Daily News Sports People of the Year: the suffering New York fans

 Michelle Musler is miserable, and has every right to be. She is paying $975 per game to sit behind the Knick bench and watch her favorite team stink out the joint, every night. Now that the Garden has been fully renovated, she is squeezed in the middle of a 22-seat, debris-filled row with no aisle in sight. She can’t get in, she can’t get out. She can’t cross her legs. In front of her, a zillion Knick assistants, whose jobs are unclear, stand or fidget in her way. One of them accidentally kicked his metal folding chair back onto Musler’s shin during the Indiana playoff series last May, cutting her leg.

So Musler literally bleeds for the Knicks, and can back up that assertion with $312 in medical bills. She is 78 years old and has been a season ticket-holder for 36 years. She probably won’t live to see her team win another championship. None of us will.

“This might be it. This might be it,” Musler said, expressing her ritual doubts about renewing her ticket package in the spring. “Forget the players and the coaches. The management of this team is absolutely, absurdly incompetent and getting worse and worse by the minute. If it were a real business, it would have gone bankrupt long ago. There is no hope.”

Musler says she might stop commuting from Stamford, stop paying the ridiculous prices, stop sitting next to the dilettante corporate types who only care about which Hollywood star is freeloading in the front row on any particular night.

Except that she’s only kidding herself. Musler won’t stop coming, of course. None of them ever stop coming. New York fans are as addicted and dumb as they get, which is why the Daily News this year celebrates these 2013 martyrs as our collective Sportsmen and Sportswomen of the Year. Step right up, bend over and get kicked in the pants one more time. You’ve earned it.

Clearly, New York fans love the abuse. It was a terrible, horrible year for our sports franchises. The Yankees didn’t make the postseason. The Mets will never make the postseason, no matter what Sandy Alderson promises. The Giants, Knicks and Nets were supposed to be good, but instead are dreadful. The Jets were supposed to be awful and are merely bad, which is considered a triumph of sorts.

The three hockey teams range from barely mediocre (the Rangers) to disappointing (Devils) to pathetic (the Isles). The Red Bulls recorded the best record in MLS, then got knocked out in their first playoff series. Coaches have been dismissed, or are on the brink of dismissal. Alex Rodriguez is still hanging around, depressing everyone.

 Yet the fans still come, and pay too much. They come to Section 203 at Yankee Stadium, where the Bleacher Creature known as Kinicki regularly ruins his shoes from the floods in the front row. They come to the Jet games to fill the top rows of MetLife Stadium, where it is nearly impossible without binoculars to discern whether Geno Smith just threw another interception.

They come to watch the Rangers fail to score goals. They come to observe the Nets get out-rebounded. They come to behold the Mets fall out of the NL East race by mid-May, in yet another rebuilding year.

There is no stopping, no discouraging the New York fan. Consider that the woeful Knicks stand third in the NBA, with an average attendance of 19,812 — playing to full capacity. The Nets, in a smaller arena, are doing just fine, drawing 17,173, or 94.9% capacity.

The Yanks boasted the fourth-highest attendance in Major League Baseball in 2013, with 3.28 million. The Mets drew 2.14 million, despite lacking a functional outfield. More than 5.4 million fans reportedly paid real American dollars to watch these two ballclubs combine for a 79-83 record at home.

Phoenix Coyotes look East to move up standings

The Coyotes continually monitor the Western Conference standings, but they won’t be able to pry away points from the teams they’re contending with for the next two weeks.

Thursday’s meeting with the visiting New York Islanders was the first of six consecutive games against the Eastern Conference. Four of those games are on the road.

“I don’t mind getting on the road a week before Christmas, take the distractions away,” coach Dave Tippett said.

The Coyotes went 3-2 on their last East road swing, which started with a stop in San Jose. There is at least some benefit in playing out-of-conference games. It removes the fear of giving up the loser point in overtime or shootout results.

“When you play teams out of your conference, that’s an opportunity to get points that other teams can’t get,” Tippett said.
Bye, bye bug

Goalie Mike Smith was back between the pipes against the Islanders after missing Tuesday’s game in Colorado with the flu.

“He’s back to 100 percent health he said,” Tippett said.

