Backpass: Citizen Soccer Journalist

The rabbi travels to Ohio and buys a ticket and cheers his head off. Also: we're in quite a tailspin. I attempt to offer insight into the reasons. Or at least solace in a dark place.

Last week in Pittsburgh, the Riverhounds faced Columbus Crew in a match so big, Hounds Communications guru Matt Grubba had to set up an auxiliary press box. That’s because the Riverhounds press box accommodates a grand total of eight people. Ten, if we all squeeze in.

The secondary press box was located on top of a half-length shipping container¹ along the end line. It really was a nice view. But also the reporter next to me nearly got decapitated by an errant cross. So, there are tradeoffs.

On the other side of me was the Columbus Dispatch’s Crew beat reporter, Bailey Johnson. At some point in our early banter, I said something like ‘You guys seem to have been struggling as of late.’ Bailey corrected me: ‘They.’ ‘Right, they,’ I replied.

Sports reporters – even beat reporters who cover the same team all season, who know the players and the coach, are obligated by journalistic creed to remain neutral. They must somehow pull off this incredible magic trick whereby they report the news from the perspective of their assigned team, watching the game in a manner that would serve the fans of their team, while not reporting from a fan perspective. Remaining neutral. Maintaining journalistic objectivity.

This is, to some degree, impossible, and ridiculous. While the Denver Nuggets reporter is gushing over the teams effective lock-down defense, the Miami Heat reporter is writing ‘the fellas just couldn’t find the hot hand tonight as shot after shot rattled off the rim dejectedly…’ Folks, they’re watching the same game. They’re just describing the exact same events from opposite sides.

Ms. Johnson is an actual professional, and as such, knows how to approach the craft with proper distance. I, on the other hand, am a rank amateur, as well as a believer in the gonzo school of journalism. Rules are dumb, objectivity is an illusion, and to pretend you don’t care is a form of atheistic nihilism I refuse to practice.

There are still rules, man.² You don’t take selfies with players. You don’t ask for autographs. You don’t cheer in the press box.³

The boundaries are still more permeable for us citizen soccer journalists than they are for the pros. So of course, for the Wednesday May 31 Colorado Rapids match in Columbus, I absolutely bought tickets in section 208 and donned my Rapids kits without any compunction.

It’s not like I was submitting my travel expense receipts at the end of match to HTHL corporate. And with a kid in tow – my 10 year old, Etta – I wasn’t going to be down in the post-game press conference recording Robin Fraser’s response to the team’s sixth loss in a row. “Yes, Etta, some of those words that Mr. Fraser used are ones that you only hear in the car when daddy is late or we are listening to gangster rap. You may NOT say them at school.” So this wasn’t a working trip. I was there as a fan. A fan who goes home and writes 2,000 words about the experience. But still.

I find this more honest, anyhow. Beat writers, unless they’ve been mistreated by the manager or start player, are all actually rooting for the team they cover. Humans have emotions. We become attached to things, and teams, and people. So for Wednesday, I leaned more into ‘citizen’ and out of ‘journalist’, at least in the traditional sense. It was not ‘they’. It was ‘we.’

The Lower.com Field Experience

The away match at Columbus is the sixth MLS stadium in my collection: added to Dicks Sporting Goods Park (Colorado Rapids), BMO Stadium (LAFC), TCL Stadium (FC Cincinnati), Lumen Field (Seattle Sounders), and Children’s Mercy Park (Sporting Kansas City). Here’s a brief rating of my experience, based on the criteria I established at my last away game in LA:

​Approach to Stadium

We stayed downtown and walked the mile from our hotel. Weirdly, Cincinnati and Columbus have almost identical geographic layouts for their downtown: Ohio River to the sound, downtown, stadium to the west, bounded to the westernmost side by a highway. Coors Field’s orientation to local landmarks is similar, if you picture Cherry Creek as, you know, a river a half-mile wide.

While Cincinnati has a vibrant bar scene east of the stadium that you walk through to get to the match, Columbus has … some office buildings, a corporate headquarters, and two other stadia. It’s kind of dull and sanitized. You pass a few restaurants and a couple of bars, but it’s not a bumpin’ scene. To be fair, it’s miles better than 'the ocean of bare asphalt parking lots surrounding DSGP (Oh where for art thou, Victory Crossing?).’ But it was nothing special. I was hoping for food trucks or something to snack on for the walk. No luck.

