Archive for the 'Sports in General' Category

Apparently There is a Hanging on the Net Epidemic

Published
by
Tar Heel Fan
on May 25, 2007
in Sports in General
. 1 Comment

Winning the Turnover Battle(hat tip Deadspin) delved into the Google Patent Search and found some fabulous sports inventions which will never see the light of day including a “no hang basketball net” which apparently will prevent thousands of playground basketball hoops from having their nets ripped down my wayward youth. Obviously the lack of nets on basketball hoops around the country is so daunting we needed to invent a net which does not hang down despite the fact that (1) The goal will continue to look naked since the net will not be hanging down and (2) Having played basketball enough I can safely say that not having a net hanging down really hinders your perception of the goal itself from certain angles.

And I would also point out that most playground lack nets because the weather dry rots the twine and they get ripped off from shear wear, not because people pull on them.

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Let Me Just Say This One Thing…

Published
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Tar Heel Fan
on April 11, 2007
in Sports in General
. 30 Comments

I usually keep myself above frays involving hot button issues outside of sports. However, like everyone else in the nation I cannot avoid the Don Imus flap over his remarks concerning the Rutgers women’s basketball team and particularly one remark made by one of the players.

“It kind of scars us. We grew up in a world where racism exists, and there’s nothing we can do to change that,” said Matee Ajavon, another member of the team. “I think that this has scarred me for life.”

No actually having your college life disrupted, your athletic career prematurely ended, and your reputation profoundly destroyed by a false accusation of rape and the overzealous actions of a power hungry prosecutor is the textbook definition of a life scarring event. I have no point of reference to know what a minority person feels when an offensive phrase is used like this but I would imagine that it is far from being a life scarring event.

And if it is, does that not mean you are letting the bigots win?

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Youth Football Parents Gone Wild

Published
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Tar Heel Fan
on September 6, 2006
in Justice and Sports in General
. 0 Comments

As a parent with children approaching the age where they might be able to participate in actual sporting events I have spent some time thinking about how I should conduct myself when I go watch them play. My hope is that I can be more controlled than I am when I watch UNC play(for which Tar Heel Wife gives me grief when I do it in the presence of the Tar Heel Children). Of course I am pretty sure I can refrain myself from running onto the field and hitting an opposing player who just committed a late hit on my kid. According to MSNBC:

An assistant youth football coach who allegedly rushed onto the field and assaulted a boy on the opposing team was arrested on suspicion of felony child abuse, police said.

Cory Petero, 36, of Riverbank, turned himself in Saturday night following what witnesses described as a late hit that turned into a brawl, with parents and children from both teams fighting on the field for about 20 minutes.

The video shows one player being hit a good three to four seconds after the play was whistled dead by an opposing player who was twice his size. Petero apparently took exception this and ran onto the field to knock the kid over. Obviously Petero is in the wrong here and needs some counseling to figure out what childhood athletic failure or trauma places spurns him to run out and hit players who commit late hits on his son. Then again I also find much of the reporting on this incident a little strange.

One issue is the boy’s father is claiming his son suffered bruises on the stomach and jaw from the assault. Now I have seen the footage and the boy, Brian Wood, 13, is not too much smaller than Petero and the hit itself while pretty hard did not result in a fall any worse than Wood would have endured had he been tackled by another player. I am also curious how Wood could have bruised his stomach and jaw when he is clearly able to break the fall with his hands and immediately rolls into the sitting position and starts to get up? Must be some pretty shoddy football padding they have out there in California. Granted I have not seen the boy nor am I able to but since the police reported no injuries it is a curious revelation coming from the father, who incidentally does not share the same last name as his son and according to The Stockton Record “indentified himself as Wood’s father.” Not to minimize the crime here but I smell a civil suit on the way.

Another aspect of the video, which in no way justifies Petero’s actions, but may have incited them is that fact Wood did commit an extremely egregious late hit. It also should be noted that the other player was half the size of Wood, not the ball carrier, Wood was a blocker not a defender, Wood seems to hit the kid in the back/side and the ball itself several yards away off to the side. In other words this was tatmount to a bully hitting another kid on the playground simply because he could. And it does not matter if Wood did not know the play was dead, what reason does he have for delivering such a shot that far from the ball anyway? Was he afraid the other kid was going to tackle the ball carrier using his mind?

