This article originally appeared on Popularmechanics.com.

In the 2004 US Open tennis quarterfinals, Serena Williams couldn’t catch a break against Jennifer Capriati. Faced with a comedy of linesman and chair umpire errors, the world’s best player looked on as one bad call after another went against her, swinging the match in Capriati’s favor. The decisions were so egregious that US Open officials dismissed the chair umpire from the remainder of the tournament and apologized to Williams for the calls. But an even more significant development in the aftermath of the match was the increased pressure to introduce technology into the game that would assist in line calls; a shift which would change the game.

Two years later, the US Open became the first of the four major tennis tournaments to allow technology that could have prevented the 2004 controversy when it introduced Hawk-Eye. The system works by mounting 10 high-speed cameras around the court with five dedicated to each side of the net to capture the ball’s movement from multiple angles, measuring its speed and trajectory. Then a computer processes that information, pinpointing the spot on the court within 3 mm of where the ball hit the ground and calculating the ball’s compression to determine the size and shape of the mark that represents where the ball touched the court.

Now with three of the four majors and numerous pro tournaments adopting the technology, it has gained support among players, broadcasters, fans and officials alike. The overwhelming success of tennis’s adoption of Hawk-Eye to aid officiating provides a model for sports still reticent about technology, like soccer, on how to integrate it into their game.

Even before the 2004 US Open, the need in tennis for a replay system was becoming apparent, as the pace of the game was fast becoming too quick for the naked eye. “String and racquet technology has made it so you can hit a tennis ball so much harder than you used to be able to,” says Mary Carillo, a former player and now a commentator for ESPN, CBS and NBC. “There’s so much more spin on the ball that it’s that much harder to judge whether a shot’s on or over the line.” So for years inventors have come to tennis’s governing bodies proposing innovations ranging “from sensors in the line to metal flakes in the ball to try to find a better mousetrap in terms of calling lines,” says David Brewer, US Open deputy tournament director.

Dr. Paul Hawkins built that better mousetrap. He premiered Hawk-Eye for cricket in 2001 and soon after he adapted the system for tennis. Networks began calling on Hawkins and his system that showed computer animations of a ball’s flight path to augment the instant replay in their broadcasts. Hawkins approached tennis’ governing bodies to propose that his tool officially adjudicate close line calls.

With the International Tennis Federation supportive of new technology, it tested Hawk-Eye at lower level tournaments to examine its viability. Then came the Williams-Capriati match that further pushed the tennis community toward wanting assistance on lines calls. “We always hesitate to say ‘this is the thing that was the tipping point,’” Brewer says. “But that probably was the tipping point.”

After two years of extensive testing the USTA put their full support behind Hawk-Eye. Yet the system didn’t displace umpires and linesmen altogether. They’re still in place, but now players can make three incorrect challenges per set and receive an additional challenge if the set goes to a tiebreak.

“I think it’s great that big matches are not decided if a linesperson or a chair umpire makes a couple of mistakes,” says Darren Cahill, formerly the world’s No. 22 ranked player, now a coach and commentator for ESPN. And in contrast to other fears about video review detracting from the game, Cahill believes Hawk-Eye has enhanced tennis. “It creates a little bit of suspense when you call for a challenge, making tennis a better sport for spectators and also a better TV sport.”

Although “it’s clearly more accurate than the human eye,” Carillo says, the system isn’t perfect. At a tournament last year, Hawk-Eye’s onsite tech called up the wrong bounce for review, erroneously calling a ball in that had actually bounced out; an error that Hawk-Eye and tournament officials didn’t recognize until after the match ended.

While tennis has shown that it is open to new technologies, other sports, like soccer, have resisted the camera and computer aid. Despite missed calls nearly as infamous as the Williams-Capriati match, including the go-ahead goal by England in the 1966 World Cup Final over Germany that may have never crossed the line, soccer has kept electronic aids out of the game. But a terrible call by a linesman in 2005 that cost Tottenham a goal—and a win—prompted English Premier League officials to explore technological solutions. Hawk-Eye for soccer tested well, impressing league officials by accurately showing whether a ball crossed the line even in “a far more crowded penalty box than has ever happened in any goal line situation,” Hawkins says.

