The Sporting Life category archive

If you wonder why I’ve given up on the Olympics (and most other endeavors of the Athletic Industrial Complex except baseball), look no further than this item in Bob Molinaro’s always excellent column in my local rag.

While wrestling and baseball are trying to fight their way back into the Summer Games, pole dancing is making a bid to join the Olympic movement. Speaking of movement, what’s now being called “pole sports” includes a rule that prohibits women competitors from dancing “in an overly erotic manner.” And I suppose fans will be prohibited from bringing $1 bills to the competition.

Afterthought:

Who defines “overly erotic,” Miss Grundy or Miss October?

I always look forward to Bob Molinaro’s Saturday column in my local rag. It’s a parade of short takes on sporting silliness.

Technology can be a wonderful thing. The San Francisco 49ers’ new stadium, set to open in time for the 2014 NFL season, will feature an app that keeps fans updated on the length of bathroom and beer lines. There’s a clear symmetry to an app like that.

Read the rest.

Daniel Ruth is not amused by the NFL’s recent purse prohibition. A nugget:

The NFL — think Iran, only without the joie de vivre — imposed the purse/bag ban after the Boston Marathon bombings, although it’s highly unlikely, given the security patdown precautions that have been in effect for years, that anyone would have been able to smuggle a pressure cooker bomb through the turnstiles.

Follow the link. Later on, he waxes sarcastic. (No word on whether sarcastic waxes h–oh, never mind.)

It’s telling that a college basketball game is no longer a game, but a “product.” From an article in my local rag about the ACC’s plans to have its own cable channel (emphasis added):

The appetite for ACC content seems high. Although league networks are football driven – and the ACC’s on-field product has come under fire in recent years – the basketball product, with the addition of Syracuse, Pittsburgh, Notre Dame and, eventually, Louisville, figures to be better than ever. It would also create an easier-to-find platform for the league’s non-revenue sports.

Bob Molinaro, in my local rag:

It might surprise you to discover that I know exactly what stage it is at the Tour de France. It’s the stage where I stop caring altogether.

More on-targetness at the link.

Athtwits. A nugget:

Curry, the high-scoring Warriors guard, was disillusioned by Twitter at first. Sidelined by injuries for most of the 2011-12 season, Curry was kicked while he was down by angry fans.

“I’d go out with an ankle injury and all of a sudden I’d get a hundred tweets saying, ‘My fantasy team is done. You screwed my whole draft!’ ” Curry recalled with a laugh.

I don’t get to see the Phillies much on local television.

The media seem to think that everyone in these parts roots for the Nats or the Birds (as I understand it, a nat is a small flying insect that is often consumed by birds and dragonflies).

But I got to see them beat the Nats tonight. It was most enjoyable.

Bob Molinaro yearns for a half-time.

Bob Molinaro:

You’ll be glad to know the NCAA is on the beat again, this time sanctioning a member of the women’s golf team from an unnamed West Coast Conference school for washing her car on campus. By using the school’s water, you see, she violated the rule against “extra benefits.” The player was asked to pay her school $20 – the estimated value of the water and use of the hose. You can’t make this stuff up.

This would not have happened if she had been a football quarterbacks.

The valet service washes their cars.

It’s only a game.

And guess who’s getting gamed (emphasis added).

Washington is one of 26 states whose highest paid public employee is a football coach, in this case University of Washington football coach Steve Sarkisian who was paid $2.7 million last year.

Coaches occupy the No. 2 and No. 3 rankings in the Evergreen State, with UW basketball coach Lorenzo Roman earning $1.35 million and Washington State University basketball coach Ken Bone being paid $855,000. They are followed by Washington State University president Elson Floyd at $625,023 and UW President Michael Young at $563,456.

And lots of persons think that the poor schmucks who fill the potholes are overpaid.

There is one God, and his name is JoePa. All others must bow before him.

Disgusting.

Aside:

Yes, it’s late when I write this.

Yes, I’ve had some Old Smuggler, one of the better cheap Scotches (any Scotch is better than every anything else).

No, I won’t regret it in the morning.

As a sporting event, the NFL draft is, as my mother would have said, “The biggest nothing.”

Bob Molinaro comments:

As everyone knows by now, the NFL draft is the world’s most popular sporting event in which no athletic ability is on display… with the possible exception of major golf tournaments.

Follow the link. It’s a delightful read.

Ken Purdy attempts to explain the kerfuffle over Tiger Woods’s two-stroke penalty at the Masters.

If you enjoy reading income tax instructions, you’ll enjoy reading this attempt to clarify the rules of golf.

____________________

*With apologies to Mark Twain (or someone else).

Bob Molinaro, sports writer extraordinaire at my local rag, introduces his column on the prospects of a local kid who has been demoted to third-string quarterback at Virginia’s always-a-bridesmaid-never-a-bride football factory with this bit:

“Over the years,” he said Saturday, “I think I lost my enjoyment of the game. I have to go back to the way it was and start having fun again.”

Following the Blue-Orange spring game, Sims said that sometimes he has to shake free from the feeling that football is “more of a job than anything,” though it really is for a college player.

“You’re so focused on studying film and doing everything on the practice field so perfectly,” he said, “you forget that this should be fun.”

He uses the quotation to lead into a nicely-done human interest story about the player.

He could just as easily have led into a story on the overall state of college sports and entertainment factories.

For a few of the fans, it’s obsession. For others, it’s a source of income (a bracket bucket shop). For most, it’s still a game.

For the college sports and entertainment cartel and its members, though, it’s all business.

Some Cubs fans aren’t happy.

They fear the loss of their cottage industry cottages.

As the Chicago Cubs and Mayor Rahm Emanuel near a deal on rehabbing Wrigley Field, the owners of the lucrative rooftop clubs overlooking the venerable ballpark yesterday displayed fear of the results.

Rattling a legal saber they’ve unsheathed before, the rooftop owners reiterated their belief that an agreement allowing signs that block their bird’s-eye views would violate not only their contract with the Cubs but also the city’s landmark rules for the 99-year-old stadium.

As many times as I’ve been to Chicago, I never got to Wrigley, though I did once take in a game at the old Comiskey Park, the one with the picnic tables behind screens in the outfield.

Must be fun cleaning those when it snows.

Just read this.

I can’t summarize or excerpt in a way that will do it justice, but it gets to the main reason I’m fed up with big-time college sports.

So, please, just read it.

Celebrate, then read E. Paul Zehr’s description of why playing baseball well is so challenging.

Baseball—America’s pastime now exported around the globe—combines explosive, powerful movements with extremely accurate fine motor coordination. Playing baseball effectively requires your nervous system to do an awful lot of things, do them well, and do them quickly.

The two quotes above capture this pretty well. A lot of what happens in baseball is pretty challenging for us to do. It’s difficult to do, hard to do right. And your brain has to do a lot of calculations all the while you are consciously aware of only the smallest amount of all that is going on.

Follow the link for the quotes to which he refers, as well as the rest of the post.

Tell me again, why they are called “student” athletes?

Please, Lord, make it go away.

Until then, I am with the guru.