Category: football (Page 1 of 8)

Hi Kim Pegula. Let’s talk. You can fix this.

3 January, 2017 / Kat

Dear Kim –

Sometimes you need a girlfriend to pull you aside and say, “Psst, you have something in your teeth,” or, “Your shirt is inside out.” (Trust me, I’ve been there.)

Well, as a fellow Rochester-bred gal, I need to pull you aside and let you know there’s something wrong with that football team you bought.

You let go of your head coach, Rex Ryan, before the final week of the season, over an alleged disagreement over the status of quarterback Tyrod Taylor for the last week of the season. You, your husband, Terry, nor your general manager, Doug Whaley, wouldn’t talk after the act, sending the media-naive interim coach, Anthony Lynn, out to hold a press conference instead. Sending the newbie out to address decisions he had no hand in making feels like sending the interim out on the coffee run on his very first morning: you’re just hoping not too many venti lattes get spilled on the poor kid’s brand new dress shirt. What were your thoughts afterward? Oh, good, the newbie survived the only press availability anyone of power in this organization is going to have the week we fired our head coach. Whew. Close one.

Then, after your team loses to the New York Jets (a rivalry loss should bug any upstate-raised gal immensely – they aren’t even in New York!) you and Terry, allowed the reason you might be in this hot mess to begin with, general manager Doug Whaley, hold as embarrassing of a press conference that there ever has been in the NFL. He isn’t involved in firing the head coach? He hasn’t even thought about it? He may have spoken to Lynn about the odd QB situation against the Jets? He may not have? To quote one meme I saw, “What is it that you say you do here, Doug Whaley?”

You spoke to WGR 550 Monday, and your husband spoke to the Associated Press, and that was it. You won’t talk further, and Whaley says that it will be his job in the off-season to represent the Bills to the media. But if he doesn’t make key decisions, and doesn’t seem to know the moving parts behind them, then why throw him to the media? You might be better off having a PR person step to the podium. They are at least trained to spin things positively.

The whole thing seems rather…um…how can I say this nicely…dysfunctional.

This is where you come in. Kim, you have come so far, and I don’t know if you understand how much of a role model you are to some women. Left as a child on a street corner in South Korea and adopted by a family in Rochester, you worked hard, had grand ideas, raised a family and helped your husband build an empire. You now are one of the only female owners in professional sports.

This is where you need to thrive. Despite great strides over the past few decades, women in business often have to work harder to prove themselves. That’s exactly what the organization you bought needs right now. Though Ralph Wilson was a legend, the last few years of his ownership of the Bills were largely absentee. Your ownership needs to make up for that lost time. You need to work harder than any other owner in the NFL right now to make Buffalo right again. Part of that will be fixing football operations, and that may mean cutting Whaley loose. Another part of it is using your background in communications and explaining what exactly is going on to the media, and in turn, the fans.

And that should be your motivation: the fans. You grew up amongst them, and you know that they are the most loyal fanbase for the least reasons in the NFL. They pack your stadium in the worst of weather, they line up to get a spot to tailgate in your parking lots 36 hours before kickoff, they wear their gear despite the team’s record and they stood by four straight years of horrible heartbreak. They do this all even though their region’s economy is crackling under their feet and their state government has abandoned them. The Bills are their outlet, their chance to escape all that has gone sour in every other place in their lives.

Kim, take the wheel. Take the wheel and speed the Bills out of that laughing stock spot. You have come so far personally, and now it’s time to take that tenaciousness and claw the Bills out of the bottom. You’re a survivor, a mother and a successful businesswomen. If anyone has the guts and grit to do this, it’s you.

You can do this.

Your friend in pop and lake effect,

Kat

Throwing a Super Bowl Party – Vegan-Style

4 February, 2016 / Kat

Two years ago, the New England Patriots were not in the Super Bowl, and thus, I did not have to work on Super Bowl Sunday. So my husband invited a few of his friends over for a Super Bowl Party, and I was placed in charge of cooking. (I dislike cooking, so I don’t know why I was placed in charge of this. But I was.)

