Pun City In 2008: Feel Free To Call It A Comeback

The U62 Telethon is on the air!

Always wanted to say that. Paraphrasing Stanley Spadowski, Pun City is back on the air. Sorry for the delay. Lots to cover here, so let's get cracking.

From the pun front:

People from Texas can be a bit Austintatious.

From the Tecmo front:

This blog finished up its Tecmo Super Bowl season where Pun City was trying to get every team to wind up 8-8. Some unexpected results there. First off, this blog was indeed successful in getting each team to 8-8. From there, Pun City had noticed/been informed by Ronk Romens that point differential was the second tie-breaker. Once Pun City was in week 17, it tried for some point differential ties as well. There were some successes on this front, including some nail-biters.

The first game of week 17 was Kansas City versus the Los Angeles Raiders. The Chiefs were sitting at +183 on the point differential, and 8-7 in record. The Raiders were 7-8 in record, +85 in point differential. So....doing the math for you, if the Raiders beat the Chiefs by 34, the two teams would tie in both record and point differential. Fortunately Pun City was able to pull off the feat, and after all other games were played, the AFC West Division standings showed the following lines:
1. Rai 8-8
1. KC 8-8
2. SD 8-8
3. Den 8-8
4. Sea 8-8

Similar ties were able to be accomplished in the AFC East, where the Bills and Dolphins tied at 8-8 and +90, and this blog was also able to get the AFC Central champion Pittsburgh Steelers to +90 on differential also.

In the NFC East, the Giants and Eagles tied at +79, and though the NFC West race wasn't close with the 49ers winning by 163 points, the NFC Central was close going into the last game. The Green Bay Packers were taking on the Minnesota Vikings. If Green Bay was able to beat Minnesota by exactly 30, the Vikings would fall into a tie with the Chicago Bears at +121. Leading by 27, the Packers gained possession of the ball on the 50 yard line with 45 seconds remaining, and proceeded to run off 29 ineffectual seconds, advancing only to the 39. Pun City knew that 16 Tecmo seconds was not very much, but figured there was just enough time for one pass play. Don Majkowski found a streaking Ed West down the sideline, who caught the ball with 2 seconds remaining and ran out of bounds at the 11 yard line with 1 second remaining. From there, Chris Jacke hit a 28-yard Field Goal to clinch the Bears-Vikings tie. After checking the game statistics, Pun City let the fireworks ensue.

Tecmo aficionados know that the "division champion" graphics normally show up when a team clinches the division based on record. With all teams having the same record in this season, that wasn't going to happen. Another quirk of Tecmo is that it will wait until a week is completely over before declaring any tie-breaker division champions. Given this knowledge, Pun City knew that all six division champion graphics would be appearing in sequence, and this blog would find out a) If Tecmo could handle a 3rd tie-breaker, and b) Potentially what that was. There was also a good possibility of finding out c) How to put out a fire started by a smoking Nintendo.

As it turned out, the screen flashed across Buffalo Bills, Pittsburgh Steelers, Los Angeles Raiders, New York Giants, Minnesota Vikings, and San Francisco 49ers as division champions; with the Miami Dolphins, New York Jets, Kansas City Chiefs, Philadelphia Eagles, Chicago Bears, and Detroit Lions as wild cards.

This meant that indeed Tecmo Super Bowl can handle a 3rd tie-breaker, and it turned out to be total points scored. Pun City enjoyed the project, but getting two teams to have the same number of wins, points scored, and points against is a tough nut to crack.

Lastly, from the college basketball front:

This blog was at the Marquette-Savannah State game in Milwaukee's Bradley Center last Saturday. This was fun, but just prior to the game this blog had some business to do. Pun City had been listening to the Wisconsin-Texas game on the radio on the way down, and was very much interested in tracking the result. The Bacardi Club in the concourse was a huge disappointment and was not showing the game on any of their 3 flatscreen TVs. Fortunately, just down the hall, a normal cathode ray TV was displaying the game. A crowd had gathered around the screen, probably about 15. The group swelled to about 20 before the end of the game. What followed was a pleasant surprise for Pun City. As you may be aware, Marquette and Wisconsin are arch-rivals, so Pun City was expecting at least a minority of the watchers to be rooting against the Badgers. This wasn't outwardly noticeable, however. And when Michael Flowers hit the game-winning shot to put Texas away with 2.7 seconds remaining, the entire group let out a genuine, giant cheer. Maybe they were just happy that Marquette's RPI was being raised, maybe they found Wisconsin to be the lesser of two evils, hopefully they were happy for the state of basketball in Wisconsin, but Pun City is happy to report that they cheered. Mad props Marquette fans.

