14th Annual Salem’s So Sweet Festival

Football on the Field
The big game is this weekend, and it’s definitely looking like it will be a game to remember even though the Patriots aren’t in it (I know. I feel your pain.) In fact, even if the Panthers/Broncos matchup doesn’t live up to all of the hype, it certainly appears that all of the performances and commercials that the NFL has lined up for Super Bowl 50 will make it a spectacle for the ages. However, if you have a loved one who isn’t really into football and you want to do something with them before the big game (perhaps so you can drag them to a Super Bowl party without feeling guilty), you may want to head over to Salem this weekend (especially if your loved one is a fan of sweets.)

This is because the 14th Annual Salem’s So Sweet Festival is scheduled to begin at 6:30 P.M. tonight (Friday, February 5, 2016). This festival, which runs until Sunday evening (February 7, 2016), will feature 23 ice sculptures (weather permitting), discounted trolley rides (also weather permitting), and discounts at a number of locations throughout downtown Salem. As a result, if you’re looking for a great way to check out Salem or you’re just looking for a way to take your significant other out for the night without breaking the bank, the Salem So Sweet Festival is definitely the way to go. For more information on the 14th Annual Salem’s So Sweet Festival, please visit Salem’s So Sweet on Facebook or visit the Salem Main Streets website.

Photo via VisualHunt

Entertaining Your Kids Before the Big Game

Football Cupcakes
If you’re a sports fan living anywhere in New England, there’s a very good chance that you already have plans tomorrow afternoon. In fact, if you’re a football fan, you’re probably already well aware that it’s that fine time of year again when the hopes and dreams of devoted fans everywhere can be realized or dashed in a few fleeting moments. Now, I am, of course, talking about the playoffs because every game could be the last game of the season for your team. However, if your kids are not football fans and/or you’re desperately looking for a way to entertain your kids before the Patriots game tomorrow (perhaps in the hope that they will actually let you sit and enjoy the game), the Coolidge Corner Theatre may have exactly what you’re looking for.

This is because the Coolidge Corner Theatre is hosting a special event entitled “Fantastic Journeys: Animated Shorts from Children’s Film Festival Seattle 2015” from 10:30 A.M. to approximately 11:45 A.M. tomorrow (Saturday, January 16, 2016). This event, which is intended primarily for younger children, will give you and your kids the opportunity to watch 11 animated short films from the Children’s Film Festival in Seattle. These films, which range from 2 to 12 minutes long, come from all around the world, and include animated shorts from countries such as Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, the United States, and more. For more information on Fantastic Journeys and/or or to order tickets for the event, please visit the Coolidge Corner Theatre website.

Photo credit: DixieBelleCupcakeCafe via Foter.com / CC BY-ND

Checking Out Boston Sports This Weekend

Boston Red Sox Baseball
Last week, I talked about how summer is a great time to get outside and explore the art around us because it’s one of the only times of the year that we’re not actually buried in snow. And, while some people might be wishing for those mountains of snow to return right now during this unprecedented heat wave, most people would agree it’s nice to enjoy some music, dancing, and other art during the warmer weather. However, it is important to remember that art is not the only thing that is easier to enjoy during the summer. In fact, if you’re a sports fan, summer can be a great time to check out some of the games played during the hotter months, attend a special event at a sports stadium, or even see some of the players from your favorite fall and winter sports get ready for the upcoming season. This means that if you are a sports fan in the Boston area looking for something to do this weekend, you will definitely want to check out some of these events.

First, if you are a Red Sox fan that hasn’t decided that the Red Sox are too painful to watch this year (and, therefore, are a braver fan than I), you may want to try and see them play the Tampa Bay Rays this weekend. The Red Sox are playing at home all weekend, and Ken Ryan, Dick Berardino, or Jim Corsi will be in Autograph Alley on Yawkey Way before each game to sign autographs. Best of all, if you’re a student that doesn’t mind standing to watch the game, you may be able to get standing room only tickets for a measly $9. For more information on obtaining discounted Red Sox tickets for students, please visit the Red Sox Student Ticket Offer page.

Secondly, if you’re a true Red Sox fan, but you just can’t bear to watch them get slaughtered night after night, you may want to consider buying tickets for the 10th Annual Boston Red Sox Picnic in the Park. Now, I will warn you right off the bat (if you’ll excuse the pun) that the Annual Picnic in the Park, which is scheduled to take place after Sunday’s Red Sox Game, is definitely on the pricey side at $325 a ticket. However, a ticket to this event will allow you to get a blanket, get autographs from Red Sox players, bid on a number of Red Sox items and experiences in a live auction, listen to the Boston Pops Jazz Band, have the rare opportunity to enjoy a BBQ on the field at Fenway Park, and more. For more information on the Annual Boston Red Sox Picnic in the Park, which is scheduled to take place after the 1:35 P.M. game on Sunday, August 2, 2015, please visit the Red Sox Foundation’s Picnic in the Park page.

