Category: Sports

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

Strong words

I’m sure everybody ever associated with Notre Dame will tell you color had nothing to do with letting Willingham go, that it’s totally a coincidence, which is like spitting in somebody’s face and telling him it’s a rain drop.

Michael Wilbon, in a column worth reading in full

Pickup game

An interesting essay from The New York Times Magazine on kids and sports. It begins:

Last summer, in the bright, buggy late-afternoon heat of an Atlanta playground, a few Druid Hills High School baseball players taught a bunch of little kids how to play the game.

My 16-year-old son, Lee Samuel, ran a baseball clinic with his teammates Andre Mastrogiacomo and Matt and Palmer Hudson. Here’s what the teenagers didn’t require of their players: tryouts; advance registrations; birth certificates; assignments to teams by age, sex and skill level; uniforms or team names; parent volunteers; snack schedules; and commuting to fields in distant counties in search of the appropriate level of competition.

Here’s what the players didn’t miss: almost none of the above. (Uniforms are pretty cool.)

A different Tiger

From Morning Briefing:

A Detroit ballplayer was once heckled so mercilessly that he went into the stands and beat a fan senseless, reported Mike Downey of the Chicago Tribune. The fan was an amputee.

The ballplayer was Ty Cobb, who played for the Tigers, and the incident happened 92 years ago.

Added Downey: “It happened in New York, by the way, not in Detroit.”

Bump on the noggin

According to a report in The New York Times soccer headgear has become an issue.

The founder of a San Diego-based company called Full90 said he had sold 100,000 pieces of headgear. The headgear resembles an enlarged headband, weighs less than 2 ounces, and covers the forehead, temples and occipital bone in back of the head. The device is made of shock-absorbing foam situated between an outer layer of Lycra and an inner layer of sweat-absorbing polypropylene. Several models are available for $24 to $39.

Full90 does not claim that its headgear prevents concussions. But the company does say the headgear can reduce, by up to 50 percent, the peak impact forces that occur during typical collisions when a player’s head strikes another head, the ground, an elbow or a goal post.

The headgear debate is occurring at a time when some studies indicate that concussions occur in soccer at a rate similar to the rate in football.

Apparently there is a great deal of resistance to the headgear in some quarters, in part for fear people will realize soccer is dangerous and the soccer moms will stop signing up their little darlings. (The article points out that concussions are almost non-existent among players under 12. It’s the older, bigger players who could gain from the protection.)

The resistance is also similar to that which took place when baseball and other sports introduced helmets. NewMexiKen attended a game between the Kansas City Athletics and the Detroit Tigers in the mid-1950s. Vic Power came to the plate without a helmet (it was optional then). He made a show of declining it. After a close, inside pitch he made an ever greater show of going to the dugout and returning with a helmet on.

Supposed I-A playoff

Hypothetical 16-team bracket using 11 conference champions and 5 wild cards. Conference champions based on current best record if not yet decided. Wildcards based on Sagarin’s current overall rating, as is seeding.

USC (Pac 10) vs, North Texas (Sun Belt)
Louisville (Conference USA) vs. Miami

Utah (Mountain West) vs. Michigan (Big 10)
Texas vs. LSU

California vs. West Virginia (Big East)
Auburn (SEC) vs. Georgia

Boise State (WAC) vs. Virginia Tech (ACC)
Oklahoma (Big 12) vs. Miami-Ohio (Mid-American)

Some interesting games and some interesting likely second round match-ups. Of course, if this was done like basketball, by a committee, there would no doubt be more finesse and finagling.

Think of the drama as we waited for next Sunday and pairings to be announced on TV. Who’d be on the bubble, etc., etc.

Alas.

Meanwhile, where the college presidents aren’t jerks — a football championship decided by (imagine) playoffs

The first round of the I-AA 16-team football playoff style tournament has been completed. Eight teams moved to the second round December 4th &mdash

Sam Houston State @ Eastern Washington
New Hampshire @ Montana
Delaware @ William & Mary
James Madison @ Furman

The championship game is in Chattanooga December 17.

(There are 117 I-A schools and 122 I-AA schools.)

In case you were wondering

Seven years after they won a civil lawsuit, relatives of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman have collected almost none of the $33.5 million in damages awarded.

