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| Caught in His Web - The Swami |
Whether they love him or hate him, the lacrosse world hangs on every word from The Swami.
The phone rings, and with one short sentence, the voice on the other end identifies himself with perhaps the most recognizable name in all of collegiate lacrosse.
It belongs not to a player, nor to a coach, nor to a representative of any college. It is in fact not really a name at all; no, that information is not a matter of public record.
The voice itself is not what you'd expect. It is an older voice, a soft voice, an amused voice, a self-deprecating voice. It is the voice not of the alter-ego but rather a very real person, one who has created something unique, something that has grown beyond any reasonable expectations he might have had, something that in many ways reflects no less than the evolution of an entire society in the last 10 years, and – more than anything else – something that has become almost an opiate to those whose addiction is collegiate lacrosse.
He is loved by some. He is hated by others. He is ignored by no one.
His "real" identity? Almost no one knows.
"This," the voice on the other end says, "is The Swami."
Lacrosse, perhaps more than any other sport, has benefited from the internet. Back in the old days of say, the time that Bill Tierney was just starting to win NCAA championships at Princeton, the sport of lacrosse received pretty much all of its attention from traditional newspapers located in lacrosse hotbeds. If you didn't live in one those hotbeds, then you didn't get to read much about lacrosse. Some of the top teams had radio broadcasts in their area as well, and television remained pretty much a pipe dream for the lacrosse world.
Contrast that with today, where almost every Division I team has its audio on its Web page, along with perhaps video streaming, not to mention rosters, player bios, stats, game notes and anything else anyone could possibly want to see. Television coverage has expanded to have more than one game available on satellite TV pretty much every week of the season, and lacrosse fans in Garden City, Kansas, can follow the game as easily as fans in Garden City, New York.
There are all sorts of new lacrosse publications today, including Inside Lacrosse magazine, which is as attractive and informative a publication as there is anywhere, and dozens of lacrosse Web sites that have varying degrees of quality and content.
And then, of course, there are the lacrosse forums, particularly one in Syracuse and one from LaxPower.com. Here, lacrosse fans under any number of pseudonyms go to discuss almost every aspect of the sport of lacrosse, in a way that is informal, informative and, in most cases, anonymous.
In short, the amount of lacrosse information available in the last 15 or so years has skyrocketed, and there is clearly an audience out there for this information.
Into this mix walked The Swami, who is sort of a mixture of Bill Simmons of ESPN.com's Page 2, Deep Throat and the Wizard of Oz.
Using "an old nickname from the '60s or so," as he says, The Swami started out as a lacrosse fan who created a newsletter in the mid-1990s basically for a small circle of fellow lacrosse fans.
"It was just a way to disseminate news on college lacrosse," he says. "All of the sudden, I was getting calls from people who wanted me to put them on my mailing list. Then, as the Internet grew, the two main message boards came along. I figured posting there would be easier than mailing out, and so I started doing that."
Today, The Swami and his weekly "This Week" production are a staple of the lacrosse season for huge numbers of people. Unique visitors to his web site – laxswami.com – average between 80,000 and 90,000 per week during the season, nearly twice as many people as attended the last NCAA championship game. "This Week" is also posted on the message boards, usually drawing an additional 3,000 or so views and then hundreds of responses on LaxPower.com alone. He does no advertising, and he is not linked to too many sites. It is mostly word-of-mouth that drives people to him, and his audience grows approximately 25% per year.
"I have no way of knowing who is reading, but I can find out where they're located," he says. "They are literally all over the world. There are a lot of military people, in Iraq, in Afghanistan.
The site has no commercial sponsorship, and he makes no money from being The Swami. At the same time, he spends some, mostly on travel expenses, but the costs are not prohibitive.
The content for "This Week" is staggering. Each installment essentially features reviews of the previous week's big games, a look ahead to the upcoming games, predictions, links to audio broadcasts, information on televised games, rankings, stats and the rest. The quantity of information, especially original information, is amazing by itself; it is the style that puts him over the top of anyone else.
"If you want to read about lacrosse technically and want stories of what offensive or defensive strategy was in a particular game, then you're going to read Inside Lacrosse or one of the other sites," The Swami says. "I get a lot of emails from people, from parents of players, who tell me they don't know a lot about lacrosse. They want the big picture. They want perspective. They want to know about big games. They read my site for that. I asked myself what I wanted my site to be. If I wanted to just pick games and describe games technically, then I'd be competing with Inside Lacrosse and those sites and I figured that there'd be more and more of those sites as time went on. I wanted to be unique. I like to write anecdotally. I write about games, but I also write about tailgates and hot dogs and fans. I try to have a unique perspective."
The Swami is informed. He attends games all over the lacrosse world, often going to a game Friday night, two games on Saturday and another one on Saturday. He has been to Princeton more than 10 times, though coming to Princeton from his central location near Baltimore prevents him from attending two Saturday games. To maintain his anonymity and to ensure that he gets the full experience, he simply walks up to the gate, buys a ticket and sits in the crowd–only after sampling the tailgating and other parts of the atmosphere.
