Sports
oracknows | October 13, 2006Yes!
The Tigers just won their third game in a row against Oakland! They now have a commanding lead in the series of 3 games to none. One more win, and they're in the World Series for the first time since 1984!
You know, although I expressed skepticism about the Tigers' chances earlier in the season, I'm starting to believe. In fact, Mitch Albom's take on the situation is sounding better and better, particularly this part:
You can say whatever you want. You can call the talk shows, fly your flag on your minivan, sing that hokey "Go Get 'Em Tigers" song, call your friends in New York and say…
oracknows | October 9, 2006Preempting what will almost certainly be the Top Ten on David Letterman's show is this list of the Top Ten Reasons Why The New York Yankees Choked.
My favorite? Clearly it has to be this one:
Detroit Tigers tricked the Yankees by playing devious "fundamental baseball"
That about sums it up. Damn those Tigers for emphasizing good pitching and fielding!
evolgen | October 8, 2006The University of Oregon football team continues to impress cause distress with the ugliest uniforms in college sports. Whatever the disease that causes such disgusting public displays of bad taste, it appears to be infectious. The University of California football team has contracted said disease, as evidenced by their current display of fashion faux paux: yellow jerseys. During my freshman year of high school, our football team wore yellow jerseys (with yellow pants and blue helmets). We looked like giant bananas. Cal looked equally as stupid last night.
drorzel | October 8, 2006About fifteen minutes from now, my Giants will take the field against the Redskins. The Giants are coming off a bye week (in which they somehow managed to trail by 10 going into the fourth quarter), so the big story leading up to the game has to do with the always-volatile Jeremy Shockey, who popped off after a bad loss at Seattle, and said the team was outcoached.
This has led to a lot of hand-wringing about whether the team is in crisis, or whether Tom Coughlin should bench Shockey, and the sports pundits have had a field day analyzing every aspect of the story. The consensus seems to be…
oracknows | October 7, 2006The Yankees are done.
Tigers win 8-3
The Yankees go home. Quoth Yankees General Manager Brian Cashman:
"I'm stunned," New York general manager Brian Cashman said. "This team fooled me to some degree. Detroit was on top of their game and we weren't, and that combination was lethal for us. I'm disappointed where we're at now."
Out of contention. That's where the Yankees are.
Whatever else happens in the rest of the series, even if the Tigers fail to advance any further, this victory is particularly satisfying given the attitude of the media before the series and given my having to live within…
jlynch | October 7, 2006ASU have the day off, but Saturday wouldn't be the same without me grousing about a team choking at football, so I present to you the Republic of Ireland soccer team (different "football" I know, but at least this one involves feet).
The qualifying rounds for Euro 2008 began last month and Ireland began with a relatively encouraging 1-0 loss to Germany, one of the useful teams (along with the Czech Republic and Slovakia) in the group. This would lead one to believe that games against teams such as Cyprus, Wales and San Marino should be gimmies, right? Wrong! Today, Cyprus beat Ireland 5-2 at…
oracknows | October 7, 2006Well, even as a born-in-Detroit Tigers fan, I wouldn't have expected it, but it's come to pass. The Tigers have the Yankees on the ropes, having defeated them last night quite convincingly 6-0 to take a 2-1 series lead. All they have to do is to win this afternoon, and the Yankees go home.
How sweet that would be. Even if the Tigers were to be eliminated in the next round, just having the opportunities to send the despised Yankees home in the first round of the playoffs would make the entire season worthwhile. And, with Jaret Wright being the pitcher on the mound for the Yankees, I like the…
oracknows | October 5, 2006Woo-hoo!
The Tigers just won Game 2 of the ALDS against the Yankees 4-3!
Time to go to Detroit with the series tied! The odds are still against them, but at least they're not lying down and dying. I suspect they're going to make it interesting, and, who knows, they might even take the series.
That is all. Please return to your regular perusal of the blogosphere.
jlynch | September 26, 2006So the Arizona Cardinals moved out of Sun Devil Stadium (home of the ASU Sun Devils) and got themselves a new state-of-the-art facility in Glendale, a city in the west valley. By all accounts it is a sweet stadium.
With Super Bowl XLII in 2008 on the horizon, the naming rights for the new stadium are up for grabs and the Cardinals went with ... University of Phoenix Stadium. Yup. $154.5 million later and a 20-year deal and those powerhouses of the NFL are willing to sound like a freeking college team. At least they play like one.
UoP, for those that dont know is a for-profit school that is…
drorzel | September 25, 2006We get the Sunday New York Times delivered every week (which accounts for the higher-than-usual number of stories from the Times that I link on Sundays...), and I read most of it, but I usually run out of steam before I get to the Magazine, unless the cover story really grabs me. This week was one of those times, with their profile of Michael Oher. I'm bothered by this particular story, in a way that's a little hard to explain, so I'm going to babble about it here a bit, and see where that leads.
