Bad sports, good sports – Delayed until Tuesday morning
I apologize for the changed schedule, but my column for the week will not post until Tuesday morning. The column itself will explain why. Thanks for reading!
Entries Tagged as 'bad sports, good sports'
Bad sports, good sports: Governor Tom Corbett sues the NCAA on behalf of Penn State
An amazing thing happened earlier this week. For the first time since last July, someone in a position of significance stood up for Penn State. Shockingly, it was Pennsylvania’s governor, Tom Corbett, a member of the school’s Board of Trustees who had formerly appeared to be in support of the sanctions. On Wednesday, Corbett, on behalf of the commonwealth, filed a lawsuit against the NCAA, seeking to overturn the devastating sanctions that were levied against the school’s football program in the aftermath of the Jerry Sandusky pedophilia scandal. [Read more →]
Bad sports, good sports: Andy Reid is out…hallelujah.
Although it has not yet been made official, Andy Reid’s tenure as head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles ended on Sunday. For the fans of the team, a group of which I am most certainly a part, this is a beautiful thing. I am extremely ready to see someone else leading this franchise. The national pundits don’t seem to understand it, but that is because they have not lived and breathed Eagles football for the past fourteen years. [Read more →]
Bad sports, good sports: Sandy Hook nightmare brings out the best in some good people
From time to time, something happens that makes us remember how little our favorite sports really mean in the grand scheme of things. Last week, as I am sure you all know, a disturbed young man walked into an elementary school in Connecticut and took the lives of twenty children and six adults after killing his mother at home. It’s hard to imagine anything more horrifying than what took place at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and the outpouring of grief has been discernible everywhere I have gone since that time. One of the victims, Benjamin Wheeler, was the son of an old high school friend of mine, and although I know that anything that I have been feeling is barely a fraction of what she, her husband, and their families must be feeling, it has been hard to watch or read any story about the incident. At times like this, though, we sometimes get to see the beautiful humanity inside some of our sports heroes. A couple of them, Victor Cruz and Derek Jeter, really seemed determined to make some kind of difference in the face of tragedy. [Read more →]
Bad sports, good sports: Why aren’t college coaches held to the same standard as the players?
Much is made of a college athlete’s commitment to his or her school. Millions of people follow recruiting, particularly when it comes to college football, and in the era of Twitter, every little comment is analyzed under a pretty powerful microscope. The fans of a school have all kinds of expectations about which players should commit to their school, when they should do it, and what kind of players they will be once they enroll. When a player transfers, you would think that he had betrayed his school and all of its fans. Little is said, though, when a coach leaves to go elsewhere. This week, Texas Tech coach Tommy Tuberville left a restaurant during a recruiting dinner, never returned, and was announced as the new head coach of the University of Cincinnati football team the next morning. [Read more →]
Bad sports, good sports: Bad behavior by athletes continues to take lives
What is it that causes people to get behind the wheel after they have been drinking? I know that decision-making skills deteriorate as you drink more and more, so I guess it is not a shock that a drunk person would make the atrocious decision to drive in that condition, but it still amazes me how often it seems to happen. In the world of sports, it seems to be even more common than elsewhere, although that is likely because it gets publicized, whereas you rarely hear about the schmuck-down-the-street’s DUI unless you are friends with the neighborhood gossip. The same thing goes for gun offenses, as they seem to run rampant among professional athletes. A week after football player Jovan Belcher killed his girlfriend and himself with a gun, Dallas Cowboys linebacker Jerry Brown was killed when the car he was riding in flipped over while speeding. His teammate, Josh Brent, was driving and was quite drunk at the time. [Read more →]
Bad sports, good sports: San Antonio Spurs fined for resting players
What is the responsibility of a coach in professional sports? Is it to try to win every game? Is it to make sure the fans in the seats are entertained? Should he be focused on the television audience, perhaps? Maybe I am unusual in this, but I feel that the job of the coach is to win a championship. It appears that David Stern, the commissioner of the NBA, feels otherwise. On Friday, Stern fined the San Antonio Spurs $250,000 for coach Gregg Popovich’s decision to not play four of his star players in a game against Miami on Thursday. This was a terrible decision by the commissioner. [Read more →]