In spite of Hawk-Eye’s promise and Adidas’ developing a ball with a chip embedded inside that could detect when it crossed the goal line, in March FIFA ruled that it would no longer continue testing the technologies; justifying the decision by saying, “we were all agreed that technology shouldn’t enter football because we want football to remain human.”

Baseball purists similarly lobbied for preserving the game’s human element, successfully keeping replay out of baseball for years, until a spate of incorrect home run calls in 2008 caused the league to allow umpires to use instant replay to determine a homerun. But the purists have won out in preventing the use of video review for close calls on the base paths.

Since its inception, Hawkeye has had a very noteworthy detractor: world No. 1, Roger Federer. “He’s a traditionalist,” Cahill says. “For the game to change in any sense, Roger would be a little questioning about it because he has great respect for the game of tennis.” But Carillo says Federer’s dislike of Hawk-Eye goes beyond merely introducing a change to the game’s protocol, “Federer questions the accuracy as well.” Most famously so in the 2007 Wimbledon Final, where he pleaded with the umpire to disregard Hawk-Eye calling a ball in by a millimeter that Federer was convinced was out.

But Federer’s voice is a minority one. “Most players think this a hell of a lot better than it used to be,” Carillo says. “In the beginning of tennis, the notion was always that it was just a bunch of retired wing commanders at Wimbledon calling the lines and falling asleep during the matches in the sun,” Carillo says with a laugh. “Over the years it’s got better as the stakes got higher.”

While most of the media focuses on the Oscars’ glamour awards like Best Picture or Best Actor, Popular Mechanics convened a panel of experts that includes past winners, to sort out the nominees in technical categories. Our award-winning group’s insight is the ultimate cheat sheet for those looking to win their Oscar pool.Read the full story at Popular Mechanics

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It just sits there, taunting neighbors and passersby with all of its unrealized potential laid bare. A gigantic hole the size of two-and-a-half football fields that looks more like a swimming pool with the water drained out than the construction site it should be. Inside it there are no cranes, no workers, nothing.

The stillness of the hole is head-scratchingly curious. Most people walking around it have no idea why someone has carved this three-acre, 20-foot-deep chasm into one of Seattle’s best neighborhoods and just left it to sit. But sit it does—a casualty of a boom gone bust.

During this decade’s real estate boom, holes like the one on the east side of Green Lake dotted the city’s landscape. Back then capital flowed, credit was easy and a pit quickly became the home of a gleaming new development. However, the cavity at 71^st and Woodlawn, a stone’s throw from the lake that gives the neighborhood its name, has been sitting dormant for nearly two years with little hope of being filled anytime soon.

Before it turned into an unsightly hole in the ground, the Vitamilk Dairy occupied the block facing the Little Red Hen country western bar. But after six decades of operation, the Hen’s milk-making neighbor closed its doors in 2003. Although their business went belly-up, the family who owned the dairy retained the site and teamed with developer Lorig Associates. In 2004, they outlined plans for a new mixed-use retail and residential space that would be “a legacy for the neighborhood,” says Lorig’s Krista Blackburn, the site’s project manager.

It was a venture evocative of the age—what was old and had outlived its usefulness would be demolished and made new again. During the last 10 years, we imploded the Kingdome to build Qwest and dismantled the UNOCAL transfer station to make way for the Olympic Sculpture Park. In that vein the family would raze their abandoned dairy and replace it with a six-story building replete with 480 apartments and 120,000 square feet of retail space.

The plan was fine in theory, but the execution hit a significant snag as demolition began in 2007. In the spring of that year, Lorig announced upscale grocer Metropolitan Market would likely be the property’s all-important “anchor tenant”. Unfortunately, the store pulled out of negotiations a short time later, leaving the developer to seek another supermarket to take Metropolitan’s place. After the withdrawal, a Portland-based store showed interest, but talks with them stalled as well.

The lack of an anchor tenant paralyzed the project. Lorig removed equipment from the hole it had just dug and halted construction while it searched in vain for a grocer. Prospects of finding this elusive lessee were all but dashed last fall when the nation was hit by an economic tsunami that washed away the credit markets. In the wake of the downturn, “a ridiculous inaccessibility to finance” gripped the region and froze building, says Bob Gregg, an Edmonds-based developer, who himself has a 50-unit condo development on hold until “financing loosens up.”

