Category: Sports

Commentary and news about sports and sports teams — and media coverage of them.

Who Should Progressives Root for in the Super Bowl?

So you’re not a Pittsburgh Steelers fan and you’re not an Arizona Cardinals fan, but you’ve been invited to a Super Bowl party and you need to know who to root for. Before you pick the Cardinals because you’re a progressive and you love underdogs, I urge you to consider a few facts.

Dan Rooney, the 76-year-old owner of the Steelers and a lifelong Republican, endorsed Obama and stumped for him not just in Pennsylvania but in the surrounding swing states. He did so despite the fact that Obama’s promise of increased taxes on the wealthy forced Rooney’s family to restructure the ownership of the team. Head coach Mike Tomlin is a vocal Obama supporter. At a recent press conference he said, “Barack is selling hope. And I’m buying.” Steelers players have spoken out about how they hope to win the Super Bowl in part because it would mean they would be the first championship sports team to visit Obama’s White House. (Also worth noting: Barack Obama grew up a Steelers fan and is rooting for the Steel Curtain on Sunday.)

The Bidwell family, longtime owners of the Cardinals, are major Republican donors. Their donor history can be found on opensecrets.org, but to save you time, I’ll point you to a couple links. The LA Times reports that team President William Bidwell and Vice President Michael Bidwell each gave $50,000 to Republicans this past election season. Politico adds that as fundraisers for McCain, they bundled upwards of $350,000 for the Republican presidential candidate.

Mull that over as you tip back your favorite adult beverage on Sunday evening. I think your choice is clear.

MoJo Blog

Seemed worth repeating in full to me.

I’ll be watching the Super Bowl with someone who knew Mike Tomlin the Steelers coach when they were in college.

Joe Buck Really Ought to Stick to Broadcasting IRS Audits

It was like being at the game with a few friends, not that one is likely to have friends who know so much. Johnston, who played on three Super Bowl teams with Dallas, and Siragusa, who was a key player in the Ravens victory in Super Bowl XXXV in 2001, easily switch from talking about their experiences on the road to the Championship to dealing with the potentially stultifying statistics that Fox supplies visually and aurally for the ADHD among its viewers.

. . .

Sadly, that is it for the Albert team this year. It is back to the mausoleum with Joe Buck and Troy Aikman next week for the Eagles-Cardinals. Back to the grave business of pro football.

Where, exactly, was Joe Buck while his father Jack was urging St Louis Cardinal fans to “go crazy folks” when the Redbirds won a playoff game* or telling a national radio audience that “I don’t believe what I just saw” after Kurt Gibson’s 1988 world Series blast off of the Eck?**

Was he reading a book? He is bloodless! And now it comes out that Buck and Aikman have been improperly escorted to gamers by U.S. Marshals.

Stephen Kaus

Buck lacks that certain something when he broadcasts a sporting event. He can’t quite put the, what’s the word, ah, life into anything. In fact, it feels like he makes his living draining the life of all who are forced to listen to him.

Taxpayers you might want to work a little harder this week because a certain someone has another game to attend on Sunday.

Yes, Philadelphia it’s true, Joe Buck will most likely once again broadcast an Eagles game — this weekend’s NFC Championship showdown against the Arizona Cardinals.

The game is expected to be full of hard-hitting, skull-cracking, bombs-away action — but none of it will come to life in Fox’s broadcasting booth.

NBC Philadelphia

Links via Awful Announcing. For myself, my reflex reaction to Buck and Aikman clicks in faster than the remote can change the channel. Aikman is just typical retired athlete, duller than most. Buck is awful, reading his notecards well into the last two minutes of the game. He’s in sports announcing because his dad was, not because he cares about it.

The Pit

Along with 15,210 other folk we attended the University of New Mexico men’s basketball game against the Air Force Academy at University Arena in Albuquerque tonight. The Lobos beat the Falcons 78-53.

It was the 750th men’s game at The Pit, designated 13th among American sports venues of the 20th century by Sports Illustrated. Tonight’s crowd was below average in attendance — the Lobos have averaged 15,559 per game over 42 years.

It’s called The Pit because the arena floor is 37 feet below grade. It’s the loudest basketball venue in America, beating out Cameron Indoor at Duke University in some study done in 1999. One hopes the $60 million renovation that begins in April won’t decrease the noise.

The original cost to build the arena in 1966 was just $1.4 million. Current capacity is 18,018.

First time

Oklahoma and Florida have never played each other in football before.

On the other hand:

It means nothing because the BCS has no credibility. Florida? Oklahoma? Who cares? Utah is the national champion.

The End. Roll credits.

Argue with this, please. I beg you. Find me anybody else that went undefeated. Thirteen-and-zero. Beat four ranked teams. Went to the Deep South and seal-clubbed Alabama in the Sugar Bowl. The same Alabama that was ranked No. 1 for five weeks. The same Alabama that went undefeated in the regular season. The same Alabama that Florida beat in order to get INTO the BCS Championship game in the first place.

Yeah, that’s how it is now in the shameful, money-grubbing world of college football. If you’re Florida and you beat Alabama, you get a seat in the title game. If you’re Utah, you get a seat on your sofa.

