March Madness fun with names, NFL notes, Joe's brush with death, and Jason's obsession with the term "sting ring." So stupid it's brilliant.
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Wow. Talk about the rich getting richer.
Basketball power and noted snotty white kid haven, Duke University, got an early Easter present on Sunday when the selection committee nearly gave them a ticket to the Final Four. Seriously, what the hell, NCAA? Duke isn't even the No. 1 overall seed, yet gets a joke of a bracket to work with. I know, I know, there are all sorts of ups and downs in the NCAA tournament and any team can get hot and upset another (for the most part). Yet, Duke couldn't have asked for any better road this year.
Let's take a look at who's in the Duke Bracket: 9th seed Louisville? Maybe last year, but not in 2010. 4th seed Purdue? Crushed by the injury bug. 13th seed Siena has hot shooting, but it can't match up, though I hope to Jeebus they do. How about 6th seed Notre Dame? It's got several scoring options, but the Irish are just not athletic. 3rd seed Baylor is a great story after all the turbulence that program has been through and my emotional favorite, but the Bears just don't attract All-America talent like Duke. How about 2nd seed Villanova? They're from the rugged Big East and have Scottie Reynolds who seems like he's been playing college basketball for 14 years, but the team has lost five of six games and may not even survive to play Duke.
Meanwhile, No. 1 overall seed Kansas gets Big 10 champ Ohio State, the always dangerous Michigan State, plus hot Georgetown that nearly won the Big East tournament. Oh, and don't forget Maryland or Tennessee both who could upset if the Jayhawks have an off game.
Kentucky won the SEC tournament and was the top-ranked team for much of the year. What do the Wildcats get for their achievements? They get a possible early game with Texas who can physically match-up with anyone, Wisconsin who will slow the game down to a crawl in order to keep things close, a dangerous Marquette team, and the Big East champ West Virginia. I'm not a Kentucky fan and would love to see John Calipari fall early, but c'mon! The Wildcats deserve more than this.
And then there is Syracuse. The NCAA stuck the Orange in the West bracket, so lots of fun traveling for them. Plus 'Cuse gets to deal with giant killer Gonzaga, Big 12 runner up Kansas State and Big East foe Pittsburgh.
And Duke just sits there laughing. Nice job, NCAA. Next time make sure you don't have Coach K helping you with the drawings.
Read more of Brad Seal at the original "SportsPants" blog.
Let's see ... there was color television. Then remote controls. Then cable. Then VCRs. Then satellite. Then surround sound and home theaters. Then DVRs. Then high def and plasma.
Now it seems we're hitting the next level of staying home and watching the game with 3-D televisions. Right now the TVs are in the infancy and I can tell you from experience, the Dallas Cowboys' experiment with the 3-D super screen was an unmitigated disaster.
Apparently though, these new televisions will be the wave of the future. You just come home, flip on your theater system, put on some glasses and gaze at the greatness. It's like looking through a window according to people who've used it.
Is there a point in the near future where people will just stop going to games? I know you can never quite make up the game atmosphere at your home, but if you have a 3-D giant television and kick-ass surround sound, do you want to fight the traffic and pay $8 for a beer every week? What if you can bring you friends over and be guaranteed that none of them will spend the game loudly giving their retarded opinion of every play or spilling beer down your back?
Sounds kind of cool. Maybe teams will even be forced to lower ticket prices in order to compete.
Then we'll get some funky technology that lets you act like your in the movie Tron and get literally sucked into your television to participate in the game yourself. But that's at least two or three down the road. I wouldn't expect that too soon.
So get ready for some 3-D TV. But relax with the porn, it may be 3-D, but it's still only television. Don't be the creepy guy.
Read more of Brad Seal at the original "SportsPants" blog.
Oscar talk, NFL free-agency, NBA notes, one member who is sick and another has been displaced.
Click here to go to the happy fun good site.
Read more of Brad Seal at the original "SportsPants" blog.
Hey, funky title! Get it? It's the Chicago Bears and it's a bull and bear market. Plus, there is a Chicago Bulls team as well! Brilliant! It works on so many angles and ... aww forget it.
The Chicago Bears are all over the NFL free agency this year. They signed Chester Taylor away from division rival Minnesota, they got stud blocking TE Brandon Manumaleuna (sounds like a Cajun dish) from the Chargers. And the jewel of their free-agent class is sackmaster Julius Peppers from Carolina.
