Au Revoir, Ailes Rouges

As the Predators...ahem...move onto the second round, here's a parting shot to the Red Wings and their fans:

Winning the cup 11 times in 86 years means that you've failed to win it 75 times. And 7 of those Stanley Cups came when there were only 6 teams in the league and it only took 8 wins to claim it. The self-imposed "dynasty" tag is really nothing more than a smokescreen to hide the 40 years the team sucked from the 50s to the 90s. Congratulations on the TWO cups you've won in the modern era of 30 NHL teams. You deserved those, and you've had a very good team over the past decade. But your time is finished. Your supposed "dynasty" is over. Your players are old and your franchise has a bleak future, as the rest of the Central Division (except for Columbus) has passed you by. Goodbye, Detroit. Don't let the Bridgestone Arena door hit you in the butt.

Sommet Remains Black Eye For Predators

In 2007, Sommet Group, with its pastel green and blue stick-man logo, popped up seemingly out of nowhere to put its name on the downtown arena at a time when the Nashville Predators desperately needed sponsorship.

Source: http://gigapan.org/gigapans?tags=tennessee

"What is a Sommet and how do you pronounce it?" was my initial thought. At the time, I had been living in Alabama for two years and figured that my knowledge of Nashville was beginning to fall behind the times, and that this "Sommet" was a major player in my hometown. As it turns out, people all over Middle Tennessee had the same questions.

Right around the time we all figured out how to say the name and began to surmise what they did (simply put, Sommet Group provided back-office support for small businesses‒—sometimes), the Predators sued Sommet in November 2009 for non-payment, and the Sommet name was abruptly removed from the arena in early 2010, a few months shy of the length of the term. Curiously, though, the Sommet name remained elsewhere in the arena, even on the dasherboards through the 2010 season.

A few months later, Sommet's offices in Cool Springs were raided by the FBI and the company was effectively shut down. The Predators turned around and whistled as if nothing had ever happened, washing its hands of the one-time partnership.

Today, we learned that the scumbag leaders of this company were indicted on Federal charges of fraud, theft, and money laundering. Among their alleged crimes: 

The Whitfields committed wire fraud, including stealing from an employee pension plan, to pay $254,535 toward their arena naming-rights obligations. 

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, their employees' pension plans paid for the naming rights of the arena.

Here's a brilliant idea... let's commit fraud and launder the money to make our name WIDELY known!


I mean, seriously... the writing was on the wall. A small B2B company with a tiny leased office in Cool Springs suddenly has the money to plaster its name across a major sports arena. Did no one with the Predators analyze this? Or did they just not care?

Sommet's name remained on the boards
even after Bridgestone had taken over
the arena naming rights.
Photo: self-taken, March 23, 2010

The deal was inked in May 2007, on just a three-year term. Three years is breathtakingly small for a major naming rights agreement, but the thought that the Predators would even be in the arena in 2010 was, frankly, a pipedream. The team was all but gone at that point. Whether Boots Del Biaggio was moving it to Kansas City or Jim Balsillie was taking our talents to Hamilton, the team simply wouldn't be in Nashville after the 2007-08 season. Everybody knew it. Craig Leipold certainly knew he wouldn't be around much longer. (He announced a week later he was selling the team to Balsillie.) Taking Sommet's money was a quick-fix cash-grab. It was a band-aid. The risk was worth taking, because the ones who made the deal wouldn't even be around to see it through.

We all know the rest of the story: how Boots is in jail, how Balsillie has lost control of his company, how the Preds were saved by local businessmen, how Bridgestone became our new favorite tire, and how <ahem> golden the Predators have become, both on and off the ice... but every time this Sommet story rears its ugly head, one cannot help but think of the arena downtown‒—and by proxy, the Predators‒—and how sad and sordid the Sommet affair really was.

Plane Crash Claims Two Former Predators

This has just been a horrific summer for the global ice hockey community. Already reeling from the deaths of three active or recently-retired NHL players (Derek Boogaard, Rick Rypien, and Wade Belak), the hockey world today learned of a plane crash in Russia that claimed all but one member of the HC Lokomotiv Yaroslavl team of the Kontinental Hockey League, which included several former NHL all-stars.

