City or Torino. Well… Torino. Salt Lake City was a beat down all the way around. At one point there we had worked so many consecutive hours and days that I was turning underwear and long johns inside out-outside in over again because we had no time to get clothes washed. I physically wreaked. I mean you could smell me coming. Before a live report one day I found a clothing store, bought new long johns, stripped in the dressing room, put the new underwear on and tossed the ones I had been wearing in a trash can. It was a brutal month.
Now, Torino was a mind blowing, magical experience! I spent six weeks in Italy, four covering the Olympics, one week with my mom and siblings meeting our Italian relatives and one week getting married and honeymooning! It was life-changing on a number of levels.
To this day I find myself daydreaming back in time and
I skied the Italian Alps twice on that trip. This is a the second time right after the Olympics ended. I got to stand at the bottom of the half-pipe... it's so big you would faint if you had to ski down it!. (That's the blue NBC coat I mentioned in yesterday's post.)
reliving different moments from that trip. I always smile. It was just that sweet. I wold go back in a heartbeat. If I could figure out a way to live there and make a great living i would move there. Utah, not so much. It was nice and all, but Italy was dreamlike.
If you hve never been to Italy, or France I highly recommend a trip. But stay out of the giant cities. Travel to the countryside and meet the salt-of-the-world people. If you’re lucky you might run into my people. I’ll write about them soon. They are the dearest most welcoming folks you’ll ever meet.
Peace… MR
February 17th, 2010 by Mike Redding
This is the first Winter Olympics since 1998 in Nagano, Japan, I’ve watched. That’s because I covered the 2002 Games in Salt Lake City and the 2006 Games in Italy. When you cover the Olympics you don’t actually SEE the Olympics. What you do see is a lot of security check points and people wearing your jacket (NBC issues official winter coats and every reporter, photographer, broadcast engineer and shuttle driver is sporting the company gear. It’s like prison, everywhere you look, people are dressed exactly like you. )
If you don’t mind, over the next few weeks I’m going to use this spot to reminisce about the Olympics. I’ll give you a behind the scenes look at this colossal event. You have no idea, sitting at home, how insane the Games truly are… from a logistical perspective.
My "workspace" at the 2006 Winter Olympics. I'm logging the tape we shot that day and writing a script that Andy Benton, the greatest photojournalist on earth, will then turn into a broadcast masterpiece.
I’ll post just a few photos today. The first tells you everything you need to know about covering the games. If you’re lucky you get to work on a folding table. If you’re me you work off the shipping crate in which your gear shipped. This is inside the giant warehouse NBC turned into a television broadcast city. A hundred NBC affiliates from around the United States packed like goat cheese into a refrigerated container in Torino. How they pull this off is something I can’t explain. They take an empty warehouse the size of Rhode Island and turn it into a digital city from which 100 different TV stations can do all their work, including LIVE reports for their home towns.
Most reporters covering the Olympics spend their days and
Warehouse turned into NBC broadcast city... this is onlya small part of it.
nights in this warehouse. It’s the most unglamorous thing you can imagine. A reporter and photographer may venture out to an event, but even then they’ll watch most of it on a TV screen in a “media” room.
And that is why on our trip to the Torino, Olympics, I basically lied to my bosses and set out on a week-long road trip of Italy right before the Games started. I’ll explain tomorrow. It’s a whopper.
Until then, I’m sitting on my warm couch, sipping a cold beer and watching these amazing snowboarding events. You can’t believe how big that half-pipe is until you stand in one like I did in Italy. It scared the crap out of me.
Pray for ice. Canada it seems is having trouble making it at the speed skating venue… MR
December 8th, 2009 by Mike Redding
This is actually a follow-up to an earlier story you may have seen right here in this column. It started at a high school football game… and now little Jonah’s dream will take him all the way to Carolina Panthers Stadium.
Click here for some relief.
November 5th, 2009 by Mike Redding
We have great news! Stop and Smell the People has a sponsor! It’s a company that believes we all can use a little relief from a cynical world! And the owner is willing to put his money behind that belief!
Andy Bovender, our very first sponsor!
Let me introduce you to Andy Bovender of The Bovender Real Estate Team.
For those of you who have been reading SASTP since May… you know how the story started… with a layoff. Mine.
My wife Anna had two reactions:
1) Start your own website ASAP. “You don’t want to leave your job and your viewers. They are a part of our life!”
2) Call Andy and put the house up for sale. We both knew it was likely a move was in our future. But to tell you the truth, she was kind of unemotional about the house I poured myself into for seven years. When the you-know-what hits the fan, she’s like a drill sergeant… in a good way… mostly.
And so, in the worst real estate market in our lifetime, Andy Bovender came over, sat on our couch and listened to us for 20 minutes. When we were done he said a number. The number was what he thought the house would sell for. We were encouraged because the number he came up with was $15,000 more than it appraised for just eight months earlier. And in a couple months Andy sold our house for that number exactly. True Story.
The man is an expert on the Charlotte area housing market and has an undeniable instinct for it.
What we didn’t know was that Andy Bovender was already part of the SASTP Nation. He was following along. Over the
SOLD!
course of selling our house we talked with him about the future of this website, where we wanted to see it go and how to get there. Andy’s response? “I’m in! I’ll be a sponsor.”
We had dinner the other night and I asked him why he wanted to do this… Andy’s answer was simple and humbling, “At the end of the day you have to spend your money on something you believe in.”
