Top Ten Bad Ideas for 2012 Earthquakes Shirt Sponsors

Milan, fashion capital of the world, is home to Armani, Versace and Dolce and Gabana.  Indeed, the city’s passion for fashion and soccer made for the perfect marriage when D&G created a glossy book of portraits of impeccably tailored AC Milan players in 2011.  I wonder if D&G would have been as quick to publish back in 1981, when the word ‘Pooh’ was emblazoned across the chest of each player’s kit.  Pooh - a jeans company with a name so odious that the club didn’t win a major trophy until they switched to the more mundanely named car manufacturer ‘Opel’ in the 1990s.

It strikes me that while the Quakes front office appreciated the financial input of the Amway global shirt sponsorship, the fans had a much tougher time embracing the corporate culture of what can euphemistically be called the ‘multi-level marketing’ of household products.  Amway written on the our chests might just as well have been ‘Pooh’ - as fans we were fed up of being picked on by friends at home, and by rival supporters on away trips.

My own experience came in The Pike brew pub, where after a rousing away victory for the Quakes, Seattle-ite patrons pointed, snickered and asked us what household cleaners or Nutrilite supplements we would be trying to sell them directly.  We remained good-natured guests, but we rolled our eyes and glanced sheepishly at each other; I usually have a snappy comeback, but on that occasion I quietly admitted that “I got nuthin’”.

The three year Amway sponsorship deal has not been renewed, and CLS’s own Lisa Erickson has already proposed possible solutions to resolve the revenue-free status of the bare-chested shirts of the 2012 San Jose Earthquakes.  In the meantime, fans can now spend their hard earned cash on sponsor-free jerseys: Quakes in black, Quakes in blue or Quakes in white; maybe all three.  A new sponsor will eventually be found, and optimistic fans believe that the next shirt sponsor will be a more acceptable one than Amway, one that we will be less reticent to defend.

But what if it’s not?  What if the next shirt sponsor makes us pine for the good old days of household cleaners, energy bars and health supplements?  What if the new sponsor provides an even less palatable alternative?  Hoping to nix any unsuitable contracts before they get signed, here’s my top ten list of undesirable shirt sponsors to be avoided:

1. Preparation H: let’s get straight to the bottom of the issue - we’re all a little sore after sitting on aluminum bleachers for four straight years.  Cold, hard and unforgiving - and that’s just the fans.  It’s just been a pain in The Buck; Preparation H would be a relevant sponsor, but it would still feel like having Pooh on your shirt.
2. Viagra: Quakes sponsored by the little blue pill?  The 1906 Ultras won’t need the specially formulated blue and black pill to ensure they are up for 90 minutes, but they should be aware that any longer than four hours might be dangerous; physicians would have to be consulted.
3. Vuvuzela:  Currently banned at Buck Shaw, this sponsorship would have to reinstate the distracting trumpets and the promotion would surely only work with co-sponsors: “brought to you by Tylenol” or accompanied by a set of Etymotic noise-canceling ear phones.
4. Caltrain: The fans can’t have horns, but trains do, and apparently train horns are not as loud (or as frequent) as a new soccer stadium.   So, perhaps instead of vuvuzelas, fans would receive free rides to the game and a complimentary train horn for the Caltrain Night promotion (same caveats as #3).
5. Pamplona Tourist Board: Here’s an obvious running of the bulls tie in for a home game against New York, but the unbalanced schedule means the Red Bulls won’t be rolling into town this season.  The Ultras are spirited enough to participate in a run down El Camino Real, though they would insist on wearing blue scarves instead of red neckerchiefs. OSHA regulations would permit the Ultras to participate with the obligatory paperwork, but the SPCA considers that running with the Ultras might be dangerous for the bulls.
6. Occupy: I’m considering here what the club might do with that vaguely unsettling giant, inflatable Amway shirt by the George Best gate.  Perhaps it can be re-purposed into a new home for an ‘Occupy Buck Shaw’ protest movement (slogan: Build It Now!).  However, it’s only a matter of time before an irate fan runs out from within the new structure during the California Clasico to handcuff themselves to David Beckham.
7. Friskies:  Plenty of perks for the pet loving fans here: free pet food, Eleanor Abernathy action figures, litter and scratch-poles in the Epicenter.  Unfortunately, these items might attract feral cats across the railroad track into the stadium; the hairballs would cause nightmares in the little kids.
8. Twinkies: a pastry so unhealthy, so objectionable that their manufacturer is going bankrupt.  Hostess would roll out a Twinkie food truck (The TwinKart; El(evated) Triglyceridense; TwinkiBites), which might be problematic since uneaten Twinkies also come with rigorous EPA regulations for their disposal - the filling is a known bio-hazardous material.
9. Lenscrafters:  The conveniently placed eye-chart on the front of the shirt could all too easily be abused by players, as they argue their case with the referees; I don’t see it myself.
10. Forever Lazy: At first glance, a great idea for the chilly evenings early in the season, but who wants to see the subs sitting on the side line bench in blue fleece onesies with butt flaps?