Midnight Madness: Now Served Between 7 and 10

Pun City was visiting New Glarus, WI earlier this week with limited interweb access so as a result there was no post. Sorry for the lack of notice, this blog is sure that in excess of 1 Tuesday night was ruined.

As a result of being gone for so long and not having much prep time, Pun City is going to draw up a short preview of its upcoming weekend, which will be the opening practice for college basketball teams across the country.

On an action-packed Friday night, Pun City plans to drive to Madison for Wisconsin's opening practice. Work ends at 4:30, drive takes roughly 1 hour and 45 minutes. Picking up Pun City's grandma so she can take in the festivities alongside Pun City. Hopefully catching some decent action and a good preview of the season to come. Most likely not getting any autographs since this blog's supply of Wisconsin trading cards has dwindled over the last couple season-ticketless years. In any case, hoping to get a good hour of watching in before taking off.

The goal is to make it back to Milwaukee in time for UW-Milwaukee's opening practice, where players will be introduced at 10:00 PM. Hopefully the drive is only about 1 hour and 30 minutes by that time of night, and also hopefully Pun City is able to meet up with a couple friends that are also hoops fans.

Saturday night, tragically, Pun City's buddy has a bachelor party. This is very poorly timed given that Marquette has their first open practice that day. With the bachelor party starting at 7:30 PM though, Pun City does have an opportunity. Gates open at 6:45 and free shirts are being distributed to all attendees. It's a freakin' sweet shirt, so this blog is going to make a run at it even though this blog is going to have to miss the practice. Then a dead sprint up to Sheboygan to play some laser tag or hit in a batting cage with some friends.

Probably a little more intense than needed, but it's been since April that this blog has had any dose of College Basketball, so it's time to start mainlining it!

Badgers Nip Cats

This blog was on the road again yesterday, taking in the Wisconsin at Northwestern game in Evanston, IL. It was a surprisingly difficult game for the visiting Badgers, who eventually prevailed 56-50.

In the photo above, Alando Tucker is introduced. Note the "darkened" seating area above the wall on the far side of the court. This section went back about 30 rows, and was filled with 95% Badger fans. This blog sat in a comparable section on the near side of the court which had the same proportion of Badger fans. (Also note the large number of empty season-ticket-holder seats near game time, these mostly filled but it was not the best display on the NU faithful's part.)
Additional Badger introductions. This season the Badgers are undefeated wearing red. They're also undefeated at home, but wore white in a pair of neutral-site games, 1 of which they lost.
The Northwestern student section. There is another section on the other side, but it appeared as though it either wasn't filled by students or was filled very late. A proprieter at a local apparel store said that the university doesn't really have that much school spirit, as they have a hard time selling out games, especially when the opponent's fans aren't accounting for a large percentage of the attendance.
Willie the Wildcat cheers on NU. This blog had low expectations of Willie, given the lack of school spirit. He didn't do too badly though. He wasn't an acrobatic mascot, given the huge head, but this blog would prefer a giant mascot head to any acrobatics out of a mascot. Very good with kids as you might expect, and he seemed to get into the game at the right times. Strangely enough he seemed to be wearing shoulder pads, something you could probably ask him about here.

An under-reported part of the game was an ugly sequence where Wisconsin's Marcus Landry and Northwestern's Vince Scott got tangled up going for a rebound, then both hit the floor. Scott shoved Landry down to lift himself up, then stood over Landry to taunt him. No foul was called, though this blog thinks that one or both of the players should have gotten a Technical Foul. Officiating was a bit spotty and the game was too rough for most of the game, building up to that moment. After officials separated the pair without calling anything, Scott was setting fierce picks on the other end of the floor that should have earned him multiple foul calls. Wisconsin fans booed him every time he touched the ball, and he played especially poorly after Landry then blocked what would have been Scott's wide-open layup.

The stadium area around Northwestern is very bizarre. Only one "sports bar" (The Bluestone) is remotely near the Arena, and it's fairly weak as far as sports bars go. While the food is excellent, and prices pretty reasonable ($6.95 for a cheeseburger with fries), the decor is sort of an Italian movie motif, and though it had roughly 5 television screens, they were all tuned to the same game (West Virginia at Marquette). This worked out very well for this blog's purposes, as it had forgone its seat at the Marquette game in order to go to Northwestern, but a more traditional sports bar would have shown capability of more than just ESPN, and only one game at that. Plus it would have been open earlier than 11:30 on a day when a 1:30 game was planned, and would have started with more staff than 2 waitresses and a bus boy (during the course of this blog's lunch, they added a hostess and another waitress).