Of course none of this actually matters, other than giving us a brief glimpse into how such occurences are reported and what kind spin gets put on them. Petero was wrong to do what he did. I think felony child abuse is a tad extreme and I suspect he will end up doing community service and some counseling. I also think the hit by Wood was more egregious than a simple late hit. Wood should have been ejected for the hit because it served no purpose since the ball was on the other side of the field and he could have easily let up before delivering it. Petero is an adult and should have the good sense to restrain himself. Life is hard and while the hit was unfair sometimes you have to let your kids endure that suff on their own, as difficult as that may be. On the flip side I also hope that Brian Wood’s very concerned father would also take his son aside and inform him that such cheap and unnecessary hits against another player is wrong and could lead to an injury. Though I would not hold my breath on that.

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Change of Heart

Published
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Tar Heel Fan
on August 8, 2006
in Sports in General
. 0 Comments

Well sort of.

I actually started mulling this Floyd Landis controversy a little more and found a whole new litany of questions.

1. Why only one positive results out of hundreds he has had?

Landis like every other world class cyclist is tested numerous times over the course of his career. Bobby Julich wrote that the testing is so rigorous that cyclists are forced to inform the US Anti-Doping Agency and the UCI of there wheareabouts and are subject to random tests at their home even if they are not racing. So given this level of scrutiny why was Landis only caught this one time? The scenario that is playing out is that Landis was so devasted by his Stage 16 failure where he fell eight minutes behind the yellow jersey that he used some sort of synthetic testosterone that night to enable a quicker recovery which led to his amazing comeback in Stage 17. However, there is some debate over whether anything Landis could have taken or any patch he could have used would have provided enough effect to enable him to pull of the comeback he managed that day in France. It is also been made clear that for him to try anything of this nature would have been exceptionally stupid since there is no way to mask it. So what we have here is a set of conditions which must be proven true: (1) The testosterone had to be effective (2) Landis had to act in a manner out of character for him and turn to some kind of perfomance enhancer to ausuage the pain of losing the yellow jersey by such a wide margin and (3) Landis would have to be inherently stupid to think he would not get caught on the post-stage test. I think the media would be well served to ask these questions and address the issues as part of the debate.

2. Swift Justice

No one really wasted one moment(myself included) in pronouncing Landis guilty as charged. I saw very little in the way of actually anlysis or postulating some kind of reasonable explanation for the postive result. Sure there were the “kitchen sink” theories which lawyers for Landis threw out in the first days following the leaked results of the “A” sample but no one in the media actually engaged in any objective reasoning. And on Saturday when the “B” sample result was made know the headline at ESPN.com read something like: “A+B=C’Ya” In my opinion that is neither professional or objective but a sensationalized headline. It also should be noted that the level of interest in the Tour de France was minimal until this happened and now the media seems to care so much because we live in such a rubberneck culture where the misery of others is entertainment to us. If anything the media has been totally complicit with process to convict Landis which is far removed from there role. As for the speed of the condemnations, it seems a little odd that everyone is tossing Landis under a bus so quick when Tyler Hamilton was accused of blood doping two years ago and has yet to be fired from his team(Phonak the same team that dismissed Landis ten seconds after the results came out) nor widely condemned by the media in general. And while this is not unusual for the people to hang you before the trial, the move to dismiss Landis has a air that someone might be hiding something. Speaking of which…

3. Conspiracy Theory

Landis said yesterday that the UCI and WADA have an agenda. He blasted them for failing to follow their own procedure in leaking his “A” sample results and lamented the fact he was condemned in the media before being properly informed so he could mount a resonable defense(which he says led to the wild theories coming from his camp). Now I think conspiracy theories are often times wrong because it requires too much complicity among too many people to get it all right and keep it a secret. In other words someone in the conspiratorial chain of individuals is going to slip up or talk about it. That being said, let’s take Landis’ theory at face value and ask what agenda the UCI, WADA, and the Tour de France could have.

First there is a longstanding feud between WADA president Dick Pound and Lance Armstrong. Basically everyone at the UCI, Tour de France, and WADA believe Armstrong cheated and was blood doping at some point in his string of seven wins at the Tour. The problem is no one has been able to prove it and it has led to some nasty back and forth between the parties. The question is would the WADA, UCI, and Tour de France be so petty as to switch the samples on Landis in an effort to discredit him and his Tour win as a veiled shot at Armstrong and United States? Would these parties be so petty as to frame Landis out of spite because another American won the Tour? Did they decide to make an example of someone in light of banning the top contenders prior to the Tour? Granted these all seem a little silly or not very plausible but that is not the real issue.