Honorable Mentions: ‘Onest ‘Arry Redknapp Tax Advisors; Justin Bieber; Nigerian Prince Financial Services, Upstream Tricasters, Zune.  

In the absence of a sponsor, the Colorado Rapids are rewarding their 2012 season ticket holders with their own signature on this season’s shirt.  Maybe the Earthquakes could sign up Sharpie so we can all sign one another’s new empty shirts with their cool silver-inked pens?   You’ll need to buy your unadorned 2012 San Jose Earthquakes shirts now, but if you feel the need to emblazon the blank canvas on your chest with an advertisement, use your own best judgement, and please avoid the sponsors listed above.

Who will you be wearing this year?




This blog was first published on Center Line Soccer on February 9, 2012.

Yet Another Offside Controversy.

The offside rule: the gift that keeps on giving on the field of soccer controversy.  The two words ‘offside’ and ‘controversy’ are often found side by side, just as often as Robert Jonas and El Tonayense taco truck.  Nothing, but nothing, provokes an emotional response deep inside the soul of a soccer fan quite like a good, solid controversial offside call - especially when it’s called at just the right (or wrong) moment of a game.

Controversial offside calls are universal and have been whistled from rec league quagmires to the lush fields of the World Cup; every team in the history of soccer has been on the receiving end of an egregious call.  Officials, driven to distraction by vuvuzelas perhaps in the 2010 World Cup, allowed Carlos Tevez's first goal for Argentina against Mexico, despite being miles offside.  Quakes fans cheered when arch rivals LA Galaxy were denied a goal in the 2011 MLS Cup Final - I’m sure you have your own favorite example.

For the casual fan the offside rule is often misunderstood, and on more than one occasion I have found my British accent a cue for intense cross-examination by soccer moms and dads – the concept of scoring goals is obvious, but they believe it takes years of soccer watching to firmly grasp the offside rule. The official definition of offside is succinctly described by FIFA, with the offside position defined in eighty-one words and the offence in an additional fifty-seven words.  However, the offside rule is hard to explain convincingly, and so it’s often perceived as the benchmark of soccer knowledge (akin to the infield fly rule in baseball).

Both John Cleese and The Guardian demonstrated that the average man on the street finds it surprisingly difficult to explain the offside rule, and appears dazed and confused without some kind of illustrative gadget.  In England, the concept is  easily explained in the greasy spoon over cup of tea and a chip butty using salt & pepper pots with the ketchup representing the goalie, or at the pub with empty glasses and beer mats. 

Now, British fans have a new tool at their disposal – a recently designed fifty pence (about seventy-five cents) coin, minted to celebrate the sports of the 2012 Olympics in Great Britain.  The seven sided coin has captured the greatest talking point in soccer with an illustration depicting offside on the reverse.  The illustration was designed by Neil Wolfson, who used a stunningly simple representation of a midfielder (apparently Triangle FC) about to pass to one of two team-mates: one player is marked as offside, and the second, level with the defender (from Irish club  Square United) is  not offside.

Courtesy the Royal Mint, UK.

Ironically, the coin’s design itself has caused its own controversy – referees wrapped in wet blankets exploited immutable laws of physics and wielded the negative energy of controversy claiming that the designof the coin was incorrect.  They put forward the argument that the diagram illustrates the offside law as it was until 1995, which has since been superseded by a revision that means any player in an offside position when the ball is played is no longer automatically penalised – whatever. 

Designer Wolfson, a sports journalist, cheerfully countered the referees’ argument that the design was meant to demonstrate the offside position – not the offside offense.  "The coin simply states that the player is 'offside' – which is true, irrespective of whether or not an 'offside offence' results...so I simply don't agree with [referee] Mal Davies’s objection on the basis that he refers to the 'offside offence', despite the coin having no such reference.  I just hope Mal doesn't book me for showing dissent." 

I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that referees would focus on the offence rather than the position, it’s just one more occasion that they’ve been witnessed controlling the puppet strings of controversy. Of course, on the other side of the coin,  it’s this very controversy that animates the fans and, to many a publicans’ delight, fuels the heated and lengthy discussions in the pub after the game.  Restaurant profit margins are preserved as table condiments are no longer spilled in lengthy reenactments – the new fifty-pence coin can be safely stowed in your back pocket as a compact visual aid to define the offside position should the need arise.

So, what about that other controversy currently on the minds of San Jose fans: Quakes in blue, or Quakes in black?  Perhaps we should just flip a coin. 