As if the lack of cash flow wasn’t bad enough for developers, the fancy-free days of perpetually rising property values also ceased.  The market fell so far that the cost of developing a property actually exceeds the value of the finished product, says Levis Kochin an economics professor at the University of Washington. “Building now is a way of guaranteeing yourself a loss.”

For the owners of the giant hole, they’re in the fortunate position to weather the recession because they own the land outright. Letting such a valuable property sit idle for so long would cause “a lot of other developers to go bankrupt” says Michael Cornell, a realtor who chairs the Green Lake Community Council. With the luxury of being patient, the site will remain dormant for at least another year, according to Blackburn, who says “our best hope is that we would start construction in June 2010.” That means Green Lake will be waiting at least three years before development’s completion.

However the prospects of building are improving, as the chilly real estate market shows signs of warming nationally. Locally, Gregg sees the economy strengthening with the recent uptick in sales of his condos. These signs of a rebound give Blackburn optimism about the future, saying potential tenants are looking long term and are banking on things not being so bleak in the years after construction finally begins.

“When all is said and done, it’s going to be two to two-and-a-half years later and the world is going to be a much different place than it is today.”

It would be too harsh to call Don Terry a cautionary tale. He’s closer to a warning—and a gentle reminder—that in the 21^st Century, the business of journalism, the careers of newspapermen, are all too fleeting and fickle.

A talented writer and reporter, Terry crafted great stories on topics ranging from the genocide in Rwanda, to the life of an exonerated death row inmate, to Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett. He got into the profession with the noblest of purposes: “To be a freedom fighter. To comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, and I still try to do that.” Despite his prowess and body of work, in February 2009, the Chicago Tribune laid him off, a casualty of the decline of the American newspaper.

Now with the Chicago Sun-Times, writing columns nearly one-tenth the size of his features, he has time on his hands. Time to discuss his career, impart some knowledge and ruminate on the future of the business. So at the end of the 20-foot-long table Terry sits, surrounded by students, discussing his brilliant 2006 Chicago Tribune profile of Reverend Jesse Jackson, “God’s frequent flier”. “One of the best long form pieces I’ve ever read in a Chicago newspaper,” says Alan Solomon, himself a longtime writer and the man who invited Terry to speak to this group of aspiring journalists.

Describing his journey with Jackson, Terry endears himself to his audience, with a quiet charm and wit. In his brown tweed jacket and white button-down shirt tucked into his jeans, the 52-year-old with the salt-and-pepper hair looks and behaves more like an affable history professor than the stereotype of a grizzled, bitter newspaperman. After ditching his prepared script, his mood becomes jaunty and self-deprecating. When a one-liner elicits a round of laughs, he boosts himself up in his chair playfully like a meerkat, grinning, extending his neck and jutting his jaw to the side.

The audience’s attention is rapt as Terry recounts following around the peripatetic preacher for the better part of the summer, wanting to see what made his fellow South Sider tick and to explain who Jackson is, beyond the sound bites and characterizations. Terry trailed him from LA to New York, from Atlanta to Venezuela, observing the man, trying to peel back the layers to see what resided in Jackson’s core.

“To get into someone’s head and heart takes a long time,” Terry says. “Especially with someone who’s so used to reporters, cameras, questions and protecting himself around the media.” Unfortunately, time is money. Something the bankrupt Tribune Company lacks at the moment, so the paper can’t make the significant investment needed to write and report stories the caliber of the Jackson piece.

“The Tribune was paying for every hotel, every meal, every airplane flight,” Terry says. “We were all over the place. So that’s really expensive. They’re going to do less of that. It’s not going to disappear, but they’re going to do less of that,” which leaves a seasoned pro like Terry relegated to the sidelines of the industry. He admits the current media landscape, defined by budget cuts and time constraints are “keeping [him] unemployed.”

“Right now I have to cobble together all kinds of stuff to make ends meet. If I wasn’t married to my wife, I’d be living out of my mother’s house right now,” the gallows humorist says with a chuckle.

To a room full of graduate students at the Medill School of Journalism his assessment of the industry is as portentous and depressing as the damp, cloudy skies in full view through the windows spanning the classroom’s eastern wall.

