Just for Sport

Last night we were all graced with one of the great football games in recent memory.  It surely goes down as one of the greatest games I’ve ever seen.  If I had to choose the five greatest games in all sports in the last ten years without spending a bunch of time thinking about it or researching, they would go as follows:

5 - 2007 Fiesta Bowl, Boise State over Oklahoma, 43-42 (OT).  This makes the list for me because (A) I hate Oklahoma - see sidebar, (B) Nobody thought Boise State would stick it to OU for three and half quarters, much less pull the upset, and (C) Those last couple of plays - The Hook and Lateral and The Statue of Liberty.  Instant classic.

4 - Super Bowl XLII, New York Giants over New England, 17-14.  Not many people predicted a low-scoring game, much less a close one.  The three lead changes in the 4th quarter plus Eli Manning’s escape/David Tyree’s catch (Do we have a name for that yet?) made it a great game anyway.  The storyline behind the game (destroying the perfect season, etc.) put it on the list.

3 - 2004 AL Championship Series, Games 4 & 5, Boston over New York.  Game 4: 6-4 (12 innings).  Game 5: 5-4 (14 innings).  I think it’s fair to lump these two together because it was really the series that was impressive.  Also, Game 5 started 16 hours after Game 4 ended.  These games were great not only because nobody had ever come back from a 3-0 deficit before, but because the Yankees had so thoroughly dominated the series up until that point.  The way they won those games was just fantastic.

2 - 2006 Rose Bowl, Texas over USC, 41-38.  This one was just like last night’s game, except with 4 times the scoring.  USC were the overwhelming favorites, and Texas overcame the odds in the Championship Game, with Vince Young scoring the winning touchdown on 4th down.

1 - 1998 NBA Finals, Game 6, Chicago over Utah, 87-86. Michael Jordan hits "The Shot" (Does that play have a name?  What is it?) in his last game in a Bulls uniform to cap off a 45-point performance and the Bulls 6th Championship.

There are some others that perhaps mean more to me than the greater sports world:

1999 Stanley Cup Finals, Game 6, Dallas over Buffalo, 2-1 (Triple OT).  Creasegate.  Modano plays 55 minutes with a cast on his arm.

June 29, 2007, Chicago Cubs over Milwaukee, 6-5.  The Cubs rally from a 5-0 deficit to win on Aramis’ walkoff home run.  This game also turned the tide in the division race.

2007 NL Wild Card Tiebreaker Game, Colorado over San Diego, 9-8 (13 innings).  This was a great game even before the 13th inning.  Plenty of offense early, followed by dominant pitching and stellar defense.  There was a grand slam and a killer error that allowed the game to go into extras in the first place.  The Padres got 2 in the 13th, and the game was thought over.  But the Cinderella Rockies beat the odds and killed Trevor Hoffman.  The play at the plate, which is consistently the best play in sports, capped it all off. 

2006 NL Championship, Game 6, Florida over Chicago Cubs, 8-3.  I hate this game, but for the Marlins, this was a GREAT game.  Cubs fans, please don’t blame Bartman.  Blame Baker.

2007 AFC Championship Game, Indianapolis over New England, 38-34.  If this game was the Super Bowl, it might have made the list.  The Colts looked dead in the water, behind 21-3, then rallied to beat the team that had been keeping them down in dramatic fashion.

Feel free to disagree or suggest some other games. 

I’m too dumb to embed YouTube videos, so here’s a couple of links:

Great Play

Best Commercial 

First, here’s how the first round shaped up for me:
1 – 26 wins, 6 losses. My previous first round best was 23-9.
2 – I had a perfect East bracket, and missed only 1 in the South.
3 – Most importantly, all 16 of my Sweet 16 teams are still in it.

