McDougald.me

Once upon a utopian time, broadcasting a sport was just about that sport. Now? Not so much. Now it is increasingly becoming about celebrity. Our culture has been programmed by Hollywood to be celebrity obsessed. Since the first commercial films were produced early last century, the moguls running the studios understood that mass marketing of their “stars” made the sheep fans lineup at the movie houses. Moviegoers were programmed into thinking the lives of those they were seeing up there…

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I guess we’ll all have to look for a new Cinderella now that George Mason is out. Last March everyone’s new-found favourite Patriots ploughed through the likes of Michigan State, North Carolina and UConn before finally falling to the eventual national champion Florida in the semifinals. This year they won’t even make it into the tournament after losing to Virginia Commonwealth in the Colonial Athletic Association championship game Monday night. Now the big question is, who are we gonna get…

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The biggest name in the World Cup thus far hasn’t been Messi, Kaka or Rooney. It’s been Koman Coulibaly, the guy who negated a Team USA game-winning goal against Slovenia because, well, for no reason really. Apparently, he just felt like it. Coulibaly is a financial advisor from Mali who, on the side, also happens to be a referee for FIFA. Late in the game against Slovenia, the Americans scored their third goal after being down 2 nil – an…

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It’s the most wonderful time of the year… …to be a sports writer. It’s a job where folks are paid to watch sports, so being an Oscar Madison type is not the most arduous job on the planet. From the free food, the hanging out with the guys more often than the wife, (or in most cases ex-wives?), the semi-cool swag, to occasionally witnessing actual history, it is, for the most part, every sports fan’s dream job. Nevertheless, even the…

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The question you’ve got to ask yourself is: Do you care if a talking head smokes pot? If you do – and if there are lots like you – then Michael Irvin is in deep hemp. If you don’t – and I suspect that you are like most folks out there – it kinda explains a thing or two about why he sounds the way he does. The Hall of Fame announced that it is considering allowing Irvin admittance to…

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The sports world is always in search of the next “big” game. It’s a television thing. With so many sports networks now fighting for viewers eyes, they are willing to spend some serious dollars trying to get fans addicted to their brand of “must see TV.” Sports networks have created many of the games that you now watch semi-religiously. An ESPN marketing guy invented the X-Games. Wrestling became gianormous not because of the steroids, but because of clever television promotion….

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At the Gay Games in Amsterdam in 1998 a major brouhaha broke out over a requirement that athletes who define themselves as ‘transgendered’, or belonging to the sex different from the one to which they were born should provide proof of what the rules called “completed gender transition.” One can only dream of what that proof may be, but I’m hoping it was a simple drug test rather than say, a panel of judges having a look see to make the…

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Every week, on average, two athletes are arrested on charges they beat up their wives or girlfriends. That staggering number -provided by the associated press – has nothing to do with the colour of their skin or the sport they play. It’s a matter of shocking frequency, which generates the perception that athletes are hot-headed maniacs who are more prone than other “normal’ men to hit their wives or girlfriends. That perception is, unfortunately, wrong. Over the weekend I asked a QOD regarding leagues…

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