Category: Sports

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

The Football Outsiders Homage to TMQ Contest

Football Outsiders

Watch this weekend’s action. Then e-mail your best TMQ-like commentary to info-@-footballoutsiders.com. You can include:

  • Haikus
  • Sweet Play of the Week
  • Sour Play of the Week
  • Stat of the Week
  • Local Affiliates Programming Outrage of the Week
  • Tis Better to Have Rushed and Lost Than Never to Have Rushed At All
  • Stop Me Before I Blitz Again
  • Best and Worst Blocks
  • Best in a Lost Cause
  • Worst Pass-Wacky
  • Buck-Buck-Brawckkkkkkk
  • Maroon Zone
  • TMQ Insider Exclusive
  • Obscure College Score of the Week
  • New York Times Final-Score Score

Extra points go to references to:

  • TMQ’s Immutable Laws (Play Fake on First, Clang On First Bars Run On Second (even though we questioned that one), Kick Early Go For It Late (we question that one too), K2 Survival Gear Does Not Equal Victory)
  • TMQ team names like “Squared Sevens,” “Flaming Thumbtacks,” “Cleveland Oranges,” and “Chesapeake Region Indigenous Persons”
  • Football Gods
  • Star Trek
  • Cheerleader babes
  • Poor uniform choices
  • United States defense policy
  • Physics
  • The Democratic presidential candidates

Negative points go to references to:

  • Disney
  • Miramax
  • Quentin Tarantino

Blanked

“A winless record was tough enough for one Michigan high school girls’ basketball team, but getting shut out in a game earlier this week was quite another.

‘The whole bus ride home, I couldn’t believe it,’ Leslie High Coach Jay Harkness told the Jackson Citizen Patriot after the team fell to 0-13 after a 61-0 loss to Olivet. ‘We missed layups. We missed two-footers. Everything that could go wrong did.’

At least the bus didn’t break down on the way home.”

From the Los Angeles Times.

Limbaugh was wrong

Gregg Easterbrook writes that “Rush Went Deep When He Should Have Handed Off.”

My first reaction to Limbaugh’s comments–he said Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb, who’s black, was a poor player being coddled by the sports media because of his race–was that Rush was simply wrong on the football. McNabb is a top-tier quarterback, though he had two crummy games to start this season. I was in Ralph Wilson Stadium for the Eagles-at-Bills game on Sunday, and as McNabb was beating up on the home team, remember thinking, “I’d hate to have to defense this guy.” At least half the teams in the NFL would exchange their starting QBs for McNabb in an instant.

Limbaugh was right

Allen Barra writes that “Donovan McNabb isn’t a great quarterback, and the media do overrate him because he is black.”

But the truth is that I and a great many other sportswriters have chosen for the past few years to see McNabb as a better player than he has been because we want him to be.

Rush Limbaugh didn’t say Donovan McNabb was a bad quarterback because he is black. He said that the media have overrated McNabb because he is black, and Limbaugh is right. He didn’t say anything that he shouldn’t have said, and in fact he said things that other commentators should have been saying for some time now. I should have said them myself. I mean, if they didn’t hire Rush Limbaugh to say things like this, what they did they hire him for? To talk about the prevent defense?

More on Mackovic

Greg Hansen in The Arizona Daily Star

Mackovic’s martinet-style personality had become a weight the athletic program could no longer bear.

Within a few weeks of his arrival in December 2000, Mackovic began an awkward process of alienating those who supported the football program. Secretaries. Boosters. Players. His own staff. Nobody wanted to be around him.

He rubbed ’em the wrong way. Jerked ’em around. Ticked ’em off.

Major League Baseball

NewMexiKen thinks it’s remarkable that Major League Baseball played all but one of the 2,430 games on the 2003 schedule. The Giants and Mets missed a game along the way. Everyone else got in all 162 games.

The Detroit Tigers won five out of their last six games to keep from matching the 1962 Mets for the most losses in a season. The Tigers ended up 43-119. The ’62 Mets were 40-120.

The Yankees and Braves each won 101 games; the Giants 100.

Final standings

BoSox and Cubbies

Those most tragic and romantic major league teams the Boston Red Sox and the Chicago Cubs are moving into the postseason. Doesn’t that give you a warm and fuzzy feeling?

Let’s see if they’re around for the League Championship Series.

By the way, seven of the eight franchises advancing were playing a century ago when the major leagues began. This includes the Twins who were the Washington Senators for 60 years, the Braves by way of Boston and Milwaukee, the Athletics from Philadelphia through Kansas City, and the Giants formerly of New York. The Yankees were originally the Highlanders and the Red Sox the Somersets and then the Puritans. But they were all around. The Marlins are the exception.

Not so sweet 16

The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport published a report earlier this year on graduation rates for the Sweet 16 NCAA basketball teams. Their chart is here.

The colleges rate from 0% graduating to 86%; the average rate for the 16 for all basketball players is 44%, for African-American players it’s 39%. This is certainly not surprising, and perhaps even higher than expected, but Oklahoma (0/0), Maryland (14/11), Arizona (15/9) and national champion Syracuse (25/0) surely need to re-think their approach. (According to the NCAA the overall graduation rate for incoming freshmen at these schools is Oklahoma 54%, Maryland 69%, Arizona 55% and Syracuse 77%.)

Major League Baseball

Atlanta Braves 93 57 .620 $106,243,667
New York Yankees 92 57 .617 $152,749,814
San Francisco Giants 90 57 .612 $82,852,167
Oakland Athletics 89 60 .597 $50,260,834
Boston Red Sox 86 62 .581 $99,946,500
Seattle Mariners 86 63 .577 $86,959,167

Two weeks to go in the baseball season (12-15 games) and listed above (with their 2003 payroll) are the only teams that have won more than 85 games (the Detroit Tigers have lost 110). Of course, these six teams don’t play the same schedule so this comparison isn’t entirely fair, but I find it interesting.

The Tigers payroll is $49,168,000.