Discuss Tickets

The Super Bowl only happens once a year, so I think it’s important to embrace that and write some more about it. This weekend is going to be a really impressive game. Two teams that aren’t very flashy, but very much down at the small-ball level of play. It’s always fun to see such teams playing well and taking each other on in a game that’s big. The big-bomber teams, like the Titans and Colts and Giants (now) are sometimes less interesting to watch, in our opinion, so it’s even better when we can actually see some teams that have to rely on strategy rather than brute force to win the game. And even moreso in the Super Bowl where anything can happen. It’s going to be an impressive game, so you better tune in!

I heard an interesting discussion on the radio this morning about how the economy has affected sports. In some ways, it seems like it hasn’t been affected at all. After all, you don’t hear about players or coaches getting laid off in large numbers, like you had last week at Microsoft and other places. But it is a little more subtle in the sports world. Sponsorship is down. And tickets sellers have a bit less flexibility in terms of their prices now. Even on the non-primary market levels of the ticket business, the prices are dropping a bit more than usual. Not that they are going to be $10 to see the big game, but still, decent for such a high-profile event.

How about a show in London that is about Michael Jackson? It is a show featuring talented singers and outstanding dancers. It is a tough show to review though. Let’s be clear about this: Michael Jackson is not in the show. Thriller Live as the show is called, is not such a great show. Yes, it’s thrilling, but it isn’t anything really exciting besides in terms of the music. Yes, we can enjoy it on that point. But there is no decent plot, or even a script. The reviewer says that all the dialogue could fit on two pages of A4 paper, which is the standard paper size over there. For a West End show, you’d think they could at least get a decent script out of it. But if you can enjoy the music and relive some of those great song, and learn a little in between, that’s probably enough.

The War of the Roses Part One just finished its run in the Sydney Theater. The show was supposed to be one of the really good ones to come out in the last decade. But for the reviewer, it is one of the more difficult shows for an audience to understand. The audience has to concentrate hard for a full 4 hours in order to get anything out of it. There is a cool moment where the players are showered with gold pieces for a full hour of the production, but even this they don’t pull of completely. It’s kind of too bad, really. The actors are good, they do exactly as they should. The reviewer really just didn’t like the show. It’s too showy and doesn’t give you anything really to chew upon.

Just like in Burt Reynolds’ classic “The Longest Yard,” a former pro quarterback is now playing football in prison. Michael Vick, the former Falcons quarterback arrested on federal charges for illegal dogfighting, has been keeping his arm loose while playing football in prison; just in case he has plans of returning to the NFL once his time is up. He may be eligible for parole as early as sometime this spring.

Plaxico Burress has been out of NFL for several weeks now, having missed out on a chunk of the NY Giants’ great season as well as an unfortunate loss this last weekend to the Philadelphia Eagles. So now what? Apparently they say that they are interested in getting Burress back onto the team. This guy shot himself with a gun that he wasn’t allowed to have and then was found to have many more such weapons in his home, after a police raid made it happen. It’s too bad that the Giants think that their best bet it to have Burress come back and then we’ll see what happens. The team obviously needs to work on some things, but I don’t know how much new players might help.

The feelings between Marian Gaborik and the Minnesota Wild Staff are tense to say the least. While his play on the ice is nothing short of fantastic, that point is now irrelevant. His severe groin injury, that was supposed to keep him from a substantial amount of ice time, has now developed into a problem that requires surgery and more time off the ice. Not only will this hinder the Gaborik’s immediate success, it will also affect the his future, seeing as how he will become a free agent at the end of the season, and most teams will balk at an injury prone player. This is all after he snubbed the $8 million for 1 year deal that the Wild previously offered him.

Major League Baseball has a lot of change to do during the next few weeks. There is just a little while left until the beginning of spring training and it’s going to be a great time. But at this point, it’s really hard to know what the teams are going to turn out like. There are many high-profile players and many generally good players still looking around for a team to pick them up. That the teams are scaling back slightly from last year because of the economic situation, they feel a need to hold onto some extra money and keep things down for now. This is why there are many players that are still looking around for teams that have some money and interest. There’s still a big chance for teams to get a lot better over the next little while, but we’ll see how that’s going.

With the beginning of the NFL playoffs only about 24 hours away, there’s plenty of not surprising faces in the playoffs. Both the Mannings, Big Ben Roethlisberger and Philip Rivers. On the other hand, there will be some delightfully fresh faces on the field as well. Matt Ryan and Joey Flacco, rookie quarterbacks for the Falcons and Ravens respectively, will look to cap off their first seasons with a Super Bowl title. Meanwhile, Chad Pennington (a not so fresh faced veteran) will take his AFC West winning Dolphins into the postseason while his former team, The Jets, watch it all from their living rooms.