Onward to victory...

It’s that time of year when everything becomes pumpkin-flavored, little ones load up backpacks, and I start obsessively looping the “Rudy” soundtrack on repeat. It’s football season!

While I won’t be making a football-specific pilgrimage to South Bend this fall due to other major travel commitments (including a trip home under the Dome for a very special wedding, yay!), I’ve made plans to take in as many games as humanly possible, starting with this weekend’s matchup against the Longhorns. We’ll be at Greg’s cabin, where it sounds like football rules the day on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend. With alums of Wisconsin, Iowa, and Michigan in attendance as well, it’s sure to be a long day of cheers and beers.

We also had our office fantasy football draft yesterday, and I had the 9th pick in a 10-person league. Needless to say, with my very minimal expertise and even more limited experience, I panicked a bit. Last year I had the second pick and it was easy-breezy. This year? Yikes. Thankfully, I have guy friends with way more football knowledge than me, and with the excellent (and extensive!) coaching advice of my dear Davids (high school and college friends, respectively!), I ended up with this fine team:

We’ll see how the season shapes up. There are a few colleagues that, being totally honest, I wouldn’t hate slaughtering on the fantasy field. Gotta defend that third-place finish from last year, after all!

Now I’m feeling all nostalgic for campus—cereal in the Band building followed by early march-outs, traipsing around the quads in my uniform so excited for the game, that long, humid first march to the stadium on a day that was inevitably 90 degrees. The claustrophobia and camaraderie of cramming shoulder-to-shoulder into the Tunnel, ready to burst into the sunlight and sound of screaming, rabid Irish fans ready for a victory. The heartache of a defeat or exhilaration of a win, and the raw, scratchy throat that, without fail, took over after eight hours of shouting and cheering. I may not be there in person, but in spirit I think I’ll always be there this time of year.

Onward to victory…unless you’re a Longhorns fan, in which case…go away!

Take me out to the ball game!

Baseball! It’s the American pastime. And for once in my adult life, the Twins aren’t abysmal, so that’s really fun. My dad scored some seriously awesome tickets to the Twins versus the Orioles a few weeks ago, and he, my mom, Jonathan and I spent a night at Target Field enjoying perfect weather, plenty of drinks, and a SERIOUSLY fantastic view of the game.

The two important things to know about my family are that we are fairly noncommittal Minnesota sports fans, but that we really, really like having good seats for sporting events. My parents and I, bless all of us, do not know a ton about the intricacies of sports apart from the activities that we, their nerd-children, did in high school and college. So…basically…downhill ski-racing, debate/speech team, drama, marching band, and…um, Student Council? Riiiight. Not a lot of extraneous sports knowledge floating around the Schwegman home. I guess you could say we’re enthusiastic fans with very little actual athletic ability? Let’s go with that.

The weather could not have been nicer for the 7:10 start of our game. We headed over a bit early to take advantage of our Metropolitan Club access…think bottomless nachos, grilled flatbread pizza, and Papa Bear ensuring the gin and tonics flowed like water. It was definitely a novel way to do a game…I could get used to pretending to be fancy, and let’s be real, the access to air-conditioning was wonderful. After filling up on snackies we headed down to our seats. And when I say down, I really do mean down:

Um, whoever my dad’s friend is who gave him the tix…THANK YOU and do you have a son who happens to be around my age and single?  I think Mom and I would go to a lot more Twins games if they always involved this kind of legroom and footrest action.

To truly illustrate how clueless we Schwegkids can be: when Jonathan Instagrammed his view from our seats, he captioned it “Front Row at TCF Stadium, let’s go Twins!” Ummmm, kiddo, wrong stadium, wrong sport (TCF Stadium is home to the University of Minnesota's Gopher football program!). That said, I think he had fun, you know, once he figured out that we were scoring runs instead of touchdowns and all…

Papa Bear, Jodester and I, in the meantime, had a blast people-watching, game-watching, and chatting. It also helped that the Twins routed the Orioles 8-3, and we got to witness rookie Miguel Sano’s first-ever major league home run. He was so excited! It was adorable! We also attended right in the middle of the crusade to get Brian Dozier into the All-Star game via fan vote. It was hilarious to see the “Bull-Dozier” campaign all over the stadium, from the parked bulldozer out front by the entrance to the creative use of cutout people…

Yessssss. Getting to enjoy a great game with my family was the perfect summer evening activity. In the meantime, I’ll keep following the Twins and hoping that our streak of looking like an actual team continues! 

