Sports
drorzel | August 18, 2006The Times takes up the critical question of locating the boundary between Red Sox and Yankees fans in New York and Connecticut. They do a comprehensive survey of the boundary line in CT, but only a fairly cursory sweep north.
Albany is on the Yankees side of the line, but it's a near thing. Union's student body is drawn heavily from New England, and runs probably 50/50, maybe leaning a bit toward the Sox (since some of the NY students are actually Mets fans).
Sadly for Kate, the situation is less positive for expat Bostonians in football-- between the Giants (whose training camp is held in…
evolgen | August 17, 2006Is it possible to have a news item about college football, with people whose names remind you of musical legends, washed up rockers, and supporting actors in a Peter North movie? Could this be the perfect intersection of sports, pop culture, and dirty jokes? This story reads like a casting call for a John Holmes movie, not a preseason roster move by a college football coach. Houston Nutt (which is a funny name on its own), the head coach of the Arkansas Razorbacks, has named his starting quarterback for the first game of the season. He selected Robert Johnson (no one's sure if the Devil will…
oracknows | August 17, 2006You know, as a native Detroiter and Tigers fan, I'm not sure whether to be pleased or appalled by this picture of one of my more--shall we say?--"illustrious" fellow Detroiters getting married. The least he could do would be to wear the jersey along with the hat, don't you think?
evolgen | August 16, 2006Check out this interview with Penn State football coach Joe Paterno:
On the fragility of life: "I do a lot of walking, and every once in a while, I step on an ant. And I say to myself, 'You know, we ain't nothing but ants.' "
I wonder if JoePa has ever looked at the back of a dollar bill . . . on weed. The boys at EDSBS think JoePaPa (the extra "Pa" is 'cause he's freakin' old . . . older than dirt, even) has been dabbling in a little E.O. Wilson:
So JoePa's either been reading chapter 27 of Sociobiology, or...well, the other option's just not possible.
Is Coach Paterno smokin' the doobies…
oracknows | August 10, 2006Deep within Yankee Stadium, a timeless evil had arrived (well, an evil around 61 years old, anyway--well, 117 years old if you count its entire existence) shambling through the dark service corridors and halls, on a never-ending quest to satisfy its unquenchable hunger. Why it had come to this place, it did not know. Perhaps it was drawn by the eminations of pure baseball evil that routinely flowed from the so-called House That Ruth Built. Maybe it was because this place was a an icon of its hated enemy from a previous life, representing the national pastime favored by that enemy and…
stcynic | August 2, 2006Fellow scienceblogger Chad Orzel has a post about ESPN, which is itself a reaction to this post from another blog. I can't say I disagree with some of the reasons from the original post:
You took away David Aldridge and foisted Screaming A on me. From a thoughtful, insightful, coherent reporter to a screaming clown who is nothing less than a thug wannabe...
I remember Sunday nights with Patrick and Olberman being a smart, funny, hip program. There is nothing left on your networks that fits that description. Allowing Bonds on Bonds to air on your network (Barry owned a piece of the production…
drorzel | August 1, 2006Here's a link for Ed Brayton, who does a fair bit of poker blogging: via Dave Sez, Brian at MGOBlog is playing the the World Series of Poker, and blogging about it.
You may or may not regard the WSOP as the beginning of the end for ESPN, but the broadcasts are weirdly hypnotic. I've played just enough poker for fake moneyto know that I'm not very good, but it is kind of fun to play. I occasionally think about trying to play more often, but I don't know any non-students who play locally, and really, an online gaming habit is just above "heroin addiction" on my list of things to acquire.
Anyway…
drorzel | July 27, 2006Via Dave Sez, Ed at the Sports Frog wants a divorce from ESPN:
I have carefully thought this through and I believe a divorce is our only resolution. I have been loyal and faithful to you and you have shit on me, cheated, lied, took 5 months to send me a check and you won't let me see some of my friends anymore.
You took away David Aldridge and foisted Screaming A on me. From a thoughtful, insightful, coherent reporter to a screaming clown who is nothing less than a thug wannabe.
[...] SportsCenter went from a highlight show to an hour of self-promotion of the preening anchors. Trey Wingo now…
evolgen | July 18, 2006Joe Morgan is a Hall of Fame baseball player and a former member of the Cincinnati's Big Red Machine. He is also a commentator for ESPN and a strong opponent of all the new fangled baseball statistics. Anyone who has listened to an ESPN broadcast of Major League Baseball has heard Morgan criticize the Moneyball style of managing baseball teams. There are some interesting parallels between Little Joe's position on baseball statistics and creationists' dissent from science.
