Sports
drorzel | April 6, 2007Yesterday, on my way in to work, I was listening to ESPN radio and Mike Greenberg made a bold assertion (paraphrased slightly):
Jackie Robinson is one of the ten most important Americans of the twentieth century. Not just sports figures, Americans.
Contrary sort that I am, my first thought was "I don't think I believe that."
Which is not to say that Robinson wasn't an important American of the twentieth century. I don't think there's any question that he's the most important twentieth century American from the world of sports (trailed by Muhammed Ali and Jesse Owens, and then a big step down…
jlynch | March 17, 2007I don't really get cricket. Growing up in Ireland, it was always seen as a British game and the Irish national squad was a bit of a joke. Barring a 1969 win over perennial powerhouse, the West Indies, nothing of note every really happened. Things are now, however, apparently getting interesting. In 1996 Ireland became the inaugural winners of the European Championships and in 2005 a defeat in the ICC
Trophy resulted in a World Cup berth seeded 13 of 16. Which brings us to this week.
On Thursday the squad drew with 9th seeds Zimbabwe. Yesterday, they beat a 4th seed Pakistani squad. Next up?…
evolgen | March 14, 2007It's March, and you know what that means: brackets. There are two ScienceBlogs brackets to keep your eye on:
The barkers at the World's Fair have put together a Science Showdown -- bracket style -- broken into four regions: Octopus (life sciences), Mortar and Pestle (chemistry), Chair (philosophy and science studies), and Orbit (physics). Showdowns between competing disciplines will be decided, in part, by reader participation, and the winners will advance to face off with other disciplines. Go here to share your opinion on the opening round.
A more traditional March bracket contest is…
oracknows | March 7, 2007
Believe it or not, the FCC is receiving a fair number of complaints over the Superbowl halftime show featuring His Purpleness, particularly the part where he did a bit of a phallic thing with his guitar (as if generations of rockers haven't done the whole guitar as wank-off thing since at least the 1960's--heck David Bowie used to simulate oral sex on Mick Ronson's guitar back in his Ziggy Stardust days, although I will concede that he never played the Superbowl). I mean, get a load of this complaint:
During Prince's rendition of Purple Rain, which I think is a really great song, there…
evolgen | January 16, 2007Gregg Easterbrook -- good sportswriter, crappy at pretty much everything else he does -- likes to take pot-shots at scientific research in his ESPN column "Tuesday Morning Quarterback" (TMQ). In this week's edition he tells us how he doesn't think scientific papers should have multiple authors and how he doesn't like the advertisements in the journal Science.
TMQ dislikes the modern convention of listing multiple people as "authors" of a work written by a single person; this is part of the overall cheapening of the written word. Several previous items have concerned the absurd number of…
drorzel | January 14, 2007You might think that the most interesting thing in this morning's New York Times was the photo essay about the Large Hadron Collider, but you'd be wrong. The most interesting article is this story about cheerleading.
Why is that, you ask? Because it's written about my home town:
Thirty girls signed up for the cheerleading squad this winter at Whitney Point High School in upstate New York. But upon learning they would be waving their pompoms for the girls' basketball team as well as the boys', more than half of the aspiring cheerleaders dropped out.
The eight remaining cheerleaders now…
drorzel | January 10, 2007I am not a baseball fan-- I suck at the game, and it's boring as hell on tv-- but I can't help noticing occasional bits of baseball news. such as, for example, yesterday's announcement of the Hall of Fame voting, which prompts the post title. Eight writers did not vote for Cal Ripken to get into the Hall of fame.
Let me say that again, in bold: Eight writers did not vote for Cal Ripken.
This has to be one of the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Leave aside for the moment that Ripken holds what may be the most impressive record in the sport, playing in 2,632 consecutive games. And forget the…
drorzel | January 8, 2007A busy sporting weekend for Chateau Steelypips:
First, there were two NFL wild card games on Saturday, as a sort of appetizer for the real action on Sunday. The Colts borrowed a defense from somewhere, and despite Peyton Manning deciding to play like his little brother for the first half or so, Indianapolis moved on in convincing fashion. I liked Manning's offer to do Ty Law's Hall of Fame induction, after lobbing another two easy picks in his direction.
Then there was the ignominious Cowboys loss, about which all I can say is: BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAAH!!!! And, really, that's all I can say, because…
evolgen | January 2, 2007It doesn't make up for the UCLA game, but the overrated, over hyped, team in the highlighter pants fell to the mighty Trojans. Fight on!
