I am a contrarian. I have no problem admitting that. I have often found myself disliking something simply because most people like it. This trait has shown itself most often in my dislike of many major sports stars. If you think back to many of the huge athletes of the past 40 years or so, you will find many on my list of athletes I just don’t like. I am not talking about the trouble-making, law-breaker types. I am talking about the international superstars. From Michael Jordan to Cal Ripken to Mario Lemieux, if most people love the guy, I feel the opposite. Despite that, until very recently, I had nothing against Lebron James. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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I realized something today: I don’t care about Chris Bosh. Bosh is a power forward who is rumored to be teaming up with fellow free agent LeBron James to form a “superteam”; it may also include shooting guard Joe Johnson. And it dawned on me: if the NBA has reached a point where playing with Chris Bosh and Joe Johnson makes you part of a superteam, the league has officially gone the way of hockey. [Read more →]

Tags: sports by Sean Cunningham
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Something is wrong with the NBA. There was a time when I really enjoyed watching professional basketball. The Sixers last won the NBA championship when I was a teenager, and they have had many bad teams over the years since then, but that didn’t stop me from watching. At some point in time, though, the league lost its way. The best evidence I can give you of this is a trade that occurred on Tuesday between the Miami Heat and the Oklahoma City Thunder, just before the NBA Draft. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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The sordid story of Floyd Landis took a revealing turn this week. After years of denying the doping allegations that caused him to be stripped of his Tour de France win from 2006, Landis has now admitted having cheated throughout his career. On top of the admission, Landis has taken this opportunity to accuse a number of other riders of the same thing, including seven-time champ Lance Armstrong. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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How bad a guy is Lawrence Taylor? Over the years, the former NFL great has done a lot of bad things. Most of his documented problems have involved drugs, particularly cocaine. This time, though, he appears to have hurt someone other than himself. Taylor was arrested last week and charged with third-degree rape and patronizing a prostitute. The victim is a 16-year-old girl who ran away from home at fifteen. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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Hey, College Football, it’s me, Alan. I was wondering if you were paying attention to the NCAA Basketball Tournament. If so, I imagine you have noticed that the Butler Bulldogs are in the final. They got there by playing and beating some really good teams. There was no voting to decide who should play in the final. If there had been, there is no way Butler, who ended the season ranked 11th, would be lined up to play Duke for all the marbles. Seems like maybe the basketball people are on to something here. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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This has been a great NCAA Men’s College Basketball Tournament. It has had all the right ingredients: buzzer beaters, upsets, and break through performances. So with a near perfect formula, why would the NCAA consider expanding the Tournament, and risk cheapening its significance? I mean will anyone watch Selection Sunday anymore? College basketball is not alone in wanting too much. There are a lot of successful professional sports that ignore the adage, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”Then there are others that need fixing bad! Let us take a look at a few. [Read more →]

Tags: sports by Robert O'Hara
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The big news in the NFL this week involved the Philadelphia Eagles and Donovan McNabb. The team appears ready to trade its 11-year veteran quarterback and move on with young Kevin Kolb. According to Stephen A. Smith, this is apparently a crime of some sort. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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Sometimes you know there just has to be more to a story. Guy Morriss, who played for the Eagles when I was a kid, is now the head football coach at Texas A&M-Commerce, a Division II school. Recently, a couple of his players were arrested on drug charges. The school paper wrote a cover story about it last week. Early in the morning on the day of publication, some of the players went around campus and took every copy and disposed of them. When asked about the theft, Morriss stated that he was proud of his players. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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There are many things I love about sports. I started watching at a very young age, and have been hooked ever since. Of course, with anything you spend a whole lot of time observing or experiencing, there are always things that you don’t like as well. Cheating is one of those things. This week, Mark McGwire openly acknowledged for the first time that he used steroids throughout a large portion of his baseball career. This came as a shock to virtually no one, I have to imagine, as most people have long been convinced that McGwire was dirty. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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I spent most of this week with my wife’s family in Nashville, Tennessee. More so than ever before, I was witness to a very odd phenomenon that goes against the very fiber of my being as a football fan. If you read this column regularly, you know I am a Philadelphia Eagles fan. In the last 7 years, I have also become a fan of the Tennessee Titans, due to the fact that my wife is from Nashville and was a Titans fan when I met her (and still is, although she also roots for the Eagles). Allegiance to a team is a personal thing. Some people are true fans, living and dying with their team, while others are casual fans. Titans fans, at least the ones I know, are a different breed entirely, and it’s all about Peyton Manning. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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I will preface this column by saying this is going to be a Tiger-free zone. I wrote about Tiger Woods earlier in the week, and the rest of the world is doing a fine job of covering the ubiquitous story. No more assistance needed from me.

