Welcome to Garden State Gurus!

Welcome to Garden State Gurus, our brand new sports blog and weekly podcast.  We plan on touching on a little bit of everything here: professional hockey, baseball, basketball, football and college sports.  It’ll take us a little time to figure out exactly how we want to handle everything, but for now you can expect a weekly BlogTalkRadio show and frequent posts on sports news, predictions, and analysis.  We’ve been friends since first grade and about 95 percent of our conversation has revolved around sports ever since.  In high school we had a critically acclaimed TV show on a local network.  Now, since we’re both pretty much unemployed, we figured we’d revive some of that old magic and spin some of our scintillating sports conversations into a radio show.  We hope you enjoy.

Before we go any further here’s a little about us:

Kevin Baumer, 21, graduated from Syracuse University in May with a major in magazine journalism.  He is currently an assistant editor with Blueshirt Bulletin and a freelance writer for Ultimate Athlete Magazine. 

Likes:

NY Giants/NY Rangers

Henrik Lundqvist

Hockey fights

Syracuse basketball

Tailgating

Jarrett Jack

Ultra-competitive guys

Guys who play through injuries

Bill Simmons

Little men that can

Tiger Woods jokes

Sauce Hockey 

Andy Rautins

Ozzie Guillen interviews

Fantasy sports

Barroom debates

The Palace Brawl and Queensbridge

Friday Night Lights

Freak injuries

Sporcle http://www.sporcle.com/

Sports Illustrated

Cocky Athletes who are funny (see Avery, Sean and Shockey, Jeremy)

Tom Coughlin’s upset face

Thanksgiving Day football

Armando Galarraga and Jim Joyce

Dan Gilbert’s letter

Dislikes:

Sidney Crosby

Martin Brodeur

Eli Manning

Dallas Cowboys/Philadelphia Eagles

Things that won’t go away: Tiger Woods, Brett Favre, steroids

NJ Devils/NY Islanders/Philadelphia Flyers

Sports stars who don’t care

Injury milkers

Ticket prices

Michael Vick’s pet care

The contents of Plaxico Burress’s pockets

Greg Oden’s lack of privacy

Guys who hit .230 with 40 bombs

The Baltimore Ravens

The lack of NHL TV coverage

Gary Bettman

Jim Rome

Wade Redden

Shootouts

Duke

Cocky Athletes who aren’t funny

John Tortorella’s anger management

Zachary Pletchan is a recent graduate from Penn State University.  As a graduate of the Department of Geography, he’s had a lifelong interest with maps and urban/regional planning.  Even though he did not go to school for this, his lifelong passion has always been sports.  This is his first attempt at sharing his passion and knowledge of sports with followers.

Likes:

Carolina Panthers

Charlotte Bobcats aka The JordanCATS

New York Mets

New York Rangers

Steve Smith

Gerald Wallace

Penn State Athletics

Twitter

RealGM.com

Colin Cowherd

Joe Beningo and Evan Roberts

Boomer and Carton

Brandon Tierney

Mike and the Mad Dog

Tom Izzo

The Mac Attack on 610 The FAN

TNT Inside the NBA Crew

Michael Jordan

Jerry Richardson

NFL Red Zone Channel

Dislikes:

Penn State’s Athletic Administration (Reference to Basketball)

Philadelphia Sports (Other than the Sixers)

Boston Sports

George Shinn

Pittsburgh Penguins

Jim Dolan

The Wilpon Family (As owners of the Mets)

Oliver Perez

Joe Buck

Michael Kay

Adam Morrison

Jimmy Clausen

Iowa Hawkeyes

ESPN Classic

The Bryce Jordan Center

Soccer Geeks

The Home Run Derby minus Steroids

The Bowl Championship Series

WFAN Overnights

Delusional and Homer Fans