Smith wasn’t even on the bench against the Avalanche but was the backup for the night. If he wasn’t able to do that, the Coyotes had a preliminary plan to use assistant coach Newell Brown’s son, Adam, as an emergency backup.

Adam Brown plays goalie for the Colorado Eagles in the East Coast Hockey League.

“That happened a few years ago in New York when we grabbed an assistant coach of a college team (Tom Fenton) and put him on the bench,” Tippett said. “Sometimes you have to take drastic measures in drastic times. We had that kind of in the back of our mind, but it didn’t work out.”
On the mend

Captain Shane Doan (illness) stopped by the Ice Den in Scottsdale briefly Thursday morning but still isn’t expected back on the ice any time soon.

“Hopefully he’s making some progress,” Tippett said. “We’ll see where he gets by the end of the week whether he goes on that trip next week.”

Meanwhile, defenseman Derek Morris could rejoin the team today after leaving a week ago to attend to a family matter.

“Hopefully he’ll be at practice,” Tippett said.

With the Coyotes roster currently at 23, a corresponding roster move would have to be made to add Morris, who didn’t count against the limit while he was away. Doan is still on the active roster.

“When you’re missing key guys like that, the other guys in the room step up and your leadership in the room doesn’t dip at all and you can continue to play well,” Tippett said.
Fourth-line production

Most fourth lines are responsible for delivering energy, and the Coyotes’ unit certainly is tasked with doing that. But that isn’t the only priority on the line’s to-do list.

Center Jeff Halpern is the faceoff specialist of the group, winger Jordan Szwarz is earning penalty-kill time and winger Paul Bissonnette adds a physical presence.

It’s a bonus, though, when they chip in a goal — like they did Tuesday against the Avalanche with Szwarz tapping in a rebound from a Halpern shot off a Bissonnette pass.

“We have been getting some scoring chances of late and just haven’t been burying them,” Szwarz said. “The other night in Colorado it was nice to finally get one.”

A last attempt to be positive about sports

In an attempt to find a subject for my last column, I went through a checklist in my head of everything that I’ve covered this semester.

The business of sports, sexism and homophobia in sports and the recent Miami Dolphins fiasco have all been subjected to my criticism.

It took me a few minutes, but I realized one very important thing: for something that I love so dearly, I haven’t written one positive thing about sports.

Maybe it’s because there seems to be more bad things going on in sports than there are good things. Perhaps it’s because I just notice the short-fallings and never the successes happening in sports.

Whatever the reason — and I still don’t know what that is — it goes against my usual ‘look on the bright side’ nature.

So, as an attempt to even things out in the grand scheme of things, I will focus on what I love about sports.

I love that a team (or franchise) is something that can bring so many people together and be celebrated.

Young or old, thin or fat, loud-mouthed or shy. For the span of the game, all differences are put aside. For the most part.

Sports, particularly Raiders football and San Jose Sharks hockey, are bonding moments for my dad and I. We like to discuss the latest Raiders game (or, in the offseason, whether we like their moves) and whether or not we saw that Sharks goal.

My grandma, though a Niners fan, is a Sharks fan through and through. She always texts me after a Sharks win to celebrate — or if it’s the playoffs and we lose, to commiserate.

Discussing my favorite teams is an automatic go-to for conversations. I know automatically that I’ll have something in common with someone wearing gear of my favorite team.

I love being able to strike up a conversation with someone and see why he or she is so passionate about a team.

Some people arrive to their fandom by birth — I’m one of them. Some stumble across the team and like the players or their style of play.

At the risk of going on a tangent, I will say that the idea of a bandwagon is ridiculous. People jump on the bandwagon when they become fans of teams that are doing well. When a team’s doing well, they get a lot more national coverage. More people are familiar with the team. It’s pretty obvious that everyone loves to be a fan of a winning team, but a lot more people see a winning team than a terrible team.

Please, people, calm down and quit talking down on new fans. You aren’t any better just because you’ve been a fan longer.

Anyways, I digress.

After a semester of writing about everything wrong with the world of sports — and let’s admit, there’s a lot of that — I’ve now found that it’s surprisingly difficult to write something good about it.

And, yes, even in my quest to be positive I had to bring up how ridiculous the whole “bandwagon” idea is. I couldn’t help myself.