It’s hard to see when the newspaper industry’s growing pains will subside, while it sheds customers and its remaining subscribers age. “One of the great challenges in our business is finding a way to maintain a quality product and also appeal to the next generations who have to support you to exist and it’s been a difficult task,” says Solomon. The baby boomers may be the last American generation to engage with the printed version of the daily paper and Solomon can see the change every day at his doorstep. He’s noticed that in his 11-unit condo building “the seven people who get the Tribune are all in their 50s and above,” he explains. “The audience is changing and it’s dying out”

The generation divide is evident to Terry as he peers around his alma mater’s classroom and sees every student with their computer in front of them.“I went to Medill, class of 1980. You all have laptops, when I came in and they had a selection of IBM typewriters and I thought I had died and gone to heaven. So fancy!” he says to a chorus of laughs.

Perhaps more importantly than changing the way news is reported, Terry says technology has changed the way journalists are compensated, which could make the profession prohibitive. “One reason that we were able to make a living as journalists for as long as we did was because we were paid a living wage,” Terry explains. “I see this internet stuff, they basically want you people to work for free.”

Yet among the aspiring scribes, there’s a feeling that a new order may emerge from this uncertain time and that with the current economy, journalists aren’t the only ones licking their wounds. “There’s tons of laid off bankers right now, what’s the difference?” Kim Wilson says, “It’s maybe cyclical and there may be opportunity with things in flux.”

Terry tells the students it’s in their hands to figure out the future of the profession. The students tell the old master there’s still reason for hope. Still a reason to pursue the profession he loves. Still work to be had.

“I’m an optimist,” remarks Emily Co. “I heard there’s spots open in Baghdad.”

When “King of all Media” Howard Stern, abdicated his radio throne in 2006, his former bosses divided this kingdom, bestowing the West Coast affiliates upon Adam “Ace Man” Carolla. And for three years, the former Man Show host kept his head above water, building a loyal following while CBS Radio tossed aside the other Stern replacements, including former Van Halen front man David Lee Roth. But in February of this year, it was finally Carolla’s turn to be walked toward the chopping block, as CBS axed Stern’s lone remaining stand-in.

Although Carolla no longer had a morning show, he planned to keep talking. Like Stern, he wanted to take his fans along to a burgeoning media platform, but unlike Stern there wouldn’t be $500 million payday waiting for him. On his next-to-last show, Adam announced his venture into the nascent land of podcasting, telling his listeners “they haven’t really figured out how to make money yet,” so he would do the show for free.

Carolla was making a bet on the future of the medium, pinning his hopes to its spread via advancing technology and an influx of ad dollars to make it profitable. “They’re going to have the internet in cars and they are going to have it very soon and I do think this is going to be the way of the future,” said the Ace Man. “If you get ears and eyeballs on whatever you’re doing, somebody will quickly find a way to make money on it, that’s all advertising is.”

Five months later, the former Loveline host looks prescient, with companies like Microsoft and Ford fulfilling the “internet in cars” portion of his theory, and others, like Subway, proving advertisers will throw money behind podcasts. And Carolla has fulfilled his end of the bargain, getting his legion of fans to download the show, shooting him consistently to the top of the charts on iTunes and putting himself at the vanguard of an emerging media.

You’re probably thinking to yourself, how could the host of the sophomoric Man Show, a guy who just got shitcanned from his radio gig be at the forefront of anything? Well, his firing wasn’t due to a lack of listeners. Although Carolla never matched Stern, the Los Angeles-based talk radio host’s numbers gained ground in all 13 of his markets, including first-place ratings in Seattle and Las Vegas. Unfortunately for Carolla, CBS deemed the high overhead of a talk radio station untenable in the throes of the country’s economic meltdown, so to cut costs it switched his home station KLSX to top 40, summarily firing everyone on the air.

And to judge Carolla by The Man Show alone is like judging Louis Armstrong by how well he plays sheet music. Yes, they’re both capable of executing a script, but that’s not where the genius happens. The best of these men occurs in the improvisation, when the music or words just flow from them in a blustering string of consciousness. On his radio show, the Ace Man could be off script, and from subjects including celebrities run amok and his hatred of L.A.’s mayor to topics as banal as his love of his label maker, Carolla hilariously riffed on nearly every subject each weekday morning. I say this all as a guy who hated him before hearing the radio show. I found his humor to be a little too fratboy for my tastes—even during my fratboy days.

