Tag: sports

Never, never, never use clips when going even moderately heavy with free weights. Some people put them on to keep the weights from sliding, but they can be disastrous, potentially even fatal.

Until three weeks ago, it had been nearly six months since I last went heavy, courtesy of a nagging shoulder injury. Yesterday, I started out with 10×225, and pyramided up to 275, which I did with a spotter. At failure, we forced four of them, then I took 50 pounds off to rep out. (Note to self: rep out at 195 next time.) My spotter didn’t realize my intentions and left the weight room without me realizing he had gone. I didn’t think of asking for a spot, because it was only 225, after all, forgetting that I’d already hit complete muscle failure.

I did as many as I could, then stupidly decided that I had enough left in me for one more, which turned out not to be true.  When the bar didn’t make it up, and then didn’t make it up on the second try – as if it ever would –  I glanced around and realized I was alone in the weight room. So, there I was, sitting with 225 pounds suspended over my chest, which left me with three options.

1. Shout for help. Yeah, right.
2. Roll the bar down my chest until I could sit up. It turns out this works fine with 95, at least as long as you’re not wearing a weight belt. Not so well with 225.
3. Dump them.

So, I went for option three. Tilt the bar left until the first plate drops off, then pull down on that side to prevent the two plates on the right from slamming onto the floor too violently. This worked and didn’t even attract any attention from anyone, which was nice. However, this would not have been an option had I put clips on.

Clips are fine for curls and skullbangers and so forth. But don’t ever use them when you’re benching or squatting, even if you’re not alone.

I used to go to Gopher football games back when Tony Dungy was the quarterback. I still remember when they upset Michigan. I couldn’t believe it when they moved their games to that ridiculous Dome. And they haven’t won the Big 10 since before I was born. But if they do, in my lifetime, it wouldn’t surprise me if it was due to the toughness and determination of their epileptic coach:

Immediately after Jerry Kill has a seizure on the sideline, one longtime assistant takes over the headset and communicates with officials. The defensive coordinator handles the postgame news conference and splits the remaining news media obligations with the offensive coordinator. Should Kill miss practice, they revert to their schedule from a week earlier, with adjustments based on their next opponent.

Always, Kill returns soon after to his office at the University of Minnesota. The assistants come to work and see him at his desk and nod and head to their own offices, not a word exchanged. 

Kill, 52, is a reconstruction specialist, an expert in taking over
feeble programs and turning them into something better. He is probably
also the only college football coach in the country who has a seizure
protocol. There is no three-ring binder or written list of step-by-step
instructions, only the calm and routine borne from years spent side by
side with his trusted assistants, as they climbed from the lower levels
of college football to the Big Ten. 

Three times in the last three seasons, Kill could not finish games
because of epileptic seizures. Each time, thousands witnessed him
splayed on the ground, as spasms shot through his limbs and his body
shook uncontrollably and some of his players cried.

Talk about the courage of being willing to get up again after being knocked down; this man epitomizes it. The life lesson he is teaching his players, however upsetting it is to them, is much more valuable than the Xs and Os.

I like the idea of fewer preseason games, but further watering down the playoffs is not going to make them more exciting.  What makes the playoffs exciting is that they are exceptional games, so the more playoff games there are, the less exceptional and exciting they become.

ESPN’s Chris Mortensen reported Sunday that the league is “urgently discussing” the possibility of shortening the preseason from four games to three, with that adjustment coming hand-in-hand with an expansion of the playoff field from 12 to 14 teams.

“That would offset teams’ lost revenue from the elimination of a preseason game, and it also could lead to additional television revenues for the league,” Mortensen wrote on ESPN.com.

Commissioner Roger Goodell strongly hinted at the possibility of a more populated postseason in an NFL.com interview last week. “A reasonable argument could be made that there are teams that should qualify for the playoffs and don’t and could win the Super Bowl,” Goodell told Judy Battista. “I don’t think we want to expand just to have more teams. We want to create more excitement, more interest and give teams a chance to win the Super Bowl.

A 14-team playoff — seven teams per conference — likely would limit first-round byes to just the top qualifying team. With that setup, six teams from both the AFC and NFC would compete in the current “wild-card round,” giving the NFL an extra game that weekend. The divisional round would maintain its current format.

