Oh, dear. Dear me. I have let this gather quite a bit of dust, haven't I? I've been a bit busy...

I have a job now. And I was able to move 1,400 miles away from my former Portland, Ore. home out to Boulder, Colorado, to take a job with the Colorado Daily. I'm still getting settled in, but my basic directive is to cover University of Colorado varsity and club sports, as well as Boulder-area outdoor recreation activities and stories. It is going to be fun.

Time to keep this thing more updated from here on out now that things have calmed down a little bit.

Happy Dreamcast Day

This is like the most ghetto and old picture of all time but yeah, my Dreamcast stuff.

The Sega Dreamcast turns nine years old today. Nine years? Good grief, I was in middle school nine years ago; now, I've graduated college. Two generations of gaming have gone by, and Internet console gaming - the pie-in-the-sky dream of the Dreamcast and it's built-in 56k (LOL) modem - is now the norm.

So are arcade-perfect ports, analog control sticks and triggers built into the controllers, voice chat in online games, and Microsoft's presence in the console gaming spectrum.

However, its downfall signaled the final death throes of gaming as a niche industry. The Dreamcast, nine years ago, launched with a bang. A huge (if a tad bit esoteric) marketing campaign heralded its arrival, and, so many people thought, the revival of Sega. 9/9/99 became the largest single-day media event in United States history, topping the Star Wars: Episode 1 opening which ruled at the time. That didn't last long, though, as the promise of Sony's PS2 was the shadow that loomed long over the Dreamcast's short life.

You can't discuss the Dreamcast's death without bringing up Sony. That Sony even had game franchises like Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid, Gran Turismo, and - crucially in the U.S. - EA Sports products was enough to sell some people. It didn't matter that the first out of any of those series - Gran Turismo 3 - dropped nearly a year after the system's launch. DVD playback (a much, much bigger selling point then than Blu-Ray is now for PS3) was enough to tide many people over.

Never mind that you could walk in to a game store in the late fall of 2000 and buy a Dreamcast and three games for the price of a new PS2 - which was at that time as hard to find as a Wii is now. Never mind that the Dreamcast had a much deeper library than Sony's system would only get two years later.

This was the point I made, rabidly, both to friends offline and online at that point in time. The Dreamcast came around just as I was becoming aware of video games as a lifestyle and more than a hobby. I started out reading game news online and posting on forums around that time, and along with how important that has been to the last eight or so years of my life, the Dreamcast was there in the beginning.

As I finish writing this, the seventh stage of arcade mode in Soul Calibur sits, paused, my Mitsurugi down 1-0 against the evil CPU Taki. This game looks just as pretty as it did nine years ago; upgrading to S-Video cables certainly helps. Not a lot has stuck with me for nine years; my Sega Dreamcast, hopefully, will for a long, long time. A window of Amazon.com also has a used copy of Sonic Adventure in the cart; I need to pull the trigger on that purchase and re-live one of my absolute favorite gaming experiences.

The soul still burns, and the legend will never die.

Why PAX 2008 Didn't Suck

One of PAX's gracious hosts, Jerry Holkins aka Tycho of Penny Arcade fame, throws the horns before the final Omegathon round. Photo by Doug Bonham

Despite the fact that 58,000 of my closest and stinkiest friends also made their way to the 2008 Penny Arcade Expo, and though it was more crowded, had more lines, and was generally more packed than ever before, PAX 2008 did not suck. I can quantify this with science!

The lines were still a pain in years past. Maybe not quite as big a pain, but they were most assuredly there. Last year it was for the first Rock Band booth; three years ago, when I first went, it was for the Zelda demo at the Nintendo booth. Compared with last year, the lines at the local eateries (especially the ones inside the convention center) were just as bad, the parking situation sucked as much; plus, it's smack-dab in downtown Seattle, which will bring necessary problems regardless.

It doesn't mean it's good, but it's certainly not much worse than in years past.