More than a year into his run, hearing two of my friends incessantly drone on about Carolla convinced me to put aside my preconceived notions and give him a chance. I went to iTunes, downloaded the podcast version of the radio show and I was hooked. Many others followed the same path, getting the show not from radio, but from the internet. Sitting in the studio each morning, Carolla realized the podcast version of his show provided him a fan base far beyond the reach of his terrestrial radio stations. “Half the calls we get are from cities we aren’t even syndicated in, so this is the future and if it hasn’t arrived yet, it’s coming. So I’d like to be on the vanguard of this,” Adam said as the sun set on his radio show.

On Friday February 20, as his on-air sidekick Teresa Strasser wiped away tears and Carolla said his final goodbyes, he let the listeners know the new show would begin in earnest the following Monday. Because of his CBS buyout, Carolla would do the podcast unpaid, eschewing any offers of sponsorship until his contract ran out—a minor hiccup he explained. “I love talking, I love the sound of my own nasally drone and I’d do the show for free if that’s all they offered,” he said.

He had an air of optimism uncommon to a person just handed a pink slip. The podcast offered a utopian vision of the type of show he always wanted to do, but couldn’t on radio. “We will not have to listen to the program directors and we won’t have to take advice from guys in suits from New York who don’t know what the f they’re talking about. We can build our own audience and we can own our own show. “

So Carolla left behind radio and ventured headlong into a new medium that carried no promise of ever delivering a payday. All he had was faith that fans would follow him, sponsors would take notice, and technology would evolve to make the podcast ubiquitous.

A few months after Carolla’s show debuted in 2006, Microsoft and Ford inked a deal that poured the foundation for Adam’s podcast theory. But computers and internet in cars? It seems like the last thing you’d want is some asshole in the lane next to you going 75 with a keyboard on his lap. Software developers had to find a way make it safe with “eyes on the road and hands on the wheel,” says Velle Kolde of Microsoft Auto.

For more than a decade, Microsoft has been toiling away in the suburbs outside Seattle, looking for opportunities to integrate software into cars. As cell phones and mp3 players became omnipresent, its consumer research showed people wanted those devices seamlessly integrated into their vehicles, giving Microsoft Auto the opening it needed.

Unlike some of the products of its past (I’m looking at you, Vista), Microsoft emphasized a simple, user-friendly interface where you could easily operate your phone or mp3 player. To accomplish that, while keeping safety in mind, the development team co-opted voice activation technology already in the works elsewhere at Microsoft. For once, the Redmond-based software giant created something undeniably cool. You could answer calls, change playlists and have text messages read aloud to you in your car, all with the press of a button and a simple voice command. And this wasn’t some temperamental, finicky system either, Microsoft carefully crafted it to feature “noise and echo cancellation in the software,” and “optimizations that reconcile voice changes and 70,000 intonations in the voice,” says Kolde. Simply put, “you say Beyonce and it’ll play Beyonce.”

Armed with its own consumer research that mirrored Microsoft’s, and impressed by the technology, Ford got onboard. The automaker “saw what Microsoft’s software was capable of delivering and we made a commitment,” says Alan Hall, a Ford spokesman. With that, Ford Sync powered by Microsoft was born.

Since the first models hit showroom floors in 2007, Fords equipped with the $395 Sync have outsold unequipped models two-to-one, proving the two companies’ research and intuition correct. However, their endgame was bigger than just integrating phones and iPods. Since that original version, Sync added 911 emergency assist and this year’s update includes traffic, directions and business search. Driving around an unfamiliar city you could press a button, say, “search near me, Starbucks,” and Sync would give you directions to the closest one. Combine this with a service to deliver news and weather and “it’s the first crack at getting internet-like data into the car,” says Hall.

The Microsoft-Ford partnership shows technology trending toward the Ace Man’s prediction. The key to fully realizing connectivity in cars, allowing you to download podcasts while you drive is already with you every day: your phone. As wireless networks like 3G improve and will soon make way for 4G, they’ll be the conduit through which the internet will flow into automobiles. You won’t have to buy a separate connection for your car, your Blackberry or iPhone will act as your link to the net.