The challenge: two of the five attendees were vegan.

That meant I had to cut my standby football food recipes of Hasenauer family pizza and taco salad (both of which I shared with SBNation a few years back) out of the lineup real quick. Instead, I turned to Pinterest and tried to find vegan football food. I had to MacGyver* a few recipes and cross my fingers that they would work, but wouldn’t you know – they did!

After a brief post last Super Bowl season about the vegan cupcakes from that party, I figured I would share all of my vegan Super Bowl party recipes this year. Below is the Pinterest board where I have collected all of the recipes and added my notes. These all taste good enough to please non-vegans, so no need to make two sets of food.

If anything, make the cupcakes. They are now my go-to cupcake in any situation, vegan attendees or not.

Follow Kat’s board Super Bowl Sunday – Vegan Style on Pinterest.

*I use MacGyver as a verb often, and find myself needing to explain it because the 20-somethings and college students I work among aren’t familiar with the show. In my eyes, “to MacGyver” something is to fix a major problem with something as small as a paper clip, making you look like a genius. In reality, you’re just doing something instead of nothing and crossing your fingers.

Why Do They Hate You? Let Me Count The Ways.

13 May, 2015 / Kat

The Boston newspaper that I work for part-time plastered the question, “Why do they hate us?” on their cover today under the images of four polished Super Bowl trophies. (Let me preface this by saying I adore the paper and thank the stars every single day that there is a large news outlet that lets me actually write about sports part-time. I understand I am an extremely lucky person.)

They chose the cover they did to echo what many New Englanders have been asking over the last week. Why does the rest of America seem to hate the New England Patriots? Why are those outside of New England rejoicing in the idea of quarterback Tom Brady being suspended four games, the team losing draft picks and having to pay a million dollar fine?

Oh, it’s easy. It is not because the rest of United States is filled with jealous green eyed monsters wanting to revel in the idea of the Patriots’ fall. It’s not because we or the NFL are a Mean Girls-level of catty.

As someone who spent 22 formidable years in “the rest of the country,” let me list the reasons why the rest of the U.S. hates the stereotypical “pink hat” Patriots fan that seems to be getting their turn in the spotlight:

The Patriots fan base will not acknowledge that football existed prior to January 2002.

I thought that by moving here 11 years ago, I would be surrounded by knowledgeable fans I could talk about my favorite 1990s quarterbacks with. Alas, many in New England failed to pay attention to the NFL prior to the millennium. It’s like Boston decided that if they survived Y2K, they should move on to figuring out what this football thing the rest of the country likes is.

You ask who Steve Young is? “He’s that guy on ESPN who bashed Brady!” Reggie White. “Who?” Merton Hanks. “A company?” Steve Tasker. “The sideline reporter from when the lights went out at the Super Bowl!”

Let me tell you, 1990s football was amazing. Less drama, great games, solid personalities, more creative post-touchdown celebrations. (Merton and Deion, your dances are missed.) You missed heck of a lot, New England.

The refusal to acknowledge that there was a point in time where the Patriots were awful.

This harkens back to my first point. Because football seemingly didn’t exist prior to 2002, Patriots followers don’t realize there was a point in time where the team was the laughing stock of the AFC East. (It was when Steve Grogan, Hugh Millen and Scott Zolak played QB. They all seem like nice guys, but they weren’t the best quarterbacks that era had to offer. I am sure there are some who listen to Zolak on 98.5 on a regular basis who may not even be aware that he once started for the Patriots.)

I own Buffalo Bills rainboots (and joke that I own them because it’s always raining for us Bills followers), and the number of completely uninformed comments I get from New Englanders when I wear them is shocking.

An actual example from a Green Line ride:

“Ha! A Bills fan. Bet you wish you’ve gone to the Super Bowl.”

