Category: Sports

The Greatest Game Ever Played is a true story about an unaccomplished young golfer, Francis Ouimet, at the turn of the century and how he beat the world’s top two golfers in an 18-hole playoff at the 1913 U.S. Open.

Francis’s goal to be a great golfer is juxtaposed against his father’s more mundane ideas. Mr. Ouimet is a hard-working immigrant from the old school. His attitude toward Francis’s ambitions is summed up by his words: “Being a man means knowing one’s place in the world and making peace with it” (quote isn’t exact). Although the movie is somewhat sympathetic to Mr. Ouimet, overall his thinking is portrayed as peasant-like: backward, old world, and as un-American as his foreign accent.

The movie portrays Francis’s struggle and eventual championship at the U.S. Open as the American way. His battle celebrates initiative (trying to be the best), democratic social leveling (crashing through barriers that surrounded the game at the turn of the century), and individualism (doing what he wants, even against his father’s wishes).… Read the rest

Welcome to the first day of spring.

So I’m a bit whipped this morning. My last son, Max, is a huge college basketball fan. Over the years, he has gotten kind of screwed when it comes to sporting events. I always tell my kids, “Every stage of life brings its advantages and disadvantages, and so does the order in which you’re born.” In Max’s case, it means his parents had more money to provide him with things but less time to do things. I know that sounds kinda horrible, and perhaps it is, but I’ve always been comforted by the fact that his older siblings had plenty of time to do things with him.

But they couldn’t take him to sporting events.

So I made up for it a bit yesterday, and crossed-off an item on my bucket list: Go to the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

We got screwed by the NCAA right off the bat. In order to get tickets (which sold out in less than a minute), you just had to pick a location and slot. In our case, Max selected “Lucas Oil, First Game.” We then waited a week to see which of the 32 games we got for our $111 per seat.

We got Baylor v. Hartford. Hands-down the worst game of the 32.

And that’s not just my opinion. The free market agrees. Whereas most resale value of tickets hovered around $100, the Baylor game resale value was just $6.

I honestly can’t imagine why the NCAA needed to set up a system (a blind sale) that inherently screws a large number of fans, but it screwed me.

And we chose Lucas Oil, home of the Colts, so it meant we would be high up (turns out, were we very high up . … Read the rest

And Miscellaneous Other Matters

I guess I really, really don’t like soccer

If you’re like me and enjoy sports but only marginally like baseball, you might want to get a Roku and check out some of the lesser-known sports. ESPN3 shows a lot of great stuff: cricket, Arena Football, lacrosse, and ultimate frisbee. I only watch on Saturday nights when I’m winding down the week and occasionally on Friday nights when I’m winding down my drinking, but I’ve seen enough to endorse these off-beat sports.

Of these, Arena Football is probably my favorite, unless ESPN is doing a bad camera job (which happens; these productions are pretty low-budget). I attended a handful of Arena Football games, back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the Detroit Drive dominated the league. Those games were a lot of fun to watch, so watching today’s Arena Football brings back some of those memories.

I’ve enjoyed watching cricket enough to consider learning the rules. Granted, I’ve watched a total of 15 minutes of cricket this summer, but that’s a lot for me (I can’t get through an NFL football game without multi-tasking or turning it off in the late second quarter and doing something else during half-time and the early third quarter . . . unless I’m drinking). Based on what I’ve seen, I’d probably be better off not trying to analogize to baseball. I think it’ll just confuse me.

I really like lacrosse in person, but the television coverage isn’t very good. The camera is too far away from the ball. You can’t really tell what’s going on. I used to attend Detroit Turbos games, of the Major Indoor Lacrosse League. Those games were great to watch: Small arena (Joe Louis, where the Drive played), fast action. I thought I’d like lacrosse on TV, but I simply don’t. You might.

Finally, there’s ultimate … Read the rest

Congratulations to Michigan State University, which has plowed into the Elite 8 . . . as a seven seed.

It makes you wonder: What was the selection committee thinking? Why in the world would you give MSU, which almost always turns into a Top 10 team in March, a 7 seed?

I might have the answer: The team selection and seeding don’t depend on what the committee thinks a team will do. It’s based on what a team did during the regular season.

And Michigan State lost 11 games in the regular season, going 26-11. Can you blame the selection committee for seeding them 7th?

Actually, you probably can. Most of those 11 losses came against powerhouse teams: ND, Duke, Kansas, Maryland, Wisconsin. And the AP voters were impressed enough to rank MSU 23rd in the nation at the end of the regular season . . . which should translate to, at a minimum, a sixth seed. And to the extent the committee takes into account late-season performance (which pundits say it does, which would, incidentally, imply that a projection for how a team will do plays into the committee’s analysis), the committee shouldn’t have ignored MSU’s late season surge: winning four straight before losing to Wisconsin in over-time in the Big Ten championship game.

I’m reminded about how well the Big Ten did in the football bowl games this year . . . and reminded that Ohio State won the national championship:

Ohio State 42, Alabama 35
Michigan State 42, Baylor 41
Wisconsin 34, Auburn 31 (OT)
Missouri 33, Minnesota 17
Stanford 45, Maryland 21
Pedophile State 31, Boston College 30 (OT)
USC 45, Nebraska 42
Louisiana Tech 35, Illinois 18
Rutgers 40, North Carolina 21

That’s 5-4 . . . and 2-1 against the SEC, which, commentators repeatedly … Read the rest

Miscellaneous Rambling

My eldest brother moved to Mississippi back in the 1990s. I took my first trip down there in 1999. I had always been a fan of the old South, so I was greatly looking forward to roaming around the oldest of the Old. Although we stayed in the northern reaches (my brother lives in Tupelo), I saw a lot of the Mississippi delta life and history, even breaking into Arkansas briefly.

My favorite spot was Oxford, home of Faulkner and home of Ole Miss. We spent quite a bit of time walking around campus, and I was favorably impressed. It had a “grand” feel to it, something cavalier. After that trip, I adopted Ole Miss as my “second favorite team” (after Michigan) and started rooting for them: partly out of respect for what I saw and the fact that I, after spending 90 minutes there and eating lunch on its quad, could boast that few people in Michigan had ever spent as much time on Ole Miss’ campus as I; partly out of my inborn tendency to root for the underdog; and partly out of affection for my eldest brother.

I renewed my adoption last year when I went back to Oxford and drove around the campus with my kids before my niece’s wedding.

So Saturday night was hard. I can’t say I watched the entire Mississippi-Auburn game (I rarely watch entire football games; I simply get “too antsy” to sit there that long), but I watched the fourth quarter and cheered loudly when Treadwell (who stunned me with his abilities) crossed the goal line to take the lead with a minute left in the game. And then it fell apart: Treadwell was hurt, bad, and replay showed that the ball came loose at the one-foot line, … Read the rest