Tag: sports

Two for three

I have scabs on the outsides of both ankles, a nice scrape curving up one shin, a toenail that looks as if it’s painted purple, and the clearly discernable imprint of a ball on one thigh. And we’re all of three games into the spring season.

We’re in that enjoyable phase of a veteran’s season when everyone has played themselves into shape but their bodies haven’t started breaking down yet. My current team hasn’t seen anything like the Bataan Death March of a season that whittled 31 players down to 10 healthy enough to be on the field, but our longtime captain is done thanks to his knees and our best midfielder is out for three months courtesy of a nagging hamstring. In other words, we have no chance at the title.

I’ve been moved back up to striker after spending most of the fall season at right wing. I’m also starting, which is nice, especially since I spent the winter running twice a week in preparation for the need to get up and down the field on the wing. However, the first game against R was a disaster; we controlled the ball for the entire first half, blew about 10 chances to score, and I couldn’t complain when the new captain took me out at halftime. I only took one shot, and too often passed when I should have simply shot on goal, perhaps because I wasn’t expecting to play up front.

We finally scored right after the half started, but then the captain made a serious blunder. We only have three speed players, me, Sergio, and Sandro. I was on the bench, Sandro tweaked his leg and had to come out, and Sergio got tired and took himself out with 15 minutes left. That left us with precisely zero speed on the field, which shrunk the field and killed our attack. R scored two goals on headed corners in the last five minutes and we lost 2-1. I also learned that unlike the previous captain, the new captain was not keen on post-match analysis, as he reacted very badly to my pointing out why we had lost a game we controlled most of the way.

And by badly, I mean badly enough that my friend with whom I rode to the next game was telling me that I’d probably be sitting on the bench for the entire second game against A. But he was only joking, as the captain told me that I was starting again and told me to prove that we needed speed on the field. Fortunately, Sergio gave me the chance to do that as he slipped the ball past the defensive line, at midfield, I blew by my defender and took a shot from just inside the box to put us up 2-0. I came out 10 minutes into the second half after our third goal, but after A scored two goals to make it 3-2 and the field started to shrink again, the captain came out and put me back in for him at left wing. I started making runs, forced the goalie to mis-hit a hurried clearance that Sergio promptly buried, and we ended up winning 5-2. Score one for the Theory of Speed.

Last night’s game started off all right, but although we were controlling the game for the first 15 minutes, I realized I just couldn’t get past this Robert Carlos-lookalike at sweeper. Not having Giorgio, our injured midfielder, really hurt as our attack kept failing to make the last pass to the striker in shooting position, and then D scored a beautiful goal on their first chance. I had one decent opportunity that I created by blatantly shoving the ersatz Carlos off the ball as we ran for it, but I hit the side of the net. We also had one goal taken away for offside, but it was the right call, and for once, no one even complained.

We were down 3-0 at halftime, then 4-0. I did get one back, however, when I charged down a backpass and blocked the sweeper’s attempted clearance with my right thigh. The ball rebounded right into the net before the goalie even realized that it hadn’t been cleared. In 25 years of playing soccer, that’s only the second time I’ve managed to score off a blocked clearance; the last time was with Nike about 15 years ago. Then our right wing celebrated his birthday by turning a throw-in into a half-volley that hit the crossbar and went in, which gave us a faint hope of coming back before D scored again to put the game away. We lost, 5-2, but no one felt bad about being beaten by the better team, although I was very annoyed with myself for getting caught offside on what should have been a good chance at the end.

Ender’s team is off to a better start. They are 2-1, but they’ve also lost two of their three best players. Jet was finally poached by an elite regional team and Cesare broke his collarbone, but, ironically enough, Ender and the big kid that he beat up last fall have turned out to be an effective combination in defense. The big kid sweeps while Ender shuts down the side and brings the ball up the field as a sort of point defender. Most of their scoring attacks begin with a long pass from him, either up the side or a cross into the middle that drops behind the defense. He doesn’t have much speed, but he has good vision and anticipation, so he’s usually in the right spot before he needs to be there.

The players’ union

I’m not a big fan of unions, but there is no question that college football players have a much better claim to be permitted to unionize than policemen and federal employees.

In a ruling that could revolutionize college athletics, a federal agency ruled Wednesday that college football players at Northwestern University can unionize. The decision by a regional director of the National Labor Relations Board means it agrees football players at the Big Ten school qualify as employees under federal law and therefore can create the nation’s first college athlete’s union….

CAPA attorneys argued that college football is, for all practical
purposes, a commercial enterprise that relies on players’ labor to
generate billions of dollars in profits. That, they contend, makes the
relationship of schools to players one of employers to employees.

