I went into Sunday evening with the thought that, despite my apprehension about the Madonna halftime show at the Super Bowl, I would not be writing about said show as my column for this week. After all, I wrote about the same subject a mere two years back, when they dug up The Who to underwhelm us. I hate to repeat myself, but it is occasionally unavoidable. This is one of those times. What a total crapfest. [Read more →]
A very challenging situation is developing in Indianapolis. Peyton Manning, arguably one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time, may be seeing his time in that Midwestern city coming to an end. It could, in fact, be his NFL career that is ending. The only part that is certain is that Colts fans are experiencing plenty of agita right now, and it is likely to last a little while. [Read more →]
I am going to preface this column by saying that I understand that there are people out there for whom the recently revealed events at Penn State involving Jerry Sandusky, children from The Second Mile, and the leadership of the university and the football program completely invalidate the incredible career and contribution to the school of Joe Paterno. I am not one of those people. I am not here to debate this point or to belittle the opinion of others. Rather, I would like to simply express my feelings about the passing of Joseph Vincent Paterno on Sunday. [Read more →]
When you watch, read about, and write about sports, you come across an awful lot of cliches. Many of them originated in the world of sports, but lots of them come from elsewhere too. With as much talking as sports commentators have to do during a broadcast, I guess it makes sense that they lean on the same old expressions over and over again. Cliches become cliches for a reason, though. One big one in football is “defense wins championships.” No title was won this weekend, but this old expression certainly showed that it has some truth behind it as the New York Giants beat the Green Bay Packers and the San Francisco 49ers beat the New Orleans Saints. [Read more →]
I suppose it might be because my team is not participating, but I found the NFL playoffs particularly painful this weekend. It is probably because of gambling and fantasy football, but I have found that most football fans watch the playoffs, even when their team did not make it, which is different than what I have seen with most other sports. I normally enjoy these Eagles-free games just because they are football, but I found these games pretty awful. As always, I make no pretense of being objective. My own dislikes had a lot to do with my disgust, although bad officiating and bad play certainly entered into it. [Read more →]
Bravado. For whatever reason, it would appear to be rampant in sports. I guess it makes some sense…athletes, especially those playing at the highest levels, are extremely competitive people by necessity. Sure, some of them motivate themselves quietly, finding everything they need to excel without having to make spectacles of themselves. Others need to play mind games, strut around like idiots, or taunt their opponents at every opportunity as ways to stoke their inner fires. On Sunday, the final day of the NFL’s regular season, there were several examples of bravado that were not only obnoxious, but also wildly misplaced, which is often another characteristic of this behavior. [Read more →]
Bill Conlin, a legendary sportswriter for the Philadelphia Daily News, was accused of sexual abuse this week by a number of people, all claiming to have been abused back in the seventies. Four people, including one of Conlin’s nieces, accused the writer early in the week, and several others have come forward since, all claiming that he touched them when they were children. Unlike many other situations like this, these kids or witnesses to the events actually told their parents what happened. Across the board, those parents chose to try to handle the situation themselves rather than go to the police. [Read more →]
Free agency gives players an opportunity to go out on the open market and get as much money as they can get. It also allows them to choose the city in which they will live and play half of their games each season. Considering how short the average professional sports career is (roughly 3.5 years for NFL players, for example, according to ABC News), I am in full support of players getting everything they can get. Unfortunately, new contracts also give players an opportunity to talk about why they chose to move on from their last team, and more often than not, it seems to me, the explanations simply cause problems. The most recent massive contract went to Albert Pujols, the new first baseman for the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (how’s that for a name?), who signed a 10-year, $254 million contract. He left the St. Louis Cardinals, for whom he had played for the first eleven years of his spectacular career. In this case, the silly interview that occurred afterward was actually with Pujols’ wife Deidre, for some reason. [Read more →]
The NBA is back. What’s that, you say? You hadn’t noticed it was gone? I can’t say I blame you there. The product has gotten so bad over the last few years that I was thinking that a missed season might not be such a bad thing. A new agreement was reached recently, though, and things are moving along toward an abbreviated season which is set to start on Christmas Day. However, what should have been the beginning of an exciting condensed period of player movement, like we had with the NFL this season, immediately went wrong this week. A blockbuster trade that had been made between the New Orleans Hornets, the Houston Rockets, and the Los Angeles Lakers involving superstar point guard Chris Paul was squashed by the league a few hours after it had been completed. The same league, by the way, that currently owns those same New Orleans Hornets.
For many of us, our college years are a time to do things we have never done before, and may never do again. New experiences are necessary in order to learn what we want out of life, and being open to those experiences is a key to maximizing the value we get out of a college career. Unfortunately, many of the things we do at that age are things that we will look back on with a cringe when we have reached a more mature stage of life. The event from this week that has made me think about this happened in Stillwater, Oklahoma, after the Oklahoma State Cowboys defeated their nemesis, the Oklahoma Sooners, for the first time in nine tries. They won in style, spanking the Sooners by a score of 44-10. At the end of the game, thousands of fans rushed the field, intending to bring down the goalposts. In the long melee that followed, thirteen people were injured, one of whom had to be airlifted to a local hospital. [Read more →]