Finally, if you’re more of a Patriots Fan than a Red Sox fan or you’re just really sick of the whole “Deflategate” thing and would like to see how the Patriots are getting ready to crush everyone this year, you may want to check out the Patriots’ Training Camp. The Patriots’ Training Camp, which runs from 9:15 A.M. to 1:30 P.M. every day at Gillette from now until Sunday, will give you the opportunity to see the Patriots practice, try some of the training techniques the Patriots use, and get some of the player’s autographs. Best of all, the Patriots’ Training Camp is open to the public and completely free to attend (even parking is free during training camp sessions), so you won’t have to pay a dime. For more information on the Patriots’ Training Camp, please visit the Patriots’ Training Camp page.

Photo credit: MacBeales / Foter / CC BY-ND

Deflategate – The Plot Thickens

NFL Officials
Last week, I talked about the New England Patriots and the scandal that the media has eloquently (or not so eloquently) entitled Deflategate. However, a lot has changed in a week, and I decided that this particular topic has garnered so much attention that it might deserve a follow-up. In fact, now that the Patriots have won the Super Bowl, the NFL has begun to release a fair number of interesting facts about their investigation. Of course, as I admitted last week, I am definitely a Patriots Fan, but the information that the NFL released right before and after the Super Bowl may have debunked more of the scandal than any of the information released in the two weeks leading up to Super Bowl Sunday. Here’s why:

Shortly after the AFC Championship Game, ESPN reported that 11 out of the 12 footballs that the Patriots used on offense were found to be 2 PSI below the league minimum. This claim is actually the basis for most of the scandal, and the reason that so many people have been preparing their torches and pitchforks. There’s just one problem. It’s not true. According to the NFL, only one of the 12 footballs tested at halftime was actually 2 PSI below the league minimum. The other 10 footballs were only a “tick” below the 12.5 minimum PSI set by the league, which means that 11 of the 12 footballs were actually above the league minimum at the beginning of the game and for most of the first half (until they lost some of their air due to the cold.) In fact, after testing the footballs, the officials felt that 11 of the 12 footballs were close enough to the league minimum that they didn’t warrant any further investigation. As a result, they just added some air to the footballs and didn’t record the PSI of any of the footballs except for the ball that was 2 PSI below the minimum.

Now, you might ask, why was one football 2 PSI below the league minimum? Well, there are a lot of possibilities. The football may have been closer to the league minimum at the beginning of the game than the other footballs were (and, therefore, had less air to lose before it was significantly below the minimum), the ball may have been underinflated by accident (because an official misread the pressure gauge before the game for example), or the ball may have been underinflated on purpose. It is, of course, this last possibility that so many football fans are concerned with. However, there is one important thing to remember. The one and only ball that was 2 PSI below the league minimum was the ball that the Colts intercepted during the AFC Championship Game and turned over to the officials after it spent a number of plays on their sideline. If this is indeed the case (and it certainly appears to be), then can anyone tell me with certainty that it was the Patriots that tampered with the football and not the Colts?

I realize that all of the Colts fans out there are probably reading this and shaking their computer screen as they scream “But the Ravens told us! The Patriots cheat!” Unfortunately, there’s a problem with this particular defense as well. It’s not true either. According to Ravens’ head coach, John Harbaugh, the Ravens never actually told the Colts anything because there wasn’t anything to tell. They didn’t know anything about the Patriots using underinflated footballs until the Colts brought it up. As a result, the only thing backing up the Colts’ claim is a single football that spent a lot of time with both teams.

Photo credit: Keith Allison / Foter / CC BY-SA

Taking the Air out of Deflategate

If we were talking about football this deflated, I would be calling foul too...but we're not...
If we were talking about footballs this deflated, I would be calling foul too…

If you’ve been following my posts for a while, you may have realized that every so often I like to change things up a bit and talk about some football. And, since this Sunday is Super Bowl Sunday, there probably is no better time to talk about some football than now. However, unless you’ve been living in a hole, under a rock, in a cave on the moon, you’ve probably heard about the shadow that is hanging over the big game this weekend, Deflategate. Now, I will admit outright that I am a Patriots fan, but I think there’s a lot more going on with the whole Deflategate scandal than what is apparent on the surface (and I don’t think it has anything to do with cheating.)

To explain what I mean, let’s start by framing the scandal for anyone that’s a little fuzzy on the details. During the AFC Championship game between the Indianapolis Colts and the New England Patriots, 11 out of the 12 footballs that the Patriots used on offense were found to be 2 PSI below the minimum limit established by the NFL. This, of course, led to an uproar because many people felt that the Patriots must have deliberately underinflated their footballs to gain some sort of advantage.