I look forward to the days when the positive outweighs the negative. When there is less hatred and inequality in sports than there is now. When people can support their team and worry less about the allegiance of the fan next to them.

I guess the biggest positive of this article is that I think this is all possible. I think one day all fans will be able to enjoy watching a world that isn’t wracked by these issues, at least not to such an extent.

Of the great rivalries in sport, Alabama-Auburn tops them all

Mike Krzyzewski has thought about a Duke-North Carolina national championship game, and what the Duke coach decided is this: He wants no part of it. He's not scared of the Tar Heels, but he knows human nature -- and he knows somebody has to lose.

"I can live with losing to any school," Krzyzewski once said, "but what would happen in this area, people-wise, if one of us beat the other in the championship game ... I wouldn't wish [that] on anybody, it would be so horrible."

Yet it happens every year. Every November a game with the intensity, the local importance, the bragging rights of a Duke-Carolina national championship matchup happens. It happens in college football, and an entire state convulses. Somebody wins, but somebody loses. And for them it's so horrible, I wouldn't wish it on anybody.

This is the biggest rivalry in college sports, and it's not particularly close, and not because the stakes this year are so incredibly high. It's the biggest rivalry in college sports because that's what it is year in, year out. The only thing that compares is in basketball -- and no, not Duke-Carolina, because Duke and Carolina have never met in the Final Four.

Kentucky and Louisville have. They met in the Final Four just 18 months ago, their coaches throw gas on the fire by taking shots at each other, and given that there's no professional sports in the state -- and no other Division I program of national relevance -- Kentucky-Louisville is a game that plays out 365 days a year.

And even that isn't as intense as Alabama-Auburn.

It's the late-season timing of the game, the us-or-them makeup of the state and the force of football, which for whatever reason is the most viscerally followed sport in America. Other countries convulse over their version of football. Here, we go nuts over ours in a way that trumps how we treat all other sports.

And nobody goes nuts for football like people in Alabama.

For one thing, they don't have anything else to distract them. No major professional franchises in the state, or even within 200 miles of Tuscaloosa, and no college basketball tradition to speak of. It's football year 'round there, whether it's spring practice or recruiting or the real thing, those four months in the fall when Alabama and Auburn do what they do with one eye on the task at hand and the other eye on that school 160 miles up the road.

Michigan and Ohio State have a big rivalry, don't get me wrong, but it's not the same thing. The fans get fired up, the teams are usually great and the coaches can act like children -- Brady Hoke won't call Ohio State by its real name, referring to it as "Ohio"; Urban Meyer asks NFL scouts visiting practice to cover up their franchise's blue because that's a Michigan color -- but it's not Alabama-Auburn.

Lose to Michigan and it sucks for Ohio State fans for a little while -- but unless they live in the border town of Toledo, they're not in much danger of running into a gloating Michigan fan.


Lose to Alabama, and its sucks for an Auburn fan for 365 days. The next-door neighbors have a Crimson Tide flag on their porch. The family down the street has a dog named Bear. And forget about the grocery store. Alabama fans are everywhere, and they're gloating because their school won the biggest game of the year, a game so big that folks in that state would pause if given this either/or choice: winning a national championship -- or winning the Iron Bowl.

Oregon-Oregon State is big -- but the state has an NBA franchise and no national football titles. Meanwhile, the last four national titles have been won by Alabama or Auburn (three by the Tide).

Texas-Oklahoma? Huge game -- even with both programs in a relative downturn -- but they're not in the same state, Oklahoma has its hands full with Oklahoma State, and Texas' affection for football is divided among a handful of college programs and two NFL franchises.

Look, we could do this all day. Florida-Florida State? Big game, but not the same. USC-UCLA? Ditto. Fans of those rivalries and the others in this story -- and probably some that were never mentioned -- are going to get bent out of shape that their special rivalry isn't the one billed here as the biggest.

Cry me a river. Honestly. Look at it like this: Every year the Miss America Pageant has one winner, but 50 beautiful women. The 2013 Mr. Olympia competition had one champion -- but 20 ridiculously ripped men.

Florida-Georgia? You're beautiful. Clemson-South Carolina? You're ripped.