He’s not just saying that. Andy knows a thing or two about believing in something. In fact, it was his dream to play in the big leagues – baseball’s big leagues. He played professional… Continue reading ‘Our First Sponsor: The Bovender Team’
September 13th, 2009 by Mike Redding
Michael Vick is not a genius. He’s a gifted athlete shaped by his culture. A man who had no sense of purpose. He did whatever those around him did. And that included dog fighting and torturing dogs to death.
What he did is heinous, beyond cruel and criminal. It makes my blood boil. I’m a dog lover.
But I’m also a sinner. I have faith and belief in God… and I fail my beliefs on a daily basis. Every day I need compassion and mercy. Every single day.
I don’t know if Mike Vick has seen the light. All sorts of people have said that and it wasn’t true. I’ve said it when it wasn’t true. The only way we will know is by his actions. And I believe he deserves the opportunity to prove he has changed. If it turns out he hasn’t, than he’ll have hell to pay. But if he really has changed, he has experienced what I consider the greatest gift any human can… redemption.
I will not boo Michael Vick on the football field today. He did his time. Now he deserves a chance to prove what kind of man he wants to be. Will he slip back into the slug he was? Maybe. Is he just saying all the right things because he was coached up and he knew it was his path back to millions of dollars? Maybe.
But I don’t know what is in Michael Vick’s heart until I see his actions. ”Time will tell” is a cliche for a reason. Because time reveals all truth.
I believe in second chances, because when I needed one, I got one. I changed and grew up and became a better more “conscious” man. I live intentionally now… not by habit. I wish the same thing for anyone else. Even Michael Vick.
MR
September 10th, 2009 by Mike Redding
A friend just sent me an e-mail saying how excited he is about the NFL starting tonight. I stared at my computer screen thinking… “What kind of man am I that I don’t know this?” A tear rolled down my cheek. “Am I crying?” What next? Shirts that match my socks? Umbrella drinks? Grey’s Anatomy?
Before my #2 son was born in March I knew all things NFL. Now I spend my days compiling lists of questions for our pediatrician and studying infant mortality rates of the Swine Flu. We were in the baby doctor’s office Wednesday for Crowley’s 6-month shots and check up. They were handing out particle masks to anyone with a child who had a fever above 100.
I took my son and marched right back out the door and waited in the hall. Until a mom and her little boy, both wearing masks, walked out to join me. AAAAAAAAAAH!
I have issues.
Among them, I didn’t know the NFL season was starting tonight? What the? I should have had this date circled on my Calendar months ago. I have crossed over a line somewhere. I might as well be sitting at a salon getting a pedicure talking about whether or not I think Ellen will do a good job replacing Paula on American Idol. ‘WHY DO I KNOW ELLEN IS REPLACING PAULA AND NOT THAT THE NFL STARTS TONIGHT?”
What has happened to me? And why am I calling them by their first names only, like we’re friends?
I’m going to go out to my garage and organize my tools. Grrrr… (I hope I have tissues out there.) MR
August 30th, 2009 by Mike Redding
Sat down to write a mind blowing critique on health care “debate” and then my brother-in-law mentioned the Panthers were on.
Apparently I’d rather watch my team lose in a poorly played pre-season football game. I’m just so freakin’ glad it’s football season again.
Okay, it’s bed time. Go football! …MR
July 17th, 2009 by Mike Redding
There is an astonishing story emerging right now in France. Two stories actually. The human drama unfolding is like a Hollywood script: The aging ex-champ comes out of retirement to to take on the younger, stronger, faster current champ. But how about a twist not even Hollywood could dream up? The younger champ is the retired champ’s brother! Let me explain.
If you’ve never watched the “Tour de France” this would be the year to tune in. If you used to watch when Lance Armstrong was on his 7-year romp but lost interest the last three years, break out your yellow wrist band. (I know many of you SASTP readers are not cycling fans. Try just this once to get into it. Push yourself. You won’t be sorry.)
This is far and away the most interesting tour in years. Maybe the most interesting in decades. The two big stories are as follows: 1. A 37-year-old Armstrong (ancient by cycling standards) who was expected to be an “also ran” this year, is only a few seconds from the lead. Story #2. The current champ and the man who is favored to win again this year, 26-year-old athletic superstud Alberto Contador, is on Lance’s team! The legend and the new champ are on the same team? WHAAAAAAT? Unheard of. (So you know that team is called Astana.) The battle within Armstrong’s team is fascinating. Lance has even admitted to the media there’s quite a bit of tension on the team.
As the Tour winds down to the brutal ride through the Alps who will attack and who will crack? Many experts (including Armstrong) think the three-week race won’t be decided until the second to the last day on what Armstrong calls the hardest climb ever in the Tour. Does the older, wiser Armstrong have a surprise for everyone? Or will he crack on the crushing roads of the Alps?
And who will the rest of the team follow? The younger, more powerful current champ and leader of team Astana or the legend and wily old veteran. Or will Armstrong and Contador beat each other up so a third rider from another team can squeeze by them for a shocking upset?
If you don’t have the “Versus” TV channel you can do what I do, log on to Versus.com and click on “Tour de France” and then click “Watch Live” and then choose the FREE option. Voila! Live continuous coverage with great play-by-play that explains all the nuances for beginners.
You can thank me later… MR