Beyond that, though there are 3 sports apparel stores within about a 10-block radius of the stadium, 2 of those are right around the 10-block area. The one that's right next to the Arena seems to have had a lot of the same shirts from around 1997 (supplemented with an occasional new one). This blog doesn't really blame the proprietor though, there just doesn't seem to be a huge market for Northwestern gear, and the proprietor was a pretty affable guy, keeping his well-mannered dog in the store as much for companionship as anything, since it didn't seem like he had too many visitors.

All in all, Northwestern seems pretty harmless. They don't seem to have quite figured out the whole athletics thing just yet, but theyare putting in the old college try. This blog thinks they'll have trouble reaching elite status athletically given the rigorous academic standards required for entry there, but there's a chance they could have a revival if they got lucky with a few recruits and had some major donations from alumni to improve some facilities.

This blog had initially thought Wisconsin would not lose another game until they meet Ohio State on February 25th, but that prediction is looking a little dicey given the tenseness of this game. This blog is going to stick with the projection, but hopefully the Badgers can shoot a lot better for the next few games.

Marquette, Wisconsin, and UWM Student Section Report Cards

A big Pun City shout-out to the Wisconsin Badgers on their new ranking of #4 in both polls.

On a somewhat-related note, this blog was able to sit in the student sections of 3 of Wisconsin's Division I basketball programs in the last month, so it figured it could now provide a primer and some ratings for these sections. (In the interest of full disclosure, this blog is an alumnus of the University of Wisconsin, so has much more game experience in that section). Here goes:

UW-Milwaukee -

Tough to rate this one with the program rebuilding. This blog has been to a few of the bigger games that UWM has had over the last few years, and sat in the student section for most of those. The students always pack it full for big games. And this blog can say that the section was by far the drunkest basketball student section this blog has ever encountered. Pun City is convinced you would blow a .06 just having breathed in the air all game. This is a double-edged sword, of course. On the one hand, you have uninhibited students willing to scream anything and everything at the players and officials. While this can lead to some humorous moments, the drunk students aren't usually well-informed on college hoops in the first place, so there are some seriously dumb comments that detract from the game.

That's the big-game crowd. As previously mentioned, UWM is rebuilding this year. Which brings us to the next point: UWM's student fans are very much of the fair-weather variety. This year, the 2-11 Panthers have seen multiple games where there are less than 50 students in the section. This blog sat in the student section last week for a game where they were giving away free shirts to students, and less than 20 students showed. That's too bad. Now given the small sample size, this blog does have to give those that show up credit.

Obviously they're showing tremendous team spirit by being there, and they still make it a challenge for opponents when they're on the student end of the court. While not the most hoops-savvy crowd in the state, this blog gives those that show up all the credit in the world. Marquette and Wisconsin haven't had down years in a long while to test their fan bases, so it's tough to say what would happen if those programs were in rebuilding mode. This blog needed to borrow a Student ID to get the free shirt, but as long as you look mildly like a student, the section is easy to get into and closely-situated seats are no problem. This blog surmises that you could probably sneak in there even if you were well above college-age since the US Cellular Arena ushers are pretty cool.

Hoops Knowledge: 4 out of 10
School Spirit: 7 out of 10
Attendance: 3 out of 10
Ease of Entry for Non-Students: 10 of 10

Marquette -

This is the student section this blog has the least experience in of the 3 reviewed. Definitely a section that fills it up for big games. Weird attendance patterns outside of that. First off, being a school where a lot of students don't stick around over winter break, those games are poorly attended (by all fans including students). One might ask: Why would the other fans not attend these games? A fair question. This most likely has to do with the quality of non-conference opponents Marquette schedules for their home games.

To this point in the season, Marquette has the 112th-best strength of schedule in the nation. UWM has the 104th-best, Wisconsin the 64th. MU is typically the worst of these 3 because of their standard scheduling practices. Marquette's basketball program (like UWM's) has to support the bulk of their athletic department's budget. Because of this, MU will only go on the road in exchange for a home game that they are sure will sell out. On other occasions, MU will give a 1-and-1 to some schools when MU has a player from around the opponent's home. The "auto-sellout-type" opponents are few and far between. Recent examples of "1-for-1s" include Wisconsin (every other year) and Arizona (one shot deal). These games sold out. Other examples were Oakland, near former Golden Eagle Chris Grimm's hometown; and Valparaiso, near current players Dominic James' and Jerel McNeal's hometowns.