Yep, the Bears dumped all sorts of money in free agency. Will it work?
Ask the Washington Redskins. They dump truckloads of money around this time every single year. I don't recall too many playoff appearances for them.
The problem with the approach the Skins have taken and the Bears are taking is that the team signs a bunch of ill-fitting parts. The names are big, but they don't have specific roles.
Peppers should be a good pass-rusher, Taylor a talented back, but what about all the other holes on the Bears? The team traded for big armed quarterback Jay Cutler and hired pass-happy Mike Martz as offensive coordinator. Yet the Bears didn't help the offensive line or top receivers. The best receiver the Bears have on the team is tight end Greg Olsen and Martz is well known for shunning the tight end in his passing game.
So to summarize, the Bears have a gunslinger quarterback and a passing coordinator, but the team signs a blocking tight end and a running back in free-agency. Meanwhile, stud receiver Anquan Boldin goes to Baltimore and pass blocking tackle Chad Clifton doesn't seem to be in the Bears plans.
I have no doubt the players whom the Bears signed are good, but aside from Peppers, none were big needs.
The Redskins can tell you that method doesn't often work.
Final Olympic talk, NFL scouting combine and rumors, plus an unfortunate affliction for someone's pet.
Clickith hereth to listen to it. You won't hate yourself. Much.
Read more of Brad Seal at the original "SportsPants" blog.
Well done, Canada. You got the gold. Now go clean your shorts.
I honestly didn't think the U.S. had a chance as I saw Canada destroy Russia in the early rounds of the Olympic tournament. That was supposed to be a gold medal type match and Canada wiped the floor with those Russian types.
The U.S. beat the Canucks early in the tournament and people like myself thought that loss simply woke the Canadians up. They'd come into the gold medal game with something to prove and would therefore crush the upstart Americans with a team that reads like an NHL All-Star roster.
And yet there the Americans were, pushing the Canadians into overtime before falling in the final game of the Olympics.
So why did the Americans look so glum afterward? Sure, they lost. Losing sucks. But c'mon, man! The U.S. was one of the youngest teams in the tournament! This is a team that was hoping to make some strides during this Olympics. They were playing for 2014, but there they were, pushing the heavily favored Canadians to the brink.
I know America didn't win the gold. The Canadians deserve the praise they get. And so do the Americans.
It would have been nice to see some love given by the winners to a team that beat them once and then nearly beat them a second time despite the Canadians having every motivation to win big. The only tip of the cap I heard to the U.S. players was a big ovation for goaltender Ryan Miller during the medal ceremony.
Miller deserved it for sure; he was a beast. Don't think though that he was the only reason the U.S. was in the gold medal game. That's selling this team short. The Americans went toe to toe with the best in the world and absolutely held their own. Guys like Zach Parise, Patrick Kane and Brian Rafalski proved that they could be on any Olympic team. Yes, even a Canadian one.
So I applaud the Canadians for a gold medal they deserve, but as I say that, I can tell you without a doubt that I am proud to be a U.S. hockey fan today.
America! F--k Yeah!
Read more of Brad Seal at the original "SportsPants" blog.
Wow. Talk about going against standard thinking.
If you listed the positions of a football team from most important to least important, you start with quarterback and somewhere toward the bottom of the list would be the kicker. Sure, if the kicker was a stud, you'd rank him higher since he could win several games by himself, but that's a rare breed of kicker.
Most kickers are streaky specialists. As we saw this past season, when a kicker loses any of his confidence, he can melt down quicker than ice cream in August. It seems half of the teams in the NFL had kicking troubles this season. The Cowboys and Redskins both dumped kickers mid-season while the Bengals and Chargers lost playoff games thanks to shoddy kicking.
Kickers just seem interchangeable. A team uses one until he freaks out, then he goes to another team and tries to start fresh.
So why would the Pittsburgh Steelers and Seattle Seahawks place franchise tags on middle of the road kickers? I'm confounded, confused, and possibly even flummoxed. Like the Southpark Chewbacca defense, it does not make sense.
Jeff Reed isn't a bad kicker for Pittsburgh, but he didn't exactly set the league ablaze last year. He didn't make any kicks over 50 yards and his kickoffs were routinely short. Worth hanging onto, but not a top three kicker.