Thoughts moving forward:
1 – I wish I would have drunk the Kool-Aid on Winthrop. I saw a couple of games early on in the season where I was impressed with Notre Dame’s big men, but it just didn’t translate. It’s kind of hard to play the whole second half in foul trouble, but the Eagles played a good game as well.
2 – I mentioned that all of my second round picks are still in, and I’m not flip-flopping on any of them. I don’t think any of the changed match-ups are very significant. I’m a little worried about Wisconsin against UNLV, but I think their first half dud against TAMUCC might have woken them up.
3 – I should have seen the Duke collapse coming. I picked them because A) It seemed like everybody was picking them to lose, and I didn’t want to get caught up in the hype, B) I overestimated Paulus, and C) I’m not that high on Virginia Commonwealth. Good win for them, but get ready for a letdown against Pitt.

My Second Round Upsets:
5 Virginia Tech over 4 Southern Illinois
9 Michigan State over 1 North Carolina
6 Vanderbilt over 3 Washington State
5 Tennessee over 4 Virginia
7 Nevada over 2 Memphis

Well, the tournament starts in about an hour, so it’s about time to reveal picks. I played it pretty safe this year; in years’ past I’ve been horrible at predicting upsets. Speaking of upsets, here are the first rounders that I picked:

9 Purdue over 8 Arizona
12 Old Dominion over 5 Butler
10 Georgia Tech over 7 UNLV
9 Villanova over 8 Kentucky
9 Michigan State over 8 Marquette

I actually picked no upsets in the South. This doesn’t usually happen, but it’s not like I’ve ever gotten an entire quarter of the bracket completely right anyway. Elite Eight:

Florida
Wisconsin
Kansas
UCLA
Texas
Georgetown
Ohio State
Texas A&M

I have Florida beating UCLA, and Georgetown beating Texas A&M. Florida repeats with a 79-73 win over the Hoyas.

I also made another bracket where I picked the most ridiculous scenarios I could think of, because heaven knows something is going to happen that nobody thought of. The final four from that bracket consists of Winthrop, Gonzaga, George Washington, and Long Beach State. If it looks like my bracket is going to be busted early, I’ll be rooting for these guys.

Every year, there is a short time (this year, it’s 12 days) which I refer to as the Sports Black Hole - it is the time between the Super Bowl and The Day when pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training. During this Black Hole period, hockey and, to a lesser extent, basketball tide me over. Perhaps, then, this is the best time for me to write a bit about each. First, though, I want to mention the thing that is helping me cope with the Black Hole this year - umpiring.

On February 5th, the day after the Super Bowl, I stepped behind the plate for the first time and called balls and strikes. I also took my position in the field and performed umpiring duties there. It was a fairly uneventful game. I got to call a play at the plate. My strike zone was a little too small for the hometown fans, but it was consistent. We did blow a call or two. There was an infield fly that went uncalled, and a ball that should have been called foul was called fair. Nevertheless, the game went on. I am looking forward to a year (and hopefully more) of umpiring. I am proud to take this role in America’s Pasttime.

As for hockey, I have this to say: Sportswriters and television commentators need to grow up. Most of them speak as if they have been personally slighted by the NHL. Hockey? We don’t cover that inferior sport. These people are paid to cover sports, yet they only cover the ones they enjoy personally. Unfortunately, I have not been able to see as much hockey as I would like this year, although I did attend my first NHL game in October. It seems as if the NHL is committing suicide by allowing the majority of their games to be broadcast on a crappy network that’s apparently too good to be broadcast on satellite.

