My 10 biggest differences between the pro and college basketball game experience

After taking my son to the Wizards game last night, here are my impressions of the main differences between the professional and college basketball game experience.

1. The college game has students and real energy. The pro game feels lifeless by comparison. Of course, the Wizards have been so bad this year, who can blame their fans?
2. The pro game is longer and feels like it.
3. The customer service at Verizon Center was noticeably better.
4. Wizards fans stream in late, walk around in the middle of the game, and generally don't seem to care about the game as much.
5. In Verizon Center, the dress code is far more diverse with ladies in dresses and stilettos, and men in suits, to adults and kids in hoodies and street clothes. College game attire is far more uniformly casual.
6. Verizon Center's Jumbotron is far nicer than Comcast Center's. Heck, Comcast Center doesn't even have a big center screen system.
7. Pro cheerleaders are more about boobs and booty than cheering.
8. Verizon Center marketing efforts are far more sophisticated with in-arena advertising blimps, fancier in-game promos and giveaways.
9. Seats are bigger and more comfortable (and I think they all have cupholders) at Verizon Center. Are the patrons just bigger on average?
10. Verizon Center serves beer.

Georgetown Basketball and Austin Freeman

Georgetown's leading scorer Austin Freeman was recently diagnosed with diabetes. What's interesting was that the Director of Georgetown Hospital's Diabetes Center, Dr. Stephen Clement, is reportedly Austin Freeman's personal doctor. How is it that Georgetown University Hospital's top endocrinologist takes the time to be a lowly basketball player's doctor? Does this say something about Georgetown University's priorities?

Post-Olympic Thoughts

• The Canadians are such wonderful, humble and proud people and it must have brought them incredible pride to have their athletes perform so well during these Olympic Games. It was also fitting that they won more gold medals than any other nation because "O Canada" is the best national anthem. Even though I'm an American, I used to sing my kids to sleep with "O Canada". Love it.
• I think it was far more important for Canada to win the men's hockey game. Hockey is part of Canada's identify while the sport is just one of many to Americans. While I was personally rooting hard for the U.S. Team, I appreciate that the Canadians really needed this win much more than we do.
• I have always wanted to do a ski trip to Whistler, but after witnessing the dearth of snow, the warm winter temperatures and relatively poor ski conditions during these games, I'm not so sure now.
• Really liked most of Mary Carillo's and Tom Brokaw's features during NBC's two weeks of coverage. They did a great job spotlighting the best of Canada--or was it just paid advertising by the Canadian Tourist Bureau? Learned alot and especially enjoyed Brokaw's piece on Gander.
• During the Closing Ceremonies, Al Michael's one sentence mention on the great Russian goalkeeper Vladislav Tretiak was one of the biggest slights by the TV commentators. Michaels referred to one of hockey's best goaltenders merely as a player "on the 1980 hockey team that was pulled after the first period". Okay, as an American, he's just a Russian goaltender we beat in the "Miracle on Ice", but Michaels could've given the guy a little more credit.

Olympics Agonizing Moments

After watching the first few days of Olympic events, my list of agonizing Olympic moments runs the spectrum from almost-gold-medal performances to spectacular failures:

- American Johnny Spillane fought valiantly in the nordic combine. He led for most of the final kilometer but faded with the finish line (and the gold medal) in sight, and was caught right at the finish by American-born Frenchman Jason Lamy Chappuis. To Spillane's credit, he seemed quite happy with the silver medal.

- American figure skater Jeremy Abbott finished a disappointing 15th after last night's men's short program (essentially eliminating him from medal contention) after singling a triple axel and then doing only a double lutz in lieu of a triple. How excruciating must it have been for him to have to complete his program knowing full well that he was completely out of medal contention? That final minute or so must've have felt like an eternity to him.

- In the men's 1500 meter short track speed skating final, two South Koreans battling for second and third place, knock each other out just before the finish to let Americans Apollo Anton Ohno and J. R. Celski snatch the silver and bronze medals.

- Dutch speed skater Annette Gerritsen falling in the Women's 500 meters. Years of training for hours a day, and your medal dreams are over just seconds into your Olympic experience.

And of course, to put all of this in perspective, we can't forget about the death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili. There was absolutely nothing more agonizing than that...

