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Memo to the U.S. Olympic women's Gymnastics team: your pratfalls in the team competition had absolutely nothing to do with the age of the Chinese gymnasts.

(not that it would have mattered - I think gymnastics is rigged worse than pro 'wrestling' and almost as bad as figure skating)

Not to put too fine a point on it, but if the allegations that some of the Chinese girls are underage is true, then that just makes it worse - you got waxed by a bunch of kids.

It's great that you got some redemption with your one-two in the all-around. Now go away and don't bother me again until London.

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I have this really really tattered Red Wings car flag. It's been with me since just after the '97 Cup-winning season. After the 2002 Cup-winning season, I bought a new car flag to succeed it. I'm as superstitious as the next hockey fan (maybe we get that from the players), so naturally I thought that my choice of when, where, and how I flew my new flag had something to do with the Wings' subsequent five-year Cup drought. This led me to perform a series of superstitionsexperiments from one postseason to the next about when to fly it: I tried waiting until the playoffs (didn't help), then waiting until the second round of the playoffs (didn't help), then waiting until the conference finals (totally didn't help (I mean. Anaheim. Really?)). Eventually, I decided not to fly my car flag again at all until the Wings won the Stanley Cup.

Well, last weekend I got a little cocky. After the Wings stole game 4 in Pittsburgh, I figured that the Cup was in the bag, so... I. Flew. The. Flag.

Of course, you all know how Game 5 turned out.

So I was sitting at a red light on my way to work yesterday morning. It was a warm morning, so I opened my other windows a bit while I was waiting (my A/C conked several years ago). I'm an attentive driver, and I didn't want to waste one second of the upcoming green light, so I kept my eyes forward and opened the back two windows without looking. The light turned green and I took off.

Clunk. Thump. I checked the rearview, and of course there's my flag - no longer held in place by the closed window - sitting on the street. I was all ready to pull over and run back to get it, 8:00 meeting be damned, when it hit me: THE FACT THAT I FLEW THE FLAG PREMATURELY WAS WHY THE WINGS LOST GAME 5!

And now I'm flying my tattered old flag again, thanks to the Wings... and Marc-Andre Fleury's butt.

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Congratulations To The MSU Hockey Team!

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I was still at Michigan State when they won their last NCAA Hockey championship in 1986. Since their previous championship was 1966, it seems like they were due again, and damned if they didn't come through, beating heavily-favored Boston College 3-1.

Brian Boyle's deflected goal at 6:50 of the second-period put BC on top. It looked like Boyle would get the backbreaker early in the third on a two-on-one, but MSU goalie Jeff Berg jumped the pass, slid across the crease, and robbed him with a top-notch glove save. This seemed to put the spark back into the MSU team, and a few minutes later, Tim Kennedy caught Boyle cheating up after a neutral zone faceoff, blowing by him and beating Cory Schneider up high to tie the game.

It looked like both teams were getting ready for overtime in the last minute, but MSU picked up a turnover at their own blue line and came back with a three-on-one. Although Justin Abdelkader clanged his first shot off the crossbar, MSU kept the pressure on. Abdelkader redeemed himself on a one-timer off a nifty feed from Kennedy behind the net, scoring the game winner with 18.9 seconds to go. Chris Mueller added an empty-netter with under two seconds remaining to finish the scoring.

Although no couches were burned last time MSU won the hockey title, times have changed, so you never know. YouTubage after the break.

After the jump.

Fusion vs. Green Bay Blizzard, 3/31/07

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The FreedomFusion were victorious in their debut, winning 36-28 over the defending-conference-champs-in-name-only Green Bay Blizzard.

Random thoughts:

  • QB Cody Hodges must work through his reads pretty fast - there were at least two times he seemed to surprise the receiver with the ball, like the receiver knew he was the third option and really wasn't expecting it (to their credit, I'm pretty sure all of those were caught).
  • Speaking of Hodges, he seemed pretty well dialed in considering that he's only been with the team since Monday. Imagine what another week of familiarity with his team might do.
  • One of the things you have to watch out for when a longtime star player becomes a coach is whether or not he can actually, you know, coach. 'Touchdown' Eddie Brown looks like he's well on his way, based on how the team looked in their debut (indeed, for most of the players, it was their first af2 game at all). I didn't see much of the confusion that you might expect from an expansion debut.
  • There was also one little bit of what I think was 'coachmanship' - the Fusion had the ball 4th and goal inside the Green Bay 10 with seconds left in the fourth quarter. They sent out the field goal team, but let the clock run out on the quarter. When the quarter break ended, they ran out the offense and caught Green Bay by surprise, making them burn a time out - one that might have proven crucial in the final minutes. Not only that, they got a touchdown on the play!

I should have some pictures up on Flickr tomorrow.

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Heading out to the Coliseum to watch the FreedomFusion opener. It's against Green Bay, who were the conference champions last year. Normally, that'd be a recipe for a grade-A pimpslapping - defending conference champ against expansion team - but since they have a new coach, and only five players return from that team, maybe the Fusion has a chance.

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I was thinking about the prediction that I (and a lot of other people) made - that the Glendale Bowl would be an aOSU blowout - and it made me think of some other predictions about which I was dead-lock-certain:

  • April 1980: "The Lions need to draft Charles White because Billy Sims hasn't shown that he can catch the ball."
  • May 1989: "Andre Ware was the perfect pick for the Lions' offense. He'll probably end up better than Barry Sanders when they're both done."
  • April of whatever year he was drafted: "Tony Mandarich will dominate in the NFL."
  • August 1997: "Michigan is doomed this season if Brian Griese is the best they can do at QB."
  • April 1991: "Desmond Howard will have an immediate impact as a Redskins receiver."
  • April 1993: "The Patriots are idiots - Rick Mirer is WAY better than Drew Bledsoe."
  • April 1998: "Ryan Leaf is so much better than Payton Manning that if the Colts don't pick him, they may as well pack up and move back to Baltimore." Full disclosure: Vijay actually said that, not me, but I wholeheartedly agreed. On the other hand, Leaf has led his team to as many conference championship game appearances as Manning has.

I wonder if Troy Smith's suckage in last night's Glendale Bowl was on purpose, designed to drop his draft stock just enough so the Lions won't take him.

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It's A Win-Win!

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I admit I originally wanted fND to win the Sugar Bowl, because it would A) make Michigan's mu#*af()4kin' BEATDOWN of them look a bit better in retrospect, and B) take a little more wind out of the sails of the OMG UR CONF SUX SEC TEH ROXOR!!!!11!!1!!eleven! kids. However, once USC's dismantling of Michigan occurred, neither of those really mattered to me, so I was back to the default condition of wanting fND to lose every game.

And LSU did not disappoint. Geaux Tigers!

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It's Like Taking Out A Mortgage On A Car

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The Islanders just signed mediocre goalie Rick DiPietro to a new contract. The cost-per-year ($4.5M) is only somewhat high for a mediocre goalie, but it's a FIFTEEN-YEAR deal. As you might expect, this has drawn some attention in the sporting press:

The theory emanating out of Charles Wang's Long Island bunker is that in the wake of the team's management fiasco of earlier this summer, wherein it hired Neil Smith as GM only to can him 40 days later and promote backup netminder Garth Snow to the post, DiPietro's long-long-term $67.5 million deal would be a sign of stability.

Ho, ho. Ha, ha, ha. Stop it. Really.

Just because a television station runs a "Three Stooges" marathon doesn't mean the program director is a genius. It just means he has more "Three Stooges" tapes than he knows what to do with.

If DiPietro is even in the league in 15 years, I'll eat a puck.

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