I am torn. I am a big fan of college sports, with football being my clear number one and basketball coming in second, but I enjoy other sports at that level as well. The reason for my mixed feelings is how much like professional sports the big two have become. At the Division 1 level, especially in the big conferences, there is very little to back up the premise that these are amateur sports, aside from the fact that the players do not (generally) get paid. Any time I start to think that the whole setup stinks and needs to be changed, I realize that the sports I love could be dramatically altered if that happened, and that’s a hard reality to face. Still, it’s hard to follow these players and not see the problems that come from the big business of college sports. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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In 1995, running back Ricky Watters signed with the Philadelphia Eagles after starting his career with the San Francisco 49ers. In his first game with the team, he was running a crossing pattern and made a feeble attempt at catching a pass because he was shying away from the contact that was coming at him. When asked about “short-arming” this pass after the game, Watters famously wondered aloud why he would have even considered doing otherwise, asking “For who? For what?” Although he went on to have a very good career with the Eagles, the notoriously tough Philadelphia fans never let him forget the selfish questions with which they were introduced to him. This week, another new Eagle, Cary Williams, went down a similar road when asked about some recent Organized Team Activities that he had skipped. Uh-oh.

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Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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In the world of academics, I would bet that university presidents are popular individuals. The successful ones are highly visible on campus, raise tons of money for their schools, and are often given at least some credit for the success of their institutions. From a college athletics standpoint, though, I am starting to really despise these guys. People like E. Gordon Gee of Ohio State just don’t seem to live in the real world, and yet they get paid large (sometimes huge) sums of money to be the faces of their universities. This week, Gee came under a great deal of scrutiny after a recording of one of Ohio State’s athletic council meetings surfaced during which he made offensive remarks about a number of different targets, including Catholics, the SEC, and a couple of Kentucky schools. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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The world has many problems. So many, in fact, that any attempt to list them would be futile, and the idea of putting them in some kind of order is ludicrous. I believe, though, that racism is certainly somewhere near the top of the list. In my own sheltered little world, it is easy to pretend that it doesn’t exist, but that bubble bursts on a regular basis whenever I let the real world intrude on my idyllic existence. Racism is not as pervasive as it was 50 years ago, of course, but it is still a very real force in our society, and sports are in no way immune to its effects. Two weeks ago, golfers Sergio Garcia and Tiger Woods battled for the Players Championship title and, at the same time, bickered back and forth about a breach of course etiquette that Garcia believed Woods had committed while they played together during the 3rd round. This week, Garcia, who was being asked yet again about the incident, stepped far over the line and made a clearly racially-tinged remark about Woods.

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Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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As I mentioned back in February, the Philadelphia Eagles made the atrocious offseason move of bringing Michael Vick back for another season. It remains to be seen whether or not he is still the starting quarterback, and I guess it is not a certainty that he will even make the team, but I was certainly distressed to see him return. I suffered through several seasons of having him on my favorite team, the last two of which did not even have the benefit of him playing well. I was certain that he would be gone after last season, especially when head coach Andy Reid was sent packing, as he had been Vick’s biggest advocate. Chip Kelly was brought in, and he apparently thought it made sense to give the guy another opportunity, despite that fact that he appears to me to be very poorly suited for Kelly’s offense due to his penchant for throwing interceptions, his constant fumbling, and his clear weakness at reading defenses. Vick was asked about the latter this week on a local radio show, and he lashed out at his critics, saying they “know nothing about football” and are “ignorant.”

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Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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The concept of “political correctness” is an interesting one. Essentially, the term is used to describe attempts to avoid offending people. That seems like a pretty good idea, doesn’t it? Sure, there are people who are very easily offended, and there are others who find offense in things where it really does not exist, but for the most part, doing or saying things a certain way to avoid making someone feel marginalized is a pretty good idea. Of course, there are a lot of people who think our society goes too far in trying to appease the folks who would be otherwise offended. In fact, as you might expect, there are individuals who go wildly overboard with it, suggesting that any attempt at all to toe this line is a waste of time, and that anyone who feels victimized by language should just get over it. Those people are rarely the ones on the receiving end of the offensive words, predictably.

