So often, it seems, big games fall short of the hype they receive. The age of social media and instantaneous reaction has led to a loss of perspective, I think. It seems like we have a new “Game of the Century” every week. Even with the century being relatively young, this level of hyperbole makes it hard to take any of this stuff seriously. The NFL is often the leader in this, driving a hype machine that is unmatched in sports. Occasionally, though, the product actually lives up to the expectations, and this weekend was a great example of that. The opening weekend of the NFL playoffs produced thrillingly close games in three out of the four contests. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
No Comments »

Football coaches exist at many, many levels of the sport. Kids start playing at a very young age, and there is nearly always someone standing on the sideline, working to make those kids better. At the top of the profession is the NFL. Just as being a player in the NFL is the ultimate goal of most guys who play football, coaching in the league is the dearest dream of anyone who ever held a clipboard. The thing is that even once you get there, the experience can be fleeting. The regular season ended on Sunday, and between Sunday night and Monday, five men were fired from their jobs as NFL head coaches. One of these men, Rob Chudzinski, had been coach of his team for only one season.

[Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
1 Comment »

Due to a combination of Disney on Ice and the Eagles game (don’t ask), BSGS will be delayed a day.  We’ll be back on Tuesday morning.

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
No Comments »

On Sunday afternoon, Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning broke the record for most touchdown passes in a season, reaching a total of 51 with one game still to go in the regular season. The former record of 50 was set by Tom Brady of the New England Patriots back in 2007. This incredible feat naturally led me to think about these two signal-callers and to compare their illustrious careers. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
2 Comments »

The future career of temporarily retired Ultimate Fighting Championship competitor Georges St-Pierre hinges on one simple question: will the aliens who periodically steal time from him once again use those hours wisely?

For those not in the know about mixed martial arts, GSP was a champion welterweight who for years was not only unbeaten, but largely untested.

Then he fought Johny Hendricks, a man who seems to consist entirely of fists and beard.

St-Pierre technically emerged from the fight with his 12-bout winning streak intact, taking a decision that was close, controversial, and almost certainly wrong. This win created one of the stranger spectacles in fight history as the “victorious” St-Pierre, both eyes blackened and the rest of his head either cut or puffy — Hendricks was basically untouched, except for a pair of hands grotesquely swollen from pounding on Georges — offered what seemed less a post-fight interview than a cry for help, hitting repeatedly on the themes:

-He didn’t remember much of the fight

-He needed to go away for a bit

-He no longer slept

-He was going crazy [Read more →]

Tags: ends & odd, sports by Sean Cunningham
2 Comments »

I was having a rough day on Sunday. The Saturday evening snow had turned to ice overnight, and my driveway, which is challengingly sloped even in good weather, was basically a skating rink turned into a ramp. I decided to skip my planned 11-mile run, as not only were the trails unusable, but running on the roads of my township was bound to be extremely hazardous. An hour and a half of breaking up ice and shoveling it was completed in time to watch the Eagles lay a huge egg against a bad Minnesota Vikings team that was missing its best player. I needed a pick-me-up and I received it in spades, thanks to the Dallas Cowboys and Tony Romo, who blew a 23-point halftime lead and lost to the Green Bay Packers.

[Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
3 Comments »

People are bad. Not all people, of course, but a lot of them. Maybe “bad” is not quite the word I am seeking…perhaps “stupid” is closer to the mark. This is the case particularly when you get a whole lot of them together and something either really good or really bad happens. Michigan State beat Ohio State to win the Big Ten title on Saturday in a thrilling game. Afterward, a large group of students set fire to a whole bunch of stuff and flipped over a car in East Lansing. I just don’t get it.

[Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
1 Comment »

College football drives me crazy. Don’t get me wrong, there were some tremendous games this holiday weekend, including some huge upsets and some wins that meant a lot to me personally (thanks Penn State!). Football at the college level, as a game, is tremendous. The structure of the postseason is a total mess, of course, and has been for years. The unfortunate part this week is that college football managed to find a way to rob me of the enjoyment of something that I would have loved in past years, which is chaos.

[Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
2 Comments »

A couple of times a year, I end up posting a column without a lead story. There is never a lack of sports stories, both good and bad…that’s for certain. Occasionally, though, nothing grabs me enough to push me to write my lead story about it. This is one of those weeks. A bunch of interesting things happened in sports this week, and some of them, like the Jameis Winston story, are sure to continue to make news in the future. If I felt that my point of view would add a worthwhile angle to the story, I would put together a bunch of paragraphs about it here, but I am not feeling it. Anyway, here are the bad and good stories for the week. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
No Comments »

Matt McGloin started for the Oakland Raiders on Sunday. The Raiders won the game 28-23 over the Houston Texans. Why, you might be wondering, is this my lead story? If you knew the tale of Matt McGloin, you might appreciate how unlikely this was. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
No Comments »

In last week’s column, I had an item about Jonathan Martin, the offensive lineman who had walked out on the Miami Dolphins claiming he had been bullied. The player who seemed central to the negativity was another offensive lineman, Richie Incognito. A voicemail left for Martin by Incognito, chock-full of threats, racism, and scatological humor, was made public. This story has been everywhere this week, dominating sports news and sports-talk radio.

[Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
No Comments »

Last Saturday I went to an all-day wrestling coaching clinic. (How about that for a lead-off?) The instructors included Olympians, national champs, and college coaches. I learned some new technique, and, as you will in any kind of immersive conference-like environment, my mind was able to focus on this one thing. But the clinic was about more than push-ups and stand-ups. What I was struck by, particularly through one clinician, was how these people who’ve competed and coached at the highest levels in one of the toughest sports voiced consistent philosophies of coaching moderation. [Read more →]

Tags: sports, virtual children by Scott Warnock by Scott Warnock
5 Comments »

OK, so who can explain to me what is going on with the Philadelphia 76ers? No one? I didn’t think so. The NBA regular season started this week, and if you polled a thousand knowledgable sports folks and counted up how many of those people would have predicted a 3-0 start for this team, I guarantee the total would have been zero. That’s exactly how they have started, though, and I am just completely astonished.

[Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
No Comments »

The St. Louis Cardinals took a two games to one lead over the Boston Red Sox in the World Series on Saturday night. That, in and of itself, is not surprising…these are two good teams and someone had to win game three, right? What made this one unusual was the way the game ended. The winning run scored in the bottom of the ninth on an obstruction call. That’s right, a call by an umpire allowed the final run of a game in the sport’s final series of the season to score despite the fact that the runner was clearly tagged out before he reached home plate. The key to this, of course, and the reason that this is Good Sports, is because it was absolutely the correct call.

[Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
No Comments »

Football has been played at Grambling State University for a very long time. Eighty-five years, to be exact. They are not a team you see on television very often, but they have a rich and successful history. This week, though, would have to be considered a low point in the school’s football history, as the team mutinied, for lack of a better term, and refused to play its game against Jackson State. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
No Comments »

If you read my column on any kind of regular basis, you know that I really despise prejudice of any kind. Whether it be racism, sexism, ageism, or sexual orientationism (that should be a word), I find it revolting. I don’t know that any of these things are actually more prevalent in the world of sports than everywhere else, but it often seems like they are. Early this week, former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice was reportedly selected to be a member of the committee that will select the college football teams that will participate in the new playoff at the end of the 2014 and subsequent seasons. Predictably, a bunch of schmucks went through the roof. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
No Comments »

My favorite magazine, The Atlantic, ran a piece this month connecting the U.S. school sports obsession with our lagging academic performance compared to other countries. While the causality in Amanda Ripley’s “The Case Against High-School Sports” isn’t airtight, her argument raises provocative points about our education priorities. [Read more →]

Tags: sports, virtual children by Scott Warnock by Scott Warnock
9 Comments »

All players are not created equal, and it is very clear that players are not treated equally by coaches or the media either. Jadeveon Clowney, the fantastically-named and even more incredibly talented defensive end for the South Carolina Gamecocks is learning that the hard way this season. This week, Clowney sat out his team’s game against Kentucky due to a strained muscle. The fallout is still flying. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
No Comments »

Earlier this week, the ridiculously pathetic NCAA made a positive move by deciding to reduce the sanctions against the Penn State football program. This is another story that straddles the line between Good Sports and Bad Sports, in my opinion. The good part is that it at least partially makes up for the wildly inappropriate and totally unfair penalties levied upon the program last year by NCAA president Mark Emmert and his gang of cronies. The bad part is that the reasoning that was given for the reduction is a bunch of lies that were intended to make the NCAA look good and effective in some way. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
No Comments »

I have been declared Emperor of the World. Let us not waste time explaining why or how; let’s all simply accept the fact that we are better off, as a result; hence, my next decree:

Emperor’s Decree No. NFL2013: The Emperor has long been disenchanted with the NFL. (He can no longer stand the whoosh-whoosh of the robot football player graphics and the folly of players who are so eager to celebrate that they spike the ball before crossing into the endzone. And stuff like that.) Still, as a show of love to his minions who enjoy such things, he has graciously allowed the plastic and peacockish hullabaloo to go on. He must, however, now step in. The puffs of Predator hair (yes, the Emperor was a child of the eighties) billowing out from under the helmets might have been pretty cool up until the four-hundredth guy did it. What was once a visual with impact; what was once a defiance against convention is now the equivalent of the fifth Dracula costume at the Halloween bash.

The Punishment: The Imperial Headsman will be offering free “haircuts” to all NFL players who haven’t corrected this follical violation by Sunday, next.

The Emperor will grace the world with a new decree each Tuesday morning.

Tags: sports, The Emperor decrees by Chris Matarazzo
3 Comments »