The real issue is we are ready to believe Landis is a cheater without pausing to ask whether the WADA, UCI, and Tour de France are capable of unehtical behavior. If it is so easy to believe that Landis, who had one positive test out of the hundreds he has taken, is capable of committing such a horrendus act of cheating on one occasion then does it not stand to reason that we can also believe that members of the WADA, Tour, and UCI who have made numerous accusatory statements against Lance Armstrong are also capable of engaging in a fraud to frame Landis. The point is you cannot(easily) declare Landis to be unethical without also considering the possibility of something shady going on with these governing bodies who have repeatedly shown a penchant for anti-American seniment where Armstrong was concerned. I do not think it is that much a stretch of logic to believe they would flog Landis as an example to others, as a cheap shot at the U.S. or just out of anti-American spite in general. Now I will grant Occam’s razor and the general complexity of conspiracies puts a serious damper on this thinking but I also see nothing in the past behavior of people like Dick Pound or the director of the Tour de France which makes me comfortable granting them absolute moral authority in this issue.

4. Maintaining Innocenence

I brought this up yesterday and it deserves a little more thought. If the evidence is so damining what reason would Landis have for maintaining his innocence? I said there were two possibilities: The first is he is mounting the Pete Rose defense which is to deny everything in hopes you can be exonorated on a technicality or you deny because you are trapped into it by the PR machine. The second possibility for maintaining your innocence regardless of the evidence is because…well…you are innocent. After having considered the issues I am beginning to lean towards the possibility that Landis may actually be innocent because the Pete Rose defense is such an idiotic defense to mount I am not sure why anyone would undertake it. Landis denied wrongdoing from Day 1 which is usually a good PR move but to maintain the denial even after the evidence is in means you are unwilling to come out of the corner you painted yourself in by initial denial or you actually believe you are innocent. Based on what I have seen and heard from Landis, he seem to believe he is innocent. Could he be a great liar playing the PR game with deft skill? Sure, he wouldn’t be the first and certainly not the last. However, the issues above cast a long shadow of doubt on his guilt. Granted it is not nearly the shadow his innocence is under but the postive result not withstanding I still see the final verdict on this in doubt.

Final Thoughts

I am not familiar with how the testing is done but the first thing I would do, if I were Landis, is demand a DNA test on the samples in question to make sure they were my samples that were tested. There may not be a reason for this. There may be enough evidence in the chain of custody to perclude this test but I would want to make sure the samples they tested were mine. I would also ask for a release of all my test results from the Tour de France. I would be interested to know what his test after Stage 18 showed. Of course synthetic testosterone probably clears the system in the time frame between stages but I think providing overwhelming evidence of clean tests with one tainted test could be a powerful PR tool. Of course given the swift justice he has endured Landis needs to come up with incontrovertible evidence that he did not use a performance enhancer or that someone at the UCI, WADA, or Tour de France framed him for the crime. Absent that he will be considered guilty and the governing bodies will ban him with the evidence in hand.

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Roundup!

Published
by
Tar Heel Fan
on August 7, 2006
in PGA Golf and Sports in General
. 0 Comments

And this was the weekend that was:

Floyd Landis on Plan C

So Landis’ “B” sample was tested and the results were announced which showed the same thing the first one showed and that was he had too much testosterone in his body and that some of it was synthetic in nature.

(pause post)
Now, having been a NCAA student-athlete I endured the specter of the random urinalysis drug test once a season except it was not as random as one might think since you had 24 hours notice. This always led to the comical sight of the soccer players showing up, entering the bathroom with their cups and emerging with it full of completely clear urine. In other words they spend that last 24 hours drink six gallons of water in an attempt to flush their system of whatever they may have ingested, smoked, or drank which may or may not produce a postive result. In my world the two greatest dilemmas I face was (1) Whether or not I could fill the cup up to the line since they tested us after we ran 8 miles in ninety degree weather and (2) whether or not the poppyseed muffin I ate the week before would show up as an opiate on the test.