Mirror's Edge was a hot property at Electronic Arts' booth at PAX. Photo by Doug Bonham

The lines to play games were sooooooooo bad. Okay, some of them sucked, but the ones I can think of were for marquee, AAA-quality game titles: StarCraft II, Rock Band 2, Left 4 Dead, Fallout 3, etc. Sure, there are claims that some of the developers were catering too much to the yellow-badged media members - I can't say I saw any of the general public in the Fallout 3 trailer all weekend, for sure - but I would trust in PA dropping the banhammer on that practice next year.

Also, focusing on the lines for maybe 10% of the games is ignoring the reasonable lines everywhere else. Yes, that includes Guitar Hero: World Tour, which is at least trying to be a AAA title. One of the best games I saw all show was Valkyria Chronicles, and we waited a minimal amount of time to see that. Crowding wasn't too bad at Microsoft, Nintendo or Sony's booths, either - at least, certainly not to the extent of the worst lines.

The panels were all too packed. I may be venturing more to devil's advocate range here, but, umm, that's bad? It's certainly better than having 25% of the panels at the show completely empty, right? Isn't this a sign that PA knows their demo and is scheduling the right people to be there to speak? Nobody wants to stand for an hour or so (I ate my dinner Friday night standing at the back of the 1up Yours taping), but at least it's a good sign that they know their market.

Also, some people (myself included) went to PAX with a hope and a dream wishing to meet people in the industry, and while it was harder than last year, it was still possible. Okay, there was a huge "Cult of (insert 1up Editor Here)" at their Saturday night party at GameWorks, but that's bound to happen. People were available after most of the panels I went to during the show. Just like with breaking into the industry, it's a matter of effort.

I could keep going, but I think I've made my point. While there was more crowding than ever, were there ever any real problems - even in PC freeplay, BYOC, or console freeplay? It seems like everybody kept their head and lived by the PAX creed: Have fun and don't be a dick to anybody or keep anyone else from having fun.

Rock Band 2sday - an interview with Harmonix

Let there be rock - RB2 fires up for the first time at Ground Kontrol. Photo by Doug Bonham

Rock Band 2 is almost upon us. The game’s developers, Harmonix, had a large presence on the show floor of the Penny Arcade Expo – the line to play the game was usually at least a half hour. While fans got their hands on the game for the first time at PAX, a lucky group of gamers in Portland, Ore., got a special treat when the sequel was demoed Tuesday, September 2. Ground Kontrol (511 NW Couch St., Portland, Ore) played host during the regular Rock Band Tuesdays to Harmonix’s Dan Teasdale, lead designer of Rock Band 2, and Heather Wilson, audio producer for the company.


Harmonix audio producer Heather Wilson and Rock Band 2 lead designer Dan Teasdale up on stage receiving applause from the crowd before rocking out to Squeeze's "Cool for Cats." Photo by Doug Bonham

Teasdale and Wilson were kind enough to agree to an interview with myself, Nick Cummings, and one of the lead volunteers in running Rock Band Tuesday, John Leslie.

How many places have you found that do a Rock Band night on a regular basis?

DT – I think we’ve lost count at how many places have done it. Originally in the earlier days with some of the earlier games, River Gods down the street was the place that did it, and was the place we knew of, and in the three or four years since then it’s just exploded. No Fail is coming out of our experience of going to River Gods every week and seeing people fail out. Even though it doesn’t really fit with a campaign mode where you want people to fail out and progress better, in a live situation, nobody wants to fail out.

HW – It also came out of people at work bringing the game home to their families and their families totally failing out but still wanting to play.

With regards to announcements and information containment, how hard is it to prevent a leak or two?

DT – It’s tough, it’s not like we’re releasing one game a year. We’re releasing 52 content packs a year, plus a game, plus however many SKUs of it. It’s much harder than any other sort of game or company I’ve worked on. Considering how much stuff we’ve done it’s been pretty good.

HW – That leak (about the PAX Pack) came directly out of the fact that we had technical difficulties the week before. Just getting the information out to everyone who needed to have it, it just didn’t make it down the chain like it was supposed to, is hard. It was a leak but at the same time, people were doing what they were supposed to.