Lower.com: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

DSGP:    ⭐️⭐️

Architecture

Lower.com (I hate writing ‘dot com’ as part of a stadium’s proper name) looks more or less like a black box as you approach in the daylight. But once you enter the gates, it really gives off a sense of ‘this is a proper football pitch.’

Both aesthetically and practically, having 360 degree-covered stands is fantastic. Getting rained on is no fun. The square roof hoisted well above the pitch also conjures the image of San Siro, AC Milan’s home ground. This is the dominant feature, and it is lovely.

The field has concourses on the South, East, and North side, and a huge bank of luxury suites and press facilities on the west, above a field-side stand. To get from the South stand to the North along the west side, there is a little walkway/perch that sits exposed to wilting sun, but you can also access that side several other ways. The stadium in Cincinnati is very similar –it’s clearly something of a cookie-cutter, modern football stadium design. This ‘weird westside walkway on the edge of the luxury facility’ to me is the only incongruous aspect of the schematics.

The Nordecke, Columbus’ supporters group, sits in … uh … the Nordecke.⁴ It’s an all-standing section with rails, and it was almost completely full. The rake/pitch of their stand makes for a noisy and intimidating scene. I didn’t get to go up to the suites or the press box, but the press get to sit high over the field, at the center line and have a pretty fantastic view.

It’s an exceptional facility, both in look and function.

Lower.com:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

DSGP:   ⭐️⭐️⭐️

​Amenities

There is a pub/bar in the southeast corner with a great view of the pitch. There’s a beer garden behind the Nordecke. And upon entering the stadium, there is a public plaza for pre-game music, pop-a-shot soccer, and the sale of expensive beers for folks who don’t want to go to their seats yet.

There are also four premium club/lounge spaces: the ‘River Club’ and the ‘Huntington Field Club’ on the west side, and the ‘Tipico Sports Book Club’ and ‘Lower.com Lounge’ on the east side (I think Tipico was once called the ‘rail club’). They all come with food and drink amenities or all-inclusive packages, and have ‘premium entrances’ and such. The Lower.com Lounge has a ‘pitch-side patio with fireplaces, the first in MLS.’ The words ‘private’, ‘premium’, ‘member-only’ and ‘exclusive’ are used extensively in the website marketing of these spaces. In other words, you will pay a lot and you will not be forced to mix with the unwashed masses.

These are high-roller options for folks in a different tax bracket than me, but I see the appeal - Columbus Crew have the ability to market their team to folks that want a pleasant, fancy, upscale experience for their clients or friends; where the soccer is secondary to the overall experience at the match. This is not really my jam - I’m there for the football. But I get it. A Crew match appeals to all kinds of different folks.

Lower.com:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

DSGP:   ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Parking/Transport

We walked from our hotel, but near-to-stadium parking followed the American standard of ‘downtown stadium pricing’: the shorter the walk to your seat, the pricier the parking. At the stadium parking will run you $35, and every block, the price drops a bit. Parking a mile walk from The Lower Dot will cost you $15.

Columbus has no light rail. I didn’t really see any buses headed to the stadium. There were lots of those zippy electric scooters near the stadium before and after the game. Seems like the only way to get to Lower is driving, ubering, or walking.

I include this category because it allows me to remind us all that parking at DSGP is free. The Colorado Rapids may not have a good team, or good food, or a shiny new field, or a stadium close to the center of town. We do, however, have free parking, and lots of it.

Lower.com: ⭐️⭐️
 
DSGP:   ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Food

There were a lot of options for me as a vegetarian. There looked to be lots of gourmet options - a hot chicken stand on the north side, as well as brisket and pulled pork sandwiches. And of course hot dogs and nachos (in a hard hat!) Honestly, I only walked 2/3rds of the stadium, and there were too many options to recall.

Prices were American standard - not cheap, but nothing astronomical if you’ve been to a sporting event. Everything from the personal pizza to the walking taco to the beer was $11 each.

By comparison in Commerce City, the food is awful and is standard American mass-garbage stadium fare. Every year a new stadium opens in MLS is another year Colorado looks more and more out of step with the obvious trends.

If you like good food at a soccer match, then I encourage you to take an MLS road trip. Do it. On the other hand, if you hate yourself and like suffering, by all means, buy a slice of Marco’s Pizza at DSGP, and live in self-shame, misery, and regret all the days of your life.

Lower.com:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

DSGP:   No stars. Only hate.