But there can be only one rivalry that is prettier, more muscular than all others, and that's Alabama-Auburn -- a series so wonderful, it's sort of horrible.

Guidelines to Expert Professional skateboarding Tricks

There are numerous skateboarding traps out there and when attempting to study your own particular deceives, you might feel overpowered with all the tips ready. There are tips for particular traps as a rule, incorporating movies, tips from the pros and then some. For a few skaters, be that as it may, you simply need some general tips on the best way to do traps the right path, not on any particular deceives itself.

Possibly you've been skating for quite a while and you as of recently know traps and how to expand them yet you only need to have the ability to ace your traps. Possibly you have the basics down and you need to have the ability to add to those by doing more progressed traps however you don't exactly have the trust yet to draw it off. Wherever you're at in your skateboarding aptitudes, here are a few tips to help you ace skateboarding traps when all is said in done (as a substitute for particular traps).

Stance and Body Positioning

Your stance and form positioning will be extremely critical. In certain traps, this is key to finishing the trap successfully. You can try different things with form position by testing distinctive sorts of traps and seeing how your physique and board are positioned in the wake of arriving. You can attempt bouncing in diverse bearings to see what impact it has on the board positioning. Careful discipline brings about promising results in terms of getting the stance and figure positioning right.

Line Up Your Shoulders

A different tip to recollect when doing traps is to have your shoulders lined up fittingly. Every living soul does traps diversely so it’s difficult to say precisely where your shoulders ought to be for a given trap yet the thought is to get in touch with your own particular form and your skating style and take note of where your shoulders are when you do a trap successfully. At that point attempt to copy this shoulder arrangement every time you do that same trap. When you get accustomed to it, the developments and situation of your shoulders will easily fall into place. So afterward you are doing a trap, take note of where your shoulders are -parallel to the ground or board, turning as you pop, and so on. You can likewise watch films of others doing traps in moderate movement and see where their shoulders are lined up.

There are a mess of diverse form movements that go into doing generally skateboarding traps. These tips are only illustrations of the diverse components that go into mastering your traps. Utilize the guidelines here to help you with different zones of studying and mastering your traps.

Tips despite any precedent to the contrary Baseball Coach

Fathers and mothers who've recently volunteered for their tyke's baseball crew may be a little lost to start with. It's significant to have a strategy. As a first time mentor you may be a little anxious; yet provided that you are ready, you will feel more agreeable. You'll need to know the tenets of the amusement, the fundamental essentials and how to show them to your players. You should choose how to docket your practices with drills and abilities your group should know. You will likewise need to hold procedure gatherings on how you need your group to play the sport of baseball.

The foremost thing you might as well do is investigate all parkways of qualified data. The web is a significant asset. You can discover whatever informative content you require on just about any subject. The library is an additional extraordinary asset for your educational requirements. Best curators are exceptionally educated and ready to help you discover the ideal materials to help you. Additionally, it doesn't damage to get exhortation from different mentors. What more terrific asset would you be able to finish than somebody who has it sometime recently?

Recollect, be ready and have your own particular approach. The more you know the diversion and guidelines the better you can instruct your players. Make it simple to grasp how to play. Start with the nuts and bolts and work from that point. Talk about the tenets and how vital they are to the diversion. Make your wants of the players clear.

Educate the fundamental baseball basics first. That is where everything begins. Have particular bores that will advance your players discovering, hurling, and hitting. While doing drills, you can examine your player’s capacities and put them in the best positions for the crew.

Plan your week of practices. Set up your practices early. Make certain to check the datebook. Look into occasions and different occasions that may clash with booked practices. Plan your practices with particular bores you need your players to improve at. As a mentor, your occupation is to assist every player development their aptitudes.

Bear in mind to educate sportsmanship. Figuring out how to score and lose with great sportsmanship is paramount. Having a ton of fun is one of the essentials in advancing your players. In the event that they are having some good times at what they are doing, the investment will remain towering. Playing as a group might as well likewise be instructed. Studying these lessons will get ready them for the sport of baseball and of life also.

These are some essential baseball tips to kick you off. You need to be as ready as you might need your group to be. You are the mentor. Your players search up to you for direction, guidelines, and structure. They all need to score, on top of you. Your honing certainty will develop stronger provided that you have a blueprint.