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Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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Just like last week, the biggest story of the week happened on Monday. Each time I needed to either write a separate story, in order to try to be timely, or wait until I wrote and posted my normal column. On both occasions, my usual schedule has not allowed for the early post, so I have had to settle for a story well after the event. Like with the attack on the Boston Marathon, though, the story was big enough to still stand up a week later. This week, it was the revelation by NBA player Jason Collins that he is gay. He is the first active player in one of the major team sports to come out of the closet, so this is clearly a big deal. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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For many athletes, sports are more important than anything else. Those at the top of their sports must have an even greater focus on that area of their lives than the rest, I would imagine, considering the level of accomplishment. College athletes have certainly reached a level of athletic achievement of which most people can not boast, and it must be quite difficult to eliminate distractions and physical ailments that could interfere with those pursuits. You would not expect one of these people to voluntarily choose something that would end his college career, but that’s exactly what Cameron Lyle did. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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This column will post on Monday morning, nearly a full week after the horror that occurred at the Boston Marathon. I really wanted to write something soon after it happened, but, as is so often the case, life interfered and I never “put pen to paper,” as they say. With the added perspective of 6 additional days, I am not sure I can make a lot more sense of what happened that afternoon. As the resident sports columnist for When Falls the Coliseum, though, I feel like I need to at least give it a shot. The human tragedy of lives lost and lives altered forever at an event that should have been a joyous celebration is one that most of us will not quickly forget. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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There is a whole lot of idiocy in sports. I write about a lot of it here on a weekly basis, although there is far more of it than I could possibly cover in this small space. Aside from the material it gives me, though, I do genuinely wish that most of it would go away. Things like what happened Thursday night in San Diego during the Padres game against the Los Angeles Dodgers just make me angry. The thing in question was a bench-clearing brawl between the two teams that included a major injury to Dodgers pitcher Zack Greinke, incurred when he was attacked by Padres slugger Carlos Quentin. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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There are not a lot of major state universities that do not have the name of their state as part of the school’s name. I imagine that Rutgers is not the only example of this, but it is the only one that springs to mind. Rutgers is New Jersey’s biggest state university, and although it does technically have New Jersey in the name (the full name is “Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey”), nobody calls it that. I choose to believe that is to avoid having to admit they go to school in New Jersey. Anyway, the school, or more specifically the school’s basketball program, is having a bad week. Last weekend, ESPN’s Outside the Lines showed a video of the basketball team practicing and being verbally, and somewhat physically, abused by head coach Mike Rice. The coach’s behavior was pretty outrageous, as he tossed homophobic comments and profanity at his players, while also physically pushing them, throwing basketballs at their heads, and doing a variety of other awful things. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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OK, guys, you are at a baseball game and you’ve downed a few beers during the early going. Between innings, you run out through the tunnel looking for the nearest bathroom. You are not the only one with this idea, of course, and you find yourself in line. A few minutes later, you reach the urinal. You do your business, wash your hands, and get back to your seat as quickly as possible, right? The Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs, a minor league affiliate of the Philadelphia Phillies, hopes not. Instead, they would like you to spend a few extra minutes playing the video games they plan to install above the urinals at Coca-Cola Park in Allentown. Wait, what?