Among those killed in the crash are former Nashville Predators players Josef Vasicek and Karlis Skrantins, which coupled with the untimely death of Belak one week ago, means that in the course of eight days, this franchise has lost three of its former players. Also killed in today's crash was defenseman Robert Dietrich, who was drafted by the Predators and played two years with the Milwaukee Admirals (and a few preseason games for the Preds). Prior to this week, only one former Predator had passed away (Sergei Zholtok to natural causes in 2004).

As we inch closer to another exciting season of Predators hockey, let's pause and reflect on these players who helped create an electric atmosphere at 501 Broadway, and whose lives were brought to a far-too-early end.

• Pete Weber remembers Karlis Skrastins

AP Report: Belak Hanged Himself; How should the Preds memorialize him?

The story of Wade Belak's death caught Smashville by obvious surprise yesterday afternoon, but the latest news may even be more surprising.

As first reported last night by the Toronto Sun, and now being reported by the Associated Press, Wade Belak hanged himself in his hotel room.

This sad story simply became more shocking, as if that was even possible. No one, at least not anyone who has gone on record, saw this coming. Wade had just started hosting a new weekly radio show in Nashville, he had just in the past week agreed to work on the Predators' television broadcasts, and he was in Toronto to work on a Canadian reality show. In other words, it's highly possible that his profile, at least here in Nashville, would have been higher than even during his playing days.

At a press conference last evening, Predators GM David Poile said that Belak was at the Predators' offices on Monday, and was as happy-go-lucky as ever. Twitter user @thepuckdude tweeted this photo earlier today, which he says was taken Tuesday night and theorizes could be the last photo ever taken of Belak. He appears to be having a good time at a bar.

I shouldn't speculate about why Wade Belak would have taken his own life. I didn't know the man, and I obviously didn't know his struggles. But it seems that literally no one saw this coming.

If you feel so inclined, you can donate $3 (Wade wore #3) to the National Tourette Syndrome Association. Wade's daughter has been diagnosed with the disease, and that was the charity for which Wade was scheduled to compete during Battle of the Blades. You can get more information over at PuckScene.

This story is just awful, and how the Predators choose to memorialize him will be tricky. The situation won't be as tricky as the situation facing the Titans following Steve McNair's death two years ago, but it would behoove the Predators to do something, especially considering Belak's popularity among the local fan base.

My idea.

My idea: a small circular helmet sticker (if the NHL even allows that) featuring the #3 in the old Predators font. Or... since the new guitar pick is only on one shoulder, a small patch featuring this design could be affixed to the other shoulder.

What do you think?

Wade Belak Found Dead in Toronto

Wade Belak, 1976-2011

Very sad news out of Toronto today that former Predators (among other teams) enforcer Wade Belak has passed away. According to a report by QMI Agency, Belak was found dead in a hotel earlier today. He was in Toronto working on "Battle of the Blades", a Canadian reality television show. The cause of death is as yet unknown.

Belak was scheduled to have his own radio show on 102.5 The Game, as well as taking on a role as the team's bench reporter for radio and TV broadcasts.

Belak was an entertaining player on and off the ice. He was a tough guy with a tender heart, and had one hell of a sense of humor. His promising radio career began as a color analyst on select Predators games last season, following his retirement. I will forever remember him nearly choking on his cough drop following the dramatic Game 5 win against Anaheim in the 2011 Stanley Cup Playoffs.

Belak is the second former Predator to pass away. Sergei Zholtok died in November 2004 shortly after a game in Belarus, where he was playing professionally during the season-canceling NHL Lockout.

Wade Belak was 35 years old. May he rest in peace.

"Is There A Preds Game Today?"

Though there was a Titans game* tonight at LP Field (which, because it is preseason, I refused to give any credence to), this was a day devoted to the Predators for me. First, my lovely wife and I went downtown to the Predators "tailgate party" (a thinly-veiled attempt by the Preds to grab the attention of the many Titans fans who were streaming into downtown before the game*), and then later to "Preds Night" at the Sounds game.

My "uniform" today.

All the while, I was decked out in Predators gear. GOLD Predators gear. I'm definitely an early-adopter of the goldness. I donned my gold cap and my gold "We are hockey. We are Smashville." t-shirt. I definitely stuck out.

As I walked around proudly donning this apparel, I was asked the same question twice: "Is there a Preds game today?" In August. In 90-degree heat. "Is there a Preds game today?" Twice.