Compared to the earlier days at Harmonix, how is the song licensing process?

HW – It’s a lot easier to license stuff now. Because people have heard of us, they want to give us content, which is awesome. With bigger bands it’s the same as it always was, there’s convincing there, you want them to want to be in your game, and sometimes there’s a barrier of entry because they may not have heard of it, may not have played it, but it’s generally a lot easier.

Nick – Back after Rock Band 1, Dan, you said your most-wanted band was AC/DC. Was that your own personal push?

DT – I think it’s everybody at Harmonix’s personal push (laughs). Everyone is fans of AC/DC. One of our first prototype songs was a cover test of AC/DC, and I think they’re such an iconic rock band.

Are bands more willing to work with you when they have new material to promote?

DT – A lot of bands are more open to giving us their stuff when they’re releasing new content.

HW – A lot of people, like Weezer for example, want to give us new content but they also want to give us old stuff too. With some bands, we’ll say “hey, we’ll put out your new stuff, can we also have this old stuff too?” and it works out really well.

How was demo-ing RB2 to bands like AC/DC?

DT – We personally weren’t close to that, it was a much higher level, but from what we understood AC/DC really loved the game and that’s one of the reasons why they wanted to be in the game.

Nick - At the panel at PAX, you said Nine Inch Nails was one of the first major acts to contribute a song voluntarily. When was that in the process?

DT – It was earlier on, before we had any songs in Rock Band. He kind of knew what we were doing because he’s on the ball with this sort of stuff, and he wanted to contribute, which was amazing because it wasn’t even like us chasing him.

HW – And Izzy, one of our audio guys, loves Nine Inch Nails and was super excited to be able to work on those tracks.

John – Speaking of NIN, it shows the song choice present in the game – not just singles like “The Hand That Feeds” but deeper cuts get into the game…

HW – We really like to go after stuff that’s we think is going to be tactful. We want stuff that’s going to play well, but is also going to be meaningful.

Will we see longer albums, more instrumentals, or even double albums released as DLC?

HW – You know, it really depends. I wouldn’t rule that out as a possibility, and with the instrumental stuff, it’s going to make it easier to release certain albums. We probably won’t go too instrumental-heavy because it is a game for four players and we want to make sure that everybody can play everything, but at the same time it’s going to make it easier to put some stuff out.

But with the amount of content in the game already and due out this year and next, it’s different than if the first DLC album released was instrumental, right?

The mic ran out of batteries at this point - CRAP! - but Dan talked about the content and confirmed they would consider things like that. Dan then was asked about the accessories to the game, and while things like the wooden instruments, the Ion drum kit, Mad Katz’s stuff, and others are outside of Harmonix, they are coming and go through the company. Unfortunately they don’t control the release dates, etc. I do remember Heather saying she wished the 3rd-party microphone with the D-pad and buttons built in was at their office!

On the accessory note…what led to the stage kit?

DT - I remember when we first got pitched the stage kit, it was like “Okay, we’ve got this hardware (that they were also pitching), and also we’d like to maybe make a stage kit,” and it was like “Wow, that is awesome.” The kit is actually labeled a controller, so on the Rock Band 1 disc songs and all the DLC so far we’ve actually authored a fog track and a lights track. So all it does is send fog and lights out to the kit. It’s an Xbox controller essentially, because that’s the only way we can get the data out, so I’m sure you can hack it to get multiple machines.

Will there ever be add-on DLC costumes, instruments or venues for the game?

DT – I think if we do stages and new guitars and stuff it’s far in the future, right now we’re focusing on the content every week and it takes a lot of our time. Never say never when it comes to Rock Band stuff.

John – When playing through BWT, I thought about how cool it would be to work through, say, all of the venues in Seattle, playing Seattle band songs, until you get up to, say, Key Arena. Have you ever thought of doing, using real venues?

DT – (Not using real venues) gives us more range to craft that sort of story. It’s the same reason we don’t have real rock stars in our game, it’s because this whole thing is about you traveling on this journey. A lot of our venues are crafted to that as well.