Ideally, baseball statistics should objectively measure the performance of individual players. Traditional baseball…
jlynch | July 9, 2006What did Materazzi say to Zidane that set him off?
My guess is that it was something about Zidane's arab background.
Not that it justifies, by the way, Zidane's actions.
jlynch | July 9, 2006Only thirty minutes to go before the start of the World Cup Final. My prediction is 1-0 for France. We'll see ...
00:00 - France win the battle of the anthems. Obvious.
01:00 - First blood to the Italians. Henry goes down, is shaky getting up. Wont be good if he goes off.
05:13 - Penalty for France! Zidane scores! The foul seemed a little dubious, but there's nothing that can be done about it now. Teams that score first are 41-8-7 in the competition. May have to change my prediction to 2-1.
15:00 - France seem to be settling back a little and the Italians are doing all the attacking. Could…
evolgen | July 5, 2006France's diminutive goalkeeper Fabien Barthez and Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford:
stcynic | July 4, 2006And Piston fans lament. This is very bad for the Pistons and very good for the Bulls. I can't blame Ben for taking the deal. The Bulls were offering an additional $12 million over what the Pistons were willing to pay him. In the long run, that may end up being a wise move for Dumars to make, but for next year at least it moves the Pistons from a serious contender to a playoff team that no one thinks can win it all. Losing Big Ben means losing more than just his 12 rebounds and 3 blocks a game; it means losing his locker room presence, his leadership, his attitude and his work ethic. The rest…
stcynic | June 29, 2006In one of the craziest drafts I've ever seen, the craziest move of the night belonged to - who else? - Isiah Thomas. I've given the numbers before to demonstrate Thomas' world class incompetence as an executive, but let's recap: 3 years ago he took over a 35 win team that was $40 million over the salary cap and had long term contracts with stiffs from one end of the bench to the other He's traded away 25 players and traded for 18 players in 3 years. And he now has a 20 win team that's $85 million over the salary cap and long term contracts with a different set of stiffs from one end of the…
stcynic | June 28, 2006In a half hour, the NBA draft will begin on ESPN. As a certified basketball nut, let me make a few predictions here.
1. The team that decides to draft Rudy Gay instead of Adam Morrison will regret that choice very much in a couple years. Rudy Gay is an athletic marvel, with enormous natural gifts, but everyone in the NBA has talent or they wouldn't be there. There's only one thing that separates an all-star from a benchwarmer: determination. There are a hundred guys in the NBA who are 6'6 with 40 inch verticals. What makes one Michael Jordan and another one Harold Miner? Jordan is the most…
drorzel | June 28, 2006Miscellaneous sports-related items (mostly soccer talk, because other than the World Cup, there are no sports going on now worth watching):
Before getting to soccer, some really important sports news: Williams College won its tenth Sears Cup in the last eleven years, as the best athletic program in Division III. They also topped the US News rankings for liberal arts schools. Eat our dust, Amherst.
On to soccer: I didn't get to watch any of Tuesday's games, because I have a day job, but Monday's games were pretty ugly. Australia lost to the Italian national diving team on a late penalty kick…
oracknows | June 24, 2006About two weeks ago, I did a brief post about a Lithuanian guy whose blood alcohol level was beyond what would kill most mortal men but who was fully conscious and nominally able to drive. I facetiously referred to it as "one quarter of my heritage at its finest," given that I'm one quarter Lithuanian. Well, I'm also one-half Polish on my father's side, and a little more than a week ago, I came across this example of that part of my heritage at its finest Not surprisingly, this item involves drinking too. It also involves the World Cup, in this case, a semi-friendly rivalry between Polish and…
stcynic | June 22, 2006As predicted, the Knicks have fired Larry Brown and team President Isiah Thomas has replaced him as head coach, prompting the obvious question: does Thomas have pictures of Knicks owner James Dolan in bed with an underage sheep? It's the only explanation, really. Of course, one could say the same thing about the fact that Thomas was hired in the first place given his track record, and the fact that he still has his job in the front office after an unprecedented 3-year run of uninterrupted stupidity. As great a player as Thomas was, this guy hasn't shown he could run a successful chinese fire…