Olindo Mare is an even bigger reach for Seattle. He's 36 years old, has only been in Seattle a couple of season and every training camp, the Seahawks coaches bring in competition to overtake him. Mare had a good late season surge last year, but he struggled early. Plus, Seattle used a franchise tag on kicker Josh Brown back in 2006. Brown is now long gone.
Maybe the Seahawks and Steelers saw how badly kickers struggled this past season and don't want to risk losing their guys in free-agency. Maybe the teams are convinced that the kickers will be in the zone next season. Whatever the reason, both teams are paying top dollar to hold into their guys, so they should probably have a team psychologist on site just in case things go a little wacky on their kicker's brain.
Read more of Brad Seal at the original "SportsPants" blog.
Tiger talk
Meaning of Mardis Gras
NBA Trades
And Olympics thoughts
Plus general silliness all on this week's SportsPants PantsCast.
Click here to not change your life.
Read more of Brad Seal at the original "SportsPants" blog.
The NBA trade deadline showed us that a day of reckoning will be coming in the Mistake By The Lake.
Click Here to read about it.
Read more of Brad Seal at the original "SportsPants" blog.
This just in: Tiger Woods is sorry for what he did, but would like his privacy. What a scoop!
I've never seen a pre-game show for a press conference, but today every sports station around had a running discussion on what Tiger might say at 11 a.m. EST today. This was probably the biggest non-sports related television event since the O.J. trial. It was like we were going to break amazing new ground.
We didn't. Tiger read from a prepared statement, was never caught off guard, and rarely said anything we didn't already know.
Don't get me wrong, Tiger nailed his statement just like he nails a golf ball (or nails mistresses for those of you snarky types out there). He managed to make himself sound like he was defending his wife and family from those awful media types while still accepting responsibility for his actions. Predictably, he discussed how he let his family down and didn't adhere to his values, but wanted privacy to cope.
Really the only thing we learned was that Tiger's wife supposedly didn't attack him the night of his car accident and that he's going to embrace Buddhism again (much to Fox News' chagrin since apparently only Christians can use religion to better themselves).
And that's that. No groundbreaking information, no concrete plans aside from another Tiger stint in sexy rehab. Just an athlete who is sorry and wants privacy for his family. As usual though, Tiger put up a good show.
Read more of Brad Seal at the original "SportsPants" blog.
You don't care about the Olympics. That's cool. But if you don't get revved up with this performance last night, you have completely lost your sports heart.
Check it out
Valentine's Day, Winter Olympics, things, stuff, puppies.
Click Here To Listen
Read more of Brad Seal at the original "SportsPants" blog.
Did I mention that things sucked for Lindsey Vonn? She got off easy.
She doesn't luge.
The Vancouver Olympics are quickly being known as a luger's nightmare. The track features the world's longest luge drop and it's causing havoc among the Olympians.
The luge sleds get up over 90 miles per hour during this drop and control has become a major issue. Already there had been two big crashes during test runs which luckily didn't result in injuries.
Then today, 21-year-old Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili crashed. He lost control going 95 miles per hour, flew off the track and hit a metal pole. He was air-lifted to a hospital where he was pronounced dead.
Now the Olympics take a somber tone. Injured shins might suck, but no we're talking about a real chance of dying. Lugers aren't going to slow down going through this track. They want to win. Whoever gets the gold will have earned it on this track.
Read more of Brad Seal at the original "SportsPants" blog.
Imagine working out and practicing for an entire off-season only to get hurt before the regular season starts. That would really suck.
Now multiply that by four years.
I can't imagine what has to be going through Lindsey Vonn's head as she attempts to move forward with her Olympic ski bid despite a bruised shin that is making things difficult. I know if it were my head, it'd be saying "are we advanced enough to create bionic legs?"
You might snicker when you see that Vonn's four-year quest for the Vancouver gold has possibly been thwarted by a bruised shin. After all, you probably played through bruised ribs or that sprained knee to help the team make the playoffs.
To you I answer: you've never skied downhill at a professional level. Those people go really fast. They scare me. In a good way.
The question isn't whether Vonn can physically make it down a hill on skis. I'm guessing she could. The problem is that she's being timed. She has to go downhill faster than everyone else on a bum leg.
That's the downside of individual sports: When there's a hitch in your giddyup, everyone notices.
Lindsey Vonn picked a terrible time to get injured. Or maybe it's the perfect time. After all, this is how Olympic legends are born.
Read more of Brad Seal at the original "SportsPants" blog.