Weekend Update

January ended and February began with subzero temperatures, a lot of wind, and a remarkably fun, relaxing weekend for me! 

On Friday, I ditched out of work ridiculously early, which turned out to be totally lucky because I had debit card fraud. Cue total panicked freakout when my card wouldn't work at the parking ramp pay machine...two hours, an irrational amount of stress, and a sweet and helpful banker at Wells Fargo later, all sorted out, and the jerk who tried to book a B&B in Liverpool on my dime should get a life. Thankfully, I had great plans with Claire to look forward to! 

My mom and I were planning to go to the Minnesota Orchestra's Shakespeare Winterfest together, but she had to go have a blast in Ohio for my little bro's fraternity moms' weekend. Claire was a champ and joined me for dinner, drinks and music despite being in the thick of a public accounting busy season! We started the evening with wine at my apartment, then headed to Masa for to-die-for tacos and the most delicious margarita I've had in a long time (and a mojito for Claire!). 

The performance was "Star-Crossed Lovers" themed, and featured Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev's versions of "Romeo and Juliet" bookending the Symphonic Dances from "West Side Story." I loved it--the Tchaikovsky is one of my all-time favorites with the iconic love theme and stirring strings, and the Prokofiev was a shocking surprise. It was Claire's first orchestra and it was so much fun to get to go with a girlfriend! We also ran into one of my other Notre Dame favorites, Pat, at intermission...it was so nice to catch up a bit!

Saturday started off with a quiet, productive morning, then I headed to the 'burbs to meet up with my Papa Bear! We tooled around home, ran some errands, and decided to go brewery hopping...one of my favorite new weekend activities! First stop: the giant, stunning new Surly Taproom near Dinkytown: 

Dad sampled Surly Hell and Surly Cynic, while I went a bit more out there with the Surly Cacao Bender, an espresso-hopped stout. 

After a lot of people-watching and marveling at the beautiful (jam-packed) facility, we went a bit more cozy and swung by Indeed. 

Here, I tried out the "Derailed Series Peloton Saison," which was mildly sour with a tart, almost spicy finish. Padre kept things a bit more basic with the Winter Ale on nitro...he shared a taste with me, and it was super reminiscent of the delicious, fresh-as-can-be Guinness at the Dublin factory. All tapped out (pun SO intended), we headed home for a great night of homemade bolognese, a few games of pool, and a viewing of "The Marathon Man." 

We woke up on Sunday with a hankering for brunch and a few inches of snow on the ground, so we kept things local and tried out the breakfast offerings at the Burnsville location of Lucky 13's Pub. Their Bloody Mary was fantastic...

...as was the "Breakfast Juicy Lucy Eggs Benedict." Um, yes. Picture, if you will, a cheese-stuffed sausage patty on an English muffin, topped with more cheese, a perfectly fried egg, and Hollandaise, and then add a side of cheesy hash browns. And that's breakfast. I would've popped had I tried to clean my plate.

Fully in a food coma, we returned home, marathoned "Property Brothers" and made fun of everyone on the show, watched a ton of Super Bowl pre game festivities, and played more pool. I headed back toward the Cities right after halftime, and caught the tail end from my apartment...what a great finish to a game that was way more interesting than last year's rout! 

Call me an old lady, but I had such a great time hanging out and relaxing. Keeping things low-key was the perfect way to end my least favorite month...especially because February is already shaping up to be full of amazing plans and festivities!

Fantasy Football for the NFL Novice

Men: Get excited, I'm going to talk about sports and mean it.

Ladies: Get excited, there's like 20 pictures of athletic men in this post.

Those who know me know I have many strengths. I read really fast. I remember birthdays and can analyze an SSAE16 report with the best of them. Sports? Not my forte. I have a healthy appreciation for them, but if you ask me to get technical, it's pretty much not going to end well. 

Despite this irreversible fact, I am somehow playing Fantasy Football this year. 

My colleagues at the office invited me to play, and little did I know what I was in for. Buy-ins? Drafts? Transactions and trades? Um, it's all Greek to me. In fact, unless it was some kind of Notre Dame-only fantasy football where Notre Dame just kind of wins automatically every week, the likelihood of me being able to even credibly contribute anything was slim to none. I had misgivings. But I went after it anyway...with the help of a close guy friend, David, who knows Fantasy Football like I know Jane Austen novels. That is to say...really, really well. 