The Bills did. Four times in a row, in fact.

“No they’ve never been! You’ve always sucked!”

Okay. Um, ESPN is about to do a 30 on 30 on those four appearances, but you know, don’t stop believing, buddy!

Bill Belichick

The greatest coaches are often those who elicit a wide range of opinions, and Belichick’s career is a fantastic example.

I grew up with a Rust Belt father who doesn’t hold much hate in his heart. He holds doors for ladies, writes birthday cards and buys candy for his co-workers in the machine shop and dragged us to 7am Catholic Mass every Sunday.

He Hates-With-a-Capital-H Bill Belichick.

After the Giants defeated the Bills in Super Bowl XXV, my father didn’t blame Bill Parcells. He didn’t blame Bills kicker Scott Norwood. He blamed then-Giants defensive coordinator Belichick for using “illegal formations,” claimed that he sent out too many players on defense several times during the game and ran a dirty defense that wasn’t called for obvious penalties. And correct allegations or not, he wasn’t alone in his beliefs. Factories and Wegmans lines all over Western New York engaged in this discussion in the 1990s. If any Giants coach was ever mentioned by name in those “wide right” post-mortems besides Parcells, it was Belichick.

Belichick then moved onto the Cleveland Browns, another Rust Belt city that once was a football power and has since struggled to recapture that glory. His failure as a head coach there there cast him in another bad light. More Rust Belt fathers joined my father and his friends in their hatred.

I’ve learned to respect Belichick for the job he has done with the Patriots and the amount of hard work he has done, cheating and all. I held much of my father’s dislike until I read Michael Holley’s War Room and Patriot Reign, and realized that while Belichick may appear to lack personality and be some sort of evil genius, he is just a lacrosse player who emulated his father and loves coaching and problem solving.

But those two books are deep cuts, volumes that you probably won’t read unless you live in New England or are a very knowledgeable football fan. Reading them changed my attitude on Belichick, but most people in America haven’t read them and rely on Belichick’s not-so shiny public persona for their opinions.

Belichick isn’t liked. Some in America find him the real life version of Grumpy Cat. Right or wrong, his association with the Patriots will forever sully the team to a large base of people.

New England’s collective temper tantrum over DeflateGate.

Never since the toddler tumbling class I once taught had a massive meltdown because I wouldn’t let them throw mats have I seen such a collective tantrum.

That Facebook image of a middle finger with four Super Bowl rings on it that everyone keeps sharing? Super classy. (On a side note, how come 49ers fans never did that with their five rings when Eddie DeBartolo was fined by the NFL, barred from active control of the 49ers and eventually forced to give up ownership? If Twitter had been alive back then, would we have seen the hashtag #FreeEddie?)

The Barstool Sports guys “protesting” at NFL Headquarters in Tom Brady jerseys? Not only is protesting anything contradictory to your previous stance on protests (which are scarily obsessively violent), they looked sad because there were only four of them. Mr. Portnoy, it looked like you threw a party and no one showed up. (Hey, I’ve been there. Seventh birthday: massive strep throat infection depleted my party’s attendance. Two girls. Chuck E. Cheese wouldn’t even come to our table because it was so pitiful.) Or it looked like you were in the end stages of a game of Duck, Duck, Goose. Just sad.

Look, it is absolutely fine to be incensed by the NFL’s decision. We all have a right to question the decision making of Ted Wells and Roger Goodell. (And gosh, Ted Wells, I hope you never decide to get a PhD on top of your MBA and JD and have to go up in front of a dissertation defense, because if Tuesday’s media availability was any indication, you would not get any of your committee to sign off.)