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Originally posted 01/30/2012 at Centerlinesoccer.com

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P.S. 02/02/2012

In response to a question posted on CLS I had fun designing my own coin to explain the infield fly rule.
  

Proposed design for the silver dollar depicting the infield fly rule

Magic Eight Ball: Will Wondo stay in San Jose?

Ask any Earthquakes fan to name a ball player who was at the top of his game, who wore the number eight on his uniform and was an all-star with golden trophies, and they’d surely name their team’s star forward Chris Wondolowski.  Mention also that his father and younger brother both coached the game, that he was a local hero getting ready to play in a new stadium, and that in his down time he loved to hit the hardwood court for a little basketball, they’d reach for their wallet and place their bet confidently on Wondo.  

Not so fast – with intentionally ambiguous grammar, I just shared the life and storied career of baseball hall of famer Cal Ripken Jr., an all-star infielder who played his entire career with the Baltimore Orioles.  All of the facts I listed above are true for both men.  Except that last one:  Cal was an Oriole for his entire career.  San Jose fans hope that all of these ‘Ripdolowski’ coincidences will mean Wondo will be a lifetime Quake, but in light of recent rumors, I’ve acquired a niggling unease that we might not see him in our blue and black for the rest of his career.  And yes, for the purposes of my argument, I have chosen to ignore (and forgive) Chris’s brief excursion to Houston.  The 2005 ‘team kidnapping’ doesn't count – technically he was temporarily a ‘zombie’ Quake.  

Two Number Eights.

I learned all about Cal Ripken Jr. when I lived in Baltimore during the most productive seasons of his career.  Fresh off the plane at BWI airport  in 1990, I didn’t fully appreciate that I had arrived at such a pivotal moment in Charm City’s sporting history – ground had just been broken at Camden Yards, and the indefatigable Cal was in the midst of his record breaking consecutive game streak.  A couple of years later, the stadium opened on April 6, 1992, hot on the heels of Cal’s 1991 Gold Glove winning and MVP season.  Does that scenario sound familiar - golden trophy, new stadium?  Invariably covered in cinnamon sugar from Uncle Teddy’s pretzels, I witnessed Cal Ripken Jr. equal, and then surpass, Lou Gehrig’s 2131 consecutive game streak, as well as an All Star game and two AL pennant series.  When I moved to California in 1997, just as Cal took his number eight jersey from short to third base, I left my last game dabbing a tear from my eye and with a feeling that Camden Yards was The House That Cal Built; it’s a truly beautiful stadium.  

http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com

Meanwhile, during that same summer of ‘97, a teenager from Danville was winning his own baseball championship.  Fourteen year old Chris Wondolowski, himself an outstanding middle infielder, started at second base for the Danville Rockies baseball team that won the 1997 PONY League World Series.  This was the second similarity that I had noticed between the lives of Chris and Cal Ripken Jr. – first there was the coincidence of their number eight jerseys, then there were their World Series rings; Cal won his in his rookie year of 1983. 

Cal Ripken Jr. acquired the number eight on his very first day as a major leaguer, when it was assigned by the club house manager.  Cal didn’t mind,“the number made no difference to me.  I just wanted a big league jersey with any number at all”.  Chris, on the other hand, always wanted the number eight since his U9 days.  In a recent conversation with CLS, Chris’s brother Steve said that family conversations always focused on whether number eight would be available for Chris, conversations that began so long ago he couldn’t really remember why.  Steve did say that Cal Ripken Jr. was one of Chris’s favorite baseball players growing up; it’s unclear if his number eight factored into Chris’s original choice, but as a fan of both players I’d like to believe so.  

Chris’s longtime quest for the number eight jersey was stymied when he turned professional.  In Houston he had to play at number seven, coincidentally the number worn by Cal Ripken Sr., and then Cal’s brother Bill in Baltimore.  In 2009, when Chris was traded back to San Jose, number eight was already assigned, so he took his father’s college number, seventeen; John Wondolowski  played at ‘Cal’ (where else?).  Even though the digits one and seven add up to eight, the octo-mojo (to coin a phrase) didn’t fully take effect until number eight suddenly became available before the 2010 season.  That’s when Chris grabbed his favorite number back, and, of course, scored his way to the Golden Boot – it seems highly unlikely Chris would ever give up the number eight again.  

Two Coaching Families.

