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Pitchers and Catchers Report
My father-in-law is a huge baseball fan. He’s lived in all five boroughs of New York, so he feels loyalty to the Mets and the Yankees. I’m a Boston fan, having grown up in Connecticut, so I get a kick out of smack-talking him before games. Let me tell you- he can dish it right back!
After his football team, the New York Giants, swept by my beloved New England Patriots, my father-in-law began his countdown to pitchers and catchers report. He hasn’t been able to make it down to Florida for spring training in a number of years, so my husband and I decided to surprise him with tickets and brand new baseball jerseys. He was beyond. I have no idea how we’ll ever top this gift. Oh well!
“Warded” Off, Hines Ward’s 14-year Tenure With Steelers Comes To An End
Hines Ward’s constant, ear-to-ear smile tucked behind a black facemask has been a lasting image for Pittsburgh Steelers fans the past 14 seasons.
They won’t see it again.
At least, not in a black-and-gold uniform.
The franchise’s all-time leader in just about every meaningful receiving category will be released sometime in the next two weeks said president Art Rooney II on the team’s website on Wednesday.
“We had a conversation today with Hines Ward and informed him that we plan to release him of his contract prior to the start of the 2012 NFL calendar year,” Rooney said. “Hines has been an integral part of our success since we drafted him in 1998, and we will forever be grateful for what he has helped us achieve.”
A four-time Pro Bowl selection and MVP of the 2006 Super Bowl, Ward will finish his Steelers career with 1,000 catches, 12,083 yards and 85 receiving touchdowns. He helped Pittsburgh to three AFC championships and a pair of Super Bowl wins. Read More >>
Documentary, “Undefeated”, Blindsides Competition At The Oscars
It may not be “The Artist,” but on Sunday, “Undefeated” nabbed the Best Documentary Oscar at the 84th Annual Academy Awards with an upset win over presumed favorite “Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory.” The film, directed by Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin (Western Washington University Graduate), follows a the football program at Manassas High School in Memphis, Tennessee, and coach Bill Courtney, who looks to lead the team to their first playoff birth in the school’s 110-year history. “Undefeated” is in limited release now. Watch a short preview of the movie above. The documentary has been compared favorably to 2010′s Academy Award Best Picture nominee “The Blind Side”. A ’based on a true story’ film (that follows Undefeated’s similar story) of an inter-city youth overcoming his traumas and poverity while rising to prominence with the help his high school football team; eventually, becoming a star in college at Ole Miss, and a future 1st round NFL Draft pick by the Baltimore Ravens.
This year it’s Big XII, next year it’s Big (10) 12
If you didn’t know university’s like Kansas, Missouri, Baylor, Iowa State and Kansas State were feared teams, then you probably 
haven’t watched too much college football, and not enough college basketball. The Big 12 conference rich in collective history, and home of the original innovator of basketball, James Naismith, is actually a relatively young conference formed in 1994 out of the cores of the longstanding Big Eight and Southwest Conferences. Although known mostly for rivaling the Big Ten and SEC for distinction in college football, the Big 12 was not slow in making its presence felt in college basketball. In just its second year of integration, the Big 12′s Oklahoma State Cowboys reached the NCAA Tournament’s Final Four in 1995. Historical NBA staples such as Iowa State’s Jeff Hornacek, (former conference team) Colorado’s Chauncey Billups, and Kansas’s Paul Pierce and Wilt Chamberlain have all graced Big 12 schools with their talents. Two of the NBA’s current arguable top 10 players have both come out of the Big 12: Oklahoma City Thunder’s elastic scorer, Kevin Durant, and Los Angeles Clipper’s dunking phenom, Blake Griffin. Read More >>
Bigger and Better
Big East men’s basketball has twice as many teams as it football counterpart: 8 teams football to 16 teams basketball. And it’s been apparent since 1979 that having such a large conference, 3 more teams in basketball than any other NCAA Division I conference, hasn’t watered-down the talent level or competitiveness of the league. The conference’s proudest moment might’ve happened either in 1985, when 3 of the 4 Final Four team’s comprised itself of Big East teams (Villanova, Georgetown and St. John’s; the tournament winner going on to be Villanova) or last year, when 11 of the conference’s 16 teams went on to enter the NCAA Tournament comprising 16 percent of the tournament’s total field (Connecticut, Big East’s conference winner, also going on to win the 2011 championship game). Although not all of the Big East’s teams have done it while members of the conference, all of the Big East team’s, besides USF, have made an appearance in the Final Four at some point in their history’s.
For the last 30 years the spotlight of this mega-conference’s season-ending tournament has been played at basketball’s virtual mecca, Madison Square Garden, where 12 of the conference’s top 16 teams annually make the pilgrimage. This year the most highlighted team heading into the Garden will be #2 AP-ranked Syracuse. The Orangemen are one Notre Dame loss removed from a perfect season, and have been winning in the face of on-going former assistant coach Bernie Fine’s child abuse scandal, and a subsequent slander case against head coach Jim Boeheim, surrounding comments about the abused ball-boy children made soon after child abuse allegations first surfaced. Read More >>
In SEC Men’s Basketball, Kentucky always rules
Throughout its history, SEC basketball has really been about one team: the Kentucky Wildcats. If you don’t quite understand the above video, you probably have not watched a lot of Kentucky basketball (fans hold a sign of the number 3 everytime they make a 3-point shot… I.E. so they make a lot of 3′s). Wildcat Men’s Basketball has had a dominant presence in a portion of every decade since the SEC’s inception in 1932. Only one coach that coached multiple seasons at UK finished with an overall losing record in his tenure: W.W.H. Mustaine, UK’s first ever men’s basketball coach. And no coach, after Kentucky’s first joined the original SEC, has left the university with an overall losing record.
