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The Sports Examiner: News & Views
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Weekly briefing for Monday, May 5, 2008 |
≡ Weekly Briefing ≡
 Cotton Bowl: suddenly relevant thanks to the calendar! |
= To Our Readers =
This is our first weekly edition of The Sports Examiner, designed to give you the stories, observations and intelligence that you might have missed in your daily newspaper . . . because its sports section has been cut in half or worse.
We’re delighted to have Al Brooks Tickets continue as a sponsor; their support and that of others will help keep this site alive. Thanks again for your continued support; please ask your friends to sign up for the Tip Sheet and .pdf newsletter.
= Panorama =
The National Pastime:
>> New York, N.Y.: The New York Daily News reports that Roger Clemens’ legal strategy may be changing:
It’s raining women and Rogers Clemens’ confidants are telling him to wise up and get out of the storm.
Clemens’ longtime friends are advising him to drop his defamation suit against steroid accuser Brian McNamee and take a new approach to rebuilding his reputation.
In addition to McNamee’s statements that Clemens used performance-enhancing drugs, allegations of marital infidelity are being used to savage Clemens’ reputation so that any charges of defamation by Clemens would be seen by a jury as baseless since his reputation would be so poor as to not be worsened by any allegations of drug use.
Clemens has so far been linked not just to singer Mindy McCreedy and Paulette Dean Daly, the ex-wife of golfer John Daly, but also to a waitress who later became the wife of WWE wrestler Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake, whose real name is Ed Leslie. Barbara Leslie told the Boston Herald that Clemens made a pass at her in 1990 when she worked at the Palace nightclub, asking “What would you do if I tried to kiss you?” Leslie (then unmarried) replied, “What would your wife say if you tried to kiss me?” That’s as far as it went.
Forget about brushback pitches and intentionally hitting batters with a 95 mph heater. This is hardball.
College Gridiron:
>> New York, N.Y: Stewart Mandel of Sports Illustrated listed his post-spring, but pre-season college football top 25. Georgia was no. 1, followed by Ohio State and USC (who will meet at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on September 13), Missouri and LSU. The second five includes Oklahoma, Florida, Texas Tech, Auburn and Wisconsin. That’s four SEC teams in the top 10 – if you’re counting – and Mandel also lists Tennessee and Alabama in the top 25. Looks like another good year for CBS, which owns the SEC television package.
>> Weston, Fl.: The seemingly endless parade of bowl games got longer last week when two more bowl games were approved by the NCAA Post-Season Licensing Subcommittee. How is this possible?
The Congressional Bowl will be held on December 20 at either Nationals Park or RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C., matching Navy (if bowl eligible) and a team from the Atlantic Coast and/or Mid-American conferences. The ACC is committed to sending its ninth-place team to the game if bowl-eligible and ESPN is ready to televise the game. Said our office wag, “It might be better if they televised this game on C-SPAN.”
The St. Petersburg Bowl will be held at Tropicana Field between December 20-23, matching teams from the Big East and Conference USA. It’s a domed stadium, so December rains in Florida will not be a factor.
Although it’s hard to imagine why, one bowl proposal was actually turned down. A group of Salt Lake City business leaders proposed a Rocky Mountain Bowl to be held at Rice-Eccles Stadium on the University of Utah campus with the idea of giving the Mountain West Conference another bowl game, matched against another secondary league, the Western Athletic Conference.
With 34 games now on the schedule, will there be enough teams to fill them? The NCAA committee reported that there were 71 teams with 6-6 or better records last season, enough for 35 1/2 games. So it’s no surprise that the Salt Lake City folks were asked to come back next year.
>> Dallas, Tx.: The Cotton Bowl will be played for the final time in the actual Cotton Bowl following the coming season, before moving to the new Dallas Cowboys facility for its 2010 edition. And for the first time since the BCS began, the game will be played at a reasonable time.
Although the Cotton Bowl is one of the oldest bowl games, it was out-maneuvered by the Fiesta Bowl for the fourth spot in the BCS line-up and has lost a lot of its luster. The move to the Cowboys’ facility will help and now a favorable schedule will restore some more of its appeal for 2009.
Because New Year’s will be on a Thursday in 2009, it’s highly likely that Friday, January 2 will be a day off for most people and the Cotton Bowl is taking advantage. It will be the first game of a college football tripleheader that day, with the Cotton Bowl game starting at 1 p.m. local time instead of 10 a.m. as required for television purposes this year. It will then be followed by the 50th Liberty Bowl, playing in January for the first time ever, kicking off at 4 p.m. in Mobile, Alabama and the Sugar Bowl from New Orleans, Louisiana at 7:30 p.m.
College Hoopla:
>> Lake Sherwood, Ca.: The strangest aspect of the Michael Avery story – he’s the eighth-grader who was offered a basketball scholarship by Kentucky basketball coach Billy Gillispie – is that Avery hasn’t yet decided on what high school to attend!
Gillispie saw the 6-4 Avery, a guard, play in an AAU Tournament in Akron, Ohio. He didn’t start, but came off the bench and played well enough to impress the Kentucky coach. Avery lives in Lake Sherwood, California, north of Los Angeles, but was playing for the Indiana Elite team in this tournament.