HW – One thing we did when we were making up the venues was we tried to craft the location we were putting it in, in terms of art style and in naming and location. We tried to place them as realistically as possible while still giving you the fantasy.

DT – I don't think (licensed venues) really fits the direction we’re going. We’re trying to go more authentic then a carbon copy.

Nick had a question about the writing in the game; Heather did most of it, including for the loading screens, rock shop, etc. Dan confirms that the text during loading screens will return for RB2…but adding more to the game along with DLC songs?

DT – That was something we talked about. There’s a couple of technical things we’d have to get around.

How is working with MTV versus working independently?

HW – We kind of have a lot more freedom artistically, now we’re working on our own IP and can do what we want with it, which is awesome. I was there before MTV purchased us, and there’s been a real effort to keep the company culturally the same. There’s stuff now where we have to fit into their corporate mold, but it’s still really low key and doesn’t affect a lot of people.

DT – I think the big thing that helps us is it gives us this huge power to be both publisher and developer at the same time. Heather, as our audio producer, she is in-house handling all our DLC submissions and all the stuff that would be handled by a third-party publisher. Like this week, we had a technical issue, but because all our stuff was in-house, we can get content out this week. If we had somebody over in LA we had to talk to, it would be impossible for us to get it out.

John – How do you feel about MTV using Rock Band as a promotional tool?

HW – There’s room. We’ve got all kinds of content, and it’s good, because it reaches the mass market and it reaches more people than we could reach, which is kind of awesome.

DT – At the same time, it’s not a one-way street, we have control over what songs go in the game. If we don’t like the song they’re proposing, we say “no,” and if we do, then we say “yeah.”

John – What did MTV think about Boston? I’d think they’d be pushing bands like the Jonas Brothers or something.

HW – They do want to put a lot of new stuff out but they also have the same vision of what we do, and have a clear idea of what Rock Band is as a brand. I work directly with a lot of people at MTV and they’re incredibly awesome to work with and they really want the same thing we want, which is great.

How would you submit music if you wanted to get your independent band into the game?

DT – If you go to Jobs (on the Harmonix website), it pops up with a little Google maps box, if you click on the pin it has our address.

HW – Just send it to my attention, to the attention of Heather.

John – Is there any chance that music previously rumored to be released can still come out? (A couple examples are named, including “Received Your Letter.”)

HW – Well, with “Received Your Letter,” there were licensing hurdles we couldn’t get over, and we really like that song and really wanted to put it in Rock Band. Occasionally we may want to revisit stuff, especially if it’s stuff we already have authored. It’s like, it’s there, why not.

As far as the PAX Pack goes, those were my personal choices, actually. I love MC Frontalot, I love Jonathan Coulton, and I love Darkest of the Hillside Thickets. So, the fact that all three of them were playing at once and we could put the pack together was awesome. The Penny Arcade guys made those suggestions, and it was a total match. The Darkest track, “Shhh…,” was unreleased and they recorded it at the same time they recorded the rest of the album, “The Shadow Out of Tim,” and they gave us that track, and I was super-excited about it.

There was an announcement about the Japanese version…any updated news?

DT – Not really, no, that’s just the announcement – that we’re working with Q (Entertainment) on Rock Band Japan, those guys are incredibly awesome, incredibly talented, a great match. They know music. I can’t wait to see what comes out of there.

The big question you must get all the time, Dan, about Australia: What problems have there been?

DT – Anything you can imagine, actually (laughs). We’ve been working really hard for a very long time to get it out in Australia, we’re going to have some announcements soon about dates, pricing. Again, it’s getting licenses for all their songs, making sure artists get paid, we want to make sure we do it properly. We’ll announce it soon – very soon.

Any word on the future for the platform, and how the support for it will evolve or continue?

DT – (No comment on specifics, but…) At the same time, RB is a platform, we’re going to be supporting it for the foreseeable future. As long as we can see, yeah.