Unfortunately, I had to tell them no. Man, oh man, do I wish there HAD been a Preds game today. I'm hockey-starved. I'm playing NHL 11 on the Playstation3 as much as I possibly can. It's the only hockey fix I can get right now. (I can't seem to let the NHL Playoff replays on NHL Network grab my attention.)

What this tells me, however, is that the Preds have reached a point where they have captured the casual sports fan in Nashville. People may not make the cognitive connection that hockey = ice = cold = winter, but they do know they're excited about the Predators and they're ready to pay attention.

It's going to be interesting to see the excitement level around the Predators in October. If the Titans have already lost the city's attention by virtue of a poor early-season showing, I believe the Predators' playoff buzz will survive the summer and we'll see an increased level of interest.

At least I hope so.

Predators To Get 3 U.S. Nationwide Broadcasts in 2011-12

Not much National TV time for the Preds

The NHL released the schedule of games to appear on its national broadcast partners today, which in the United States is NBC, Versus, and NHL Network USA.

All said, the Nashville Predators will only get THREE national broadcasts, and none on NBC. That's all. Three. For a team that made the Western Conference Semifinals last year and provided some of the most exciting games of the playoffs. Three.

102.5 The Game To Carry Alabama Football

The Crimson Tide Sports Network will
soon be a part of "The Game" airscape.

There is some new info coming out today about the new-sports-radio-station-to-be. WPRT-FM, whose management announced Monday that the station now known as "The Party" will soon be known as "102.5 The Game", will carry University of Alabama football, according to RollTide.com. The university's athletic website has quietly listed WPRT-FM as the radio affiliate for Nashville.

As the station has all-but-confirmed its intention to move the Predators over from sister station WBUZ 102.9, there will likely be some programming conflicts in October and November, when Alabama often plays Saturday evening games at the same time the Predators are scheduled to be playing. The SEC football schedule is set week-to-week by television partners CBS and ESPN, so any potential conflicts will only be discovered around 10 days in advance. I am fairly certain that the Preds would get priority over Alabama, so hockey fans need not fret.

102.5 FM To Become Sports Talk Station "The Game"

Image courtesy AllAccess.com

If you've read my initial post on this blog (despite the fact that the name of the blog has since changed)... you know that I made my career in the sports radio industry until early 2010. News breaks today, courtesy of radio industry news site AllAccess Music Group, that WPRT-FM (102.5 The Party) will soon be changing formats and becoming "102.5 The Game". The morning show, titled "The First Quarter", will be hosted by Darren McFarland and Brad Hopkins, who have been anchoring "The Afternoon Press Box" at 560 WNSR for the past few months.

Currently, I am employed part-time by Cumulus Media, the company in the process of purchasing Citadel Media, parent company of Nashville's other FM sports station, 104.5 The Zone. So, I will offer no further comment on this news, due to my obvious conflicts of interest. Instead, I will direct you to the aforementioned AllAccess article, and to the blog at Section303.com discussing the implications involving the Predators.

However, I do wish the folks at the new station the best. Competition makes everyone better.

• 102.5 (WPRT-FM) Coverage Map

I'm a Hockey Fan, So I'm Smarter Than You

...or so I have been accused.

The Facebook argument went as such:

A friend (who shall remain nameless, unless you are a Facebook friend of both of us) believes that the poor reaction to Titans single-game ticket sales had nothing to do with Chris Johnson. I reply that I believe that's a part of it, as well as a whole host of other BS that has gone on with the Titans (see my previous blog post). He replies that it's purely the economy, and nothing else. I disagree, and point out that the Predators have increased ticket sales in the same "bad economy" the Titans are dealing with. I am then told that the fan bases are totally different and that I am "rich" (which I definitely am not... it took me 5 months of extra jobs to save up the money to buy 1 season of Preds tickets).

And then the bomb was dropped...

 YOU are obviously one of those Preds fans who believes that being a hockey fan makes you more intelligent and sophisticate than the rest of us.

BOOM! There it is. I am a pretentious hockey fan.

And I didn't even point out to him that he misspelled "sophisticated." So, I may be smarter, but I still have tact.

Shea Weber is a Nashville Predator

I can haz $8 mil?