Present Accreditations for Activities Lovers

On the net have become quite typical these days. That is because it is quickly available not only at the financial institutions and shops but also on the internet. It is not always possible to side over presents individually even if it is for someone very unique or on unique events. Then these present accreditations come of great use for all reasons.

For activities fans and sportsmen, present accreditations are perhaps the best present that one can provide. If you have the time, you can create your own customized present certification and deliver it to the individual who will appreciate it and appreciate getting it. There are various shops that help to get present accreditations on the internet. They are quickly obtainable and you can also put in anything individual if you want. It is that simple to please someone who is a activities nut. It is also possible to create out present accreditations by installing them on the internet that is 100 % free.

Then you can beautify it with activities decals of your option or the one that the individual for whom you are creating it is enthusiastic about. If you want a certification for a individual, you can enhance it with tennis paintballs and groups or for a soccer fan, insert soccer paintballs and decals of well-known sportsmen and see how he is excited. You have to be innovative and impressive as well to get the glowing grin on the devices experience. The use of indicators and silver or silver lines carry a amazing look to the certification especially when they are developed for kids. There are some on the internet retailers too that do the work for you.

You can always create out a activities fan. They always seem to be complete of activities products like images, decals and tops all around them. So it is quite challenging to provide a present to such a individual as he seems to have almost everything relevant to his preferred activity. At such periods of problems, present accreditations create an ideal factor to provide to create him satisfied.

Certificates as presents are not intended only to provide as a simple present. They are valued as valuable remembrances and as evidence also of the quality in a particular area. In university or higher education, when you get involved in any occasion, say dilemma or activities, you are granted with a honor or award. May be it is an excellent award and you have to come back it after a season or so. But the certification that you get as identification of your skills continues to be with you forever. Hence these present accreditations are more in need not only to create one satisfied but these provide as additional certification later on.

Enjoying Ice Hockey - Some Tips

We have, as observers, dependably viewed ice hockey with energy and beguilement. We have viewed men race crosswise over for objectives. Anyhow have you needed to play it? Have you ever held back supposing how hard it isn't that so? There is a straightforward route to study and play.

Like numerous different recreations, ice hockey too is a group brandish. It has two crews with six players every, one goalkeeper and five opposing players. The five players can move over the arena (the ice field). The point of the diversion is to have greatest objectives to be the victor. You need to guarantee that you don't let your resistance score, which is called playing barrier. The amusement has a period structure. It is isolated into twenty-moment periods. There are three such sections in the amusement. In the event that the score is equivalent or not, one or the other of the group has scored, an additional time is designated which truly comparable to the sport of football.

To manage and look after the decency of the game, there are certain tenets and limitations. There are two sorts of punishments in the amusement, one distinguished as major and the different as minor. While playing, you will regularly find players prodding one another to hold the puck. There are certain ways which are acknowledged unpleasant. Cutting, catching, impedance, looking from the back, and so on. are everything acknowledged minor retributions. Abstain from submitting them. For instance, while being in control of the puck, if a player comes and attempts to take ownership from your back, it is acknowledged as a minor punishment and it can take a player off the ice for two minutes. No substitution for this player is permitted. That leaves the crew with just five players on the arena. In the event that the crew scores an objective after the minor punishment, the player is permitted back in. There are additionally occasions when the restricting crews battle on the arena. This accelerates a major retribution. The player is sent off the ice for five entire minutes. Major retributions can additionally include transmitting a player that initiated physical harm to another.

At the time you begin off as a tenderfoot, the most fabulous test is to know how to hold the hockey stay accurately. The thought is to be agreeable for the purpose that you can move the puck as needs be. One must additionally work on spilling, slapping, hitting and prodding with the stick consistently. Each diversion additionally has a set of wellbeing monitors and supplies. Determine you have the essential few before beginning. The head protector, mouth watch, puck, stick, skates, shin monitors, player and socks are fundamental for the security of players.

When you take note of all the above, you will gradually acknowledge the effortlessness of the diversion and begin delighting in it. The diversion tests your systems, group spirit and single aptitude at each minute. Ice hockey is played on a national and worldwide level in numerous nations. It is a greatly quick diversion and can get harsh now and again so provided that you have a frail heart, doesn’t attempt it.