I’d much rather see the playoffs consist of all four division winners only. No wild cards.  The second-round games are rarely all that entertaining; home teams win 74 percent of divisional playoff games compared to 57 percent of regular-season games. Anything that strengthens divisional play is good, anything that weakens in in the names of benefiting “the best teams” is short-sighted foolishness for the love of trouble-making.

There is nothing unfair about an 11-5 team sitting home when an 8-8 team goes to the playoffs. Win your division. Unless you’re dumb enough to go all the way, throw out the playoffs altogether and simply award the league championship to the team with the best regular season record, you’ve already conceded the point.  You’re just quibbling over where the line is drawn.

The NFL responds, weakly, to the politically correct opinion editorialists who deceptively call themselves “sportswriters”:

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell softened his stance on the Redskins name on Wednesday when he said that the NFL had to listen to concerns about the team’s nickname even if only one person is concerned about it.

In an interview on 106.7 The Fan in Washington, Goodell, who grew up in the region as a Baltimore Colts and then Redskins fan, said, “I think what we have to do though is we have to listen.”

“If one person is offended, we have to listen,” he said.

Goodell’s remarks come after Sports Illustrated’s Peter King’s website decided to refer to the team as the Washington football team. Earlier in the year, in response to 10 members of Congress who wrote him demanding action, Goodell defended the name. Redskins owner Dan Snyder has said he will “NEVER” change the team name and does not intend to sell the franchise. 

Then listen to this, Mr. Goodell. I am offended, DEEPLY AND SINCERELY OFFENDED, that Christian Ponder is frequently referred to, in print, radio, and television media, as “the starting quarterback of the Minnesota Vikings”.

What is the NFL going to do about this insulting and offensive travesty that tarnishes the legacy of a proud franchise and a loyal, emotionally scarred fan base?  That’s what I want to know, Mr. Goodell.  THAT’S WHAT I WANT TO KNOW!

I’m also offended by all the hot pink. I have a solution, though. If the NFL wants to raise breast cancer awareness for a month, just have the cheerleaders go topless. That will raise considerably more awareness than all the ridiculous pink accoutrements.

This would be your weekly open NFL thread. Like most Vikings fans, I’m looking forward to seeing if Christian Ponder can finally beat a defense daring him to do so.  He has enough firepower at WR and TE this year, so there isn’t any excuse for failing to capitalize on the opportunity presented by the defense focusing on trying to slow down AD.

My expectations aren’t terribly high. If they can make it to the playoffs again as a wild card, they’ll be doing very well.  Denver looked like the team to beat in the AFC even before Peyton went off against Baltimore, while Seattle, San Francisco, and Atlanta all look tough in the NFC.

Happy NFL Opening Day to everyone. This would be the right place to discuss the upcoming season.

Skol Vikings!

The new season has started.  And it’s going to be a little harder than I anticipated. The challenge is due to switching to midfield. I don’t have enough power on my shot and the defenders seem to get younger and faster every year.  More importantly, I’m willing to pass the ball to our star striker, something too many of our mids simply would not do last year.

So, for the first game of the year, I’m not only the second-oldest man on the team, but I’m sick, I’m playing a new position, and, I discover, we have no substitutes.  Anything else?  Oh, right, here comes the International.  By International, I mean the former professional player who used to play for the national team. He’s just a little better than I am, in much the same way the Sun is a little larger than the Earth. But he’s a good guy, teases me a bit about the highly improbable goal I scored in our last meeting, and welcomes me to their field, which I’ve never seen before.

It starts off all right. Their left wing isn’t really following me back and I twice beat the left defender. Once I make a good pass back to the striker for a solid chance, the other time I slow down too much trying to decide whether to pass or shoot and the sweeper shows up to render the decision moot.  Then Giorgio decides not to pass me a through ball when he’s just outside the box, but rips it and puts the ball in the lower corner instead.  1-0.  Good decision, I think.

20 minutes in and although I’m playing well, I’m starting to breathe pretty hard.  And cough.  Suddenly, it seems like every time we lose the ball, I turn around and find myself 40 meters behind that bloody left wing.  And the International has observed that I’m having trouble getting back, so they start attacking down the left with regularity.  This is a problem, as behind me is the worst player on the team and he’s being forced to defend two whenever I get caught forward.  I also make the wrong decision at least three times when faced with a choice between covering man or ball. Our sweeper lets me know he is unhappy with my decisions.

Somehow, we fend them off, despite a ten minute period where the ball barely gets out of our half.  We make it to halftime, still leading 1-0.

