New York, New York

After arriving in New York on Aug. 9 to start a job as a Player Participation Auditor for the National Football League, I feel more and more comfortable with the Big Apple.

Here are some random observations that I have made in the last 33 days:

1. "The city that never sleeps" is a pretty accurate description of New York. There are so many places that stay open 24 hours. You can hear car horns blowing at 3 a.m. just as likely as you would at 5 p.m. I personally have been staying up later and later while still waking up at 7 a.m., but somehow I do not feel any more tired than usual.

2. I was told that I would get trampled if I did not pick up my walking pace in New York. This is also fairly accurate. When I was back in Cincinnati, I walked like I had all the time in the world. Now that I have been in the NYC for a while, I notice my strides are longer and quicker and that I get impatient with people who are walking slow right in front of me.

3. If New York could legally charge money for oxygen, it no doubt would. Everything is expensive here. It is a challenge to go a day without spending more than $20. About the only sure-fire way you can is to stay at home and not leave the house for any reason.

4. Apparently the normal pattern for sports-team allegiance is Yankees-Giants and Mets-Jets. I first thought Mets-Jets was because the names rhymed so the chants are easy to remember - "M-E-T-S Mets! Mets! Mets!" - sounds pretty good to me. But the reasoning explained to me was because the Mets and Jets both were started around the same time in the '60s, while the Yankees and Giants were the senior New York pro teams. Funny thing about this combo is that one of my co-workers is a Yankees-Jets fan and most of the people at work view him as a freak because of it.

5. College sports are not as big of a deal here as they are in other parts of the country. I wonder why this is? Could it be that the only BCS school approximate to New York is Rutgers (whom my Cincinnati Bearcats embarrassed 47-15 on national TV this past Labor Day) and the major college basketball team, St. John's, has been in year No. 1 of a five-year rebuilding plan for the past decade? It could simply be the professional teams, most notably the Yankees and Giants, have garnered so much attention lately with their success that college athletics in New York seems like what college sports is technically supposed to be - amateur hour.