Bad sports, good sports: A big mess for the NFL on Thanksgiving
As popular as the NFL is on any given day, Thanksgiving day is still one of the showcase days for the league. The last thing Roger Goodell and his cronies wanted to have was a major embarrassment on Turkey Day. Nevertheless, that’s what they had. The Detroit Lions lost their traditional tilt, this time to the Houston Texans, after a confusing turn of events involving a bad call, an automatic review, and a coach’s challenge ended with a bogus touchdown for Houston that helped them win the game. [Read more →]
Bad sports, good sports: Owner of the Marlins is stealing from the fans again
The relationship between a professional sports team and its fans is a special one. I come from a city where the fans take their sports extremely seriously, and ownership is held responsible for every decision, no matter how minor. Even in other, less fanatical cities, though, the people who own sports teams have a responsibility to give an honest attempt to field a winning team. I know it’s a business, and ultimately an owner only really needs to try to make money, but I feel that there is an implied contract with the fans that takes it well beyond that. In a league like Major League Baseball, there is no salary cap and also no minimum payroll. There are numerous teams in the league who spend a small fraction of what the big spenders lay out for their rosters. It’s fun to write about those high-payroll teams that fail and the penny-pinchers who succeed, but if you look at the big picture, there is a clear correlation between the amount of money spent and the relative success of the team. One owner who clearly cares nothing for that contract with the fans is Jeffrey Loria, the owner of the Miami Marlins. What he is doing to his team right now is shameful and the whole league should be embarrassed to have him be a part of it. On Tuesday, the Marlins made a deal with the Toronto Blue Jays that involved most of the team’s big-money players. They got very little in return. [Read more →]
Bad sports, good sports: Instant replay should produce better calls, shouldn’t it?
I have always been a proponent of the use of instant replay in sports officiating. Since the technology exists, it would be a total waste to not take advantage of it in order to get more calls correct. Football is using it extensively, and baseball has been expanding its use over the last couple of years, with more sure to come. Game officials have a very difficult job, despite what you might hear from many fans. It is far easier to make a call when watching on television than to make it from field level at full speed. The thing I just don’t get is how the replay officials manage to get it wrong so often, as they have the advantage of technology that the officials on the field do not have. The two games that meant the most to me this weekend, Penn State against Nebraska and the Philadelphia Eagles against the Dallas Cowboys, each included a call that was massively botched by replay officials. [Read more →]
Bad sports, good sports: Indecision was the wrong decision for the New York City Marathon
Since I last wrote, the East Coast took quite a shot from Hurricane Sandy. My family was far more fortunate than most, as we only lost power for 24 hours, and we had no damage to our home or property at all. Many people along the Jersey shore and in New York City were not nearly so fortunate. There are still many without power, and as it gets colder, the problem will be even more magnified. In the middle of all of this, the New York City Marathon was scheduled to happen on Sunday. On Tuesday, as the storm was just clearing out, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that the marathon would go forward as planned. After several days of backlash about that decision, he reversed field and called off the race on Friday. [Read more →]
Bad sports, good sports: Mack Brown’s excuses are absurd
In professional sports, the difference between the haves and have nots is fairly small. In leagues like the NFL, the salary cap is structured in such a way as to force the teams to spend a similar amount of money on their payroll each year. In baseball, where there is no cap, the difference can be far more dramatic. Still, when compared to major college sports, even the New York Yankees and the Pittsburgh Pirates are far more similar than a school like the University of Texas when compared to some of the small schools out there that are trying to compete in something like football. To widen the gap even more, Texas, in conjunction with ESPN, started its own television network last year that pays it $300 million over 20 years. Amazingly, the head coach of Texas football, Mack Brown, complained this week that the network is actually one of the reasons why his team has underperformed over the last couple of years. [Read more →]
Bad sports, good sports: Can running around a corn maze be considered a sport?