Read article in the Los Angeles Times.

Do you think the real killer took all of OJ’s money, too?

Sideline Chatter

Dwight Perry has had a good week:

  • Chris Dufresne of the Los Angeles Times, trying to figure out what the fuss in college football is all about: “Really, except for three times since 2000, when has the BCS failed us?”
  • “When I get back,” banished Pacer Ron Artest vowed to Indianapolis’ WHHH radio, “I’m going to prevent things like that from happening.”

    Uh, right.

    And in the meantime, O.J. Simpson is going to help him look for the real Pacer who ran up into the stands.

  • Just wondering: If it’s really fantasy football, shouldn’t Nicollette Sheridan be a No. 1 draft pick?
  • Caught a glimpse of the NBA highlights from Detroit on Friday night, and there for a second we thought they’d ended the NHL lockout.
  • Saints owner Tom Benson, no doubt realizing he had spoken out of anger and was not thinking clearly when he said his NFL team “looked like high-school kids” in Sunday’s 34-13 loss to Denver, is reportedly being pressured to issue a blanket apology.

    To all the high-school kids.

Turkey Day Sports Section

From Bob Somerby at The Daily Howler:

We wanted to give this topic more space, but let’s just ask the Kevin Drums to adopt the cause of Arizona State, this year’s most abused college football team. The Sun Devils are ranked eighth in the nation by the six BCS computers—but they’re inexcusably ranked 18th and 20th in the AP and USA Today human polls. Indeed, they’re even ranked several spots behind Iowa, with whom they share a two-loss season—and who they clobbered, 44-7, on the field of play in September. Which team has played a tougher schedule? According to USA Today’s Sagarin computer, ASU has played the nation’s second-toughest sked, Iowa the 35th best. (Put it another way: ASU has played four of the current AP Top 25; Iowa has only played two.) Meanwhile, why is Wisconsin ranked ahead of ASU? The Badgers have played only one ranked team—Iowa—which beat them to a pulp last Saturday. But then, the week before, they got blasted by unranked Michigan State, too. But so what? Despite back-to-back blow-out defeats, the myopic pollsters still have the Badgers ranked ahead of Arizona State, a team which simply has to have the nation’s worst PR department.

Pac-10 fans will be thankful if Southern Cal beats Note Dame this weekend. In the meantime, a member school is being jobbed. It happens to some Pac-10 team every year. Let’s bang the drum-sticks this week where the need is the greatest.

In his praise of the Sun Devils Somerby doesn’t even mention that ASU’s two losses were to the number 1 and number 4 ranked teams (USC and Cal).

Of course, when Arizona stuns ASU Friday (that would stun me, too), this will all be mute.

Name game

From Sideline Chatter:

Among those signing letters of intent this week to play basketball at Idaho State was Central Kitsap’s Emily Zygmontowicz, whose surname alone is worth 41 points in Scrabble tiles.

NewMexiKen is waiting for the cheerleaders to try this one:

Zygmontowicz, Zygmontowicz,
She’s our man
If she can’t do it
Nobody can

Sideline Chatter

A couple of items from Dwight Perry:

That’s the ticket, not

Saturday wasn’t a good day to be a ticket scalper at Husky Stadium, which appeared to be only about two-thirds full to watch Washington and Arizona battle it out for last place in the Pac-10.

In other words, it was a cellar’s market.

Food for thought

Timberwolves guard Latrell Sprewell, who makes $14.6 million this season, created quite a stir when the team’s three-year contract offer averaging $10 million a year left him feeling “insulted … I’ve got my family to feed.”

  • Bill Lankhof, Toronto Sun: “Exactly how big is this ‘family,’ anyway?”
  • Jim Armstrong, Denver Post: “Hey, that’s understandable. I mean, have you noticed the price of caviar lately?”
  • Jim Litke, The Associated Press: “Apparently the Sprewells have never been to Wendy’s.”

Let’s go to the videotape

Phil Simms’ new book Sunday Morning Quarterback is discussed in Richard Sandomir’s column in The New York Times.

Simms’s view of calling football is derived from a belief that what you see on a TV screen is not the truest reflection of what just happened. “TV absolutely can lie,” he writes. Those who do not delve beyond what is immediately before them are doomed to simple analysis.