There are less whiny and more classy ways to voice your support of your favorite NFL team and the uneven decision making of the NFL. The changing of social media profile photos to a Brady jersey? Classy. Asking the Patriots not to raise a Super Bowl banner until Brady plays? Understandable. But stop flipping out like a two year old being weaned off a pacifier.
I don’t dislike Patriots fans and know many who are just wonderful. I choose to live in Massachusetts, listen to a lot of sports radio and have a desire to be a full-time sports writer in this town that I chase like a kid chases the first ice cream truck of the season. My statements above aren’t indicative of all Patriots fans, but the loud few. But if Patriots’ followers don’t understand why the rest of America dislikes them, then it’s time to wake up. Just like many other franchises, there is a lot to dislike.

Family geography could put end to Thanksgiving football rivalries

12 November, 2014 / Kat

Salem visits Beverly on Thanksgiving Day in 2012. Photo by Kat Hasenauer Cornetta

Witches and Panthers are two things you don’t quite equate with Thanksgiving, but since becoming a high school sports writer for the Boston Herald four years ago, they have become as much a part of the holiday as cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie.

I’ve experienced three years of the legendary Thanksgiving Day football rivalry that is Beverly High School versus Salem High School. I’ve covered meetings 113, 114 and 115, and depending on what my editor decides in the coming weeks, I may be back for 116 on Thanksgiving morning.

Watching the Panthers take on the Witches has become my favorite part of Thanksgiving, a holiday that I’ve struggled with in these ten years of living seven hours away from my family. Since diving into sports writing as a side career, I’ve found a group of friends like none other I’ve ever had – a second family. Therefore, spending Thanksgiving writing about football and taking box scores in the office just feels right.

But my experience is a reason why I don’t expect the Thanksgiving Day high school football games to last much longer in Massachusetts.

These games have become a huge discussion point given the MIAA’s two year old football playoff system. Most games held on Thanksgiving Eve or morning now have no bearing on standings or titles. And if they do, one or both of the teams could be juggling how many players to put on the line, given that they have a championship game the very next weekend at Gillette Stadium. Given all of that, many are asking why they exist.

But when I look at the games’ future, I’m not looking at the playoff system and its impact. I’m looking at the more spread-out nature of the American family. In the past 25 years, more and more families have become geographically spread out. My own family is the perfect example. I made the move away from my family in Western New York a decade ago. I was the first of my 23 cousins to leave the state, but have since been joined by my next youngest cousin, who is moving South for her husband’s job this month. I have another seriously considering a similar move. My sister and brother are on career paths that may also end up taking them away from our hometown of Rochester.

The Hasenauers are behind the times when it comes to this. Families are now spread all over the country and globe. If you’re playing, coaching or administrating high school football in the Commonwealth, Thanksgiving Day games cement you in place, making your family either come to you for the holiday or not allowing you to get together at all. How much longer can schools honestly ask players and coaches to make that sacrifice?

Look at it this way: say I eventually have a child, and they decide to play high school football for Salem, Beverly, or wherever I end up (and given my tiny height, their playing football will probably be limited to being a Steve Tasker-esque kick returner, but that’s more than okay with special teams-adoring me.) My parents – their grandparents – will have a difficult choice. Do they come up to Massachusetts for the holiday, or do they go to wherever my siblings are? My hands would be tied because of football, and I know there are plenty of families around Massachusetts in a similar situation.

This is far from the sole reason to get rid of Thanksgiving Day games. All families – regardless of miles between them – have to make decisions about how and where to spend the holidays. (Heck, my parents struggled with it, and my grandparents used to live across the street from each other.) But it is a factor that I never hear raised in the discussion. For all the talk of “games with nothing to play for” or “resting players for Super Bowls,” I never hear my fellow high school sports reporters say, “this scheduling is difficult for families.”

Deep down, I hope there are always Beverly-Salem, Woburn-Winchester, Weymouth-Walpole and Sharon-Oliver Ames games as a Thanksgiving day appetizer. But I know the current climate may have those games’ days numbered.