When I asked David for advice (aka texted him "I'm in my office Fantasy league. HELP."), he pretty much had to give me a full crash course. Because I found this surprisingly interesting, and because he made it so easy to understand, here we go: a Liz-style review of everything I now know about Fantasy Football! (Thanks David!)

League Structure

Basically, once you decide you're going to do Fantasy Football, you have to set up a league. For me, this meant: "Be invited to participate as the sole rookie in a long-established, competitive office pool." Done. Leagues can be public (on NFL.com, you can play against people all over the world) or private through a variety of sites (My boss has played on Yahoo; our office league is using ESPN). 

Scoring

Every Fantasy team fields eight players per game, who earn points based on how well they play in their real games every weekend. Each team is matched against another team in the league, and the winner of the "game" is the team with more total points at the end of a given weekend. In a standard scoring structure, points are awarded for touchdowns, returns, rushing and receiving yardage, etcetera. All points systems can be customized. 

My league, in an effort to make things as complex and non-intuitive as possible, competes on a "PPR," or "points per reception," league. I'm still pretty shaky on my comprehension of how PPR scoring works, but what I do know is that it makes wide receivers and running backs the indisputable top scorers. (I lucked out in my draft and have a standout RB and a couple good wide receivers, so this works.) The overall value of a quarterback is less significant, too. 

Draft

Leagues can either do online drafts, which are run through the site the league plays on and are timed, or do a live draft, where participants meet face to face and make their draft picks in real-time. Supposedly, online drafts are easier. I wouldn't know since my team left work at 2:30 on a Tuesday and went to a bar to do a live draft...um, not going to complain about that one...

Draft pick order is randomly assigned in our league by picking a number out of a hat. I had the 3rd pick out of 8 participants, which was really good. Picks go in reversing order...so on odd rounds, I picked third, and on even rounds, I picked sixth. 

Drafting is what I was most nervous/clueless about going in, but David game me his handy-dandy foolproof guide to drafting NOT like an idiot, and since I'm pretty sure this is common knowledge, here we go!

First round: Easy. Since I had the #3 pick, I was to take the remaining player out of Adrian Peterson, LeSean McCoy, or Jamaal Charles. I ended up with Jamaal. (He plays for the Chiefs, and once upon a time Charlie Weis coached for them, so, there's a tenuous Notre Dame connection...)

Second through fourth rounds: Stack up on a combination of wide receivers and tight ends. I landed Montee Ball, Brandon Marshall, and Antonio Brown. Of the three, so far Brandon's my favorite, sheerly for the picture below center. 

Fifth: Flex, which is basically another wide receiver, tight end or running back. I got Rob Gronkowski (who, of course, was out on the injured list this week...). 

Sixth: Here's where we landed a quarterback. David gave me a pre-approved list from which to pick, and I ended up taking Matt Ryan. Conveniently, he meets my desire that my quarterback be cute. Nice. 

In the seventh and eighth round, I needed more offense and picked up Shane Vereen and Emmanuel Sanders. 

Ninth round: Another quarterback. Pickings were slim by this point but I got Jay Cutler, who, to the best of my knowledge, is still Mr. Kristin Cavallari. 

In the tenth and eleventh rounds, more offense. More men about whom I know very little: Jason Witten and Danny Woodhead, who looks like quite the doofus if you ask me. 

Twelfth and thirteenth rounds were our last two, because our league is smaller. David's number one draft rule was to wait and take my kicker and defense last...apparently they're lower point-scorers in Fantasy. Using his tried and true method, I ended up with the Patriots defense and Justin Tucker, the Baltimore kicker (Hi Kait!). 

So there you have my team!

Transactions/Weekly Bench

I haven't really experimented much with this yet, but here's what I've got: You pick your eight players every week: a quarterback, a kicker, and a defense always, as well as 2 running backs and, in my league, any combination of wide receivers and tight ends. The rest of the players sit on your fantasy bench, which, in my fantasy, is gold with throw pillows, and don't earn you points. If at any point a player isn't pulling his weight, you can drop him from your team and pick up a new player (in my league, this costs $$. Real $$, so I'm hoping to limit that...). You can also trade with other teams, but nobody in my league ever trades so we end up with weird little powerhouse oligarchies of fantasy teams. Appropriate. 