Rick Reilly – ESPN The Magazine

Reilly’s rant continues.

This isn’t a national championship—it’s a big-money waltz

Bill James urges his colleagues to boycott the BCS. An excerpt from a piece that really requires you to read it all:

It is inherent in the nature of sports to seek a clear resolution of the competition. You have two football conferences, two basketball conferences, two baseball leagues—you want to know who the best team really is. That doesn’t come from anywhere; it’s integral to the sport. It’s like a movie; either the boy gets the girl, or he doesn’t. Either the cop catches the killer, or he doesn’t. Either the hero wins the battle, or he dies on the battlefield. That’s just the way it is, whether it’s Shakespeare or schlock. Leaving the situation unresolved is unpopular because it’s unnatural.

You hear voices in the night and its Joe Buck and Troy Aikman

Among the top-10 signs you’re watching too much football, from CBS’s David Letterman:

• “Only fresh air you’ve had this month is opening door for pizza guy.

• “You refer to orange juice as ‘FedEx orange juice.’

• “You schedule an appointment to talk to your doctor about Andy Reid’s cholesterol.

• “Three words: Norv Turner tattoo.”

Sideline Chatter | Seattle Times Newspaper

As Title Game Approaches, What About Utah?

But in an open letter to the 72 members of the media who choose the Associated Press No. 1, the Washington Post’s John Feinstein makes a strong case for them to place undefeated Utah at the top of their ballot.

“The reason to vote for Utah is simple: This is the one and only way you can stand up to the BCS bullies — the university presidents, commissioners, athletic directors and the TV networks who enable them — and, to renew a catch phrase, just say no,” Feinstein argues. “Say no to this horrible, hypocritical, feed-the-big-boys system. Say no to the idea that fair competition doesn’t matter. Say no to all the hype surrounding the power conferences and power teams. To co-opt yet another catch phrase, say yes to change.”

The Daily Fix

Does BCS violate anti-trust laws?

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Utah’s attorney general is investigating the Bowl Championship Series for a possible violation of federal antitrust laws after an undefeated Utes team was left out of the national title game for the second time in five years.

Attorney General Mark Shurtleff contends the BCS unfairly puts schools like Utah, which is a member of a conference without an automatic bid to the lucrative bowl games, at a competitive and financial disadvantage.

Shurtleff said Tuesday that his office is still in the initial stages of reviewing the Sherman Antitrust Act to see if a lawsuit can be filed. To succeed in a lawsuit, Shurtleff would have to prove a conspiracy exists that creates a monopoly.

SI.com

Big Ten’s play not worthy of BCS

“There are a lot of little things that go on in there,” Paterno said following the loss. “I think in all fairness without, again, being a crybaby, I think in all fairness when you play Southern Cal, they’re home and they practice where they normally practice. It’s a lot easier for them to get ready.”

If the traveling parameters are too much for the conference, then perhaps the Big Ten should pull out of the BCS altogether and commit its conference champion to the Motor City Bowl.

Drew Sharp — Detroit Free Press

I say the BCS should be like European futbol — realign after each season and throw out next year’s automatic bid for the conference that performs worst. Out with the Big East, in with the Mountain West. Out with the Big 10, in with the WAC.

• The Big Ten is winless in six Rose Bowls this decade, losing by almost a two-to-one margin in those defeats — 219-121.

• It’s now lost its last five BCS games by more than a two-to-one margin — 198-97.

• The Big Ten’s BCS record of 4-10 this decade is the second-worst winning percentage of the six major conferences.

Anybody think Ohio State is going to improve upon that against Texas tonight?

In B.C.S., Dollars Are the Only Relevant Numbers

. . . Under the rules, the championship teams of the Atlantic Coast, Big 12, Big East, Big Ten, Pacific-10 and Southeastern Conferences go to the B.C.S. automatically. This season, the first team in each conference to qualify receives $18 million — win, lose or draw — and that money is distributed in that team’s conference. If a second team from a conference qualifies, the conference shares an additional $4.5 million.

But the rules for the other five conferences are different. One champion from one of the non-B.C.S. conferences gets in if it is ranked in the top 12 or ranked in the top 16 but higher than a B.C.S. conference champion. That is how Utah, ranked sixth, found its way to the Sugar Bowl against Alabama and an $18 million payday, to be shared among the five smaller conferences.

But no other small-conference team made it. Boise State went 12-0, won the Western Athletic Conference and finished the regular season ranked ninth in the B.C.S. For this, the Broncos earned a trip to the inventively named San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl and collected $750,000 — a set of steak knives compared with the Cadillac that is a B.C.S. berth, even after sharing the revenue. Boise State lost that game to Texas Christian, another non-B.C.S. program. The Horned Frogs finished second to Utah in the Mountain West and ranked 11th in the final B.C.S. standings.

Boise State and T.C.U. ranked higher in the B.C.S. than the Orange Bowl participants: No. 12 Cincinnati, winner of the Big East, and No. 19 Virginia Tech, winner of the Atlantic Coast. For their efforts, the Bearcats and Hokies came away with $18 million each for their leagues to share. Strange? It becomes even stranger.