"I think Princeton fans are great fans," he says. "They turn out in all sorts of weather. Attendance at Princeton is pretty good and pretty stable. It's not exactly the middle of lacrosse country, but the fans turn out."
Each run of "This Week" starts with the music from Monday Night Football and goes from there. It is colorful in prose and design, and the length often approaches 7,000 words per week. The Swami estimates that he spends 40 hours per week during the season on the site, doing the bulk of the writing and Web design, though he does get some assistance in both areas.
And then there are his sidekicks, none of whom, of course, is using a real name. There is Venus Lee, a writer who covers games for The Swami in much the same style that he uses. There are the Big Boyz–"a group of former players, good former players, who really know the game" –whose weekly predictions of the top 11 games of the week are a huge part of the package. There are the Swamiettes–"my own personal cheering section."
His "companion of many years" is also featured on the site, under the name of Miss Bunny Bimbette.
"When Woodstock the movie made its second rounds after sound enhancement, I took her to see it at a big screen theatre in D.C.," he says. "We sat near the back of the theatre. At one point early in the movie a scene shows the construction of the sound stage as technicians test the audio equipment. When the chief audio engineer in the movie asks the assembled early crowd at Woodstock if the people in the back will raise their hands if they can hear clearly, Miss Bimbette raised her hand in the movie theatre. I knew I had a winner then. She is the most intellectual person The Swami has ever dated."
He often refers to himself in the third person, at least in print. He also comes across in his writing as pompous and self-absorbed, but that is the act.
"He's a learned student of the game, with a touch of P.T. Barnum in his bones," says a loyal reader and poster to the LaxPower forum who wishes only to use his posting name of "Artful Dodger." "His service to the lacrosse community goes beyond mere entertainment. Even individuals well-versed in the game of lacrosse and on-field play benefit from The Swami's insights and lacrosse facts. For example, Swami goes out of his way to present information to help the fans access TV, radio and internet broadcasts of lacrosse action. He'll even suggest where to hang out to watch games, have a good meal or simply be around like-minded lacrosse nuts. In short, he is a full-service purveyor of all things lacrosse. Now, some people don't like the Swami. More aptly put, they love to hate him. They bridle, I suppose, from the scent of hubris that permeates his flowery prose. Or, perhaps it's his air of arrogance. No, it must be the pompous nature of his certainty. Whatever. He reels them in as surely as the rest of us."
"Artful Dodger" is not alone.
"Love or hate him, you must read the Swami," says "Lax Fidelis." "The effort he puts into his in-season weekly release deserves the highest praise. The music, graphics, links–I know how much time and effort he puts into it, and all of it on his own nickel as far as I know. I wouldn't dream of not reading the Swami."
Aside from having such a loyal following, there is the added dimension that very few people know who he actually is –"maybe a dozen people know who I really am, and nobody has ever walked up to me at a game and asked me if I were The Swami." Speculation on The Swami's identity is commonplace, and lacrosse fans everywhere are certain they know who he is. Often at games fans can be overheard pointing in one direction or another, claiming to have unmasked lacrosse's version of Batman.
"Once your identity is known, it changes things," he says.
So who is he? Well, we do know something about him.
The Swami spent time in his childhood in New York City, on Long Island and in Baltimore. He claims to be a former college lacrosse player, though he never gives any details about where or when.
He lives in the Baltimore area and is obviously a huge lacrosse fan, which doesn't quite narrow it down too much. He calls himself a "businessman" but elaborates no further on his actual vocation. From reading his site, it's obvious that he likes to tweak Johns Hopkins fans and is a big fan of the service academies.
"Why should the lacrosse fan read his stuff?" asks another regular poster, known as "Jordan Industries." "For a lot of reasons. His multimedia presentations are classics of insight, wit and creativity and are great places to learn about the sport. He is the only writer I have found who can explain in a very understandable way how the NCAA tournament rankings work and why teams were seeded where they were. He sometimes offends some team's fans, but he is always spot-on. Some resent his arrogance, I assume because they cannot appreciate his schtick. But The Swami is unique."
From speaking to The Swami directly, it's clear that he has a sense of humor and that he's not taking any of this all that seriously, even if everyone around him is.
"Despite the fact that I try to make it obviously humorous, I get a lot of email," he says. "I'd say 50% of the emails I get are people trying to egg me on, 25% is from people who send compliments, and the rest are people who want me to come tailgate with them. Yes, there are people who don't like The Swami, but that's okay. When I put on the cornflower blue turban, I become a different person. And I'm just having some fun with it all."
His fun. For the rest of the lacrosse world, it's more than that. It's the possibility that, maybe on Friday night at Navy, or Saturday afternoon at Loyola, or Sunday afternoon at Delaware, maybe they'll see him, in the parking lot next to the grill or on line buying a ticket or in the row behind them. And never realize it.
And then it's back to the Web. It's waiting for another week, for another "This Week," to see what The Swami has to say about their team and their game, to see how this anonymous man with a computer and a unique talent can grab them again and not let them go, as only he can.
Whoever he is.
Jerry Price is Associate Director of Athletics and Athletic Communications at Princeton University.
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