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Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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Every once in a while, I review all of my stories at the end of the week and find that while a bunch of interesting stuff happened in sports that week, nothing stood out to me as a lead story for Bad Sports, Good Sports. This is one of those weeks. Either nothing happened in sports this past week that moved me to attack with my customary cynicism or to wax poetic about someone’s great accomplishment, or I am just tired after a long day and a long week and my synapses are not firing well enough to make something leap into my imagination in order to lead my fingers to type out some clever commentary, or at least something that approximates my usual drivel. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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Of all the aspects of sports that cause arguments and opinions, officiating is one of the most obvious. Some people would say that the best officials are the ones that you don’t notice during a game, but I would disagree with that. Just as too much referee involvement can make a mess of a contest, too little can do the same. One specific subject on which many people disagree is whether or not officials should change their calls late in a game to avoid having a major effect on the outcome. The people who think whistles should be swallowed in the final minutes will have a lot to complain about if they watched the Richmond-Charlotte game in the opening round of the Atlantic-10 Basketball Tournament on Thursday. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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In the big business that is professional sports, corporate sponsorship is a major factor in the whole show. From stadium signage to television and radio commercials, many varieties of companies and organizations pay significant money to make sure you know their name. Most of the time, fans do not have major opinions on the nature of those sponsors, preferring to try to ignore them instead. I am a pro at completely tuning out commercials, most of the time not even realizing that they are on. Occasionally, though, a sponsor appears that causes an uproar, and the sport involved becomes secondary. One such situation became news this week when Texas Motor Speedway announced that the National Rifle Association would be the title sponsor for the NASCAR Sprint Cup race that will happen at the track in April. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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Professional athletes make a lot of money. Especially the ones whose names you know. Sure, some of them make a lot more than others, but even the supposed have-nots likely make a good bit more than you do. Some of them make more than you’ll make in your whole life, and if you lived multiple lives, you still might not get there. Usually, although not always, the best players make the most money. Sure, you can find a young superstar who has not yet cashed in on his first big contract who seems woefully underpaid, and you can also easily spot guys who had a big year, hit it big, and then never approached that level of accomplishment again, but I think it is fair to say that most of the guys making the biggest money are among the elite in their respective sports. Maybe I’m silly, but I feel like a guy who signs a deal that makes him the highest paid player in the history of his league should not only be the best player in that league, but one of the all-time greats. This week, Baltimore Ravens and quarterback Joe Flacco agreed to such a deal. Joe Flacco. Huh? [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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As I sit here watching the Oscars pre-show, I am struck by the odd nature of entertainment. We spend an awful lot of time and money to be entertained, and it becomes such a focus of our daily existence that we are also willing to watch the stars of that entertainment pat themselves on the back for hours on end. Sports, of course, is really just entertainment in many ways, and for some of us, it is our primary escape. The biggest difference between movies and sports is that a lot of people (myself certainly included) often take sports a lot more seriously, to the point that a loss can not only affect our moods for an extended period of time, but can also lead us to anger over very silly and insignificant things. Early this week, the announcer for the University of North Dakota’s basketball team was suspended for two games for using the phrase “choke job” to describe the team’s loss to Northern Arizona last Saturday. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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Nerlens Noel is a freshman basketball player at the University of Kentucky. Pro scouts and draft gurus all had Noel penciled in as a very high draft pick in the next NBA draft, with some considering him a candidate for the number one overall pick. On Tuesday night, Noel tore his ACL in a gruesome-looking incident during his team’s game against Florida. A debate began immediately about the NBA’s draft eligibility rules, which require a player to be at least 19 years old and at least one year out of high school before he is eligible. It’s certainly possible that this rule may have cost Noel a whole lot of money. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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Wednesday was the biggest day of the year in the world of college football recruiting: National Signing Day. Over the last several years, this day, and recruiting in general, has become such a circus that I am rarely surprised by anything that happens. Press conferences, hat ceremonies, and millions of people hitting refresh on their browsers are normal occurrences on this day, as people wait to find out if some teenager has decided to play at their school. I have to admit, though, that the saga of Alex Collins was not one I could have predicted. Collins, from Florida, was committed to play at Miami until Monday, when he changed his mind and announced his intention to sign with Arkansas. His mother had other ideas, however, and she not only refused to sign his letter of intent at the signing ceremony, she actually ran out the door with the papers. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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I am not going to recap the Super Bowl for you. Everyone watched it, right? OK. Good. I am a sports fan, so I obviously watched as well. I am an Eagles fan, so I had no real skin in the game. I actively rooted for the 49ers, though, and there are two words that explain why: Ray Lewis. In case you had somehow missed it, the celebrated middle linebacker from the Ravens was playing his final NFL game. Lewis represents everything that is wrong in professional sports, in my opinion, and the incessant focus on him made the days leading up to this game somewhat unbearable. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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