On the surface, it's a really heartwarming story. Michael Oher is a poor black kid from the slums…
drorzel | September 17, 2006Does including his middle name make USC quarterback John David Booty sound more or less like a porn star?
(Yesterday was the inauguration for our new college president, so it was a long day, and I'm a little punchy watching SportsCenter...)
evolgen | September 14, 2006Read this (via The Panda's Thumb). Here's a taste:
TO THE CHAGRIN OF BAYLOR football fans, once steeped in the steady success of Grant Teaff during his Hall of Fame coaching career that concluded in 1992, their East-Central Texas school is now better known for its controversial role in the dubious effort to move the study of creationism, typically limited to philosophy and religion classes, into the arena of science.
It's an article that rags on creationists in the context of college football. I think I need to change my underpants.
P.S. Fight on!
evolgen | September 9, 2006You wanna know the best way to predict the quality of undergraduates at a college or university? It's not SAT scores or high school GPA. It's the quality of the school's ultimate team. From the press release:
A study (slated for release September 1) by Dr. Michael Norden shows that among all 86 private national universities, those ranking in the top half for Ultimate have a graduation rate of over 85%, while those in the bottom half graduate just 60%. The difference in the totals of Rhodes scholars and Marshall scholars among their graduates during this decade is even more dramatic -- 208…
evolgen | September 9, 2006It's Saturday on the second weekend of the college football season. Tomorrow (Sunday) marks the opening of the NFL season (okay, the season really kicked off Thursday night). Also, we're hitting the home stretch of the major league baseball season, and the playoffs are just around the corner. With all of that in mind, this marks a good time to ask, How good is my city when it comes to sports?
If you live in Cleveland, you don't need any scientific study to tell you you've suffered through some miserable seasons. But what about the rest of the United States and Canada? The blog Urban Sports…
evolgen | September 6, 2006A lot of people at ScienceBlogs and around the blogosphere have been chattering about the death of Steve "Croc Hunter" Irwin, but here at evolgen we know who the real killer was:
We're on the ball like the Boulder District Attorney's Office. Now, we're off to arrest Kevin Vranes for sexually harassing the football team. They lost to Montana State, Kevin. Montana State!
stcynic | September 5, 2006Two weeks ago I wrote about Tiger Woods' astonishing career. All he's done in the meantime is continue one of the greatest streaks the sport has ever seen. He's now won the last 5 tournaments he's entered, including the British Open and the PGA Championship. It's incredible to think that 2 months ago, in the wake of the death of his father and missing the first cut in a major in his entire career, we were talking about what a slump he was in. Now he's on a roll for the ages. And this weekends Deutsche Bank tournament may have been the best of the run.
The first two rounds, he was hovering…
stcynic | September 3, 2006I've mentioned before that I was a big tennis fan growing up and for most of my adult life. Like so many other tennis fans, the game has lost my interest more and more in the last few years. I grew up watching first Borg and McEnroe, then Lendl, Becker and Edberg, and finally the greatest generation of American players in Sampras, Agassi, Courier and Chang. Agassi is the last to retire, at 36 years old, and I share the universal feeling that his retirement represents the end of an era. And frankly, I'm quite surprised that he's the last one standing.
Early in his career, I didn't care for…
stcynic | August 30, 2006The Sports Guy has a column about Tiger Woods and how boring he's become. To some extent, he's right. Tiger never says anything the least bit controversial. He dominates the tour in a manner no one thought possible. He's always on his best behavior and says nothing in interviews. I kind of like some of his ideas for how Tiger can spice things up. Like this one:
Back in 1997 you were covered in Nike gear, flashed that infamous toothy smile and talked with the same voice Dave Chappelle uses to make fun of white people. Nine years later? Nothing has changed. Maybe you're a little thicker and…
oracknows | August 26, 2006While I am on vacation, I'm reprinting a number of "Classic Insolence" posts to keep the blog active while I'm gone. (It also has the salutory effect of allowing me to move some of my favorite posts from the old blog over to the new blog, and I'm guessing that quite a few of my readers have probably never seen many of these old posts.) These will appear at least twice a day while I'm gone (and that will probably leave some leftover for Christmas vacation, even). Enjoy, and please feel free to comment. I will be checking in from time to time when I have Internet access to see if the reaction…
stcynic | August 21, 2006I have to admit to being absolutely fascinated by Tiger Woods. I've followed his career closely, despite doubting him initially. I remember watching the press conference when he announced that he was leaving Stanford and turning pro. I particularly remember watching Phil Knight, CEO of Nike, talk about the $40 million contract they had signed with Woods, and I remember laughing out loud and ridiculing Knight when he said that Tiger Woods would transcend the game of golf the way Michael Jordan and Muhammad Ali transcended their sports.
No way, I said; not a chance. No matter how good he is,…