Three (okay, four) questions for Patriots’ coach Bill Belichick

30 October, 2014 / Kat

#457326248 / gettyimages.com

I feel awful for the journalist who got shut down by Bill Belichick in the New England Patriots head coach’s Wednesday press conference. I know what it’s like to think you have the best question ever…only to have the subject crush all your hopes and dreams like the Harvard graduate school application process. It stings. You deeply question not just your choice of profession, but your own understanding of the English language. Then you drink a beer, tell yourself there are worse things, and move on with a new found habit of obsessively reviewing every single interview question 17 times before asking it.

Given that my sports consumption habits are approximately half Boston focused and half Western New York focused, I hear a lot of Belichick press conferences. My go-to midday show (Christian and King on ESPN New Hampshire) plays the weekly Belichick press conference at the top of their show every Wednesday. The morning news and sports recap shows I watch show clips from Belichick post-game press conferences. And every single time I listen to one of his conferences, I think of what I would ask him if given the opportunity. What could I ask that wouldn’t get a grunted or bored response?

Mind you, I’ve been in the same breathing space as the man, the myth, the person-responsible-for-the-Giants-defense-that-crushed-my-Bills-fan-dreams once. It was at a lacrosse tournament I was covering at Gillette Stadium that included Ohio State. His daughter Amanda was the assistant coach for the Buckeyes women’s lacrosse team at the time. (She is now the head coach at her and her dad’s alma mater, Wesleyan.) Belichick had been lurking on the sidelines during Ohio State’s tilt against Northwestern, engrossed in the action.

After the game, I was waiting in the hallway for Northwestern’s head coach, Kelly Amonte Hiller. I looked over my shoulder and found a positively beaming, excited and jean-clad Belichick directly across from me. I nearly jumped up in surprise.

The hallway we were in was quite wide, so it’s not like I could strike up a conversation with him without yelling. (“PLEASED TO MAKE YOUR ACQUAINTANCE, BILL!”) Plus, I had a job to do – interview Hiller, a legend in her own right – and was focused on preparing for that.

With all of that on the table, and given that I’m a far more experienced lacrosse journalist than NFL journalist, I know what I would ask Belichick that would prompt the tightly wound and tight lipped coach to be happily loquacious. I would ask the lacrosse-obsessed coach about the sport. (It works for the Baltimore media.)

Here are my three questions, in no particular order:

What are your thoughts on the trend of young lacrosse players to drop all other sports and focus solely on lacrosse at an increasingly early age?
Hypothetically, if Bob Kraft purchased a professional lacrosse team and asked, “Bill, I’m not allowing you to pull double duty as head coach of both teams as much as you want to. Who should I hire as head coach?” who would you recommend and why? Living, dead, retired, active – say you could have anyone ever in the history of lacrosse.
We have seen a lot of lacrosse/football player hybrids play tight end, including yourself and Will Yeatman, who you brought in for a time. Most recently in Massachusetts, we have Marblehead’s Brooks Tyrrell, who is one of the best tight ends in the last 10 years of high school football, but is headed to Notre Dame to play lacrosse. From both your coaching and playing days perspective, what skills does a good tight end have that compliment one’s lacrosse game?

I would like to imagine that at the end of this conversation, Belichick would be smiling and so gosh darn happy he’d say, “Golly, Kat, let’s go pick up our lacrosse sticks and go outside and play.” And then during our shoot around, I’d get all the actual dirt on the Patriots.

No, I wouldn’t do that to him, though I would try to sneak in one football question:

How much did the Bills’ use of Steve Tasker – who your mentor, Bill Parcells, once called one of the most difficult players to defend against – influence your uses of Wes Welker and Danny Woodhead when they were with the Patriots?

I understand most beat journalists don’t have the luxury of asking such questions – they have a quite defined job to do. But maybe someday down the line, in an off-season, I would love to see a Boston media outlet do the grand “Belichick Talks Lacrosse” interview so that fans and media alike can see an entirely different side of the man.