I also am humored by the fact that all these world class athletes have vials of the urine or blood stored in labs all over the world which can be taken out and tested days, months, and years later to see if they were juiced or not.
(resume post)

Anyway, Landis is not in full spin control as he conducted interviews this morning in which he distanced himself from the more ridiculous excuses he offered last week such as drinking beer caused his levels to go up. He is also maintaining total innocence which is an interesting position to take in the face of such damning evidence. A man who stands firm like this when everything we know says otherwise is either (1) Clinging to a wing and a prayer or (2) Actually innocent. I honestly do not know how the second could be true unless you buy into Landis’ theory that the UCI and World Anti-Doping Agency has an agenda. This is somewhat plausible in light of the accusations leveled against Lance Armstrong but as with all conspiracy theories it also requires too many people to know what is happening to make it happen. I mean this isn’t a soap opera where someone can sneak into the lab and switch the labels on the DNA test to make little Nicky believe that Paul is his father and not Ned. I assume there are significant controls in place.

Landis is basically in Pete Rose territory now where if the samples are correct he is only hurting himself in the long run by sticking with a defense that is totally debunked by the evidence and no one outside of his family and hometown actually believe. Landis also has to prove how synthetic testosterone made it into his sample if he did not use a patch. That excuse should be interesting to say the least.

Tiger Wins Buick Open

Tiger Woods gave the rest of the PGA Tour something to think about as we head towards the final major of the season by shooting four consecutive 66s and winning by three strokes over Jim Furyk. And yes Tiger hit driver in this tournament, only hit 2/3 of the fairways and still won by three. I did not see but on shot of this tournament and it was Tiger driving the ball left of the green on a par 4 from the tee and then angrily swinging the club again. Woods then walked down to his ball alone with driver in hand which I presume he was ready to break against a tree somewhere. As much as is made about Woods’ drives and the erratic nature of his accuracy it should be noted that if his second shots are dead on and his putting is good then the drives really do not matter. Woods hits his second shots, even from the rough, well enought to overcome his failure to drive the ball as accurately as everyone else. The PGA Championship is in two weeks and it will be Tiger Woods’ tournament to lose.

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This Weekend While I Was Battling the Plague

Published
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Tar Heel Fan
on July 24, 2006
in PGA Golf and Sports in General
. 0 Comments

I was sick all weekend which made me fairly miserable but also granted me total control of the bedroom television all day. I was able to enjoy the full weekend coverage of the British Open and the Tour de France which both turned out to be American triumphs. In my last post I covered the emotional impact of Tiger Woods’ victory at Royal Liverpool. Now on to the rest of the things I observed while trying to cough up my right lung.