I'll fully admit this: I don't know a whole lot about how the NHL arbitration process works, but I've been given a crash course over the past 24 hours. I do know, however, that the Twitterverse is overreacting to WeberWatch.

But, in the grand tradition of this baby blog, let's step back and look at this thing from a broader scope. Shea Weber will be wearing the Predators logo on his sweater next year. Right now, that's all we know. Beyond that, though, we'll figure out in due time, I guess. But we're supposed to be taking this one year at a time, right? Are we seriously worried right now about winning the Stanley Cup in 2014? I'm not. I want the Predators to win it in 2012, and I'm sure the Predators want to win it in 2012, too. Nobody in that organization, Shea Weber included, is considering 2011-12 a "building block" year toward a future Cup. The goal is to win it, and win it now. If that means this is the "all in" year (with apologies to Auburn University), then for goodness' sake, this is the "all in" year. I fully understand that it's best to look to the future when making plans, and I really want Shea Weber to spend the best years of his career here, but really, all we can control is what we can control right now, and that's the 2011-12 season that begins in 65 days (but who's counting?).

If we lose Shea Weber next year or the year after, that will suck. Acknowledged. I don't want that to happen. But the team (hopefully) will remain in Nashville, and we will press on with or without him. If Weber opts for the 1-year deal out of arbitration, let's just hope that he was true to his word in that he wants to stay here, and that the short-term deal is only to gauge the franchise as it works toward signing Pekka Rinne and Ryan Suter long-term, too, and maybe even getting a viable goal-scoring forward at the deadline.

The real thing to remember here, folks, is that we don't know everything we think we know. It's mostly speculation at this point. We're trusting reports out of Canadian MSM for the numbers we've heard so far, and we have no way of knowing if those are even right, nor do we know exactly what was said in the hearing. For all we know, this could be very amicable. I trust David Poile. He's proven over time that he knows what he is doing.

Go ahead and tell me I'm naive. That's what the comment section is for.

==
UPDATE: Later in the day, we found out that Weber received an arbitration award of a 1-year, $7.5 million contract. My previous statements still apply. The time to win the Cup is now (even if it is followed by a Florida Marlins-esque fire sale). I just hope Poile can surround our "Big 3" with the complementary talent they need to get the job done.

Could Nashville Support the MLS?

Major League Soccer in Nashville?

Is Nashville ripe ground for a Major League Soccer team? We've certainly seen good crowds come to LP Field for the Team USA friendlies in recent years. Some 20,000 attended the most recent one at the same time the Predators played to a sold-out crowd at Bridgestone Arena.

While you may say, "Soccer?!?", I say that Nashville has an increasingly diverse population and a large (and rapidly growing) percentage of immigrants from countries where fútbol is king. And, of course, there's the old standby reasoning: kids play soccer and it's on the cusp of being the next big thing (which people have been saying since the 70s).

Overhead for an MLS team is rather low. Currently only 6 players in the league command a salary of $1 million or more, but 3 of those (Thierry Henry, David Beckham, and Rafael Marquez) are over $4 million, and the market for Henry and Marquez was no doubt driven up by Beckham's exorbitant contract with the LA Galaxy a few years ago. The average player salary is around $140,000, and that's including those players above the million-dollar mark. You could stock an entire team for less than the Predators are paying Sergei Kostitsyn this year.

The big question is: Who would own the team and where would they play? The answer that would come to everyone's mind immediately is LP Field. Not gonna happen. The only way Nashville will get a MLS team in the immediate future would be if Bud Adams ponies up for the franchise. His old buddy, the late Lamar Hunt, was a charter MLS owner, but the old bird-flipping curmudgeon from Houston is pushing 90 years old now, and I don't see launching a new soccer franchise in Nashville as a high priority for him. And if Bud doesn't own the team, it's not going to play at LP Field. The owner would have to pay rent, no control over any off-field signage, and the Titans would keep the concession & parking money. Good luck with that.

