A guy like me should never have 16 teams left in the Sweet Sixteen. In fact, nobody should. Hell, Barack Obama is kind of a busy guy and even he managed to get 14 right. A word that can never be associated with something branded as “madness” is “predictability,” yet here we are. There was precisely one “upset” in the second round of this year’s NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament. One. Perdue beat Washington, but it wasn’t that much of an…
If you are your average NCAA basketball fanatic, you’ve been spending the last few months boning up on all things statistical and informational getting ready for this very week. You are in full bracket mode. You know who the 6th man is on North Dakota State and who is the starting point guard for Morgan. You’ve spent sleepless nights wondering if North Carolina is the team to beat – and if Syracuse is really for real. You’re in a knot…
Thanks, Super Bowl – now February gets to piss us off even more than usual. The month that lingers on like a BBQ stain on a white T has just become even more onerous because all we have is a great game (the greatest game?) to look back upon – and little to look forward to. Sure it’s the shortest, but just consider the brutal withdrawal symptoms we will all soon be suffering through due to the lack of a…
On the morning of September 15th, 2008, the news from Wall Street was disastrous. Later dubbed as another “Black Monday” by the media, John McCain insisted in a speech that same morning that “the fundamentals of our economy are strong.” With those seven little words, his run for the American Presidency effectively was over. For the majority of voters, he was so clearly out of touch to the realities of living in tough financial times that all the Moose Hunters…
…and no, Michael Phelps does not make the list. Yes, he’s been everyone’s athlete of the year. Yes, he won more gold medals than France. And yes, he seems like a pretty nice guy, despite that terrible eating disorder. But let’s face it, we’re land animals and swimming is only interesting every four years. If swimming were an every year thing, 2007’s Athlete of the Year would have been someone named Martin Strel. That guy swam the entire 3274 miles…
Is this typical of these guys or what? For the first time in a long time, the PGA Tour had a tougher than usual decision to make when it came to naming the player of the year for 2008. And they blew it. From the tour that just introduced its third version of its playoff system that is only two years old, and that is reeling from a cascade failure of corporate sponsorship comes the choice of Padraig Harrington as…
I use computers every single day – and almost invariably there comes a time while perched over the keyboard that I find myself glancing around for something heavy to smack the thing, or myself, with. It is the nature of their complexity. They make our lives infinitely easier – yet on regular occasions also drive us – either through a fault of their own or ours – to apoplectic rages. Take Sunday for example. Had I been in the NCAA’s…
New York, New York is all up in arms about Plaxico Burress shooting himself in the leg, but they should realize, when it comes to athletes injuring themselves, that’s just not going to make the grade. Uber-lame as it was – aided and abetted by his protracted lying about how he managed to nearly pop his own kneecap – his doesn’t make it near the top of the list of athletes who have taken themselves off the playing field when…
Sports – they’re ruined for me now. I’ll never be able to look at my TV the same way again. It’s all about the World Anti-Doping Agency’s new campaign against the drug, sildenafil citrate, what the world knows as Viagra. It seems that the WADA believes the diamond-shaped blue pills are being used by athletes around the world to create an unfair “competitive advantage.” Viagra, if you didn’t know, causes the dilation of blood vessels and subsequently increases the body’s…
Back in the 90’s my sister laughed when I told her I’d been hired to be a sports writer – and not just because of that nasty “can’t spell to save my life” thing. No, it was because she couldn’t stand sports and the thought anyone earning a living off such silliness was simply hilarious. Then she joined an NFL pool at her work. Suddenly I became “cool.” Such is the impact of wagering on the NFL. Forget the great…