Trey Griffey selected for Under Armour All-American Game
That’s Ken Griffey’s grandson, Junior’s son.
Category: Sports
Commentary and news about sports and sports teams — and media coverage of them.
Too many headers ‘can damage the brain’
Frequently heading a football can lead to brain injury, warn doctors who say they have found proof on brain scans.
Imaging of 32 keen amateur players revealed patterns of damage similar to that seen in patients with concussion.
There appears to be a safe cut off level of 1,000 or fewer headers a year below which no harm will be done, but the US investigators say more work is needed to confirm this.
Heading is believed to have killed the English footballer Jeff Astle.
After Last Night
But before today’s games.
LSU is undefeated.
Alabama lost only to LSU 9-6 in OT.
Oregon lost only to LSU 40-27 in first game of season.
Arkansas lost only to #3 Alabama 38-14.
Stanford lost only to #4 Oregon 53-30.
Virginia Tech lost only to #7 Clemson.
Clemson, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Boise State all lost to an unranked team.
Houston is undefeated.
Everybody else has lost at least twice.
How would you seed the playoffs?
Letter to a Coach
Coach Saban,
First off, let me say you have a fine, fine football team. The running game and the defense are just fantastic. I’ll make this quick because you’re busy. Tuscaloosa probably has a part of town where Latinos are concentrated. If not Tuscaloosa, then certainly Birmingham. In that part of town there will be a makeshift soccer field, or maybe even a real soccer field. On this field you will find children of all ages for whom kicking a ball is easy, second nature, and who haven’t lived lives steeped in American collegiate football lore and therefore wouldn’t be super-duper nervous if asked to kick a weird-shaped ball through uprights that to them would seem a gaping target. After you’ve chosen your boy, explain that he will receive a college education at one of the top 100 state universities in the nation if a few dozen times a year he kicks the weird ball through the uprights for you. There may be a moment of confusion when the boy thinks he has to actually hit one of the uprights with the ball, and then when he realizes he merely has to kick it anywhere between the uprights, both of you will laugh, and laughter knows no borders.
The Thrilla in Manila
Recommended reading. Mark Kram’s classic piece from Sports Illustrated in 1975 — Lawdy, Lawdy, He’s Great.
Sportswriting at its very best; indeed, writing at its very best.
And a tribute to Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali.
The Real Tragedy
The real tragedy stemming from the Penn State case is that when they play Nebraska this Saturday I will have to root for Nebraska.
[I believe the story at The Pennsylvania State University is a tragic one — please don’t think I forget that if I rant about the football coach or joke. This blog is about wisdom, whimsy and wit.]
The All-22 Football Footage the League Won’t Show You
Every play during an NFL game is filmed from multiple angles in high definition. There are cameras hovering over the field, cameras lashed to the goalposts and cameras pointed at the coaches, who have to cover their mouths to call plays.
But for all the footage available, and despite the $4 billion or so the NFL makes every year by selling its broadcast rights, there’s some footage the league keeps hidden.
…
Without the expanded frame, fans often have no idea why many plays turn out the way they do, or if the TV analysts are giving them correct information.
…
The Wall Street Journal has the story.
50 Greatest
Chuck Klosterman writes about the 50 greatest college basketball players ever.
Pujols and Respect
A classic piece from Joe Posnanski. Don’t pass this by.
Best Line of the Day
“Perhaps the only certainty is that Arizona wants a coach with a more stoic, less demonstrative manner – the anti-Stoops, in short.”
Pre-Snap Read in surveying the likely prospects.
Arizona Makes a ‘Difficult Decision’
I would have said, Arizona Finally Makes a Difficult Decision, but never mind.
Pre-Snap Read takes a look at Arizona’s firing of eighth-year football coach Mike Stoops.
“There’s clearly more to it than just wins and losses, even if that’s always – always, always – the ultimate motivator behind a coaching move, particularly one that occurs in October, halfway through a season. When it comes to another quote from Byrnes, you can read between the lines as you will: ‘I think (Kish will) create a culture of calmness, which is probably a good thing for us.’
“Red, redder, reddest: that’s Stoops, or that was Stoops, along the sidelines as Arizona’s head coach.”
The school has to pay Stoops $1.4 million.
Front Page of the Day
Life Is Good
Red Sox done.
Yankees done.
Yay!
Baseball stat line of the day
“You want the stat of the day? In the history of the postseason, before Verlander [last night], pitchers who allowed four runs in eight innings were — get ready for it — 1-14.”