(Ed.Note: J.R. Lind tweets me this: "Also worth noting: MLS would have to waive soccer-specific stadium req to play at LP Field. They've only done that once, for SEA [Seattle]. And Seattle pre-sold like 37K season tix")

It would take someone who would be willing to finance a privately-owned stadium (capacity 18,000-25,000), on land possibly donated by Metro for the cause. I wouldn't ask Metro for any cash right now...with the Music City Center stretching the town thin and Mayor Dean barely interested in getting a new stadium for the Sounds, the city probably wouldn't be willing to take the risk on soccer. But, if the Sounds end up getting a new ballpark downtown, Greer Stadium's current location (with a new building, of course) might be the perfect place to land. With the Predators having a rather large ownership group of local business leaders, I don't know if someone here in town would be available or willing to start such a venture. It might take somebody from the outside (let's hope it's not Craig Leipold) to make it happen.

Even with all that said and a lot of questions left to be answered, I believe within the next 5-10 years, Nashville will be home to a Major League Soccer franchise. Not quite yet...but soon.

A Different Window of Opportunity

The Predhead shows off his new colors.

I am passionate about the Nashville Predators like I have never been about a sports team in my life. Part of that is due to the tight community of fans that I’ve become tuned into through various forms of social media over the past year. Another part is: I absolutely love the city of Nashville and almost everything about it. I take pride in the awesome things our city brings to the world, and the Preds are no different. This is Nashville’s team. This is the only major professional sports team that bears our city’s name. Sure, the Titans have a larger fan base and represent our city as well, but they focus on being a regional draw with the “Tennessee” name. I bet if you polled 10 NFL fans in another part of the country, at least 3 of them would say the Titans are located in Memphis. The Titans don't do a whole lot to associate themselves with the city.

On the other hand, the Predators are ours. They are proud to call Nashville home, and they went so far to prove that by putting piano keys, guitar strings, and a guitar pick on the new uniforms (that's a different post for a different day). They're a way we can reach out to the world and say, "Hey. This is our team. They play hockey, but they also represent what is so great about our city. They're classy. They're hard-working. Watch them play, and then come to visit, and you'll see why we love our city and our team."

Much has been made recently about the “window of opportunity”, pertaining to a competitive agenda, facing the Nashville Predators. With guys like Shea Weber, Ryan Suter, and Pekka Rinne leading the team now, and the massive upside of guys like Mike Fisher, Patric Hornqvist, and Sergei Kostitsyn (and don't forget Ryan Ellis) who are sure to step up their games as this team finds room to compete for a Stanley Cup.

But that’s not the window of opportunity I’m talking about. There is a gigantic open window for the Predators, and it looks out toward LP Field. I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but the professional football team that calls that stadium home has run into a bit of turmoil lately.

All seemed well until that fateful week when the Titans were slated to play against the Washington Redskins in November. The Titans were on pace to make the playoffs, and all seemed well with the team. They acquired Randy Moss, to much fanfare. Then it all fell apart. Rapidly. Beginning that day, the Titans began to unravel. And that unraveling continues now. Whether or not they’ll be able to pick up the pieces remains to be seen, but even the most optimistic Titan fan will tell you that it's going to take a while. It started with Vince Young quitting on the team during that game, and led to the postgame fireworks in the locker room between Young and Jeff Fisher. Then, for two months, Titans fans began a civil war with each other as the losses piled up. Either you were “Team Vince”, or you were “Team Fisher”. Or, if you were like me, you were on “Team I Wish Both Of Them Would Be Gone.” (My team won, by the way.). Let us not forget that the team proceeded to do absolutely nothing with Moss (it reminds me of the way WCW treated Bret Hart), not that Moss had any reason to be excited to be there. The team kept losing. And losing. And losing. There was absolutely no leadership. Toward the end, it seemed as if they weren't even trying anymore, and they probably weren't. After the decision to cut Vince Young, and three weeks later, Jeff Fisher’s abrupt departure, we got to see that amazing press conference where WGFX’s Clay Travis sparred with Titans front office head honcho Steve Underwood. The Titans then hired an unproven head coach who filled out his staff with what seems to be an island of misfit toys (with the exception of Bruce Matthews), and then the NFL Lockout was on. The team drafted a quarterback with accuracy issues. Kenny Britt got arrested…multiple times. Kerry Collins called it a career.

Since that 1999 run to Super Bowl XXXIV, the Titans have been the 800-pound gorilla of Nashville sports, but it’s hard to find someone right now who is absolutely passionate about the state of the Tennessee NFL franchise. The old saying “hope springs eternal” may not be totally true. The Titans’ may need to go dig another hope well, because the current one is drying up. That’s where the Predators come in.