“I can watch a game on TV,” he said, “but when I put on coaches’ tape, my opinions and thought processes change dramatically.”

It wasn’t until his sixth season that Simms had his epiphany about coaches’ tape. One day, Ron Erhardt, the Giants’ offensive coordinator, showed him tape of the Redskins’ defense.

Erhardt pointed to an outside linebacker, who, he said, kept his feet parallel when Washington was going to rush four down lineman but kept one foot forward for a blitz.

“But that can’t be true all the time,” Simms writes. Yes, Erhardt said, 100 percent of the time.

The Bryant case

The Los Angeles Times has an article on the mock trial the prosecution staged in the Kobe Bryant case.

They wanted to gauge how their chief witness would hold up under hostile cross-examination.

The answer: Disastrously.

For more than three hours, a lawyer playing the role of Bryant defense attorney Pamela Mackey pounded away at the accuser and the account she had given police. The lawyer pointed out that in her police statement the woman said she had kissed Bryant consensually for five minutes before the alleged assault.

“All right, let’s start now,” the lawyer said, looking at his watch.

For the next 60 seconds the courtroom was silent.

“You’re still kissing him,” the lawyer broke in, continuing to look at his watch. “You kissed him for four more minutes.”

“That’s too long,” she responded. “We didn’t kiss that long.”

The lawyer pounced: “Well, you said five minutes.”

The woman crumbled, and seven days later so did the criminal case against Bryant, superstar guard of the Los Angeles Lakers and one of the nation’s wealthiest and most celebrated sports figures.

Deal in danger

Michael Wilbon thinks the D.C. government is fouling off the deal to bring the Expos to Washington.

And if I ran MLB I would call [Mayor] Williams and say, “The deal’s off the table. We’re not accepting your council chairman’s bait-and-switch idiocy. Do we have a deal or not? And if not, we’ll let the team play in RFK until we strike a deal with Las Vegas, or perhaps we’ll more fully explore our options in Northern Virginia. If you don’t get the stadium built where you promised, you don’t get the team. Period.”

Mildcats

Poor Mike Stoops. The first-time coach (brother of Oklahoma head coach Bob Stoops) inherited an Arizona team that went 2-9 in 2003 and he’s having a tough time doing as well. The Wildcats are 1-7.

Try rebuilding with the country’s toughest schedule. They’ve lost to teams currently ranked No. 4 (Wisconsin), No. 6 (California) and No. 8 (Utah). Arizona’s one win was over Division 1-AA Northern Arizona.

Today may be Stoops’ best chance for one more victory. The Wildcats play Washington (also 1-7) in Seattle.

Next week it’s USC (8-0 and ranked No. 1). The final game is against Arizona State (6-2 and No. 23).

[Update: Arizona 23 Washington 13]

Bless us all Chester

Albloggerque posted this Wednesday (sorry I missed it before now):

DOWNTOWN–Chester Nez rests on a plaza bench after the Kerry rally. Many in Boston credit Mr. Nez for breaking the Curse of the Bambino with a Navajo blessing. The WWII Code Talker and Congressional Gold Medal winner blessed the Kerry campaign in Albuquerque Tuesday night.

Apparently the Boston Red Sox called on Chester Nez to come to Boston and give a Navajo blessing to the Red Sox last April. After the team lost its 3 games to the Yankees in the ALCS they called him again. The local story goes that he walked out of his Albuquerque home, faced Fenway Park, and gave a blessing.

Now the Kerry campaign has him on stage with JK. And last night in Albuquerque’s Civic Plaza there he was extracting corn pollen from a little leather bag and letting it sift into the air in all 4 directions. The thousands of people at the rally were hushed during the brief ceremony…

Albloggerque has a couple of photos.

It’s over

Michael Bérubé sums it up pretty well:

And surely some of you must regard victory itself as a prize of dubious worth. Until tonight, your team was legendary, and their legend shaped and defined your self-identification as fans. If you win the World Series, you win the World Series– and you become kin to the 2002 Angels and the 1980 Phillies. You will be elated (and drunk!) for a couple of days, sure. But then the championship will begin to sink in, and while some of you will say, as did a New York Rangers fan in 1994, “now I can die in peace,” others among you will be plunged into existential crisis.

This was written before last night’s game.