There are a couple of fundamental flaws with this notion, however. First, there’s actually no evidence that an underinflated ball would give a team’s offense any significant advantage at all. In fact, according to ESPN, an underinflated ball would fly a little slower, which would actually be more likely to help a defender reach the ball before it reached its intended target. The only advantage that an underinflated ball might give an offensive player is a slightly better grip, but the difference would be hardly noticeable.

The second flaw is that there’s a large number of physics professors that will happily tell you that it’s completely possible that the footballs deflated on their own. This is because of a physics law known as Charles’ Law, which states that the volume of a gas is directly proportional to the absolute temperature when the pressure is constant. This means that the amount of gas (in, this case, air) within an object will decrease as the temperature decreases, so a football inflated just above the league’s minimum in a warm room prior to the game may have had significantly less air in it (and, therefore, a significantly lower PSI) after it spent a couple hours out in the cold. The reason that one of the Patriots footballs and all of the Colt’s footballs were above the minimum when they were tested at halftime is most likely because they were inflated to a higher PSI before the game actually started and, therefore, had more air to lose before they fell below the league minimum.

Now, this brings about an important question: if there was no advantage to using underinflated footballs and there is a logical explanation for how the footballs may have ended up underinflated even though they had the correct pressure at the beginning of the game, why has this become such an issue? The answer is money. Scandals make news outlets, TV stations, and the league itself more money because more people will not only pickup newspapers and watch broadcasts to keep up with the scandal, but will also watch the Super Bowl to root against the alleged “cheaters.” As a result, the reason that most of the news outlets are more than happy to paint the Patriots as cheaters (and the league is more than willing to let them) is that everyone loves a good villain, and a good villain will make more people watch.

Photo credit: frankieleon / Foter / CC BY

Football Friday – Was It Really a Mistake for the Patriots to Pick Up Amendola?

Another Saint Patrick’s Day has come and gone, and we’re now into the part of March where there’s really not a whole lot going on. In fact, unless you’re sitting on a beach somewhere for Spring Break or you’re a video game fan on your way to PAX East, you’re probably going to have a hard time finding anything beyond the local concerts, wine tastings, and other similar events that you would typically find somewhere in your local area almost every weekend. As a result, this week, I’m going to talk about something a little different than I usually do and discuss something that all of the sports fans out there can really look forward to — football.

However, I’m not just going to ramble on about football in general because there’s simply too much to say in one blog post. Instead, I’m going to focus on one specific decision that has been highlighted by sports analysts, experts, players, owners, and fans everywhere. Which decision am I talking about? I’m talking about the Patriot’s decision to pick up Danny Amendola and let Wes Welker go to Denver, of course. Many analysts and experts consider this move to be a rare mistake on the part of the Patriots, but all the talk brings about an interesting question. Was it actually a mistake to pick up Amendola?

Let’s look at some stats. Wes Welker caught 118 passes for 1,354 yards and 6 touchdowns during the 2012 season. This means that Welker averaged about 11.5 yards per reception. Danny Amendola caught 63 passes for 666 yards and 3 touchdowns during the 2012 season. Amendola, as a result, averaged about 10.6 yards per reception. Now, looking at these numbers, you can see why so many people are saying that it was a mistake to let Welker go, since Welker had almost exactly twice as many receptions, yards, and touchdowns as Amendola.

Here’s the problem though. Welker had Brady as a quarterback while Amendola had Sam Bradford. Brady threw 637 times for 4,827 yards and 34 touchdowns during the 2012 season while Bradford threw 551 times for 3,702 yards and 21 touchdowns. As you can see, there’s a big difference between Bradford’s numbers and Brady’s, which means there were less opportunities for Amendola to actually move the ball down the field. If you don’t believe me, look at the number of times that Amendola and Welker were actually targeted. Amendola was targeted 101 times and Welker was targeted 174. This means that Welker had 73 more opportunities than Amendola to catch the ball, which could explain the difference between their stats.

Now, am I saying that Amendola is going to be the next Wes Welker? No, but I am saying that he could be. Amendola is only 27, his average yards per reception has improved every year (even when he was injured), and he’s shown that he can make the long catches that every team needs to win. Welker, on the other hand, is 31, and his stats actually dipped a little in 2012 (although, this dip could have been a result of the fact that his stats were inflated by his stellar performance in 2011.) As such, the Patriot’s decision to pick up Amendola may seem strange at first glance, but was it actually a mistake? No. Is it a gamble? Maybe. But, if the Patriots put Amendola in the same role as Welker and Amendola can stay healthy, things could get very interesting in New England.