When Howard Avery – Michael’s father – spoke to Gillispie after returning home from the tournament, the coach said “I like him so much, I want him to come and I’ll give him a scholarship.” The father’s reply was “You’re joking, right?” but Gillispie assured him he was serious.
Now the young Avery only has to figure out if he’s going to go to high school at Crespi HS in Encino, California or a private school in Culver, Indiana. What if he doesn’t even make the basketball teams there?
>> Bloomington, In.: New Indiana coach Tom Crean may be putting ads into the Indiana Daily Student if he keeps losing players.
Center Eli Holman told Crean he wanted to transfer last Thursday and during the meeting, the 6-9 freshman became agitated and campus police had to be called just in case. He’ll be the sixth Indiana player to be lost from last season’s 25-8 team after freshman Eric Gordon declared for the NBA, seniors D.J. White and Lance Stemler finished their eligibility and guard Armon Bassett and Jamarcus Ellis were kicked off the team by interim coach Dan Dakich. Crean could reinstate Bassett and Ellis (who have asked to come back) and Ellis, but as of now, he has four scholarship returnees and four incoming freshmen.
Anyone want to practice with the Hoosiers?
Punched Out:
>> Los Angeles, Ca.: Oscar De La Hoya out-pointed Steve Forbes in a unanimous decision over 12 rounds in front of a capacity crowd of 27,000 at The Home Depot Center on Saturday night, but it didn’t add to his most impressive career record.
Sure, his ring record improved to 39-5, but the fight was on HBO’s standard cable package and not on pay-per-view. De La Hoya’s 18 pay-per-view appearances on HBO have yielded a staggering total of $626 million in sales and he’s now set for another bonanza in a rematch with undefeated Floyd Mayweather, Jr. That match is set for September 20 and last year’s edition – a close Mayweather win – had 2.4 million pay-per-view buys at $49.95 each: $119.88 million before the live gate, concessions and parking are figured in.
That’s a record he can – and has – taken to the bank.
Rings & Things:
>> Chicago, Il.: ESPN.com senior writer Jim Caple wrote a serious but amusing story last week entitled “Quit making fun of this sport” about synchronized swimming.
He detailed the wonderful athletic prowess of the competitors, their exhausting training regimen and how difficult their routines are. No one doubts that these things are all true. But they are not the point.
The point is why this sport is in the Olympic Games next to track & field, racing swimming, rowing and basketball? In fact, why are any judged sports in the Games?
In the first Olympic Games of the modern era, there were 11 sports on the program: cycling, fencing, shooting, swimming, tennis, track & field, weightlifting, wrestling and gymnastics. Rowing and sailing were cancelled because of bad weather and the cricket competition was cancelled because no one entered. Only gymnastics was a judged sport.
Others have crept into the program over the century. There is diving as well as synchronized swimming as part of the aquatic program. There is boxing – where dozens of outrageous decisions have insulted fighters and fans – as well as, of course, gymnastics, both artistic and rhythmic. That’s three sports out of 28 and perhaps three too many. And that’s not to mention the winter sports of figure skating – also a gathering place for world-famous scandals – plus competitions in freestyle skiing.
With today’s technology, there’s little doubt about who wins in event decided by who gets to a finish line first or has the fastest time over individual time trials. But judging makes people uneasy, no matter how qualified the officials. The accusations of prejudice in officiating at all levels of sport are hard to ignore when travesties like the 2002 Salt Lake City pairs competition and too many bad decisions in boxing to count are remembered.
Synchronized swimming is a fine sport. It, like diving, gymnastics and boxing, just shouldn’t be part of the Olympic Games. The motto is “Swifter, Higher, Stronger,” not “Degree of difficulty, deductions and ignoring the high score.”
~ Rich Perelman
>> Have an opinion? You can send it using the “Comment” button below!
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The Sports Examiner: Out Loud!
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Out Loud! for Friday, August 24, 2007 |
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TSX Tip Sheet
Weekly briefing for Monday, May 5, 2008
Baseball: Opposing lawyers playing a new kind of hardball against Roger Clemens, and he’s hitless so far!
College Football: Georgia ends spring practice rated no. 1 in one columnist’s view
College Football: More bowl games in 2009 and guess what . . . they’ll both be on ESPN!
College Football: Cotton Bowl will matter more in 2009 thanks to the day the game is scheduled!
College Basketball: Only in Kentucky do they choose college scholarships before deciding where to attend high school!
College Basketball: Look for ads in the Indiana Daily Student for basketball players?
Boxing: Oscar De La Hoya won his fight Saturday, but it didn’t help his most important career record!
Olympics: ESPN.com story says synchronized swimming shouldn’t be laughed at; that’s true but it shouldn’t be in the Olympics, either.
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TSX Quick Fax
The longest major league baseball game on record was played on May 1st, 1921, between the Brooklyn Dodgers and Boston Braves. It was called at the end of 26 innings on account of darkness, with the score tied 1-1. Brooklyn's Leon Cadore and Boston's Joe Oeschger both pitched the entire 26 innings. The entire game lasted only 3 hours 50 minutes.
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