Okay guys. Now that I've manned up for a solid half hour, off to watch a marathon of "Dance Moms" and "Raising Asia." Because let's be real...I'd probably be way better at Fantasy if it was with Junior Elite dance teams. 

Notre Dame Nostalgia

I was in the marching band in school. The Band of the Fighting Irish. Even typing that makes me a little bit shivery with memories. Gamedays for band members looked a bit different than the typical student's "sleep-in, pick out gameday attire, pregame/tailgate, watch game, call it a day" routine, though. Gameday, for us, started every Monday with a new halftime routine. Four more days of three-hour practices would hone and polish that routine...rain, snow, or shine...with sectionals thrown in to learn the music too. Practice was never dull, especially during the most wonderful week of the year, Piccolo Spirit Week (Piccs on top!!). 

Fridays were not so much a practice as part of the campus gameday experience. The 400 band members assembled at the Dome at 4pm, each section sporting their own t-shirt (and in the piccs' cases, often crazy headbands or, ahem, neon tights?). We warmed up and did a full marchout in front of hundreds of fans to our practice field, where we did a complete run-through, no breaks, of the pregame, halftime, and postgame routines, again in front of hundreds. And this was just Friday!

We'd march to the pep rally after Friday practice, perform again, and disperse until midnight, when we joined hundreds of others for Midnight Drummer's Circle under the shadow of the Golden Dome. Six hours later, we'd wake up for Saturday morning breakfast at the band building, marchout, practice, and morning meeting, with skits, speeches, and other reminders for gameday. Cramming into the band practice room with 400 of my closest friends...every week, I savored the sense of excitement and camaraderie (or survived the occasionally raging hangovers, senior year!). 

Uniform time followed morning practice. As nerdy as it sounds, putting on those delicious wool-poly-blend pants and snapping on spats never failed to make me feel absolutely insane pride. Campus would be buzzing at this point, and the second I stepped out of my dorm, I'd start noticing fans' smiles being a bit brighter in my direction. The band is recognized, and truly beloved on campus. It wasn't uncommon to get stopped and asked to pose for pictures, either. Because who doesn't want a photo of their kid with a college piccolo player? (I need to ask Johnny Manziel for his tips on how to sell autographs and not get caught...)

The piccolos always headed over to Band Brunch in South Dining Hall after we got dressed and ready. Traditions like the saxophone-falto original song war...concluding with the singing of "God Smite the Saxophone" (to the tune of, yes, "God Bless America")...kept us and the fans who paid to eat dining-hall food amused. And every band brunch concluded with several surprise trumpets popping up to play the fight song, prompting every band member in the dining hall to immediately climb up on our chairs and shout along.  

And Concert on the Steps...words can't describe. The piccolos always had the top several rows of steps at the Architecture Building, since our instruments were compact and our section was smallish. Cramming in shoulder to shoulder often meant we could hardly turn side to side, let alone get enough elbow room to breathe and play without compacting every body part to just make it work, but the rush of looking out and seeing this view made every second of sweating on those steps feel like a privilege. 

Then came marchouts, which were alternately hot, rainy, freezing by turn, and endlessly perfect. Marching through walls of fans cheering for us as we shouted and played the best university fight song in the country could only be topped by our final destination, The Tunnel, where we crammed together closer even than shoulder-to-shoulder, clinging to each others' plaids, breathless with anticipation. The sheer adrenaline of this moment...I can't imagine topping it. On the drum major's whistle, we exploded in the trot out of the tunnel and took the field. I'll never forget the first time I ran out, saw 80,000 fans screaming, and summarily died and went to heaven. I'll never forget the last time I did it. To quote Rudy's dad, it was "the most beautiful sight these eyes have ever seen." 

Games in and of themselves held many traditions...halftime apples, 3rd quarter "1812 Overture," Traveling Band, special picc cheers to each cadence...before we knew it, the games would end (for my class, usually with a loss) and we'd march out, back to the band building, only to do it all again starting Monday. 

Not going to lie, there were days where I didn't want to be at practice, and if I hadn't been in the band I probably would have had just as much fun sleeping in on Saturdays and tailgating with friends. The band was my community though...my sorority, my safety net, my identity. Looking back on those gameday Saturdays has become the lens through which my entire college experience is colored, and I'll never associate fall or the sound of a drum with anything more forcefully than with blistered feet and the shrill tweet of a whistle calling me to march out, again, and cheer on the Irish.