The West gets wild in baseball’s final week
There’s less than a week to go in baseball’s regular season, and the National League West race is set to come down to the wire. But with close to half of UCSD’s undergraduates from the Los Angeles and Orange Counties, and the Dodgers getting thoroughly beaten on and off the field, odds are you and your friends are no longer paying attention.
For Bay Area fans, it’s another story: They’re either thrilled the Giants have hung on for this long, or pulling their hair out because the Giants have scored fewer runs per game than there are goals in an average World Cup match. Then again, Bay Area sports teams have been pitiful, unlucky, unable to come through in the clutch, or a combination of all three for the last several years. If the Giants can’t catch the Padres even with San Diego’s late season 10-game losing streak, no one will be surprised but their own followers.
Padres fans, however, must be pinching themselves that a division title is still possible. With a payroll less than UCSD’s annual tuition hikes, every baseball “expert” had consigned them to a year of playing at a level equal to that of the Yankees Triple-A team. The Padres organization should be applauded for showing that money can’t always buy wins — or at least given a pat on the back for getting lucky with their young roster.
College football sets record attendance
Major League Baseball had an average attendance of 30,338 in 2009. The NBA averaged 17,520. The NHL had 17,460 per game. On Sept. 4, Michigan opened its season against University of Connecticut in front of a record 113,090 people. Read that again — we’ll wait. Just to be clear, we’re talking about the University of Michigan and college football.
Make all the arguments you like about larger fields and larger stadiums, but that is a lot of people packed into the Big House. While Michigan’s newly renovated stadium is the largest in the country, the amount of seating can hardly get all the credit for drawing spectators. In the same week, Penn State, Ohio State and Alabama all saw six-figure crowds.
Even with college football getting all the attention with its mammoth stadiums, the NFL and professional football remain by far the nation’s most popular sport.
Sure, smaller arenas account for a lot of the attendance disparity across sporting lines, but keep in mind that the NFL gets two and a half times the attendance for its preseason games that the NHL gets for its Stanley Cup finals games. That’s to say nothing of L.A. Clippers or Oakland A’s games, which allow fans more than enough room to stretch their legs on the empty seats in front of them.
Yeah, she could definitely beat you at everything
Anybody who has seen a UCSD women’s basketball game in the last four years might recognize the name Annette Ilg. The athletic, 5’10” guard made 62 starts for the Tritons, including every game from the 2008 to 2010 seasons.
If you check the game stats of any UCSD women’s soccer match this season, playing at forward for the Tritons is none other than a certain senior named Annette Ilg. No, it isn’t another student athlete with the same name. After using up all four of her NCAA-allowed years of eligibility in basketball, Ilg decided she wasn’t done with UCSD athletics and went out for soccer.
Ilg hasn’t played competitive soccer since her time at Avon Lake High School, so it’s expected for her to come out a little flat, maybe struggle to earn playing time. Ilg, however, scored two goals in her debut against Dominican University on Sept. 10 and added another days later against Notre Dame de Namur. An athlete that good is worth seeing while she’s still representing UCSD.