The coach can see I’m in trouble, as when I’m not running, I’m doubled over, apparently trying to cough up a lung.  I also spend most of halftime on one long coughing jag. He tells me to stop worrying about getting forward and focus on defense.  We line up for the second half and I see they’ve got a fresh left wing, and even worse, he’s frisky, bolting diagonally every time it looks like the ball might come anywhere near.  It’s going to be a long 45 minutes.

He’s much quicker off the block than me, although I can match his top speed once I get going.  So, I pull out an American football trick out of the bag, namely, the cornerback’s 5-yard chuck.  I stay close on him, and every time he starts to bolt, he gets a little bump to accompany his first step.  Nothing the ref will call, but it’s enough to disrupt him.  Pretty soon, he’s furious, complaining about me grabbing his shirt – not at all true – and about how I’m knocking him off the ball, which is, in fact, the case.  They try four straight attacks down the side, trying to wear me out, but after the last one, when I take him down hard with a slide tackle right as he thought he’d gotten past me, he decides he’s had enough and takes himself out for a break.

The next guy is even faster and burns me the first time, but he’s less frisky and easier to anticipate.  We almost get a goal against the run of play, but it just goes wide.  I should have been there on the far post to clean up, but I’m a good 50 meters behind.  The first guy comes back in, then the second guy.  He’s still angry, so I laugh at him and give him a Dikembe Mutombo finger wag the first time I shut him down again.  At this point, I’ve decided I will kill him or die trying before I let him past me and he seems to suspect as much.

We survive until the 75th minute when we finally crack. One defender crashes into the back of another and takes him down, the other two defenders freeze, expecting a call, but the referee rightly shouts “play on”. One striker shoots, our keeper saves, but can’t hold onto the rebound and the other striker puts it in. 1-1.

The last 10 minutes is one corner kick after another.  We fight them all off, but then a big central midfielder puts one in the upper corner from 25 meters out; there was nothing anyone could have done.  They get one more to put us away 3-1; my only consolation is that, against all expectations, none of them were down to me. We shake hands. The International is a good sport and points out that we played them tough, we just ran out of gas. 

I watch Ender play. His team loses too, by the same score, but he has a great game, bails out his keeper twice by clearing balls on the line, and although he gets beaten three or four times, he doesn’t make any mental mistakes. He reminds me a little of Jaap Stam; he is an imperious defender and what he lacks in speed he makes up for with power and patience.  He’s in a good mood after the game; he knows they were beaten but they were not defeated. He’s beginning to understand the difference.

This revelation makes the famous tennis match an apt metaphor for the intellectual and scientific fraud that is called “sexual equality”:

WHEN HAL SHAW heard the voices at the Palma Ceia Golf and Country Club in Tampa, Fla., on a winter night some 40 years ago, he turned off the bench light over his work table and locked the bag room door. He feared burglars. Who else would be approaching the pro shop long after midnight? Then Shaw, who was there late rushing to repair members’ golf clubs for the next day’s tournament, heard the pro shop’s front door unlock and swing open.

Peering through a diamond-shaped window, Shaw, then a 39-year-old assistant golf pro, watched four sharply dressed men stroll into the pro shop. He says he instantly recognized three of them: Frank Ragano, a Palma Ceia member and mob attorney whose wife took golf lessons from Shaw, and two others he knew from newspaper photographs — Santo Trafficante Jr., the Florida mob boss whom Ragano represented, and Carlos Marcello, the head of the New Orleans mob. Trafficante and Marcello, now deceased, were among the most infamous mafia leaders in America; Marcello would later confide to an FBI informant that he had ordered the assassination of John F. Kennedy. A fourth man, whom Shaw says he didn’t recognize, joined them.

The Palma Ceia Golf and Country Club in Tampa, Fla., is where assistant golf pro Hal Shaw says he overheard mobsters planning a match fix nine months before “The Battle of the Sexes.” Courtesy Hal Shaw

Shaw’s workroom was about 20 feet from the men, who sat at a circular table. Through the window to the darkened bag room door, he could see them, but they couldn’t see him. Shaw says he was “petrified” as he tried to remain completely still, worrying that the men would find him lurking there. Then Shaw heard something he’d keep secret for the next 40 years: Bobby Riggs owed the gangsters more than $100,000 from lost sports bets, and he had a plan to pay it back.

Shaw, now 79, told the story of what he saw and heard that Tampa night to a friend late last year for the first time. This spring, he told it to “Outside the Lines.”