HW – Our schedule, we’re scheduled out to mid-spring. We schedule really far in advance. It shifts, certain weeks might not stay what we have them on the schedule now, but at the same time we have content lined up.

John – Any plans to go into different genres of music with the DLC in the future?

DT – I think we definitely want to go broader and wider on the platform. More regional content, more deep content for specific artists, more regional inside the U.S. content as well. I know we’ve hinted at indie stuff a bit, and we’ll have more announcements soon. I’ve been pushing for an Aus music pack for a long time (laughs).

HW – I don’t think it’s straining too far, we want to make it a platform. There are a lot of country fans in-house. I tested CMT Presents Karaoke Revolution: Country, and honestly, it’s a super-fun game. Singing country songs is fun. I’d like to do some of that content.

Will that content stay region free?

DT – I can’t promise it, but we’re going to do our best to make sure that everyone can play the songs.

What is the feeling at Harmonix developing what you can now as opposed to pop music games like some of the Karaoke Revoution ones?

DT – I think bands of all walks, but a lot of us play rock in our bands.

HW – There are people at Harmonix who love all genres of music. We’ve got opera fans. It’s a really broad base.

So the long and short of it, Rock Band isn’t going away?

HW – Nope (laughs). DT – It’s here to stay.

Big thanks again to Dan and Heather for demoing Rock Band 2 at Ground Kontrol, agreeing to an interview, and special thanks to Anthony and the crew at GK for throwing such a good event week-in, week-out. For more details on Rock Band Tuesday and GK, see groundkontrol.com. For more on Rock Band 2, see rockband.com and harmonixmusic.com.

PAX 08: The quick write-up

The One Ups rock the stage on Friday night at PAX 2008. Photo by Doug Bonham

I'm tired, my body is sore and tired, and I drove back from Seattle to Portland today, but PAX 2008 was a great experience, as it was the other two times I have made the trek to pay homage to Gabe and Tycho. Well, it's never really been about kissing the ring and bowing at their feet, more like enjoying their hospitality and having them host the greatest gaming festival that can be thrown.

And it's morphing into that - 58,000 people can't be wrong, and the quality and content on display from exhibitors shows that as well.

Quick-hitting thoughts: Nerds smell; you can tell what somebody's doing at PAX by how well they dress; lines suck, but they're also great places to make impromptu friends for five (or 45) minutes; as my friend Tyler noted, a surprising amount of attractive females were at the show and not just dragged along by significant others.


Holy fucking shit, Starcraft II playable? NO WAI! Photo by Doug Bonham

There were a few games on display that I was not expecting to be at the show in anything other than video form. Mirrors Edge, Left 4 Dead, Fallout 3, Starcraft II, and Rock Band 2 were all playable - and all had fucking epic lines to play them. I suppose it's good that you, at least, could.


Be glad you can't see the guy in the Destructoid helmet's shorts. Photo by Doug Bonham

I went to a bunch of panels, especially ones about the video game industry and writing for it/with it/around it, and easily the best was the one hosted by Destructoid. Hilarious, mad-cap, and very informative, I've come away from it floored - and instilled with energy to go out there and get into the industry starting from scratch. I know I can do it, and I have some plans in mind that will all be revealed as soon as they're truly formulated. Until then, I'll keep off my feet and fantasize about living the dream.

Braid: Praise and damnation

Photo courtesy of IGN. As if you couldn't tell from the watermark.

The praise online for Braid – the Xbox Live Arcade game that is part platformer, part puzzler, and part short story – has spread like wildfire. The game’s $15 price point clearly has not been a detractor, and the critical acclaim – a 93 rating on MetaCritic, the eighth best Xbox 360 to date – has rolled in.

I have it. I like it. I want to love it – but there’s something holding me back: the game itself.

There’s difficulty, and then there’s difficulty. Braid is not a controller-throwing, how-much-is-the-game-cheating game in the mold of a Ninja Gaiden or a Bionic Commando, games that require pin-point precision and have brutal standards that gamers struggle to meet.