There is no doubt the standard of excellence is high at basketball university USA. Perhaps, where Kentucky has shined most has been in the tournaments. Kentucky has won over half of SEC tournaments in history (27 of 52), owns 7 total NCAA tournaments Titles (Second most to UCLA in history), the most appearances (51) and wins (105, currently tied with North Carolina) in NCAA tournament history. If those stats were too much for you, then know UK also owns 2 NIT Titles in its history too (the only school with multiple NCAA and NIT tournament Titles). It’s no wonder Rupp Arena in Lexington, where the Wildcats play, is the biggest basketball arena in the nation, and regularly leads college basketball in attendance. More often than not considered the Yankees of basketball, fans annually expect a Sweet 16 and Final Four appearances from their Wildcat basketball squad. This year’s crop talent, despite their youth, is not letting expectations fan expectations down. Considered by many the best team in the nation, and tied with the Syracuse Orange for the best record in the NCAA so far this year, the Wildcats are a virtual lock for one of the four tournament #1 seeds. Barring an early exit in this year’s SEC tournament, they are in best spot to grab the overall #1 seed of the tournament’s field of 68. Read More >>
This is not Madness…
It’s awkward time as we approach the 15th of March. A day also known as the Ides of March, in Ancient Rome the day was a celebration of Mars, their God of war, but was more famously the day of Julius Caesar’s untimely assassination and betrayal by the friends he considered close. On the 15th of March fans of NCAA College Basketball will be celebrating the famous ‘Ides’ in their own way. Yes, after the opening round of the First Four (the first four play-in games to enter the tournament’s overall field of 64 teams) the NCAA Tournament will officially begin. March Madness is the colloquial term for the time over the duration of the NCAA Tournament; where buzzer-beating shots regularly encroach on narrowly-lead teams and lesser known teams ordinarily poach off more commonly branded basketball. It is a time of passion, persistence and revelry in the arts of war; not unlike the ancient Roman’s celebrations of the God of war. Today, I’ll be starting off tournament coverage of possible tournament teams conference by conference, each of the major conferences, and a bundle of the mid-majors. Read More >>
Twisting and Turning in the Mountain West
Since being established in 1999, the NCAA’s youngest D-I FBS conference, the Mountain West, has been gaining exponentially more media coverage and national respect over the past few years, as a growing mid-major conference that can compete and win against the other high-major conferences: Pac-12, Big 12, Big 10, Big East, Southeastern and Atlantic Coast. Of the five mid-major conference BCS births since the 2004 NCAA College Football season, four of the five have been from the Mountain West (Utah in ’05, Boise State ’07, Utah ’09, Boise State and TCU ’10 and TCU again in ’11), going a combined 5-1 in those BCS appearances, possibly 6-0 if Boise State and TCU had not been bidded against eachother in the 2010 Fiesta Bowl. Mountain West men’s basketball has not been meek in competitive spirit either, appearing in 29 NCAA Tournaments since the Conference’s inception; on average, almost two and half teams a year. Most notably in my mind, the Mountain West has had three #1 overall draft selections for each major professional sport: the NFL’s Alex Smith of Utah and the NBA’s Andrew Bogut of Utah in 2005; MLB’s Stephen Strasburg of San Diego State in 2009. Read More >>
Yao-Less, The Year of (Lin)
6 feet 3 inch, 200 pound, 23 years of age, Asian-American, and Harvard educated – Jeremy Lin
Putting all of the above attributes together, it would have gone beyond society’s reason to believe they are the distinguishing characteristics of the New York Knick’s newest star Jeremy Lin. Before point guard Jeremy Lin came along, chances are you could not name an NBA player of asian-descent outside of former Houston Rocket’s center Yao Ming. Let alone could you have named any undrafted player of that his particular background. If you could, leave a comment on this post, you probably know more than the average NBA fan.
“Lin-sanity”, as the media is calling it, began a little over a week ago. Without last year’s superstar acquisistions Amar’e Stoudemire and Carmelo Anthony, Knick’s coach Mike D’Antoni, a coach who has been on the hot seat, began rummaging through his roster to find scoring from whatever player he could. Luckily, for 4th stringer Jeremy Lin, that meant an opportunity and audition to be the temporary starting point guard for the New York Knicks. Lin responded with a 25 point, 5 rebound, and 7 assist performance in a win against the New Jersey Nets. The Knick’s next game Lin got his first career start; he responded with a win, and an even greater statistical outburst. Read More >>
NBC ‘versus’ ESPN
As of Jan. 2, 2012 Versus, a channel known for broadcasting NHL games and a number of outdoor and combat sports, became the NBC Sports Network. The transition and rebrand weren’t completely unexpected. When Comcast, the original owner of Versus, bought the majority stake of NBC February 2011 it started merging NBC’s own sports content into the channel, and started relaunching Versus as a sort of extension to NBC normal sport’s broadcasting. As the months progressed the executive decision made sense to rebrand Versus as NBC Sports Network.
The rebrand is expected to make Versus into a more creditable channel that would appeal to a more mainstream sport’s audience; essentially, a channel that could compete with ESPN’s sports monopoly. An advantage of the new NBC Sports Network is NBC Universal’s recent procurements of lengthy contract extensions of viewership rights with the NHL and Olympic Games, helping Versus with its initial step towards its vision.
Brightening for the future expansion of the channel was the announcement of a new TV deal next year with the growing MLS over its original broadcaster partner, Fox Sports Channel. The deal was even announced for less money than Fox was offering, because executives were convinced on the future direction of the sports network. With soccer gaining ground each year in the US, the MLS has been thriving more than ever, and should be able to continue growing exponentially if NBC Sports Network can continue growing along with it. Read More >>
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