It’s hard, if not impossible, to argue with that. The fact that the employer is a university doesn’t mean that the janitors and professors are not employees, and they generate considerably less income than the football players do.

These young men are actually putting their bodies on the line, and they deserve the right to a significant slice of the income their activities are producing.

This is why bitches need smackdowns

Ronda Rousey couldn’t even beat me. Mayweather would KO her in less than 30 seconds.

UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey has dominated her opponents since coming on the scene and is ready to set her sights even higher.  Rousey, who is an Olympic bronze medalist in judo, said she could beat undefeated welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather if he were ever so inclined to step into the octagon.

“I wouldn’t even stand up, I wouldn’t even be anywhere near him. I would just do like a little army crawl over there, and he would have to run away,” Rousey told Power 106 FM.

This is why it behooves some woman to have the crap kicked out of her in her youth. It prevents her from putting herself in insanely dangerous situations.

Playing with fire

What business is it of the NFL’s to interfere with state law in Arizona?

Call it what you want — anti-gay or religious rights — but if Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signs a controversial bill, you might not be calling Arizona the home of the 2015 Super Bowl.

The Religious Freedom Restoration Act, S.B. 1062, is the current controversy du jour out of Arizona, and the National Football League is with the opposition.

“Our policies emphasize tolerance and inclusiveness and prohibit discrimination based on age, gender, race, religion, sexual orientation or any other improper standard,” NFL spokesman Greg Aiello told USA Today. “We are following the issue in Arizona and will continue to do so should the bill be signed into law, but will decline further comment at this time.”

The idiots in the league office are making the same mistake that the gatekeepers in SF/F made about 20 years ago. They wrongly assume that they are in a position to dictate to the public, when in fact it is their position that relies upon the good will of  the public.

Tolerance is an evil joke. It is nothing but a stalking horse to impose anti-Christian, anti-Islamic secular values on an unwilling public. It is now eminently clear that the First Amendment was a mistake, considering the way it is being used to attack religion rather than protect it, as was the original intention. Somehow, “Congress shall make no law” has metastasized into “no one anywhere shall be permitted to make a law.”

Arizona should respond by telling the NFL that if it pulls the Super Bowl, it will be taxed 100 percent of its revenues in the state, including revenues derived from television income.

The NFL flags hate speech

Does anyone in the league office ever actually spend time around the players or pay attention to how they talk? It should be interesting to watch NFL games with half the black players sent to the sidelines by the end of the first quarter. Or perhaps theleague can come up with a policy that permits black players to call each other “nigger” while penalizing white players. Which raises the question; will multiracial players like Russell Wilson only be penalized five yards?

The NFL may implement a new rule this offseason calling for 15-yard penalties for any players who use racial slurs on the field. John Wooten, head of the Fritz Pollard Alliance, told CBS Sports that he expects the league to make it an automatic 15-yard penalty if a player uses the N-word on the field, and an automatic ejection for a player who does it twice.

“I will be totally shocked if the competition committee does not uphold us on what we’re trying to do,” Wooten said. “We want this word to be policed from the parking lot to the equipment room to the locker room. Secretaries, PR people, whoever, we want it eliminated completely and want it policed everywhere.”

You would swear this was a parody, but perhaps the wags who predicted that the NFL would devolved to flag football with penalty flags thrown for making other players feel bad weren’t so far off after all.

And it’s fascinating to observe that they are quite willing to set themselves up as the speech police.

The Age Monster

It gets everyone eventually. We can train, we can eat right, we can think positive thoughts, but every year that passes, the opponents get younger, the pains get sharper, and the effort gets more strenuous.

Yeah, we had our first soccer practice of the year last night.

It actually went surprisingly well, mostly because I’ve been running 40 minutes twice a week over the offseason in preparation for a season at right wing. My side played a man down in the scrimmage, but I was arguably, (no, definitely), the worst player on my side and I was able to shut down the best player on the other side. This is a decided advantage.

I mostly hung back, with occasional sprints forward when the other team wasn’t looking and managed to score our first goal that way. More importantly, it took the new guy, who was, in the immortal words of Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon 3, “a handful”, a while to learn to respect the lingering remnants of my speed, so he kept trying to blow past me to no avail. And when he switched to trying to use his vastly superior ball skills to fake me out, I simply refused to commit, thereby forcing him to finally pass off after my teammates were already back on defense.

So old age and experience really can overcome youth and skill. And a little treachery combined with upper body strength doesn’t hurt either. After practice was over, the new guy came over and introduced himself. He looked a little surprised to discover that he was 20 years younger. It’s a bit of a backhanded compliment, to be sure, but these days, I’ll take it. It’s certainly better than the alternative.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to win a regular starting position again this year or not, but the initial omens appear to be good. We crushed the other half of the squad despite playing a man down the whole time, so that should help. I know that in our captain’s eyes, reliability tends to trump talent.