Having said that, this season has been an exciting one. For Stars fans, it has been frustrating. I was at the game where Steve Ott broke his leg, and that seemed to set off a steady stream of injuries that have crippled the Stars all season. Add an inconsistent Marty Turco to the equation, and it makes me more nervous as we approach the end of the season. I had all kinds of optimism going into last year’s playoffs, and it all got squelched in the first round. I don’t know if I can handle another collapse. Stay tuned…

As for basketball, I’d like to get everything I have to say about the regular season (both pro and college) in one post. So, here are my mid-February Final Four picks. As always, you never know who’s going to end up in what region, so I tried my best to come up with four teams that are fairly spread apart. I’ve got two fairly obvious picks and two underdogs, listed here in alphabetical order:

Florida
North Carolina
Notre Dame
Texas A&M

In the pros, I see only six legitimate contenders for a Finals berth: Dallas, Phoenix, San Antonio, Detroit, Cleveland, and Chicago. If you forced me to pick right now, I would say Dallas vs. Detroit, although anything can happen in the West. I’ll probably have more to say when the regular season is up, but not until then.

On Friday, watch for a preview of both the Rangers and the Cubs.

I’m watching the UTEP-UAB game, and Jordan Palmer just made an amazing play. He dropped back to pass, felt the rush, broke two tackles, scrambled to his left (he’s right-handed) and completed a first down pass - on third down. Of course, the drive ended in a touchdown with a minute left to go in the first half. Yet the announcers for ESPN2 continued to debate the National Championship problem caused by the otherwise mediocre Rutgers Scarlet Knights. They didn’t even acknowledge the play. This has to be Reason #837 why I prefer professional football over its college counterpart: A great play was just shoved out of the way by controversy over the BCS - and the entire discussion had absolutely nothing to do with the game being shown! I was under the impression that I was watching a broadcast of a football game, not an opinion show about the Bogus College Sport. Soon, I will post about many of the reasons I see college football as inferior. Until then, be informed that a large portion of it has to do with the subjectivity of crowning a champion, and about how the rich get richer and the poor get poorer while we sit around and talk about the rich. That’s a metaphor - but it really happened.

Note: This post originally appeared on February 8, 2005.

This afternoon I got back to my room from class and turned on one of my favorite TV shows, Pardon the Interruption. If you don’t know (and you should), PTI is a genius show where two guys, Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser, sit around and argue about sports. This is truly near and dear to my heart. Anyway, one of the issues today (as it is many days) was the national poll for college basketball. There are currently two undefeated teams in NCAA basketball, The University of Illinois and Boston College. The problem is that while Illinois is ranked #1 and has been for a while, BC is still ranked #4, behind two seemingly better, but not undefeated teams. Of course, anybody who follows sports at all knows that there has been a whole lot of trouble for college football concerning the national poll and the BCS system. Because basketball has a tournament, it’s not a big deal to a lot of people, but I think the poll in basketball is just as flawed and needs attention.

I have a simple solution. And please don’t misunderstand me, I am not taking up Boston College’s cause. I don’t give a rip about them. As a matter of fact, they are tied with Notre Dame 20-20 as I write this. No, this is a matter of principle. Allow me, if you will, to set up a hypothetical situation for you. A certain team in the NFL, say, the Browns, goes 9-7 in a given year. They never won by more than 10 points, and they only beat a winning team twice. All of their losses are blow-outs. Then take another team, say the Bengals, goes 8-8 in the same season. They beat the Browns twice, but a few heartbreaking losses and a hard schedule gave them the .500 record. The question is, who goes to the play-offs first? The answer is always the Browns. It doesn’t matter how much the sportswriters like the coach; it doesn’t matter if the quarterback is cordial to the media; it doesn’t even matter about the strength of schedule. 9-7 always beats 8-8. That’s why all college teams should play the same number of games, and rankings should be based on record. All undefeated teams go automatically to the top, followed by one-loss teams, etc. It’s really not that hard. Then, let the people vote on teams with the exact same record. Under my system, the current top 5 in NCAA basketball are as follows (with actual ranking in parentheses):

1. Illinois 23-0 (1)
2. Boston College 20-0 (4)
3. Kansas 18-1 (3)
4. Syracuse 21-2 (7)
5. North Carolina 19-2 (2)

As you can see, there is an apparent discrepancy. Under my system, University of the Pacific (18-2) would be way higher than the 24 they are now. Before you argue based on strength of schedule, let me remind about our humble little example. 9-7 always beats 8-8. Every time. Why? Because WE PLAY TO WIN THE GAME! It doesn’t matter how good you are if you can’t win games. North Carolina doesn’t deserve to be #2 if 2 teams have already beat them. As far as I’m concerned, there are at least two teams that are better than UNC, and that was proven on the court, not in some reporter’s notebook.

