A Question of Sport

The Final Four has invaded Indy. Or, more correctly, I guess I should say the corporate sponsors have invaded Indy. They've plastered Coke and Bud Light signage on every available inch of the downtown buildings, and most of the streets around Monument Circle are shut down and covered in lighting rigs, speakers, and giant projection screens shilling their products (all guarded by some flabby meatheads wearing security shirts who feel they have to earn their minimum wage by being total dicks and not letting you cross the street to get to your office because they're assembling some scaffolding 2 blocks away and "someone could get hurt"). It takes a good 10-15 minutes to make the 5 block drive from my apartment to my work. There appear to be about 200 portable trailers selling all manner of fried food (and to wash it down, of course, Coke and Budweiser products). Half of the circle is now buried under a stage where 80,000 people are expected to gather to see Michelle Branch, John Mellencamp and Carrie Underwood. Nothing like an American Idol winner to bring out the masses. But it's all worth it, because millions of dollars will be spent in Indy this weekend. Millions of dollars of free publicity will be generated for the sponsors. Hundreds of thousands of man-hours will be wasted by workers staring out their windows at all the chaos and holding on that last little slim hope that they might still win their office pool. Oh, and somewhere in all this mess, some college kids will play a couple of basketball games. Luckily, I managed to get something worthwhile out of this deal, scoring some free tickets to see a non-lip-synched concert when Robert Randolph and the Family Band play tomorrow afternoon at... the Bud Light tent? Shit. I guess nobody's safe from the long arm of corporate whoredom.

While most of the country is gearing up for this moneymaking extravaganza, I'm saving my excitement for the fact that this is Opening Weekend for MLS. All 12 teams are in action, with 3 matches on Saturday and 3 on Sunday. There are 2 matches on national TV tomorrow: Chicago and Dallas start the day on ABC at 4 pm Eastern, and ESPN2 has the rematch of last year’s final between LA and New England, at 11 pm. My boys from DC United open the season on Sunday at home against the New York Red Bulls, one of two teams that changed their name this year. The Red Bulls used to be the Metrostars, but were bought only a month ago by (believe it or not), Red Bull, and immediately rebranded. The other team with an identity crisis ended last year as the San Jose Earthquakes. During the offseason, they moved to Houston, where they were christened Houston 1836, after the year Texas won its independence from Mexico. Unfortunately, this managed to piss off the very Hispanic community the team was trying to attract, so they wisely and quickly changed the name again, settling on Houston Dynamo. They did manage to get one thing right, though, ending up with some of the coolest uniforms in the league. For more info, ESPN and MLSnet have both extensively previewed the new season, and SoccerTimes has a condensed wrapup of the offseason.

So between Final Four-related activities and a wide range of televised soccer, I’m in for a busy weekend. Usually, I’d be joined in my excitement by my friends Todd and Cynthia, but for some reason they seemed to think a two-week vacation in Australia would somehow be more interesting than sitting on the couch watching sports. Different strokes, I guess...

AP Photo