The British Open

  • I heard some golf analyst interviewed on 850 the Buzz last week who said that Sergio Garcia is still somewhat immune to criticism for not having delivered the goods since standing toe-to-toe with Tiger Woods at the 1999 PGA Championship. My question is can we criticize him now? Not only does Garcia break multiple fashion taboos out there he simply folds like a cheap lawn chair when he gets anywhere close to a lead in a major. On Saturday, Garcia blistered the front nine at 29 and moved within one shot of Woods at -11. With three negotiable par 5s left on the back nine Garcia produces one birdie and finished the day at -12. Woods was -13 and led to Garcia and Woods being paired together. Bad news for Sergio who bogeyed four holes on the front and took himself out of contention. One announcers said Sergio probably wishes “Tiger was 42, 43 years old.” I am not sure even that would matter.
  • Let me just say I like Chris DiMarco. He almost matched Tiger shot for shot. I would have been interested to have seen how the round would have gone had they been paired together. It would have made for some epic golf I am sure. It was also a case of two grieving sons dueling each other for that “destiny” win for their father/mother. Tiger won that duel but no one would have minded if DiMarco had pulled it out.
  • “CAMERA PHONES!!!” That was Woods’ cry on at least two occassions where he stepped away from his ball after being peturbed by the beeping of camera phones. It happened so often that Woods and Garcia were warned on the 10th for slow play. This led to an interesting discussion among the ABC announcers of whether the PGA would enforce a one stroke penalty if the slow play continued(BTW, they were slow, a full hole behind DiMarco/Els but then again they were the last group.) Yeah, riiiiiggghhhht. The PGA is going to dock Tiger a stroke on something as trivial as slow play when he is holding up no one behind him. A better idea would be the PGA removing anyone from the course who is brandishing a camera phone while the player is addressing the ball. I am sure the specter of being kicked out of the tournament would be enough of a deterrent for those amatuer photogs.
  • Someone on ESPN Radio this morning suggested that Woods’ win was cheapened by the fact he chose to hit driver only once and instead hit three wood and 2 iron to keep the ball on the fairway and short of the pot bunkers. At times Woods was a full 100 yeards behind Els or Garcia on his drive but because he hits his irons so far and so well he can accomodate for the extra distance. It is no secret Tiger has not hit his driver accurately in a long time and his strategy at Hoylake was simple: Keep it in the fairway. In doing so Woods showed himself to be a brillant tactician as well as physically capable golf player. This theory is wrong for two reasons. First, it forces Tiger to hit a longer second shot which requires far more accuracy considering the speed of the greens and pin location on a links course. Woods essentially played to his strength which is not necessarily his drives but his approach shots. Not to mention, Woods’ putting was dead on all weekend which illustrates putting the ball in birdie position does not matter if you are unable to put it in the hole(Just ask Sergio Garcia). The second point is the object of the game of golf which is to move the ball from the tee to hole in the fewest number of strokes over 72 holes. Nowhere in the rules of golf does it dictate certain clubs must be used to accomplish this task. Woods did what he needed to do to accomplish the goal which was shoot the lowest score. I could care less if he used a putter to do it and speaking of which I found it more disturbing guys were putting from the fairway onto the green than I did Woods not using driver. This guys was trying to trump up controversey to spark an on-air argument for ratings.
  • Finally it has been 39 years since the Open was played at Hoylake. What are the odds it will be another 39 years or when Tiger is out of his prime before it ends up there again.

Tour de France

  • Much to the chargrin of Frenchman another American won the Tour de France this weekend. Floyd Landis who was counted out after Stage 16 when he fell 8 minutes back(yeah he’s done) came back in Stage 17 and close the gap back to 30 seconds, stayed put until the Stage 19 time trial which constitutes the last “real” stage on the Tour. Since Landis was far superior in the time trial than any of the overall leaders he concluded Saturday with a minute lead which would be enough to secure victory on Sunday. Why?
  • Because for some reason the last stage in Paris is a stage that is not really a stage. In other words your opponents are either unable to catch up to you because the stage occurs on the streets of Paris or out of some sense of sportmanship they refuse to try. Lance Armstrong said that it was cermonial for the most part except if you fell and broke a collarbone you could lose the Tour. This probably explains why Landis had teammates surrounding his bike for most of the stage. If you ask me it seems a little anti-climatic. If the stage counts when make the winner earn it. If the streets of Paris cannot accomodate real racing then leave Paris for the very end and have some real racing to determine the winner. This would be like a team winning their third game in the World Series and then handing them the next game in a slow pitch softball exhibition.
  • And the OLN announcers were good for the most part except for one depressing segment where they lamented Carlos Sastre who was close to the lead and then was blown away in the time trial. They kept using phrases like “he has lost everything” and “you have to feel for Sastre having rode so well only to lose now.” First of all, stop the presses, we have never seen a case in the history of sports where someone leads a race or game all the way through and then fails at the end. The NCAA Tournament was made on stuff like that. Secondly, they make it sound so life altering as though Sastre is contemplating suicide for having failed so utterly in his pursuit of cycling’s greatest prize. I have expected him to take a ride straight off a mountain since apparently life was no longer worth living.
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Quote of the Day

Published
by
Tar Heel Fan
on July 14, 2006
in Sports in General
. 0 Comments

From Michelle Wie after shooting a six-over 77 in the first round of the PGA’s John Deere Classic:

“It was very uncharacteristic,” she said. “Considering that I had the water hazard penalties, considering that I had to call unplayable, considering that I hit my driver like 50 yards right, I felt like I played really well.

Um, OK, except she just described what happens when I play a round of golf. That would be like me saying, “Considering I got two traffic citations, considering I hit a parked car at the office, considering I kept running off the road on the interstate I feel like I had a good drive to work.”

