Blog Posts For: January 2009

Super Bowl!!! After this incredible season in which the chi of the year was changed with the injury of Tom Brady, the NFL season has come down to a game between the 14-4 Pittsburgh Steelers dominating defense and the 12-7 Arizona Cardinals tremendous passing attack. To end it all, I have a few predictions to make.

Which is rarer, pure greatness or a great center? This question came up after Brian Schmitz of the Orlando Sentinel posted the vexing question in anticipation for the Cleveland Cavaliers-Orlando Magic game on Thursday night. Essentially the article was asking what is more valuable to a championship team, a player with pure greatness like LeBron James or a player with an incredible set of skills for a true center?

Yesterday must have been a slow news day on the MLB scene. The only thing ESPN had to offer was a blurb about Joe Torre and his depiction of Alex Rodriguez in his new tell-all book about his time with the New York Yankees and the fact that Jerry Manuel would not mind having Manny Ramirez in the New York Mets outfield. Rather ho hum stories I thought, but then I began to make some connections and thought: why would Manuel want Ramirez?

Eddy Curry began his career as a big boy for the Chicago Bulls with a lot of potential. Now he is a big man for the New York Knicks with the world around him falling apart. He has dropped out of the rotation, been accused of sexual harassment by his former male limo driver, and recently found out that his former girlfriend and mother of his three-year-old son has been murdered.

Last season the Tampa Bay Rays came out of nowhere with god-like pitching, a little bit of power, and a whole lotta speed to shock every Yankees fan and die hard Red Sox faithful and win the American League East. They had the right elements and they came together at the right time. The club ultimately lost the World Series but still managed to shock the baseball-verse.

It seems like the winter wasteland that blankets the top half of this country is so intense that few things can bring a solid group of sports fans together. There is the Super Bowl, which is on February 1st this year, but little else seems to excite a nation that lives to love sports.

Does great offense trump great defense? Anybody in Chicago who watched Michael Jordan terrorize the league’s best perimeter defenders every night would say so. Anyone who has watched Alex Rodriguez win intense battles at the plate for the New York Yankees against Cy Young winners would say so. Anybody who remembers the smooth skating of Wayne Gretzky would say so. So, in this upcoming Super Bowl will the explosive Cardinals offense be able to overcome the dominating Steelers defense?

Now that the only high seeded team left is the Pittsburgh Steelers I think it is official that all bets are off. Say what you will about the Steelers defense, the offense has been inconsistent and the playoffs, especially the conference championship, is no time to test your defenses ability to carry a game.

Twenty-three. Yes, twenty three. I am not chanting Michael Jordan’s old number, but counting the number of three-point shots made by the Orlando Magic Tuesday night against the Sacramento Kings. The Magic hit 23 of 37 shots from beyond the arc to set an NBA record for the most triples made by a team in a single game. They were hitting shots from all over the place and nine players helped the Magic capture the record even after garbage time had started in the fourth quarter.

The experts are dumbfounded and I am looking back at most post Friday and wondering how I could have been so blind. Surely, everybody in the Carolinas and Tennessee assumed they were going to have another week to find NFL Playoff tickets. Three of the four favored teams lost this weekend. The Ravens started out by surprising the Titans 13-10, then Cardinals embarrassed the Panthers 33-13, and the upsets were capped off by the Eagles delivering the emotional defeat of the New York Giants 23-11. Only the Pittsburgh Steelers were able to take advantage of home field advantage in a 35-24 win over the San Diego Chargers that was much more one-sided than the score reveals.

Yes, the Florida Gators won their second BCS championship with a 24-14 victory over the Oklahoma Sooners. The season’s end was of course embroiled in the controversy, for the sixth time in 10 years (I thought the new system was supposed to clear up the confusion not further institutionalize it). There are loud voices of outrage…again.

This time the argument is that the Utah Utes have been robbed of the college championship for the second time (the first time was in 2004). Luckily my preference for the professional game really pays off this time of the year. It is not a bowl committee deciding which single game decides the “best” team, but NFL Playoff tickets that will give a definitive answer.

Led Zeppelin is back…sans Robert Plant. More than a year ago, after the Ahmet Ertegun Tribute Concert, Led Zeppelin took the stage with Jason Bonham respectively taking his father’s place on drums. The rumors of a reunion persisted, but ultimately it was Robert Plant who laid them to rest, insisting that he was only concerned with his work with Alison Krauss.

The Boston Celtics started 27-2 and looked like they were going to be the team to beat the Chicago Bulls historic 72-10 season in 1995-96. The season looked like one long holiday, but Christmas Day began with coal in their stockings and by New Years Eve it looked like Boston would have to make a resolution to play better defense.

The American League East just got a little more interesting. The Tampa Bay Rays are well on their way to completing a deal that will bring Pat Burrell to Florida for just $16 million over two seasons.

After four weeks of meaningless preseason games and 17 weeks of football that twisted and turned, beginning with an injury that cost the Patriots NFL Playoff tickets and gave every team a chance to fill the void in the Super Bowl, the wild card round of the postseason finally began.

New Years Day kicked off 2009 with a familiar tradition, a Big Ten team showing up a lame duck to the Rose Bowl. This time it was Penn State lost badly to USC by a score of 38-24. The halftime score was 31-7, so the final score really did Penn State more justice than they really deserve. The chatter was that this was the game that would decide whether the Big Ten was a major joke or a major conference. At 1-5 so far, with one game left the Big Ten is officially an invalid of a conference.

The one and done feature after 17 weeks of jarring hits, needless holding calls, and general professional football drama is set to start this weekend. It is almost fitting that the second chapter of the NFL should begin the first week of the New Year. The only thing that matters from the 16 previous regular season games and the pointless four preseason contests only matter in the respect that they got these 12 teams here.