Cool story of the day
“If being named homecoming queen is a lifetime memory for a high school student, so, too, is kicking a winning field goal. For Amat, 18, they happened within an hour of each other.”
Best football line of the day
“Wisconsin could have played the second-team and run all over the Cornhuskers, which says a bit about both teams.”
The first World Series game ever
… was played 108 years ago today.
The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Boston Americans 7-3.
Cy Young was the losing pitcher that day, but went on to win two games as Boston won the best-of-nine series, five games to three.
The Americans became known as the Red Sox in 1908. They were never known as the Pilgrims, though the name is often cited.
An even better best line
… is at the end of Joe Posnanski’s piece on last night. But you must read it all first.
Best line of the day
“I’ve written this before: I never argue with people who say baseball is boring, because baseball is boring. And then, suddenly, it isn’t. And that’s what makes it great.
“In other words: Then, suddenly, Evan Longoria steps to the plate.”
I’m still pumped 12 hours later.
Just watching it WAS fun
“There are several stories that will mark baseball’s fine last evening, but the most agreeable, even for this Red Sox fan, is that of Dan Johnson, who’d spent part of the season in the minor leagues despite being among the team’s great hopes going into the season. His two-strike home run down the right-field line never got very high off the ground, and just barely hooked inside the foul pole. … His teammates didn’t quite believe what had happened either, as they slapped him on the head and seemed to giggle, yes, like little boys. Being good enough to play professional baseball must be fun, and hitting a season-extending home run must be even more fun.”
The Sporting Scene : The New Yorker
Johnson was batting .108.
Exactly
Arizona at USC — 37-14, 37-10, 56-31. Arizona’s past three games. The Wildcats are the 14 and the 10 and the 31. And another loss coming up, at USC. Finished last season with five straight losses, three of them blowouts, did the Wildcats. At some schools, coaches build credit they can ride through tough times by winning a national or conference championship. In Tucson, apparently, an 8-5 season earns you that credit. Before two of those eight-win gems, Mike Stoops went 5-7, 6-6, a couple 3-8’s, maybe even a 2-10 way back there. Is this guy’s seat finally hot? Or hot again? Or genuinely hot? I’m asking. I don’t hear much news out of Arizona and I’ve spent two days of my life in Tucson — saw the Mission San Xavier del Bac, then built up an appetite walking around campus, and then relented to that appetite at one of the finest Outback Steakhouses I’ve ever been to. Let’s take this hot-seat talk in a different direction. If the Arizona athletic department doesn’t care about the football team, hire a head coach who needs the money. Hire a guy with two 11-dollar-an-hour jobs and four kids. This is a chance to help someone, to transcend sport. You can still hire regular assistant coaches to install their systems and call plays. Down South, we honestly don’t see much of a difference between losing most of your games (41-48, the Internet tells me) and losing all of them.
This alum frankly doesn’t see much of a difference between losing most of your games and losing all of them either. And the record is more like 34-48 because beating Northern Arizona five times and Stephen F. Austin and The Citadel don’t count for much.
Summing up
Terrific column about what happened in Baltimore and Tampa last night — Red Sox ultimately can’t weather Rays.
Best line of the day
“I love sports. I think that’s what sportswriting on the Internet is all about. There’s a connection between writer and reader on the Internet that goes beyond the printed page. There are comments, easy ways to reply, polls and video and audio embedded, arguments, agreements, feelings hurt, exclamation points, it’s a lot like talking sports in a bar. In some ways it’s even better than talking sports in a bar because there isn’t crappy music playing too loud and the drunk who is screaming ‘Yankees RUULLLLE!’ is easily skipped over in the comments section. It’s not as good as talking sports in a bar, however, because the Internet does not offer beer. I expect Apple to fix that with their next version of the iPad.”
Best line of the day
“A few strokes before midnight Sunday, a motorcycle policeman turned on his red and blue lights and led four Oregon Ducks buses from Arizona Stadium to the airport.
“It was the only time all night that anything red and blue had a step on the Ducks.”
Greg Hansen, Tucson Arizona Daily Star
Red and blue are Arizona’s colors.
Arizona has gone 63-84 since its 12-1 season in 1998.
Best line of the day (alas)
“And honestly, if two off-field incidents and a 2-22 record didn’t get him fired the first two seasons, who knows if New Mexico will do anything after this latest event.”