I probably should cut her some slack since she is only 16 years old. One problem is that everyone in the media wants to act like she is mature beyond her years and posesses some sort of media savvy. She does not and this quote is evidence of that. When offering your own “spin” on a set of events it always helps to stay fairly close to the truth of what happened so the “spin” itself is credible. For Wie to say she felt she played well when her score and the actual events speak to the contrary illustrates so serious deficiencies where addressing the media is concerned. Of course if you are unable to “spin” the events to your liking just find a good scapegoat:

“I would like to say it didn’t, but it bothered me a little bit,” she said. “Bugs on me, I hate bugs, and I was starting to get a little aggravated like the fifth time I stepped out. I was a little aggravated, but I felt like I shook it off.”

This is just another point that proves Wie would be better off devoting herself full time to the LPGA Tour honing both her golf and public relations skills hopefully in a bug free environment.

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All Star Caliber Thoughts

Published
by
Tar Heel Fan
on July 11, 2006
in MLB and Sports in General
. 0 Comments

Well, not really.

We have more insight into what drove France’s Zinedine Zidane to head butt Italy’s Marco Materazzi in the chest drawing a red card during the World (Non)Cup Final Sunday in Germany.

Well actually we have conflicting accounts, one which says Materazzi called Zidane “the son of a terrorist whore” and also told him to go engage himself in a sexual act which may or may not be anatomically possible. Materazzi has since denied the claim saying that he did insult him but did not call him a terrorist or presumably the offspring of one. The Italian clamied that he was not cultured and says he did not even know what an Islamic terrorist was.

Are you kidding me? Does Itlay keep this guy in a bubble and only let him out to play World (Non)Cup games? Unless you have been absent from the planet or not living in a civilized modern society(which I am pretty sure includes Italy) you know what an Islamic terrorist is and you know that Islamic terrorism is a bit of a problem right now which means he knew exactly how horrible an insult it was. I actually think confessing to not knowing what an Islamic terrorist is in 2006 following three major attacks in the U.S., Spain, and Britain as well as two wars in the Middle East shows he may have fewer brain cells than Zidane did for cold cocking his culturally ignorant rear end onto the field of play. Materazzi obviously missed the first day of media savvy training which stipulates then when you deny having said something and you want to claim ignorance that ignorance has to be plausible on some level. Unless he has been underground or off the earth for the past six years then claiming ignorance on the definition of an Islamic terrorists is simply not credible.

I am also marveling at the incredible cross-cultural power of insulting someone else’s mother as a means of talking trashing during a sporting event. And here I thought that questioning another player’s parentage or disparaging the loins from which they were conceived and birthed was solely an American art form and skill. This instance proves that insulting another person’s mother not only has international appeal as an effective physchological technique but it also produces far more violent responses when employed against a European player versus some street baller in Harlem. It also shoule be noted that if there were more head butts of that variety during World (Non)Cup games, the ratings would be right up there with the NFL.

And I will make brief mention of baseball’s All Star Game which I used to enjoy but now not so much because (1) I do not believe an exhibition game should have any impact on how championships get decided such as determining home field advantage and (2) I also think preparation for this game or the game itself should influence the unfolding of the regular season as little as possible. In other words, managers should use whomever they want prior to the All Star Game and not have to worry about whether a pitcher will be available to start in an exhibition game on Tuesday if he pitches in a game which has actual bearing on the standings on Sunday. Players should play as little as possible during the game as to protect them from injury and not cause serious issues in their own teams pursuit of the pennant. This goes back to my first point which is removing the HFA factor from the All Star Game and allowing it to stand as an exhibition for the fans and not something that actually has any meaning. Sooner or later someone crucial to a first place team will get injured or a pitcher will blow out his elbow and then you will see some controversy.

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Since Bashing the French is Cool…

Published
by
Tar Heel Fan
on July 10, 2006
in Sports in General
. 0 Comments

….I think I will join in. Italy beat France on penalty kicks or some such nonsense as that to win the World Cup which is not actually a cup but a golden ball on top of some golden stand. I mean the Stanley Cup is an actual cup but now we find out the World Cup is not an actual cup but a trophy with a ball on top. Why not call it the World Ball or the World Trophy. World Cup? A tad misleading methinks.

But I digress….

The real story of the other than the fact they once again kicked the ball around for 120 minutes only managed to score one goal each is the actions of the French captain Zinedine Zidane who was red carded and therefore ejected for headbutting an Italian player for reasons unknown to those watching the game(which did not include me, I was busy cleaning up after having a flooring crew in my house for three days.)

