Sharks eating up the ice
By WEST COAST GUY
They swim quietly through the Bay Area sports scene, occasionally poking their heads above water, garnering little more attention than, say, the Stanford women’s basketball team.
At 17-3-1 (11-0-1 at home), they are the best team in all of hockey. They proudly wear the sweater of the San Jose Sharks.
And practically no one in the Bay Area gives a hoot.
There are about 15,000 serious Sharks fans and almost all of them have season tickets. They get a little attention in the playoffs as TV clowns head out to do the same story every year. But compared to the East Coast, they might as well be a junior varsity volleyball team.
Almost any member of the Sharks can go to any bar in San Francisco, perhaps even wear their team jersey, and not get hassled.
They earn big money, but aren’t burdened by the privacy-erasing life of most pro athletes.
Oh, a few folks might recognize Joe Thornton. He’s just about the best player in hockey, so that helps. You might also notice longtime veteran Jeremy Roenick.
But goalie Evgeni Nabokov? Only if some leather-lunged jackass started screaming: “Nabby!”
Would you know leading scorer Devin Setoguchi if he got into a cab with you? Nor would 98 percent of the sports fans in the Bay Area.
What’s a Devin anyway? Sounds like he should be selling make-up at Bloomingdale’s.
Montreal or Toronto would go bonkers over such a hot-starting hockey squad. New York? Hell yeah! Philly? Big time.
Anaheim, Dallas, Charlotte and Tampa Bay have Stanley Cup titles in the last decade. So adulation can happen for a warm weather city in which ice skates are as useful as snowshoes.
But the clock is ticking for the Sharks.
San Jose hockey fans have a reason to be grumpy.
San Jose has a long string of regular season success, followed by rampant playoff frustration. San Jose has been to only one conference final, losing to Calgary 4-2 at the end of the 2003-04 season.
In a year or two, without an extended playoff run to remind the fans of why they pay those big prices, the Sharks may have trouble keeping up their stellar attendance marks. A run to the Stanley Cup Finals might also spark more media interest.
Decent Sharks tickets are $125 and up (hockey is a rumor from the upper decks of most arenas) and, in case you need to be reminded, the economy is tanking.
The Sharks are as good in the sportsbooks as they are on the ice. They are 14-8-1 ATS so far this season. But the St. Louis Blues and Columbus Blue Jackets have similar records ATS, so who knows?
If you’d like to warm up your own personal economy, start betting on the Sharks. They crush teams they are supposed to crush.
But be advised, once they lose two in a row, back off. They can‘t keep up this 17-3-1 pace of winning all season and are sure to have a five-game losing streak soon.
I have a short and brutal history of betting on hockey. I am 1-3-1 all-time and that is likely going to be my career record.
I got hooked twice, losing on empty net goals, one that hit the pipe about six times before dribbling across the goal line. One was the final game of a 5-game parlay that would have paid more than $1,000.
No, I wasn’t bitter.
I realize the money line is probably an easier way to win, but I just loved walking away from the window, knowing I had a goal and a half in my pocket.
The serious Sharks fans – I call them a cult -- are still showing up at the arena as San Jose averages 18K a game.
But Sharks games on TV get horrible ratings and the media isn’t at all interested.
In fact, the San Francisco Chronicle, the only large Bay Area newspaper that’s not part of a “money-first, quality-later” chain, doesn’t even cover Sharks home games.
The Sharks fan base isn’t likely to get much more robust. Immigrants from India, China and Mexico are flooding into Northern California. I don’t recall those three countries making much of a splash in the Winter Olympics.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go study up on West Coast women’s basketball.
West Coast NFL Roundup
After one of the biggest upsets in the NFL this season, the Chargers had to roll the Colts on Sunday night.
But no, not even after the dead-in-the-water Raiders blasted the Broncos, could San Diego summon any pride, or intensity.
Instead, the team picked to go to the Super Bowl by many pundits is now 4-7 and in serious trouble after another agonizing loss.
The Raiders came out of nowhere and the way the Broncos quit, it makes me wonder if the fix was in on that game.
Seattle kept up its legacy of losing this season but at least they gave the Redskins a game.
The Cardinals pushed the Giants some, but still lost. Luckily for Arizona, the team could not show up the rest of the season – literally not even go to the stadium, and it would still win the awful NFC West.
The 49ers, part of that NFC “Worst”, might have hit the Singletary Wall.
Is their interim coach a little too intense?
Blasting the Rams was one thing, but they got drilled by Dallas on Sunday and are now 1-3 under Singletary, who will not let up on his charges. Won’t do it.
West Coast College Roundup
What do we have here? Oregon State and Penn State in the Rose Bowl? Not quite yet. The Beavers still have to beat rival Oregon. Load up on the Ducks. No way Oregon State completes the dream.
I grew up on Ohio State-USC, Michigan-Washington in the Rose Bowl with the occasional Stanford, UCLA, Wisconsin or Iowa thrown in.
Penn State-Oregon State is ugly, doesn’t look right and it’s a rematch of a mismatch from earlier this season. Maybe with a neutral field, Oregon State will only lose by 30 this time.
How awesome was the (Rotten) Apple Cup? The fact that Washington lost to Washington State makes Tyrone Willingham one of the worst coaches in Pac-10 history. The Cougars were being fitted for the honor of worst team in Pac-10 history after losing by an average of 40 points in each Pac-10 game.
Yet lame-duck Ty couldn’t even get his team fired-up enough to beat Wazzou? Wow.
Cal plastered Stanford in the Big Game, which is truly “Big” to about 1,345 Cal or Stanford alums and a few crazy people in jail.
This year, the “Big Game" decided the fate of the next Pac-10 entrant in the Emerald Bowl. Yes, the nut company-sponsored throwdown in downtown, San Francisco.
Cal could still go to the Sun Bowl. Wee haw!
Oh wait, Cal plays Washington this week in a game that means – absolutely nothing.
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