In hindsight, the timing couldn’t have been better. In the summer of 2010, the Predators brought in a new CEO (Jeff Cogen) and COO (Sean Henry). These master salesmen took an already-good product and made it better, both on-ice and off. The marketing strategy changed from a “hockey-first” pitch to a “Hey, come down to the arena and be a part of something fun” pitch. Did you notice the TV commercials for the Preds last season? Very few of them showed hockey players or on-ice action. Opposing teams were only mentioned in the tag at the end of the spots announcing the next home game. Instead, the focus was on the fans. You saw shots of Broadway before the games, and people cheering inside the arena. You saw people interacting with the Predators’ dancers, and Gnash with kids. We weren’t being sold on hockey. We were being sold on the experience. The sizzle, not the steak. And, whaddya know, more people started coming to the games, and the energy inside the arena led to more wins. The playoffs rolled around, and Nashville had a winner to support. The excitement during the latter games of the Anaheim series and all throughout the Vancouver series led to a fever pitch I haven’t seen in this city since that 1999 Titans Super Bowl run. Though the season ended in the second round, Nashville finally figured out what it had been missing for ten years: there’s a hockey team on Broadway, and lo and behold, it’s a lot of fun to watch them play.

The Preds rose to prominence during the leanest of times for the Titans and gave Nashville something to cheer about. As the NFL lockout ends and the season begins, there’s not much to be hopeful for with the boys in blue, but the guys in gold are giving us something to love. Just as the Titans are going through their deepest valley since moving to Nashville, the Predators are climbing a mountain. I firmly believe they can reach the goal of 25 sellouts this year. The real question is: "Will the Preds hang onto these new fans once they falter and the Titans start winning again?" That's going to be a challenge. But if the people who came to love the Preds during the Titans' struggles are like me, they'll get hooked on hockey; not just our team, but the game as a whole.

There is room for both teams in this town. The Preds sputtered along in first gear for the first 12 years, but they shifted into second gear last season, and as the generations change, I think we'll see more off-ice success for the Preds. The news that Bridgestone Arena has ranked among the world's top concert venues only helps things. Though the city owns the building, the Preds see that revenue, and that's helping to stabilize the finances of the team and make it more competitive on and off the ice. It's allowing them to eventually invest more in the products they control (the team and the building), as they pointed out at the Skate of the Union. Cogen and Henry worked with what they inherited last season, and they've had a year to make this team their own. We're beginning to see the effects of that now with the team's rebranding efforts, the increased amount of non-hockey events happening at the arena, and the aesthetic changes coming to the building itself... and I'm getting very excited about the future.

Though I hope the Titans come back to prominence sooner rather than later, I really think the Preds have a chance here to solidify their place in the hearts of Nashville's casual sports fans that have, to this point, pretty much been Titans-exclusive. I hate to go back to the Herb Brooks “Miracle” line, but hey Preds: this is YOUR time, now go out there and take it. The window of opportunity is wide open.

To All Who Come To This Happy Place: Welcome.

To all who come to this happy place: Welcome.

Okay, that was what Walt Disney said when he introduced Disneyland to the world in 1955. So, I totally ripped that off. But, the sentiment behind it is the same. Welcome to Big Picture Sports.

I’m not going to break down contracts. I’m not going to analyze stats. I’m calling this Big Picture Sports, because I want to take a look at, well, the big picture. The great thing about blogs is that the infinite amount of space provided allows us to get really deep into the details. That’s great and all, but that’s not where I’m going to go (most of the time). I might decide to focus on some minutiae every now and then, but that's not my true intent. I’m going to zoom out the lens a bit and look at things from the broad perspective of a casual fan. I’ll cover things happening in the world of sports, both on and off the field/court/ice. A lot of what will be posted here will be Nashville-centric and Southern-centric, but there might be some other opinions about general sports topics or national stories.

I can't guarantee you a post every day. I'll write as the mood (or a particular opinion) strikes me. And I'll promise that after this initial post, I'll focus more on sports and less on myself. I hope you enjoy it.