The USC bashers are pissed, and the sad Wolverines are moping. But this is par for the course at the school that has perfected losing in Pasadena.
jlynch | January 1, 2007OK, so Michigan lost to a team that itself lost to UCLA and Oregon State. Unsurprisingly, Dwayne Jarrett showed himself to be a classless TO-wannabe. But what about Boise State? 43-42 over Oklahoma in overtime to go unbeaten. Classic, just classic.
evolgen | December 28, 2006
Barbaro, the 2006 Kentucky Derby winner who broke his leg during the Preakness Stakes, is almost healthy enough to be released from his ICU stall at University of Pennsylvania's New Bolton Center. He has been the focus of hopes and prayers of many horse racing fans -- and little kids who are fans of horsies in general. The chief surgeon at the center has this to say about Barbaro's recovery:
"It's not a miracle. It's anything but that," he said, sitting next to a Christmas tree topped with a stuffed Barbaro.
"Some of the Barbaro fans aren't going to like that, perhaps. I'm a scientist, I'm a…
evolgen | December 25, 2006
The University of California, Berkeley and Texas A&M University will square off in this year's Holiday Bowl football game on Thursday, December 28. While not quite as complex as last year's national championship game pairing, there is a nice dichotomy when one considers the stereotypes of Cal and Texas A&M. In general, Cal is home to a bunch of liberal, tree hugging, pinko hippies, whereas the Texas A&M student body is made up of gun wielding, warmongering good ol' boys (and Nick). The tale of the tape is laid out in this article from the San Diego Union-Tribune -- San Diego is…
drorzel | December 11, 2006There were several sporting events worth commenting on this weekend, none of which I saw in their entirety. Hence, the combo recap post.
Maryland-BC The Terps got beat by Boston College in a game that I didn't realize was on TV until Kate told me about it about midway through the second half. I'm still used to thinking of Sundays as football days.
Maryland was down ten when I started watching, and made a game of it for a little while, before dropping behind by double digits again in the final two minutes. The game was pretty much consistent with what I've seen previously this season-- the…
jlynch | December 4, 2006Terry Bowden points out what could have been had there been a eight-team playoff for the college football championship.
Now that would have been some good football ... although I dispute his claim that Florida would beat Michigan.
jlynch | December 3, 2006So I guess it is Ohio State versus Florida for the national championship. Florida leapt over Michigan in the BCS rankings and the Wolverines are fated to meet USC in the Rose Bowl (my money is on Michigan).
I still think Michigan (11-1, second place in Big 10) are a better team than Florida (12-1, SEC champions) and could beat the Buckeyes on neutral territory. I can hear it now ... Florida won their conference but Michigan didn't, so the Gators deserve to go to the big one. Yeah, but look at who Michigan lost to (and by only three points at that). Obviously winning a conference shouldn't be…
jlynch | December 2, 2006I said all along that USC weren't as good as they thought they were and were not deserving of their #2 ranking. After all, when #3, they only beat unranked ASU by a single touchdown. And now, unranked UCLA beat them 13-9 in a great game.
National Championship game ... not yours, USC, not yours.
As Schopenhauer said "Neid zu fühlen ist menschlich, Schadenfreude zu genieÃen teuflisch."
evolgen | December 2, 2006The USC offensive line sucks.
Lane Kiffin and Steve Sarkisian suck.
Absolute failure.
When you play against a speed defense, you run right at them. You attack them. You make them overrun and overplay. You don't run slow developing plays.
And when you play against a young, crappy QB who likes to run the football, you hit him hard -- real fucking hard -- early. You make him question his ability to play the game. You make him question his skill level. You make him question his manhood. You don't wait until the 4th quarter to kill the motherfucker. You don't get a 15yd. personal foul by tapping…
drorzel | November 27, 2006I'm worried about Jay Bilas's job.
For those who aren't college basketball junkies, Jay Bilas is a former Duke player who is currently the best college basketball analyst in the business. He's smart, well-spoken, funny (listen to him banter with Bill Raftery and Sean McDonough when the three of them work games together), and extremely knowledgable about the game. Whenever he does a game, he clearly does his homework, and learns more than the token one or two facts about each team that most announcers do. When he does studio analysis, he always has his facts in line, and while he sometimes…