It’s not some far-fetched fantasy to imagine sitting in your car someday soon, pressing a button, saying “Download Adam Carolla Podcast” and the stereo obliging your command. In this world, Carolla would no longer need radio to reach the captive audience of commuters. Drivers would only need a cell phone linked to a powerful enough network and Carolla’s podcast could be plucked from the ether to play in their car in a matter of moments.

With the accessibility Sync offers, Podcasts will continue to grow, but even without this leap in technology, the medium is coming into its own. According to a study released late last year by Pew Research, 19 percent of internet users had downloaded a podcast, up from only 7 percent in early 2006. And the future of the medium looks even brighter, with the study showing young demographics are adopting the technology even faster than the public at large, meaning the podcast is gaining traction among Madison Avenue’s most coveted cohort.

Despite the promising jump in popularity of the form, without the ability to make money, the podcast could go the way of BetaMax, MiniDisc and the dinosaurs: quaint but extinct. Adam’s severance package affords him some time to develop the show while people try to figure out how to make a nickel via podcast, but it ain’t cheap. Bandwidth alone costs Carolla $10,000 per month and he’s not alone. Another top performer on iTunes, This American Life, asks listeners for donations to offset its over $100,000 in fees. Podcasting needs advertising, not just to turn a profit, but to stay afloat.

Carolla can be optimistic about finding a sponsor—he only needs to look toward his good friend ESPN’s The Sports Guy Bill Simmons to see a podcaster who’s secured one. For a couple years, Simmons has produced his show, The BS Report, and in February Subway put its money behind the podcast. The Worldwide Leader in Sports gives the home of the $5 foot long exclusive marketing rights and integrates the brand messaging right into the show, with Simmons conducting interviews on the “Subway Fresh Take Hotline.” This incorporation of advertising makes the medium intriguing to marketers because of the “low level of clutter and high degrees of listener engagement,” says Nic Covey, an analyst for Nielsen. Without competing messages from other advertisers, the marketer’s ads will be “stickier.” Additionally, marketers may value podcasts because they “offer the routine, appointment—even if self regulated—consumption that advertisers crave and lately fear is fading,” says Covey. It’s a bunch of marketing speak that means podcasting is alright by advertisers.

Tony Pace, Subway’s chief marketing officer, says after a healthy internal debate, the company moved forward with an ad buy on ESPN podcasts, betting that medium will be an advertising platform of the future and integral to any digital marketing strategy. “The world is changing pretty rapidly, so to some degree we making hopefully an intelligent decision that this will be continuing format,” says Pace. “I think podcasts are going to continue to grow.”

While The Sports Guy’s show garnered a sponsor, his ratings pale in comparison to Carolla’s podcast, which Apple calls “one of the fastest growing and most popular in history.” When his CBS contract expires, advertisers will pound down Carolla’s door to access his large pool of male listeners. Even more enticing to potential sponsors is Carolla’s willingness to play ball with them. “Hopefully, just like the radio, they’ll be live reads incorporated into the show and we’ll have some fun with it.”

But for now, the money flows out of, not into, the Adam Carolla Podcast. Yet Carolla continues to perch himself on his L-shaped orange couch, spewing unfiltered rants, and discussing random topics with guests ranging from actors and comedians to his gaggle of lifelong friends. He remains steadfast in the belief that he is at the forefront of a movement, a new media, and it bothers him little that the podcast fails to fill his pockets.

“I have done well in my career with a deferred or delayed gratification. I understand very well the concept of doing something free for a while for a payday down the road.”

This Article originally ran in the November 2007 issue of Seattle Metropolitan Magazine

Two years ago I stood under the setting sun amidst a throng of suede-headed, disaffected young men in a stadium in Vienna. Green and white flags waved around us, an incessant drumbeat led our cheers, and we hoisted our scarves toward the sky. Did it matter that it was my first time at the Gerhard Hanappi Stadium and I didn’t know a single person around me or understand a word of what we were screaming? No, no, and no. At my first European soccer match, all that mattered was that I was rooting for the home team, SK Rapid Vienna. I belonged.

Over the course of that match I felt all the things that made me love sports in the first place: camaraderie, a sense of identity, naked displays of emotion, and a healthy dose of escapism. More than 5,000 miles from home, I felt at home.