Healthcare Reform

I don't "get" how critics of healthcare reform come up with all the supposed huge new costs related to any healthcare reform legislation--regardless of the specific plan or implementation.

Our current system is so broken that the millions of insured Americans already pay for the healthcare costs and medical bills of the millions of uninsured Americans indirectly. When you are uninsured, you can't afford so you simply don't visit your doctor for routine, preventative care. The delays in providing proper medical care upfront costs everyone much more in the end than if that same person were insured and had sought timely care from the get-go. Uninsured Americans regularly use hospital emergency rooms for routine medical care because they are the only option available to them. This overloads hospital ERs for people with more urgent care needs and runs up huge and unrecoverable costs for the hospitals. Naturally, these costs are passed on to paying, insured customers in the form of higher premiums and other systemic costs.

So in the end, doesn't any healthcare reform that insures more Americans--whether it includes a public option or not--save money in the long run? Where's the extra cost and what's the problem?

Debbie, please don't waste my money to fire Ralph!

With all the uncertainty surrounding Terps football coach Ralph Friedgen heading into today's Boston College finale, I want our Athletic Director Debbie Yow to know that I am one booster strongly in favor of not firing the coach. It has been estimated that the total cost to replace Coach Friedgen now would run close to $10 million and it simply isn't worth it.

The main problem right now is not Ralph Friedgen. The main problem for the University of Maryland is its weak fan base and an overall lack of financial support from alumni and boosters. To be an elite college football (or basketball) program, a school must have enough loyal fans and boosters willing to contribute generously to help the school keep up in the ever-escalating resource "arms race". The funds are needed to build or improve facilities and to buy the best equipment in order to attract and keep recruits. The sad truth is that the University of Maryland never has and never will be competitive in this.

I'm realistic--Maryland is and will always be a second-tier FBS football program. It is simply not realistic or cost-effective for us to try to be an elite FBS program like Florida, Texas, or Virginia Tech as just a few examples. I am grateful for the BCS and five other bowl appearances that Ralph has led us to over the past nine years. Can we do better? Certainly. Could we do worse? Certainly. Overall, I believe that Coach Friedgen's results have been about what we should expect. Personally, I would've preferred to spread the winning around a little more versus 31 wins in his first three seasons, but I'm okay in the end.

The bottom line is that, regardless of who coaches at Maryland, our program cannot, and will not ever, win consistently against the best programs in college football. Coach Friedgen deserves much of the blame for this season's woeful results, but inexperience, injuries and just bad luck were equally responsible for the horrible season. Ralph is otherwise a very good coach who has a good track record of winning and developing young men. Paying $4 million to buy him out after this season just to give Franklin or anyone else an earlier shot is really a huge waste of money. I'm one Terp fan willing to give Coach Friedgen another season because the only question that should be asked is: "Will an expensive coaching change really make a difference?"

Anyone miss Dave Neal yet?

The Terrapin men's basketball team failed its first early season test this week. In losing to two middle-of-their-conference teams, Cincinnati and Wisconsin, the Terps were beaten decisively. While they played adequate defensive, their inability to score created numerous transition opportunities for Cincinnati. Against Wisconsin, they were forced to play Badger ball and again shot the ball poorly. And in both games, they couldn't do the most basic of basketball tasks--make free throws. While it's way too early to worry to sound any alarms and there is still plenty of time to improve, a few questions stood out in my mind.

While the two freshmen bigs, Williams and Padget, clearly improve our interior post play, who will make-up for oft-maligned and now-departed Dave Neal's scoring? While we lacked front-court depth last season, Neal gave opponents a unique match-up problem in his ability to consistently shoot the mid and long-range jumper. Heading into the season, most of us thought surely that, with more practice and another year of development, the rest of the team would easily make up for Neal's scoring with improved team play and pure shooting.

From this week's Maui results, it's clear that the Terps' offense struggled to score against their first significant opposition this season. Sean Mosley's shot has clearly improved, and he is in my opinion, the most improved player. And he hasn't lost any of that hussle! Eric Hayes remains a steady and reliable shooter but opponents know to keep a body on him so he needs to be more aggressive on the dribble or be a better catch and shoot player. Landon Milbourne still has his good mid range jumper and can be aggressive on both ends of the floor, but I don't see that he is better this season.