Anyway, the NCAA has a subset of teams that will play Marquette in Milwaukee without a promised return game. These teams support their athletic programs by getting a huge check from MU. These teams also tend to suck. Which finally brings us back to the student section. Faced with unpalateable opponents, students (and other fans) miss these games in droves. Now granted, these aren't big-name opponents, but this blog still thinks you should show up (especially if you already have the ticket).

They do still fill the lower deck student section with regularity, so it's not the worse attendance you could have there. This blog thinks it can chalk it up to bad luck, but thinks it is worth mentioning that both the guy next to Pun City and the guy behind Pun City spilled their beers during one visit, and in another visit frequent contributor Wells had his jacket spilled upon. MU's Gold Rush as a result gets the award for "most beer-spillingest" section in the state.

This blog would say they are also the most fiercely loyal section in the state, having enormous rivalries with non-conference and conference schools alike, and students rabidly defend their school and team. Sometimes this leads to some insane proclamations, but those can be fun as long as one remembers to keep it all in perspective.

A positive is that MU, like UWM, doesn't have another sport to distract most students, so Midnight Madness is the first major sporting event they have during the school year. Not a lot to do (sports wise) other than catch up on basketball, so the students generally have a good grasp on the college hoops landscape.

The biggest downside from this blog's perspective would be the difficulty in sneaking into the student section, since they have all entrances blocked by fences, and you generally have to show your ticket (which is paper and thusly very different-looking than a normal ticket) to ushers to gain entry. Some games they haven't been very stringent, but typically your best bet is to sit in a section adjacent to the student section, then sneak over when an usher isn't looking, since the ushers within the section generally are there just to indicate when the section is filled.

Hoops Knowledge: 8 out of 10
School Spirit: 8 out of 10
Attendance: 6 out of 10
Ease of Entry for Non-Students: 3 of 10

Wisconsin-

The section Pun City has the most experience with (pretty much in all sports). Perennially sells out, similar to Marquette except Wisconsin fills in all decks for the games where school is in session. Winter break usually finds some empty seats, but mainly just a lot of old people replacing the students.

The Kohl Center does not sell alcohol (except for Suites, where it's included in the cost of the Suite), so there aren't too many issues of drunk students and definitely not any spilled beer. A rare drunk student will have had to have gotten drunk before the game and/or brought in a flask. This blog has seen maybe 2 or 3 drunks in the student section in roughly 100 games over the last 7 years. This isn't half bad because everyone's brains are working at full capacity when they're screaming at the officials or opponents.

This blog would say that sneaking into the student section isn't a problem, since they don't really check tickets too closely. The main issues would be a) Getting into the building in the first place, and b) Finding an unoccupied seat that someone isn't going to boot you from.

Since the entire season has been sold out for all seats since around 2000 (if not before), it's tough to get a ticket. Obviously they're available at a price, but still a pain to mess with. If you're lucky enough to get into the building, and for some reason want to switch seats into the student section, good luck. On the one hand, there's probably a couple seats here and there that you can find. This blog imagines most of them would be on the 2nd or 3rd deck, even though there are a few to be had on the lower level for some Winter Break games or early non-conference games. On the other hand, students are a late-arriving crowd so it's unlikely that you'll be there long before someone kicks you out of their seat. And unlike MU and UWM, it's pretty rigidly-followed assigned seating, so you can't just go anywhere.

A plus is that ushers never check your ticket unless they're called over by someone who's had their seat taken, so you can get into the student section easily although it's tough to find an individual seat once there.

The Wisconsin basketball crowd is a lot different than the football crowd there, so this blog is going to rate them pretty high in hoops knowledge. After all, this blog went there, so there's some knowledge base right there. Although, there's some overlap of football and basketball fans and the football fans are not always the most focused sports fans, to say the least.

Wisconsin hoops fans are pretty rabid as far as school spirit goes. There's a bunch of different chants and songs that most students seem to keep up with. This blog is among those that think some of the songs/hand motions are kinda dumb, so people like Pun City often sit out a couple. There is probably more school spirit exhibited at football games, but there's still a lot at the hoops games. Perhaps not as much as Marquette because UW fans "split" their intensity over the 2 sports (and for some 3 or 4 with Hockey and even Volleyball factored in). UW fans, at least in this blog's estimation, also avoid being as unrealistic/optimistic/delusional as MU fans can sometimes get. This speaks to their hoops knowledge but detracts from school spirit.

Hoops Knowledge: 9 out of 10
School Spirit: 7 out of 10
Attendance: 9 out of 10
Ease of Entry for Non-Students: 5 of 10