Ever since that memorable match, I’ve searched Seattle’s sports landscape, from the shores of Lake Washington to the stadiums of SoDo and the heart of Seattle Center, trying to recapture that excitement. My quest remained unfulfilled until I learned what hordes of local soccer fans have known for years: that as far as this area is concerned, a modest pub in Fremont called the George and Dragon is Mecca.

I had enjoyed my visits to the George before, but I’d never ventured there for a major soccer match, thus I didn’t appreciate the intoxication that its mixture of fish and chips, bangers and mash, and beer and the world’s game could produce. That all changed on a Wednesday morning in May when I blew off responsibility to watch the Champion’s League Final live at the George.

A little background: The UEFA Champions League is the world’s premier football club competition; its television audience nearly matches the Superbowl’s. Europe’s best teams compete from August to May, when one is crowned the finest on the continent. This year, five-time winners Liverpool FC navigated the group stage and knockout rounds to earn a date with six-time champions AC Milan. In 2005, Liverpool overcame a three-nil halftime deficit to capture the cup from Milan in what many call the greatest Cup Final ever. This rematch had all the makings of a classic.

I thought I’d come early, but 30 minutes before kick-off the George was packed shoulder-to-shoulder. A line formed out the door and the pub began turning people away. I wondered how many of them had jobs.

I waded through the human mass to the bar. Some fans were easing into the morning on coffee or water. Others ordered pints or Bloody Marys. The guy next to me had a Manny’s Pale Ale and a Bloody Mary. Something told me this wasn’t the first time he’d started drinking before noon.

Pint in hand, the air thick with anticipation, I readied myself for the match. The George and Dragon crowd let out its first collective cheer as the camera focused on the two teams gathered side-by-side in the tunnel the field. If the Europeans have one thing over us, it’s their innate ability milk such moments for everything their worth. Entering the field may seem banal, but as the players begin their slow procession, the Champions League Anthem played, and the stadium erupted in cheers, a chill went down my spine. I looked into each combatant’s eyes and knew that for the next few hours nothing else would matter to him or me but this game.

At kickoff an odd, tense silence fell on the pub; all eyes fixed on the screens positioned around it. But it took just a few moments for the patrons to snap out of their stupor and begin oohing and ahhing at every minor chance and clever move. Keeping one eye on the match, I glanced around the room and think to myself what great unifying forces soccer and a good pub can be. Race, religion, age, economic status, political bent… nothing mattered except whether you pulled for the Reds of Liverpool or the Rossoneri of AC Milan.

The first half was a roller-coaster ride of emotions. The patrons, mostly Liverpool supporters, went into halftime disappointed at their club’s conceding a late goal to Milan’s Pippo Inzaghi. But hope still reigned as they returned to the bar. I enjoyed my halftime ale with two 50-something Norwegians who hailed from the same town as Liverpool midfielder John Arne Riise. We started out talking about the game but soon diverged into discussions of our mutual Norwegian roots and the cruelty of the lutefisk my mother and grandmother used to make me eat each Christmas.

All discussion of disgusting lye-soaked cod halted as the match resumed and the fans resumed living and dying with each build-up on offense. Each time Liverpool moved forward their exclamations rose to a crescendo, invariably ending in collective groans as the Reds squandered their chances. Just when they thought it couldn’t get any worse, it did: Milan’s brilliant midfielder Kakà received far too much space as he dribbled toward the back four and slid a perfectly weighted pass to Inzaghi, who ran onto the ball and calmly slid it under the keeper to score his second of the day. A young Merseyside fan stared into his beer, trying to come to grips with his team’s collapse. I knew how he felt, helpless and empty and gutted. The final whistle confirmed our despair.

Most patrons closed their tabs and filed out, unable to watch the triumphant Rossoneri hoist their seventh championship trophy. I felt deflated by Liverpool’s loss but triumphant at having finally found all that I had longed for in sport since I left the Hanappi Stadium two years before. Once again I was in a place where the crowd and the play seemed joined as one, where total strangers could share a beer and cheer in unison. I felt at home, and I knew I wouldn’t have to travel 5,000 miles to recapture the exhilaration of that Viennese night.