Other/Tailgate/Press Box:

It was a Wednesday, so even if the Nordecke had a tailgate, I assume it wouldn’t have been large and raucous, so I skipped it. And I wasn’t working press, so I didn’t get to see the press box this time. Which spares you from listening to me complain about the free food in the press box not being good enough. Something something gift horses… something something mouths…

Overall

Lower.com Field is an awesome experience: a bit better than Cincinnati, and as good as going to LAFC, or perhaps even a little better (read about what bizarre experience it was to get to the LAFC press box here.) Folks on twitter let me know that they thought Austin and Minnesota are the best stadia in MLS right now. I look forward to going to those stadiums. But I would say that of the six stadiums I have been to, I rank Lower.com number one. Other than the lack of atmosphere on the walk-in to the match, and a lack of public transit right near the field, it’s a top-notch experience.

Lower.com: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1/2

Bad Six

With the defeat in Ohio, “our” Rapids extended their skid to six losses in a row. We’ve been outscored 14-5 over those matches. The team currently sits 2-6-8 (WTL) on 12 points, with a -11 Goal Differential. That puts us 28th overall in MLS, only one spot above the LA Galaxy, who have a game in hand on us. Yes, we are in a competition for hardware: the Wooden Spoon.

The Wooden Spoon, for any folks who haven’t heard of it, is the MLS ‘award’ for the league’s worst team. Despite several awful seasons for Colorado: 1996, 2014, 2015, 2018, 2019; we have thankfully never claimed the Wooden Spoon.

In the past two weeks on our podcast, we’ve begun to shift the narrative from ‘what chance do we have to get back in the playoff picture?’ to ‘how bad is this season?’

Answer: pretty bad! We’re looking at a season where the team will likely pull somewhere in the realm of 4 to 8 total wins. If the Rapids keep on this trajectory, they’ll finish 4-13-17, putting them around 10th all-time for worst MLS season ever, and worst ever in Rapids history. Worse than 2014 Colorado, Pablo Mastroeni’s first season, when the team hit a 14-game winless streak to end the season. Worse than 2019 Colorado, when Anthony Hudson failed to win the first 10 games of the season and proclaimed “we’re sitting at the bottom with a bottom group of players.”

Extrapolating in a linear manner is never accurate. Things could get better! But they probably won’t.

In Columbus, the team actually played well in long stretches. Wilfred Nancy’s Columbus love possession, and the Rapids were outgunned for talent, so Coach Fraser put the team in a 5-4-1 and had defenders jump lines to intercept passes. That resulted in the first goal for Colorado:

Fraser also played counter-pressing football - the Rapids attempted to win it back high, and then transition to quick offense from an advantageous position. That resulted in a goal for Jonathan Lewis, ruled offside, at 20’, and a fantastic missed chance for Nicholson to score a brace at 44’, which he pulled wide. So there was an alternate universe where the Rapids win or draw this game, 4-3 or 3-3.

But they didn’t. The defense was really weak. Columbus had no trouble cutting inside on dribbles or getting open looks from outside the 18 yard box. Zelerayan had a goal and an assist, and if you watch the replays, you’ll see he wasn’t closely marked on either play. The Rapids midfield four of Danny Leyva, Connor Ronan, Jonathan Lewis and Sam Nicholson struggled to get back on defense and plug holes, especially in the second half. Wilfred Nancy made those adjustments at the half, and beat an outmanned Rapids team.

Colorado also were forced to put on Remi Cabral and Marlon Vargas, two Rapids 2 players, because of all the injuries and suspensions and because Colorado is playing Saturday-Wednesday-Saturday. The team is stretched very thin.

Fraser did demonstrate he can be adaptive and crafty to compete, and I think over the next 18 games, he’ll use that guile to scrape together something like 4-6 wins and 6-8 draws, keeping the Rapids out of the ‘worst all-time’ record books. We do need some reinforcements, though. We need Diego Rubio to get healthy.⁵ And we need a midfielder to partner with Conor Ronan that can compete at an MLS level.

I doubt ‘hey, maybe we might not finish last’ was the optimism you were looking for, friends.

1. This is used as a pitch-side luxury suite. It’s quite clever, if not more than a little garage league, which is totally on brand for the USL.

2. ‘Smokey, This is not ‘Nam. This is bowling. There are rules.’

3. This is actually a US custom. Latin American-based journalists regularly scream for joy when their team gets a goal.

4. Wednesday was the day that I learned it is pronounced Nor-Deck-Uh. 10 years an MLS fan and I didn’t know that.

5. I have no knowledge of what’s up with Rubio, injury-wise. He’s listed as having an ‘upper body injury’, which is probably his oblique muscle - which is what the team listed the injury as a week and a half ago. I know of no timetable for return.