Now, the rest of this post is all about me. I’m not asking you to read it, but if you want to understand my mindset, this would be a good place to start…

My name is Zack Bennett. I am Nashville-born, Wilson County-raised. I grew up bouncing around from team to team among the four major sports, really riding the bandwagons and not rooting myself with a deep love for any particular team, until the Titans and Predators came along.

I watched the first Predators game through a snowy picture on a clearance TV hooked up to a coathanger in the electronics section of the now-closed Hermitage Kmart, which is where I was working in 1998. That game, against the Florida Panthers, was broadcast on WNAB-TV 58, and our TVs only picked up Channel 5. So, I had to find a way to make sure I witnessed history. I’ll never forget it. I had always been curious about hockey, and my knowledge of it was fairly limited to what I learned playing NHL ’94 for the Sega Genesis. But I remember being SO excited that we had a team to call our own.

My first Predators game came against the San Jose Sharks. I was still in high school, and my mother wouldn’t allow me to go by myself or with friends, so I bought her and me a ticket. We sat in section 316. I don’t remember if the Preds won or lost, but I do remember how fascinated I was, and how my mother had no clue. My second game was part of a Lipscomb University recruiting excursion, and it was the Preds’ first shutout: a game against the Phoenix Coyotes, when Tomas Vokoun permanently stole the spotlight from Mike Dunham.

During the 2002-03 season, at MTSU, I began a friendship with Brendan Stubblefield (@vols7381 on twitter), and thanks to a combination of $10 Upper Goal Zone seats, and $8 tickets on Thursday via a weekly coupon in The Tennessean, the two of us went to as many games as we could afford. It was then that I fell in love with hockey and the Preds. I bought single-game seats to almost every game in the 2003-04 season, most of which were in the famed “Cell Block 303”. The lockout and a subsequent move to Alabama for nearly 5 years forced me somewhat out of the loop, so I wasn’t here for all the turmoil surrounding the Jim Balsillie and Boots Del Biaggio affairs.

But once I moved back to Nashville in 2010, and began making new hockey friends on Twitter and reading the various blogs, I was hooked again. Now, in 2011-12, I will be a season ticket holder for the first time, and I can’t wait.

My relationship with the Titans is a little different. Right out of high school, I began working for WANT 98.9 FM in Lebanon, a Titans Radio affiliate. Quickly, I volunteered to man the control room during all the games. I was literally getting paid to watch football. The first game I attended was, of all things, the Music City Miracle game. After the Super Bowl loss, I applied for (and received) an internship with Titans Radio, where I wrote for TitansRadio.com, and produced audio packages for the broadcast each week. Imagine me, at 20 years old, getting practically unlimited access to one of the NFL’s elite teams. The whole experience was surreal. For the 2000 season, I was manning the controls on the flagship station, WGFX 104.5, and in 2001, I was manning master control for the entire network. Then, it all came to an end. My contract was revoked for reasons I still don’t fully know, though admittedly, it was probably because I was being an ass. But, I managed to stay on board at 104.5 as it became “The Zone”. After a year of working with guys like Willy Daunic and George Plaster, I was fired again, so I went to work over at Cumulus, which then hosted 106.7 The Fan. So, there, I got to work, albeit briefly, with Blake Fulton, Joe Biddle, and Pete Weber. Interestingly, me and Kevin Ingram were the only two people to work with both sides of that faction after its very public breakup in 2003.

After moving to Alabama to manage and program a Sports Talk radio station (WUMP-Huntsville), I worked with the station’s afternoon host, Thom Abraham. Yes, the same Thom Abraham who would later come to Nashville. During my time there, I requested a media credential (and received it) for the Titans from 2007-2009, so I went to almost every home game during that span as a member of the media.

As far as college sports goes, I’ve always been a fan of the Vanderbilt Commodores, first and foremost. It’s been a pretty crappy fandom. But, I live by this simple rule: everybody needs a winner in their life. So, I have created a new rule: If you claim to be a lifelong fan of the Vanderbilt Commodores, you get one other team to be a fan of… but you always have to root for Vandy first. So, I adopted Alabama as my secondary team of choice when I was 11 years old. That alliance came in very handy when I was running WUMP – Huntsville’s Crimson Tide radio affiliate.

So, there you have it. I really can’t believe you read all of that, but thanks.

NOTE: The blog's title changed to "Picks, Pucks & Pigskin" roughly 24 hours after the site's launch.