| | | I thought the Yankees would win it in five. I thought NASCAR fans would learn to love Jeff Gordon. I thought the Michael Jackson concert wouldn't rate all that well. I thought Elvis Grbac would keep Shannon Sharpe very, very happy. I thought Jason Giambi would win the American League MVP. I thought Pete Carroll was a big mistake for USC.
|  | | "What do I know? I thought Elvis Grbac would be a great fit in Baltimore." |
I might need to stop with all the thinking, and just react more. Trust my instincts, you know?
Days later, I'm still hearing about all the fistfights and beef-on-the-street that went down at the USC-UCLA game. And my reaction is always the same:
Huh?
Like it's Alabama-Auburn? Or Rahman-Lewis? Or Bledsoe-Brady?
This, I will confess with the wide eyes of the geographic outsider, is a said-to-be-bitter rivalry whose alleged passions I truly do not comprehend. I mean, get real. People, we live in Southern California ... we've got the sun, the beach, the beauty of our L.A. sisters and brothers ... and if we had our own Olympic team, we'd win so many medals that NBC's genial man of letters Jimmy Roberts (whom I met on the "Tin Cup" set, but that's another story) would need a week's worth of video encomia just to remind us How Great We Art.
Even if the town of Los Angeles is, as my wife, Gretchen Henry, once said, "the boyfriend in whose arms you don't want to die."
|  | | The "bad blood" between USC and UCLA spilled over into the stands. |
Still, it seems true that the SoCal fan is typically not nearly so rabid as her East Coast counterpart. From where I've sat, the stereotypes do appear to be true. I took my son to an L.A. Kings game early in the 1990s, and he screamed so loudly for Wayne Gretzky that season-ticket holders four and five rows ahead of us were craning their necks backward to get a look. (If only my daughter had screamed that loudly when Kerri Strug fell off the balance beam as we watched her post-Olympic performance live in "MGM on Ice.")
I wasn't at the Kings' playoff game against the Red Wings last spring or the Lakers' fourth quarter revival against the Blazers in 2000, so my favorite L.A. fan experience comes from the 1994 World Cup final. I went to the game fully intending to buy a ticket from a scalper, but $425 per was just a little too rich for my blood. Instead, I blew off the ticket and stood immediately outside the Rose Bowl with about 20,000 Brazilian fans and watched the game on TV, as we tried to shield the screen from the bright sun.
The match ended in a 0-0 tie and went to penalty kicks -- hey, if they want to settle the most important sports championship in the world with a skills competition, so be it -- and when Italy's noble, exhausted Roberto Baggio put his kick over the crossbar, the Brazilian party was on. I must have been the only guy there without a flag, a drum, or a booty worth shaking. Not that that stopped me.
|  | | Roy Williams proved that wearing an Hawaiian shirt doesn't mean you're happy. |
But oh, that heat ... sort of like the Maui Invitational. Even if it didn't have all those kids fainting from the heat and humidity -- and it didn't bump Wednesday's "Unscripted" to ESPN2 -- I'd still watch the Maui Invitational, just to see Kansas coach Roy Williams in a Hawaiian shirt. Until I saw coach Williams, I wasn't aware that it was physically possible to frown in a Hawaiian shirt: I can now report that while it is indeed possible, it is not especially flattering, especially when you're getting beaten by David Letterman's alma mater. (Hey, did Chaminade beat Ralph Sampson on Classic this month?)
It's not widely known, but I, too, once took part in a Maui invitational: the press junket for the Leonardo DiCaprio movie, "The Beach." It was a luau-filled whoopeefest, to be sure, but the closest that trip came to producing a sports highlight was DiCaprio crony Tobey McGuire (pre-"Spider-Man") winning some low-stakes but emotionally intense games of backgammon in the hotel lounge against a series of exceptionally lissome infotainers, including the dazzling E!goddess Jules Asner, this month's Maxim
cover girl. The key to Tobey's success? He always brought his own board ...
... and was always in Leo's posse.
Leo's game is, of course, hoops -- and in that realm I find myself wishing there was some higher league where the Lakers could truly be challenged. The "statement game" that Jason Kidd and the Nets laid on the Knicks last Friday had me thinking the Clippers perhaps could do the same. Uh, right. I knew it was over when I saw Shaq go the length of the court and throw down a slam that reinvented the adjective "Robazine-crying."
See? I went into this season figuring Baron Davis would become a full-fledged superstar, yes, but also thinking the Kings would fold without C-Webb and J-Will, and the Grizzlies would be a lot better than expected. I thought the Lakers would struggle early, and that Tim Hardaway would never turn on Pat Riley, and that with Michael Jordan on the floor, Christian Laettner would finally become the scoring threat that he's always seemed on the verge of becoming, and ...
... well, like the movie says, "You keep thinking, Butch. That's what you're good at."
Chris Connelly writes a weekly column for Page 2. "Unscripted with Chris Connelly," the TV show airs at 5 p.m. ET, Monday-Friday on ESPN.
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