As a sports fan, one of the things that has always appealed to me the most about the games we play is the unifying nature of team sports. Seeing athletes of different nationalities and fans from all walks of life coming together as one to achieve a common goal is the sort of thing that warms the cockles of my heart.
There’s nothing better, in my opinion, than watching a Japanese pitcher make a Puerto Rican batter hit a grounder to a Venezuelan third baseman, Read More
You may not have noticed, but this past week marked the 10th anniversary of the infamous Tonya Harding incident, in which Nancy Kerrigan got clubbed in the knee but nevertheless went on to an Olympic silver medal, and Harding got arrested but nevertheless went on to Celebrity Boxing stardom.
Even people like me who couldn’t care less about figure skating know what Tonya Harding looks like. She has transcended sports and even her own association with Kerrigan to become one of those things that American pop culture loves the most: She’s someone who is famous for being a loser, like Saddam Hussein or Bill Buckner or Screech from “Saved by the Bell.” Read More
Don’t you just love the whole Kobe Bryant scandal to death? I know I do. That’s why I’m so excited. Thanks to our country’s drawn-out legal process, Kobe-gate could go on for years.
The U.S. Constitution entitles everyone to a fair and speedy trial, but for good reasons, there is considerably more emphasis on fair than on speedy. Well, not so much good reasons as profitable ones.
Lawyers, for obvious reasons, benefit from lengthy court proceedings more than anyone else. Read More
Well, here it is a week later, and I am still shocked, I mean blown-away shocked, about the Colorado Avalanche’s signing of Paul Kariya and Teemu Selanne. This is the biggest news in hockey since the 1980 miracle on ice, as far as I’m concerned.
So if I stumble over my words a bit during the course of this column, you’ll understand why. I’m not fully in charge of my faculties at the moment. And I’m not even that big of a fan of the Avalanche. Read More
The rumors started weeks ago, long before any official announcement was made, and soon Internet sports chat rooms were abuzz with the news: The Atlantic Coast Conference was seeking to expand and wanted to steal three schools from the Big East – a hostile takeover, essentially.
Sure enough, in early May rumor became fact when ACC commissioner John Swofford announced that the conference’s schools had voted 7-2 in favor of making the ACC a 12-team league. The move would allow the league to split into two six-team divisions and stage an annual football championship, à la the Big 12 and Southeastern Conference. Read More
By now, if you are a serious sports fan, you’ve hard about the bonehead comments Bob Ryan made last Sunday about New Jersey Nets point guard Jason Kidd’s wife.
Ryan, a sports columnist for The Boston Globe and on-air personality for ESPN, commented on a Boston TV show that he thought someone should “smack” Joumana Kidd. He also called Joumana an “exhibitionist” and said that she was using her 3-year-old son “as a prop” to get on TV during Nets playoff games. Read More
To the many vocal champions of the Big 12 out in these parts, it may come as a surprise to know that there was a time in the not-so-distant past when the Big East was college basketball. Oh, I know all the Dicks and Diggers have been telling us for some time that the Midwest is the center of the roundball universe, but it wasn’t always so.
Georgetown, behind junior center Patrick Ewing, won the national championship in 1984 after losing in the final game two years earlier to the once-in-a-lifetime North Carolina triumvirate of Perkins, Worthy and Jordan. Read More
March madness indeed.
Just when college basketball nation should be gearing up for what promises to be one of the most wide-open NCAA tournaments in recent memory, it seems as if everyone involved in the men’s game is suffering from a very severe form of dementia.
At Villanova, most of the team was suspended for using an improper long-distance code Read More
Man, it seems like the world of basketball can’t go a week nowadays without some idiotic controversy springing up. And I’m not just talking about the NBA and things like Portland players getting caught with weed. This hard-court brain fart has infected all levels of the game.
First, as you may recall, came the inane LeBron James affair. James, a brawny, freakishly athletic, 6-foot-8 high school senior from Ohio, is a lock to be the first pick in the 2003 NBA draft. First-round draft picks receive guaranteed contracts worth, in James’ case, about $3 million or more a season. Read More
To those who have seen me lumber around a field playing flag football or softball, or lag far behind nearly every play in hockey, it may come as some surprise that I am actually rather fleet of foot. Seriously. I can run pretty fast.
And so I feel as if it is my duty to protest the recent proclamation of America’s Tim Montgomery as the fastest man on Earth. Sure, he just set a new world record of 9.78 seconds for the 100-meter dash, but what does that really prove anyway? Read More