There is a Godard movie that closes with the caption, “End of film. End of cinema.”; even by French standards, it’s awesomely pretentious. Friends and I became obsessed with it and tried to adopt it into our daily conversation whenever possible. (“End of sandwich. End of lunch.”) With Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari finally winning his first national title, it seems worth reviving this grammatical construct, for surely Calipari’s ultimate triumph has signaled the point when players ceased being “student-athletes” and officially became “teenagers killing time before declaring for the NBA draft.” [Read more →]

Tags: sports by Sean Cunningham
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There are a variety of reasons why a pitcher will intentionally hit a batter with a pitch. Often, it is done as a retaliation after a slow homerun trot or a batter on the pitcher’s team had already been hit by the opposing pitcher. Baseball is filled with “unwritten rules” that dictate when various things need to happen, and “purpose” pitches certainly fall into this category. Many times, the pitch does not actually hit the batter, but merely makes him dive out of the way. Baseball writers sometimes call this “chin music,” romanticizing the concept of revenge in the national pastime. Is this all really okay? I guess it depends on who you ask. There are times, though, when it is very clearly not okay. Sunday’s preseason game between the Colorado Rockies and the Cleveland Indians in Scottsdale, Arizona, was one of those times. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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Railing against media-created drama is a self-defeating proposition when you are contributing to the problem in the process. All I can do is plow ahead, I guess, and discuss the carnival atmosphere surrounding the National Football League this week. The draft is in a few weeks, free agency is well underway, one of the greatest quarterbacks in league history, Peyton Manning, signed with a new team this week, and a franchise’s head coach was just suspended for an entire season. What, then, was the talk of the sports world this week? Tim Tebow, of course. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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There are many perks to playing in the NFL, ranging from untold riches to the right to pat other men on the butt whenever you want, no questions asked or judgments made. The downside is that, if you stick around long enough, your brain will be battered into goo and large guys will snap off your legs. (Ask Joe Theismann.) That’s why Peyton Manning is currently living the dream, for after a stretch of being hailed as a gridiron messiah wherever he went, he signed a five-year, $96-million deal with the Denver Broncos. Tragically, the actual season will soon begin and there suddenly will be a very real chance Ray Lewis will slam him to the ground repeatedly. And thus we are forced to think of the immortal words of Bartleby the Scrivener: “I would prefer Ray Lewis did not do that to me.” [Read more →]

Tags: sports by Sean Cunningham
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Watching your children play sports is fun. My girls did not spend a great deal of time playing sports, being more inclined toward the performing arts, but they did play basketball for several years when they were younger. They were never more than role players on their teams, but I used to love sitting and watching them play. I am a hot-headed sports fan, so my grumbling about bad calls was occasionally louder than it should have been, but I never went too far with it. I did once tell our coach, after listening to him tell me about bad officiating, that we would probably get better calls if his own daughter didn’t repeatedly mouth off to the referees and show up her teammates. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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A big part of being sports fans is the way we idolize the athletes. A lot of lip-service is paid to the idea that we should not set these guys up as role models, particularly for children, but in reality, we can’t help ourselves. I challenge any of you to find yourself in the presence of a player you like and not become a goofy fanboy. If we really thought of them as regular guys who play a game, we would have a different reaction. At the same time, we can find real hatred for players on other teams, despite the fact that they may be totally decent, admirable human beings. The real dilemma is presented when a player we hate starts to play for the home team and plays well. Sometimes, we hang on to the dislike, while more often, that hatred is quickly left behind. There is no sports-related passion quite like the one we have for a guy we used to hate but now love. For me, Lenny Dykstra was one of these guys. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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Professional football is a violent game. No matter what rules the league puts in place, that basic fact will remain. The NFL can, should, and will continue to legislate the game to attempt to reduce injury, particularly the long-term variety, but in the end, a game that involves huge men tackling each other is going to be dangerous. When a team actually rewards its players for injuring opposing players, then, you can be sure that things will get ugly quickly. This week, the NFL revealed details of a “bounty” program that was in effect for the New Orleans Saints during their Super Bowl season of 2009, as well as the rest of the tenure of former defensive coordinator Gregg Williams. Players were given off-the-books bonuses for hits that knocked opposing players out of the game. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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People often complain about the excesses in sports. The players make too much money, the games cost too much to attend, and the players behave too badly. Despite those antics, we hold these players up as role models to our children, protesting all the while that we are not doing so. Rather than finding ways to tone down the adulation, the fans and the media seem to be inventing new and worse ways to contribute to the phenomenon. Every February, a bunch of high school kids sign letters of intent to play football at colleges around the country. This has been going on for years, but now, in many cases, it has become a quite a spectacle. This needs to stop. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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My PC was on the fritz for more than a week, so it was hard for me to keep up with all the juicy February headlines. So many blog-worthy things have happened since Super Bowl Sunday: Whitney Houston died, Rick Santorum became a viable candidate for president, and America became obsessed with Jeremy Lin. I just bought a new laptop and I’m back. So what better way to tie all of these things together into one blog, than to give you an outrageous headline like the one above? [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, politics & government, sports by Robert O'Hara
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I think I give people too much credit. I don’t necessarily expect to never encounter racism and bigotry in the normal course of life, but I somehow still manage to be surprised when it rears its head, especially when it happens in some kind of mainstream fashion.  Last week in one of my Good Sports stories, I mentioned the emergence of New York Knicks point guard Jeremy Lin, who came out of nowhere to dominate the sports news over the last couple of weeks. Lin, a Chinese-American man who played college basketball at Harvard, quickly became the target of ignorant headline writers and news people. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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