The men, Shaw says, used an array of nicknames for Riggs — “Riggsy,” “BB,” “Bobby Bolita.” Ragano told the men that “Riggsy” was prepared to “set up two matches … against the two best women players in the world,” Shaw says. “He mentioned Margaret Court — and it’s easy for me to remember that because one of my aunt’s names was Margaret so that, you know, wasn’t hard to remember — and the second lady was Billie Jean King.”

Ragano explained that Riggs “had the first match already in the works … and the second match he knew would follow because of Billie Jean King’s popularity and everything that it would be kind of a slam dunk to get her to play him bragging about beating Margaret Court,” Shaw says Ragano told the men. Shaw also says he heard Ragano mention an unidentified mob man in Chicago who would help engineer the proposed fix.

“Mr. Ragano was emphatic,” Shaw recalls. “Riggs had assured him that the fix would be in — he would beat Margaret Court and then he would go in the tank” against King, but Riggs pledged he’d “make it appear that it was on the up and up.”

Having played tennis at a very good school that won the state championship my senior year, (NB: I wasn’t part of that team, having switched from tennis to track the year before), I always assumed that Bobby Riggs loss to Billie Jean King was fake. I never imagined, however, that the whole situation was one big fix.  It never made any sense that the guy who crushed the world number one, a player who won twice as many Grand Slams as King, could somehow lose in straight sets to a lesser player no matter how “out of shape” he’d gotten in the intervening four months.

This should help you understand that equality isn’t merely a myth, it is a fraudulent myth that is pushed dishonestly by those with a vested material interest in it.

I was getting my gear together yesterday when I realized that it appears I will live my entire sporting life without ever once wearing my favorite shade of my favorite color, which is the royal blue of Chelsea, Duke and Minnetonka.  That seems a bit strange, if not unfair, given that this is the thirty-eighth autumn that I’ve worn team colors of one sort or another.

Elementary school: red
NSSA: light blue
Junior high: navy and yellow
High school: red and white
Minneapolis KPAC: red and black
College track: orange and blue
College rugby: black
Dragons: black and yellow
St. Paul Sting: yellow and black
New Brighton Nike: green and black
FC prima squadra/veterani elite: green and black
FC veterani: yellow and black

Because European soccer clubs are practically cradle-to-grave, Ender has played for the same two clubs that I have, except for that two-week flirtation with the pro club when he was nine.  Last night reminded me of the time I went to watch my younger brothers play at my old high school and I suddenly realized that they were no longer playing little kid games, but were essentially my athletic peers.

(Not quite, as I scored two goals against them when a group of players who were mostly from my year or the year following beat them 3-1 in the annual alumni game, but essentially. And it was a lot of fun to play with one younger brother on the Sting and with the other who was with Nike.  Between the two of them and Spacebunny, they got me back into soccer after nine years off for track, rugby, and martial arts, for which I am quite grateful.)

Last night’s friendly was fun for me to watch, first because it was a local derby, and second because, as the coach said, Ender went from being one of the role-players to one of the leaders of the team. He owned the right defense, shut down both the enemy strikers thrown at him, and combined effectively with the sweeper to cover up the occasional defensive breakdowns.  He prevented two easy goals by getting back and clearing balls that the goalie couldn’t hang onto after making saves, and repeatedly launched the attack by coming up the line and putting nice balls on the ground behind the opposing defense for the strikers and midfielders to run onto.  The first goal and most of their good opportunities were started by long passes he made, usually to his favorite teammate, Jet.

We were all impressed by Ender’s first assist at this level. The other team was in the midst of a counter attack when he broke on a ball being passed to the attackers near midfield, intercepted it, beat an opposing midfielder, and then passed a through ball into the box for a teammate to run onto. The midfielder drilled it first time and the goalie never had a chance.  The whole team went wild as that put them up 3-1 and pretty much iced the game, which finished 4-2 after the other team got a late goal at the very end.

My 29th soccer season hasn’t begun quite so well; in our second practice I banged knees with a teammate who later inadvertently stomped upon my left foot.  But I’ll be fine by our first game and it should be fun to play in the big stadium that belongs to the new team in the league. Not that anyone will be coming to watch the old guys play, but there is something about night games in stadiums that brings back those old state tournament memories. I don’t know how many seasons I have left; I’m hoping to play five more, but regardless, I plan to enjoy the game as long as I can still play it.