Other players however have been a clear disappointment so far. Vasquez's productivity has declined markedly as defenses have figured out his game. His shooting is so far off the mark I wonder if he's actually been working on his shots. How can he play in the NBA if he consistently shoots below 30%? You can give any Division I player 20+ shots a game and they will be 20 point per game player. And Adrian Bowie and Cliff Tucker have thus far not shown that they can play consistently or put the ball in the basket.

Of course, Dino Gregory's return sometime next month hopefully should shake things up by taking some of the pressure off of our two frosh players. It will also free up Landon to play more "3". Maybe Dino's return will help get the Terps' mojo back in time for ACC competition in January.

Norfolk Versus Baltimore Cruise Sailings

For next year, Norfolk Virginia will be losing cruise sailings while Baltimore will be adding ships and sailings. The business rationale for this action was very obvious to me however, after a recent post and long thread on CruiseCritic, it became apparent that many people in the tidewater area simply don't understand or can't accept this trend.

In advocating for Norfolk over Baltimore, the following facts were thrown out to support the case for Norfolk:

1. Geographically closer to ocean so ships don't have to waste time and fuel traversing the length of the Chesapeake Bay
2. New or renovated cruise terminal and facility
3. Better and lower-cost dock workers
4. Proximity to great beaches and other tourist attractions

Even if one were to acknowledge these as minor tactical advantages, the argument that Norfolk is a better cruise port and market than Baltimore completely misses or ignores Baltimore’s massive demographic, economic and tourism strategic advantages.

First, this is a business decision that is based on demographics, the laws of supply and demand, overall economic conditions, and business profitability. A cruise line bases a cruise ship in most non-Florida cruise ports for one reason--to expand their market beyond its flying customers to attract customers primarily from that local metropolitan area. In other words, they put their ships within a short drive to their customers. Unlike the major cruise ports, these regional or local ports draw the majority of their customers locally, probably within a couple hours drive. The cruise lines have already put many cruise ships close to major U.S. cities such as like Seattle, San Diego, Galveston/Houston, Boston, New York and Washington D.C./Baltimore. Is Norfolk (like Charleston) in this class?

The demographics case for Washington D.C./Baltimore over Norfolk is both compelling and overwhelming. Based on median household income, the Washington DC/Baltimore metropolitan area is the nation's second most affluent with 7,608,070 people with a median household income of $57,291. Per capita income is fourth at $28,856. The Norfolk/Virginia Beach metropolitan area on the other hand is ranked 84th with 1,569,541 people and a median household income of $42,448. Per capita income is ranked 107th with $20,328. So not only does the Washington DC/Baltimore area have almost 5 times the number of people that Norfolk has, but those same people have almost 42% more money to spend. And these statistics are based on a 2000 Census that doesn't even reflect the reality of a likely wider gap today.

Add to this that Philadelphia and many large suburban Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland communities that are all within less than a 90 minute drive of Baltimore's cruise terminal. Except for Richmond, Norfolk doesn't have any other major city within a 2 hour drive to draw customers from. That’s a few million more customers to add to the advantage there.

Now let’s look at their respective tourist attractions and tourism businesses. The Washington D.C./ Baltimore area offers a rich assortment of historical, cultural, entertainment, dining and other tourist options. With over 20 million visitors annually, Washington DC is one of the most visited cities in America. Baltimore is in the top 30 with over 12 million visitors each year--comparable to Fort Lauderdale or Nashville and more than the entire tidewater region. The Norfolk area offers tourist attractions with mostly limited, regional appeal such as Busch Gardens, Williamsburg and Virginia Beach.

So in the end, if you want to put a cruise ship near customers who have the discretionary funds to partake in it on a regular basis, where would you put it? RCI Grandeur (and Enchantment next year), Carnival Price and Celebrity Mercury all sail out of Baltimore because they are conveniently accessible to one of the top five most affluent customer bases in America. If anything, more and more ships will call Baltimore home--not fewer. In fact, I'd bet RCI would consider putting a Voyager-class ship in Baltimore if only it could clear the low-spanning Bay Bridge.

The bottom line is that the Washington DC/Baltimore area is far ahead of the Norfolk region from a basic demographics, overall buying power or tourism perspective. Norfolk cheerleaders have been trying to compare their mid-sized city with an average economy and some regional tourist attractions, to a Top-5 major U.S. metropolitan area with some of the nation’s most affluent customers and attractions with substantial international and national drawing power.