Braid, though, is almost too cerebral, too spacey for its own good. It doesn’t preclude that its player is dumb – which, while better than hand-holding and too low a level of difficulty, steers in my opinion too far the other way. The game doesn’t hint nearly enough at the way to complete too many of its puzzles. My good friend and gaming colleague, Nick, insists I can complete this; apparently, the game’s creator, Jonathan Blow, has a taunt to players on a game guide that says, in short, “you don’t need a guide to finish this game.” And an integral part of the game’s control structure, the rewind button, takes the last-gen Prince of Persia’s “rewind button as small eraser” concept to its inevitable conclusion, even integrating it into a few different puzzles.

But I still get incredibly frustrated most every time I turn the game on. I’ve gone through every level by now – well, barring World 1 – and I’m still stuck on far too many puzzles. World 4, 5 and 6 all still are baffling.

Maybe I’m focusing too much on the negative, feeling too cynical about my gaming abilities. I just wish Braid left a few more hints about how to untie its knots, instead of standing there with arms crossed looking down at me.

It's a masterpiece - I just wish it wasn't so condescending.

Put me in, coach

If I learned one thing from the coverage I did last week for the Trentonian of the Little League Softball World Series, it is that I am not a cynical sports writer quite yet.

I’ve been guilty of thinking that the TV production values brought to the World Series of both baseball and softball isn’t very healthy for the kids involved, but from what I saw out at Alpenrose Dairy (which sits right at the border between Portland and Beaverton) I’m fortunately a bit wrong about that. I was a bit peeved after the championship game because I needed to talk with the coach of the Robbinsville, N.J., team I had been covering, and I couldn’t get to him; however, it wasn’t because he was avoiding the press, but because the teams – including coaches and players – were all busy doing post-championship awards ceremonies.



I actually got a hold of Robbinsville coach Jim Freeman on the field right after the ceremony ended, as the LLSBWS staff was trying to rodeo all the fans, families, players and coaches on the field to engage in the world’s largest chicken dance. No, I’m not kidding. No, I did not stay, because I was on deadline. Whether that’s fortunate or unfortunate is not for me to say.



The above photo was from the semi-final game that the East representatives from Robbinsville, N.J. won; the photo below, after losing the championship game almost exactly a day later. Definitely a range of emotions.



Note that I said I interviewed the coach, not the players. I talked with some of the players after the game the night before – when they won to reach the championship – but out of respect I didn’t even think about talking to any of the girls after the game. It’s not because they’re girls – I would have done the same if I were out in Williamsport, Pennsylvania this week for the Little League baseball World Series – but because they’re 12 freaking years old. They’re not even college students, let alone high school students. After a pool play game, I saw a girl get pulled off the mound because she was starting to get tired as pitcher, get substituted out to shortstop, and missed a following play because she was crying about it. Sometimes you have to have a little sympathy about your subject matter.



I wasn’t just writing, I was also flexing my photographic muscles and shooting a sport I hadn’t shot before. It was fun; working around the limitations of my camera was an interesting challenge. Compared with the professional (or nearly professional) camera bodies some reporters and professionals were walking around with, I felt as if I was walking into a war zone with a squirt gun. Nothing like getting outgunned by gear that is easily $4000 more than my more entry-level setup.



As a photographer, I’m starting to understand the limitations to my gear and how it effects me and my work. There’s the obvious – I don’t have long enough telephoto lenses – but the other really big hurdle was my camera’s meager 2.5 frames per-second burst limit. Pro bodies push 6 FPS at least. That means you get that action shot instead of being just ahead or just behind the real moment that you need frozen in time.



At the least, though, covering softball reminded me that, yes, sports can still be fun and played “for the love of the game” – and that these top levels of youth sports have not sold out to crass commercialism. That a family and team of volunteers can still run the World Series is a wonderful thing in this era of sports-as-business.



All photos ©2008 Doug Bonham, with the full set available on Flickr available here.

