And the Winner Is...

Russell’s Music
Russell has a great band, A Million Engines in Neutral, you can also find them on MySpace. I couldn’t find them on Seeqpod or figure out how to embed their music so please go check them out.


Contest Contest!
Well I didn’t have as many entries as I’d like, make that one entry but it was quality and that’s all that counts. I’m a young blog, come on now. The winning entry comes from Russell Courtney from Toledo Ohio. Russell and his crew… well I will let him tell the story.

Russell’s Box Truck
Some back-story is necessary to fully appreciate my supporters’ photos. On a nice (hot) summer day this past season, we rented a box truck for our tailgate. First, it took some serious convincing with the parking lot administrators at Crew Stadium (not sure why, since there are plenty of trailers in that lot). But after a series of “come on!”s from those riding in the cab of the truck, they let us in.

You will see that the walls of the inside of the cab were nicely decorated. The cab also included a couch, a loveseat, a foosball table, and, of course, a keg. We also filled a weed sprayer (yeah, like you use in your garden) with “jungle juice”, which we sprayed into the mouths of fellow supporters that made a stop at our tailgate.




If you look carefully, we are standing on the back of the cab. This is the platform from which we distributed booze.


I submit these photos, first, because I think it was a great idea for a tailgate. Second, because after all the effort we put in (and money we spent), nobody really took advantage of the cab of the truck, since it was 90 degrees out that day, and, of course, much hotter in the back of the truck, where we forgot about air conditioning.

Admittedly, the photo of the trailer would be much better if packed full of Crewties (a term for hot girl Crew supporters), and that didn’t happen because of the heat. But isn’t the risk of failure, or muted success, inherent in task of finding creative ways to support the team? I think the message is this: the day was hot as balls, but yet we still spent the money and the manpower, and went for it anyway. That’s true support!

Thanks for the submission Russell. You win yourself a free Bumpy Pitch T-Shirt!

Advantage Played State of the Union
Hey everyone, Graham here. Thanks for reading Advantage Played. Since I began about three months ago I’ve made a lot of changes and started to understand exactly what Advantage Played is. It has a nice character and extremist Major League Soccer viewpoint that is fun to write from. The layout has also changed, I think for the better. I’ve got two side columns now and a decent amount of regularly update information in them.

My numbers have tripled since I started, so thanks to everyone out there who is stopping by three times a week to read my work. I have fun and ya’ll make me happy.

Google Reader
A final note to you Google Reader people. To really get the full Advantage Played experience you should stop by my blog instead of just viewing it through the reader. I always have Seeqpod playlists at the top that are meant to be played while reading or that are picked by the person featured in the update.