Notre Dame, an independent, goes to the B.C.S. if it ranks eighth or higher in the standings — not a consideration this year because the team made no one’s top 25. But no matter: Notre Dame gets an automatic $1.3 million payout whether it makes it to the championship series or not.

Keeping Score – NYTimes.com

G

Mega rap star Lil’ Wayne has been chosen as one of the voice-overs for the newly designed Gatorade beverage.

In a new commercial for the popular sports drink, Weezy is heard narrating a description of what “g” represents, as popular sports figures like Dwayne Wade, Serena Williams and Bill Russell glare into the camera.

“[G’s] the emblem of a warrior, it’s the swagger of an athlete, a champion and dynasty,” Weezy says in the commercial. “It’s gifted, golden, genuine and glorious. It is a lower-case god. It’s the goat. Ha-ha. The greatest of all time.”

As the 60-second video continues to scroll past other public figures, including the Yankee’s Derek Jeter holding a bat and Muhammad Ali facing off with his fists, Weezy wraps up the meaning of “G.” “What’s G,” he asks. “It is the heart, hustle and soul of the game. That’s G.”

SOHH.com

Best line of the day, so far

See, John Parker Wilson stands at a bar at Bourbon Street, and he’s wondering what to drink. There’s a lot of beers, see. Tons of them. There’s Abita Amber, Abita Turbo Dog, Bud, Bud Lite, Corona, Coors Light, Harp, Guinness, PBR. So many options! He’s just about to decide, he’s looking, he promises he is and he’s looking….he reaches his bruised arm into his pocket to get money.

The bartender asks: “What do you want?”

And in the moment, just when John Parker Wilson is about to decide, he is tackled by three defenders wearing Utah jerseys. They take his money and mock his bangs before heading to Pat O’Brien’s to drink Hurricanes until their eyes cross.

From EDSBS (Every Day Should Be Saturday). Awesome win Utes, 13-0. The nation’s only undefeated Division 1 football team.

Futility, Cardinals Is Thy Name

Through 89 seasons, today’s contest is just the eighth post season game for the Chicago-St. Louis-Arizona Cardinals. And it’s only the second time they’ve played a playoff or championship game at home — the other time was in 1947, when they won the NFL Championship at Comiskey Park as the Chicago Cardinals.

59 out of the 89 Cardinal years have seen losing seasons.

The Best Sportswriting of 2008

The Daily Fix is a blog at The Wall Street Journal that takes a “daily look at the best sportswriting on the Web.”

The average Daily Fix contains a dozen links to sportswriting from around the Web, which over a year adds up to some 3,000 sports stories we thought were worthy of a look. Some pieces stuck with us weeks and even months later. For the fifth straight year, we’re picking the 10 columns or features we found most memorable.

Here they are.

What’s With the Home Underdogs in the N.F.L.?

Freakonomics author Steven D. Levitt looks at this weekend’s NFL games and concludes:

Home underdogs are of particular interest right now because, remarkably, in all four playoff games this weekend, the home team is the underdog. If I were a betting man (or more accurately, if I had an account I could bet on), I would be hammering the home underdogs this weekend.

Click the link to read Levitt’s reasoning.

Detroit Kittens

On this date 51 years ago Tobin Rote threw for four touchdowns and ran for another as the Detroit Lions defeated the Cleveland Browns, 59-14, in the NFL championship game. It was the Lions’ third title of the Fifties, all over the Browns.

Since then the Lions have missed 42 out of 51 post seasons (counting this year) and are 1-9 in games when they did make it. Only the Cardinals have done worse.

For nearly all of that time the Lions have been owned by William Clay Ford, grandson of Henry and son of Edsel Ford. The Lions aren’t exactly built Ford tough.

From Pro Football Weekly (June 29, 2000)

Tobin Rote, the quarterback who guided the Lions to their last NFL championship in 1957 while filling in for injured Hall of Famer Bobby Layne, has died. He was 72….

The Lions platooned Rote and Layne at quarterback before Rote finished off the ’57 season after Layne broke his leg in the regular season’s second-to-last game.

In the divisional playoff, the Lions trailed the 49ers 24-7 at halftime. Through the dressing room walls at San Francisco’s old Kezar Stadium, they could hear the 49ers already beginning their celebration.

“We could hear them laughing,” Rote said in ’91. “The walls were paper thin. They were going on about how they were going to spend their championship game money. It made us angry.”

In the second half, the Lions scored three touchdowns in four minutes, 29 seconds and went on to win 31-27.

The next Sunday at home in Briggs Stadium, the Lions won their third championship in six years with a 59-14 rout of the Browns. Rote threw four TD passes and ran for another.

Best sports line of the day

On the first play of the second half, the Lions broke the huddle with 12 men. The first play of the second half. Now, it’s important to keep two things in mind:

1. The Lions had known for nearly two hours that they would have the ball at the start of the second half.

2. Only 11 men are allowed on the field at a time. That is a new rule for the 2008 season. Oh, wait, my bad: That’s actually been the rule for, like, 100 years.

Michael Rosenberg writing about the futility of the 0-15 Detroit Lions.