Note: This post originally appeared on January 3, 2006.

Last night, ESPN did a special piece about a highlight video that Reggie Bush’s high school put together. Ugh.

A couple of weeks ago on ESPN Radio, Colin Cowsherd (who is a typical ESPN employee - cheers shamelessly for any team from New York, LA, Chicago, and Boston and never gives anybody else a chance) was raving about how the Rose Bowl was already decided when he stopped and declared that in his opinion, this year’s USC team is the probably the greatest of all time. I almost called in. Thankfully, somebody else did. The caller from Houston told Cowsherd that Bush won the Heisman because ESPN is USC’s number one fan. Cowsherd, of course, cut off the caller right away and got very defensive and angry. “We just report the most intriguing stories!” he thundered. I laughed for probably ten minutes. It’s so funny that a team as good as Texas gets almost no chance from anybody to win this game. Mack Brown said it very well himself today in a press conference: “I would like to thank all of the members of the media. I don’t even have to make a pep talk.” Here are 5 reasons Texas will beat USC tomorrow night:

1) Reggie Bush isn’t as good as everybody makes him out to be. I compare him to Ki Jana Carter. He’s great when he’s around people who can’t tackle, but he won’t make it in the pros. Every single one of his highlight runs have come against poor tackling teams. Every single one of those runs gets at most five yards against a team that will tackle well. This leads me to my next point…

2) Texas’ defense is way better than any other defense USC has seen all year. This is one fact that the talking heads will actually concede, and I think the fact that USC hasn’t really been tested hurts them. You can’t rely on converting 4th and 9 versus this team.

3) USC’s defense is suspect, and Texas has all the weapons to beat them. As a matter of fact, I’d have to agree with Vince Young that position for position, UT’s offense is superb to USC’s. The two O-lines are easily the best two in the nation. Vince is better than Leinart. Charles can play with Bush. Tweedie, Sweed, Pittman, and Strong are much better weapons than what USC offers.

4) UT only really had one close game this year (Ohio State). There were a couple that were close for a half or so (Texas Tech, Oklahoma State), but ultimately they dominated those games as well. USC had trouble with Notre Dame, Fresno State, and lest we forget, Arizona State. The analysts will tell you that USC is simply a second-half team that lowers its intensity when it meets a lesser opponent. I see weakness. Here are the results for these three teams in bowl games: Arizona State barely survived Rutgers, 45-40 in the Insight Bowl. Fresno State lost to Tulsa in the Liberty Bowl. Tulsa isn’t exactly known for its offensive prowess, but they outgained Fresno State 430-421 despite only holding the ball for 21:40. Kind of puts Reggie Bush’s big day in perspective, eh? Finally, there’s Notre Dame. They got whipped by an Ohio State team that gave Texas everything they had earlier in the season. Keep in mind, Notre Dame was the team on the other side of the “epic” game between so-called giants. Notre Dame is one of the most overrated teams of 2005, yet it took an illegal push for USC to beat them. Texas has played better all year long; is there any reason to doubt that tomorrow’s game will be any different?

5) Matt Leinart is bored. I’m all about athletes finishing school, but if you watch the interviews that he’s given in the past weeks, he’s got that “been there, done that” attitude about the National Championship game. He used to get really emotional and fired up whenever he talked about upcoming games, but last time I saw him on TV, he stifled a yawn twice. Even if he can elevate his play at gametime, that kind of attitude is contagious. Look for his USC teammates to be flat and unmotivated. After all, they’ve already been crowned one of the greatest teams of all time. What is there to play for?