I generally try to restrict myself to writing about actual sports when I put together this column each week. I tend to define a sport as something that has a winner that is determined on the field, as opposed to by judges, although I am sure an occasional ice skating or gymnastics story has slipped in here and there. There are also many forms of competition that have a clear winner and loser that don’t really qualify as sports, like chess or shuffleboard, for example. This week, I have decided that there are no rules. This is my column, and I’ll write what I want. The benefit to you is that you get to read about my team’s winning effort at a corn maze near Lambertville, New Jersey, on Saturday. That’s right. Count yourselves lucky. [Read more →]
Bad sports, good sports: Michael Vick gets a dog
It was bound to happen. Three years ago, Michael Vick left Leavenworth prison after serving nearly two years on charges related to the dog-fighting ring he had been running in Virginia. A year later, he became the starting quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles. Around the city of Philadelphia, there are a variety of opinions about Vick, from people who despise him and refuse to watch the Eagles while he is playing, to those who feel that he served his time and deserves to be judged based on his performance. Whether or not you like him, it would be tough to find fault with his behavior during his time with the team, as he has done and said the right things throughout. Until this week, that is. On Thursday, Vick admitted that he owns a dog. [Read more →]
Bad sports, good sports: Maybe it’s about more than just sports
It is easy to assume that we, as fans, are far more invested in the outcome of our teams’ games than the players themselves. After all, they are getting paid whether they win or lose. It drives us (or at least some of us) crazy to see players on different teams being chummy with their opponents during a game. As a passionate (some would say obsessed) fan of numerous sports, my favorite players are the guys who seem to care just as much as I do, and who appear to despise the other guys while the game is still being played. For some of these athletes, that kind of demeanor comes naturally, even if it is not for real. Those guys have it easy, I guess. The game does not need to be life and death for them, as long as they are giving their all when it counts. It is easy to forget that these are people who have lives of their own off the field, and that their performances may well be impacted by things that have nothing to do with sports. This week, real life intruded upon the sports world in a big way for a couple of people, and, by extension, their teams. [Read more →]
Bad sports, good sports: What happened to playing defense?
I was all set to write about the ridiculous replacement referees that officiated the first three weeks of the NFL season to disastrous results, but the sides resolved their differences and the real refs were back at work starting Thursday night. The beautiful thing about the world of sports, though, is that there is always something else about which to complain. I guess that is because we are so passionate about the subject. This weekend, there were a whole lot of insane numbers put up by some college quarterbacks, the most astonishing of which came from Geno Smith, the incredible quarterback from West Virginia University who is widely considered to be the front-runner for the Heisman Trophy. Smith threw for 656 yards and eight touchdowns in his team’s 70-63 win over Baylor. I guess many people might slobber over those stats, but I just can not get past one simple question: doesn’t anyone play defense anymore? [Read more →]
Bad sports, good sports: Steve Sabol of NFL Films dies of cancer
No sport translates to television quite like football does. I enjoy watching them all, but there is just something about football that lends itself perfectly to an afternoon on the couch in front of a giant screen. With so many sports, I would actually rather be there in person. Sitting at a baseball game is fantastic, for example. Football, particularly the professional variety, is a lot of fun to watch in person, but you actually lose a lot by not watching on T.V. Much of the experience that we have watching the NFL broadcasts can be traced back to the Sabol family and NFL Films. Steve Sabol, the real genius behind all of that, died on Tuesday of brain cancer at the age of 69. [Read more →]
Bad sports, good sports: Marathons and half-marathons are big business, but I don’t care
Last November, I ran my first-ever race. After months of training, I participated in the Philadelphia Half Marathon, and I wrote about what a thrill it was. Today, ten months later, I ran my second race. I am not sure why I have never done a 5K…I seem to be attracted to the longer races. The event on this beautiful Sunday was the Rock ‘n’ Roll Philadelphia 1/2 Marathon, formerly known as the Philadelphia Distance Run. It was a similar course to the PHM, but not exactly the same. As I ran, I found myself thinking about what a major industry this thing has become. [Read more →]
Bad sports, good sports: Nationals shut down Stephen Strasburg for the season
Stephen Strasburg is a young pitcher for the Washington Nationals, a team that, as of this writing, has the best record in all of Major League Baseball at 86-54. Strasburg, in his first full season in the bigs, is the team’s best pitcher, sporting a record of 15-6 with a 3.16 ERA. He has struck out 197 batters in only 159 1/3 innings. With his team a virtual lock for the playoffs, you would think he would be preparing to lead the Nats into the postseason for the first time since the former Montreal Expos moved to our nation’s capital in 2008. Instead, team officials have shut Strasburg down for the rest of the season. [Read more →]
Bad sports, good sports: NCAA fails to punish UNC for academic fraud
Somebody needs to explain the NCAA to me. Seriously, I am obviously not equipped to comprehend its rules, policies, and methods of determining punishment. Everyone knows what happened at Penn State, or at least people think they know. The Nittany Lions were hit with stunningly severe sanctions for the Jerry Sandusky situation, despite the fact that no NCAA rules were broken. On Friday, it was announced that the NCAA had concluded its investigation of accusations of academic fraud at the University of North Carolina and had found no evidence of wrongdoing. If you have read anything about this situation, you are as astonished by this as I am. [Read more →]