When I started to dig a little deeper, I uncovered many more coincidences in the paths followed by the Ripken and Wondolowski families.  Cal’s younger brother Bill played second base for seven years while Cal played shortstop – Chris and Steve both played for the Houston Dynamo from 2007 to 2009.  Both family patriarchs handed down their coaching skills to their sons: Cal Ripken Sr. managed Cal Jr. and Bill as Orioles (still the only time a father has ever simultaneously managed two sons in MLB) – John Wondolowski coached son Chris from U9 to age 14 and is currently Head Assistant Coach for soccer at San Ramon Valley High School, where he is assisted by Steve.  Steve enthusiastically described how he and Chris have already coached together: a freshman team at SRVHS and a competitive girl’s team while they were in Houston.  Steve already has his foot in the coaching door with the Earthquakes and says of Chris “He’s been doing camps for years and years and I see him jumping right in with an academy”.  Bill Ripken, with Cal, is an established baseball instructor in their “Ripken Baseball” academy – if history repeats itself, then a Wondolowski Soccer academy will surely follow.  Deja vu all over again?  

Here’s the final kicker (as it were) – and this is when I got a little freaked out by the sudden apparition of The Twilight Zone theme in my head – the Ripkens love soccer.  In Cal Jr’s autobiography The Only Way I Know, he described how Cal Senior actually knew more about him as a teenage soccer player than as a baseball player – “Soccer was the winter game for both of us”.  Cal Ripken Sr. loved the game and loved to coach the game “During the World Cup, especially, it [was] easy to get Senior to analyze the play of the midfielders with exactly the same precision and passion with which he analyze[d] center fielders”.  

Two Franchise Players.

All of these similarities aside, Chris Wondolowski couldn’t have a better role model than Cal Ripken Jr. Cal was the franchise player when the Baltimore Orioles crossed town from a decrepit football (the throw-ball kind) stadium to the purpose-built brick edifice of Camden Yards.  Cal’s loyalty to his city and its team, and his community work after he retired has earned him such reverence from the club that his number eight jersey was retired – and there’s a fair chance that if you call out ‘Hey Cal’ in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, approximately twelve teenage boys, all sons of Ripken fans, will look up from their crab cake sandwiches.   



It’s my opinion that the San Jose Earthquakes couldn’t have a finer candidate for their franchise player than Chris Wondolowski,  someone around whom the team can be built as we prepare to cross the Caltrain tracks to our own new stadium.  Chris has just had a stellar two seasons on the pitch, and off the field he already conducts himself with the same affable, unselfishness as Ripken.  He has a strong sense of community spirit, recognized last season with a nomination for MLS W.O.R.K.S Humanitarian of the Year for his work with Street Soccer USA.  After each home game, drenched in sweat, he jogs over to commune with the 1906 Ultras (almost as sweaty after a close game) – he then circles the pitch, patiently signing autographs for any fan that wants one.  The countless numbers of small hands thrusting last season’s Wondo bobble head, or their favorite picture through the rails for Chris to sign after the game show me that he also has the heart of the younger Quakes fans – just as Ripken had in Baltimore.  

Will Wondo Stay in San Jose?

With the new stadium closer than ever, I’ve spent a lot of time this off-season wondering if I will be lucky enough to see another number eight inaugurate a new ball field.  I figure on some of my own octo-mojo when I pull out my Magic 8-ball, but it is disappointingly non-committal with its response to my question: “Reply hazy, try again”.  My heart hopes “it is decidedly so”, but when I read recently that Wondo was open to a move to Europe, and about the interest of a couple of Danish teams, some seeds of doubt were planted in my mind.  Wondo is in his prime as a forward and is coming off two MLS seasons as the league’s top scorer – he also made the MLS Best XI, he was Soccer America’s highest ranked striker and won the Castrol Index Player of 2011.  Now that he’s earned a second call up to the US Men’s National Team, his scoring prowess is surely getting noticed by other teams, at home and abroad.  It remains a distinct possibility that one day he could be lured away from San Jose.  


Cal Ripken Jr. chose to stay in Baltimore for his entire career,  presumably declining lucrative offers from larger market teams.  In my vivid imagination, Quakes fans would enlist Cal Ripken Jr. to help persuade Chris to stay with the Quakes. In what is probably the final coincidence, it turns out that both players gravitated towards basketball as their favorite sport outside their chosen profession – Wondo’s MLS biography states “If not playing soccer, he would play basketball because it has a lot of similarities to soccer”, while Cal plays basketball avidly enough to have built his own court beside his house.  So, I envisage Cal battling Chris during a little one on one on the court at Cal’s home.  During the Gatorade breaks, Cal would extol the values of family stability, loyal fan support, and opportunities to serve his own community – all valid reasons to remain with a home town team – they might even argue whose bobble head is more realistic.  Mind you, given the similarity of the two families’ histories, it’s equally possible they would have the same discussion at half-time of a Ripken versus Wondolowski five-a-side contest or between innings of a family softball game.  


In my book, the Ripkens win the softball, the Wondos win the soccer – the basketball outcome, like our hope for Wondo’s future, is still up in the air.


This article appeared first at Center Line Soccer on January 18, 2012.