On to some bad sports. Charlie Weis, former head coach of Notre Dame (I love writing that), decided to mouth off this week, talking smack about Pete Carroll of USC, stating that Carroll was having an affair with a graduate student. Mouthing off is nothing new for Weis, of course. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports, sports by Alan Spoll
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It is very easy for those of us who longed to play professional sports but didn’t have the talent to think that those who have reached those heights are indestructible. Beyond that, I think we naturally think that those people are the luckiest people in the world, and must love their lives. Sadly, that is often not the case. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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For a lot of years, I was a big fan of Allen Iverson.  To me, no one in the NBA was more exciting to watch. The Sixers didn’t always win, but Iverson rarely failed to excite. It was always clear, though, that he was a selfish player who cared more for his own statistics than he did about winning. Now, at 34 years old, his skills have eroded, but his attitude has not. That makes for a bad combination. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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Oklahoma Sooners quarterback Sam Bradford had a magical redshirt sophomore year. He led the Sooners to a 12-2 record, winning the Heisman Trophy in the process. The NFL scouts loved him, and he was projected by most to be a high pick in the draft, if not the first overall. Instead, he chose to return to school, hoping to lead the team to a National Championship. Instead, his junior year has turned into a nightmare for him. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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Delonte West, a guard for the Cleveland Cavaliers, was pulled over for speeding on his motorcycle in Maryland this week. The traffic stop became an arrest when police discovered that West had not one, not two, but three guns on him at the time. Apparently, he had a handgun in his pocket, another in his pant leg, and a shotgun in a guitar case strapped to his back. Seriously. I am not reading you the plot synopsis from Mad Max. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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Serena Williams lost her U.S. Open semifinal match on Saturday after being penalized for a vicious tirade directed at a line judge after being called for a foot fault. Williams wasn’t playing terribly well, and had already been penalized once in the first set for throwing her racket. The venom she spewed at the line judge went far over the line, though, including threats of physical violence. Her behavior really jumps out as bizarre because tennis generally seems to be a pretty civilized sport. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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On Wednesday, an announcement was made that there would be a massive demonstration outside of Lincoln Financial Field before the Eagles preseason game against the Jacksonville Jaguars, the game in which Michael Vick would make his on-field debut as an Eagle. No surprise there, right? Many people (myself included) were outraged by Vick’s signing. It was inevitable that there would be demonstrations. Reading deeper into the announcement, though, I discovered that this demonstration would be in support of Vick, rather than against him. Huh? [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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I will start this by saying that I am not a fan of Lakers coach Phil Jackson. Sure, he is clearly a great coach.  Lots of championships make that fairly obvious. I have always thought, though, that he was a bit of an arrogant, elitist snob. His whole “Zen master” thing seemed a bit bogus to me. I know well, though, that I have often disliked the extremely accomplished players and coaches from teams other than the ones for whom I root. His resume certainly does speak for itself. [Read more →]

Tags: sports by Alan Spoll
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Rarely has an athlete who has shown up in the papers for the wrong things as often as John Daly had so much positive press at the same time. Sure, he has won some tournaments and wowed crowds with his long-distance drives. But he has also been a human train wreck. Issues with alcoholism and weight have chased him his whole career. Fans have always flocked to him, though, drawn in by his everyman persona and his sense of humor.

This week, he leads off our Good Sports section by showing his support for the plight of fellow golfer Phil Mickelson’s wife, who has breast cancer, by wearing pink pants at the BMW PGA Championship in England. [Read more →]

Tags: sports by Alan Spoll
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