The most shocking aspect of the headbutt was that I completely unaware that the French were capable of such unprovoked and egregious violence. Where was this spunk in 1939? The second most shocking aspect is the fervent protest Zidane gave to the referee for getting the red card as though he did nothing wrong. Though it should be noted that he is a French soccer player so protesting and whining about something he clearly did wrong is not a surprising as one might think.

The best line concerning the final yesterday came from the Ace of Spades blog who said of the French:

In fairness, they lasted longer against the Italian soccer team than they did against Hitler.

Anyway, I am glad that is over.

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The Weekend That Was

Published
by
Tar Heel Fan
on June 19, 2006
in Carolina Hurricanes, PGA Golf, Sports in General and UNC Baseball
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I came to a realization Saturday night. I realized how glad I was that the NCAA Tournament does not include a best-of-seven series to win the championship. I just do not know how much I could deal with UNC being up 3-1 on someone and have them lose two straight games and look really bad doing it. Of course I would have to think that UNC would have more titles since series play tends to produce the better team in the end. I really hope that is the case tonight as Carolina hosts Edmonton in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals. The Canes looked flat and basically were steamrolled by the Oilers physical play in a Game 6 loss 4-0. I also thought the Oilers got away with felony assault on some checks but that does not tend to matter when you allow Edmonton to carve up your zone and get clean shots at Cam Ward. Erik Cole returned to the lineup after being at three months with a broken neck(and let it be said that I hope I can go back to doing anything three months later if I ever break my neck or even two cracked vertabrae as was the case with Cole) There is nothing like a Game 7 for ALL the marbles. One goal could win it and the Canes need to wake up and take it right to Edmonton’s zone, they need to be physical, and they need to leave it all on the ice because there is no tomorrow.

UNC baseball is rolling at the College World Series. They topped Cal State-Fullerton Friday night in extra innings and last night handed #1 Clemson a 2-0 loss. If the Heels win once more they get a slot in the best-of-three championship series(yeah I know what I said before.) UNC has some very strong pitching including two guys taken in the first round of the MLB draft earlier this month. Here’s hoping for another national title in Chapel Hill.

In case anyone was beginning to think Phil Mickelson was on the same level with Tiger Woods, Mickelson took care of that by choking away a one shot lead with a double bogey on the 18th hole of the US Open yesterday at ultra difficult Winged Foot. Mickelson who called himself an “idiot” afterwards used his driver and sent the ball into the rough and then instead of chipping back onto the fairway tried to hit the ball out of the woods and played pinball with the trees. Needless to say I can relate which is why the US Open is so fun because all of these pros end up looking like your favorite uncle after he has had five beers and lost four golf balls. Now, Woods did not make the cut but he also had not played since the Master because of the death of his father. I know I was barely thinking straight two months after my father died and given Earl Woods prominence in the golfing career of his son it may take Tiger a while to get his “A” game back. The difference between Mickelson and Woods in that situation is Woods would have found a way to win. He would have either made a smarter club selection on the drive or pull out some tremendous shot to at least salvage the playoff. It would have been Mickelson’s third straight major title, now all it is images of Vintage Lefty choking away the big one. My father-in-law who theorizes that Tiger Woods majors drought was the only reason Phil finally won most likely enjoyed yesterday’s result. He has some serious dislike for Mickelson.

And let me note that my opinions of the NBA Finals and World Cup soccer are the same as they were last week. On the NBA front I watched Dallas opt to foul Shaquille O’Neal instead of actually playing defense since O’Neal makes about one free throw as often as they score goals in World Cup soccer. The NBA is just not good basketball to watch and the fact they are starting game at 9:20 PM EDT is atrocious. They spend so much time on pre-game and I cannot really be sure what can be said about the game that has not been said every 10 minutes on SportCenter every day and night. As for the World Cup, there is more time spent kicking the ball around than anything else. I see final scores of 0-0 flash by which means two teams kicked the ball around for over 90 minutes and nothing happened. I also find the players behavior after they get knocked down as though a sniper in the press box has blown a hole in their right leg only to bounce up once a yellow card is issued to their opponent. I know baseball is also low scoring and so is hockey but at least there are things happening in the context of the game. I see very little going on in a soccer match.

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