Do I always say, “Good game”?
On that great list of things I think I don’t want to be, near the top is “glib.” I don’t want to be all back slappy, all here’s-a-trophy-even-though-you-didn’t-do-much, all smiling and treacly.
Entries Tagged as 'sports'
Bad sports, good sports: Michael Vick rips his detractors
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.”
Bad sports, good sports: Washington Redskins refuse to change the team’s name
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.
Bad sports, good sports: NBA’s Jason Collins comes out as gay
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 →]
Bad sports, good sports: College athlete gives up final meet to donate bone marrow
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 →]
Top ten signs your horse isn’t going to win the Kentucky Derby
10. His odds are about the same as Romney’s winning the next Presidential election
9. The racing form states he’s a descendant of Seattle Stew
8. He’s scared of crowds
7. His nickname is Tripod
6. The Elmer’s glue people have already put in a bid
5. Trotting gives him the trots
4. The only surface he’s ever run on is shag carpeting
3. Parts of him have already shown up in British beef burgers
2. In the starting gate, he’s facing the wrong way
1. Your jockey is Chris Christie
Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.
Bad sports, good sports: My thoughts on the Boston Marathon
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 →]
Bad sports, good sports: The stupidity of bench-clearing brawls
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 →]
Bad sports, good sports: A big mess at Rutgers
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 →]
Top ten signs your team isn’t ready for the baseball season
10. When the umpire yells “Play ball!” your entire team runs to second base
9. They feel weak and listless without their Twinkies
8. One player gets injured standing for the National Anthem
7. A runner gets thrown out for stealing the dugout
6. When a sports writer compares your cleanup batter to Ruth, he means Ruth Buzzi
5. You keep hearing arguments about how many strikes to an out
4. When you tell a player to take left field, he asks, “My left or your left?”
3. Every time the pitcher throws the ball, the catcher dives out of the way
2. When your leadoff hitter gets to first, he has to ask for directions to second
1. It’s a hockey team
Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.
Bad sports, good sports: Minor league baseball team to add video games above urinals
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?
Bad sports, good sports: Lots of stories without a standout
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 →]
My kid plays on that team — my jacket says so
There was a time when kids played organized sports and enjoyed the experience in whatever form it took. They didn’t have much perspective on a bigger youth sports picture. Now, we turn them into little joiners. We want them connected to the best team possible. We want them to experience heightened competition at the ripe old age of nine. But is it for them and their athletic hopes, or is it just so we can look good at neighborhood gatherings? [Read more →]
Bad sports, good sports: Should officials call games differently in the waning moments?
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 →]
Bad sports, good sports: The NRA is sponsoring a NASCAR race
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 →]
Bad sports, good sports: Joe Flacco is the highest paid player in NFL history. Really.
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 →]
Bad sports, good sports: Basketball announcer fired for speaking the truth
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 →]
Goodbye to wrestling?: Another pitiful modern sports story
Anybody who knows me at all knew this one was coming. The IOC board voted to dump wrestling from the Olympics starting in 2020. [Read more →]
How to predict the future using the Super Bowl
Those who move in spiritual circles often talk about how we are all connected, that our thoughts create our future reality, and that the universe provides us with clues about our direction in life. Personally, I look at spiritual principles as scientific rules that we just don’t understand yet. Not too long ago, the idea that people could get sick from tiny bugs they couldn’t see or that invisible waves could carry images or music was thought to be magical thinking, until science proved it to be true. So if these spiritual principles are indeed a rule of our universe, there should be a way to test and predict their occurrence. Doing this on an individual scale might prove challenging though, since one person’s thoughts may not have enough energy to make something manifest in a testable way. But what if there were an event that millions of people were focusing on, and this event inspired heated, emotionally charged thoughts that could result in only one of two possible outcomes? If only we had such an event, why, we just might be able to predict the future on a grand scale! [Read more →]
Bad sports, good sports: Should basketball and football players have to go to college?
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 →]