This is what the Olympics needed

Usually I'm the first to really groan about media over-exposure, but sports fans have definitely benefited from the expanded coverage available the last few years. Now out-of-town fans can watch their team, albeit for a premium, and people of looser morals and greater computer technical abilities have a good crack at watching most anything they want on the plethora of international streams on the Internet.

And this has only helped out the Olympics this summer. Between coverage on all of their affiliates (CNBC, MSNBC, NBC, Universal on HD, etc.), Americans have a great deal of Olympic coverage available on TV. However, the real ace in the hole is the online coverage that streams almost every sporting event that they can through their main online hub, nbcolympics.com.

Most of the fun of the Olympics is seeing sports that you don't generally see - not even on ESPN 2 at 3 in the morning. Not even sports that gain marquee attention most every Olympics - swimming, track and field, and gymnastics standing out - but stuff like women's weight lifting, or fencing, or handball. Or badminton! I watched some of that with my dad yesterday morning and it was awesome in HD.

Doug Bonham's Selected Clips

Select clips from the Oregon Daily Emerald

Main index on dailyemerald.com

"Down for the count?", investigative sports enterprise feature, originally published February 27, 2008.

"The Ol' College Try", player feature, originally published February 21, 2008.

"Making the grade?", investigative sports feature, originally published February 19, 2008.

"How would you spend $100 million?", sports opinion column, originally published January 25, 2008.

"Alexander the Great,", player feature, originally published January 17, 2008.

"As Ducks seek national spotlight, history repeats itself,", sports opinion column, originally published November 1, 2007.

"'Bioshock' an all-around great gaming experience," video game review, originally published September 17, 2007.

"Sounds of fall ring out as Ducks open camp", sports news article, originally published August 8, 2007.

"After 26 years, baseball is back, sports news feature, originally published July 16, 2007.

---------------

Freelance work

"'Wasn't in the cards'", sports news story, originally published in The Trentonian, August 14, 2008. Freelance photographs also published with story.

"Robbinsville one win away from world title", sports news story, originally published in The Trentonian, August 13, 2008. Freelance photographs also published with story.

"Robbinsville rallies for thrilling win," sports news story, originally published in The Trentonian, August 10, 2008. Freelance photo also published with the story.

Not everything needs to be news

I'm so utterly tired of one of the best football players of all time right now.

Brett Favre has created a hurricane of interest in the past few months, and the eye is now settled directly on Wisconsin. I think ESPN is running a news update every time Favre sneezes or goes to the bathroom (I think John Clayton is on that beat for the World-Wide Leader). He has single-handedly stolen all of the attention away from every other team in the NFL, which is almost unfathomable.

I'm just tired of it. I'm tired of the hyper-analysis of every move in this chess game, I don't care about every single detail, and I hate that it can hijack sports news coverage so easily. I hate that there's an almost-constant "FAVRE" ticker on ESPN. I hate that I'm writing this column.

With all due respect to all the incredibly talented athletes out there, please, please, please take your contract squabbles out of the media's eye. I just don't care anymore, and I'm sure even the most hardened NFL junkies are starting to get soured. If the people around Favre hadn't started squawking to the press, if Favre himself had come out and said "I'm going to go negotiate with the team and we'll talk when I'm done," if the agents hadn't whipped everyone into a frenzy, I'd have much more sympathy of the plight of the ancient quarterback.

As it stands, this is a black mark on his legacy and a sad way to keep a fanbase chasing its tail.

It isn't just the NFL that is falling prey to this. European soccer is rife with players going to the press and trying to work their way out of deals and hogging the sports pages. Manny Ramirez just earned about two weeks worth of press coverage leading up to his deadline-day trade to the Los Angeles Dodgers. It's ridiculous.

I'm all for the freedom of player movement and in now way would I ever advocate to a return of the pre-free agency days, but come on, have some respect for your teams. I'd have more sympathy for Favre if he had kept the talk in the board rooms and between himself, his agent and the Green Bay Packers. As it is, it just stinks of attention grabbing, with the dogs baying for blood up in Bristol, CT.

I can't wait for real, meaningful football news to get started.