East Coast Blogging: Sports

There is something very important I want to address: being an East Coast fan of West Coast sports teams.

My life is constantly interrupted by my love of sports. I just received a text message that the 49ers have tied up their football game at 10 all with 1:56 left in the second quarter.

There are two main problems with living on the East Coast during football and basketball season (pro and college):

1. Games start so late during the week
2. Access to games is minimal

The first problem I'd like to gripe about is watching games, period. If a UCLA basketball game starts at 7:30 PST, I'm looking at a 12:30 EST or later bed time on the East Coast. I could swing that when I was 25, but I have a real job now, and it's a bit of a problem. See below for more on being able to watch the game at home, but many of those games are not televised on a channel I can watch at home so...off to the bar. Nothing like staying out drinking until 12:30 for an early January game on a Thursday night.

Last Monday, I stayed up until midnight watching UCLA's unbelievable overtime victory over Tennessee. It was fantastic. However, pretty much the next day I managed to get some sort of summer flu, and I missed several days of work. Hmm...think getting sick had anything to do with staying up late? You bet.

During the college basketball tournament, this becomes a huge problem. Games run late and before you know it, it's midnight, your game is at half time, and you're so amped up that even when you do get to bed, you can't fall asleep for hours from all the adrenaline.

For a while, I tried going to bed early and waking up early to watch my game. Please. I never managed once to get up. I can watch a game if I already know what happens, but being a sports fan, why would I want to unless it was absolutely necessary?

And access to these games is even more miserable.

For NFL games, one can purchase a DirecTV package to follow one team. I suppose if I wanted to follow two teams, I could buy two. For college sports however, the best this UCLA fan can do is buy access to the radio commentary of games, and hope the games are broadcast on the bar sports package plan every week. There is some law against colleges broadcasting all their games online (something with amateur athletes not being able to make a profit), and lord knows the Pac-10 television sports contract with Fox Sports doesn't do a thing to fill in all the gaps. If I get lucky and a game is on CBS, I can buy the right to watch it online for 10 bucks. Those games are few and far between.

Once when UCLA was in the top 10 in college football, I had to listen to the game at home on Internet radio (the aforementioned UCLA CSTV school sports plan). Wasn't a big game nationally, even though they were top ten. Game wasn't shown on FSP.

I'm not going to give up on sports, and I don't think I'll be leaving the East Coast for a while, so I've had to get used to it. I just find myself in complete envy of fans of East Coast teams. They have it so good.