Battling the new guy to a draw reminded me of our indoor tournament the week before, which was the most fun I’ve ever had at a soccer tournament. 12 teams were invited, good teams, including all three of our primary rivals. We figured we would probably finish fourth of six in our group, with the possibility of a shot at third. The tournament went until after midnight, with copious beer flowing throughout the course of the evening.

The first game was easy. We won 3-1, but it should have been 6-1. I got the third goal when S picked me out and rifled a pass right to the corner of the goal; I just had to stick out my foot and deflect it in. The second game was my best; it was against the team that has been my personal bete noire, but I got two goals and we put them away 3-1 as well. Then we played our derby game, which was incredibly annoying because despite dominating the ball, we somehow managed to lose 3-2.

So, it looked like third-place group finish was in the cards, and that’s when things got exciting. We destroyed the fourth team 6-0, then watched as they played our neighbors without much hope of them scoring an upset. But their best player was the coach of our first team squad, and he ripped off an early goal from 25 meters that briefly would have put us in second place. Then our neighbors came back and took the 2-1 lead that they held until the last minute. The other team got a goal to tie it with 50 seconds left, but a tie didn’t do us any good since we knew we probably couldn’t beat our arch rivals, who have supplanted us as the league’s dominant team, in the final game.

However, with 11 seconds left, the ball was passed back to the coach, who was nearly the entire length of the indoor field from the goal. He pushed it forward a step, picked his spot, and put it right in the upper corner for the win with three seconds left. Phenomenal shot. The entire gymnasium went nuts. The upset meant that we were guaranteed second place in the group, and first if we could beat our rivals.

Unfortunately, we lost 3-1. But it was a good, hard-fought game, and there was a funny moment after the young Serie B ref, who is a friendly acquaintance of mine, told me before the game that I couldn’t stop him. About halfway through, he had the ball on the left side I was defending, and I knew, beyond any shadow of a doubt, there was zero chance he was going to pass the ball. Despite my best efforts, he did manage to turn on me, but I kept just enough shoulder on him to force his shot wide of the goal. He laughed, offered a high-five, and decided we could call it a draw as his teammates shouted at him for not passing the ball.

That is precisely what I will miss most about competitive sports when the time finally comes to hang up my soccer boots for the last time. The competition. The physical testing. The going head-to-head to find out who is better. And the mutual respect that so often results from the process. Whether one wins or one loses, it is the battle, not the result, from which the pleasure is derived. I’ve won league and conference championships. I’ve coached a team that never won a single game. But the teams I remember most fondly aren’t necessarily the championship teams, they are the teams that never stopped competing until the final whistle blew, no matter what the score.

The Age Monster will get me in the end. I know that. I accept that. The time will come when the young guys will blow right past me, when their speed and power will be simply too much to handle. But I am going to keep that bastard at bay as long as I can, and I will keep playing as long as I can help my team win.

Women in combat: a prelude

The Sochi Winter Olympics are providing a useful service in demonstrating the complete absurdity of the woman warrior meme:

Sarka Pancochova, a Czech snowboarder, led the slopestyle event after the first run. On her second trip down the course of obstacles and jumps, she flew through the air, performed a high-arcing, spinning trick and smacked her head upon landing. Her limp body spun like a propeller into the gully between jumps and slid to a stop.

Pancochova was soon on her feet, and the uneasy crowd cheered. Her helmet was cracked nearly in half, back to front. She was one of the lucky ones, seemingly O.K., but her crash last week was indicative of a bigger issue: a messy collage of violent wipeouts at these Olympics. Most of the accidents have occurred at the Rosa Khutor Extreme Park, the site of the snowboarding and freestyle skiing events like halfpipe, slopestyle and moguls.

And most of the injuries have been sustained by women….

The Winter Games have always had dangerous events. But the Extreme Park,
as the name suggests, is built on the ageless allure of danger. All of
the events there have been added to the Olympic docket since 1992, each a
tantalizing cocktail of grace and peril.But
unlike some of the time-honored sports of risk, including Alpine
skiing, luge and ski jumping, there are few concessions made for women.

For both sexes, the walls of the halfpipe are 22 feet tall. The
slopestyle course has the same tricky rails and the same huge jumps. The
course for ski cross and snowboard cross, a six-person race to the
finish over jumps and around icy banked curves, is the same for men and
women. The jumps for aerials are the same height. The bumps in moguls
play no gender favorites.

“Most
of the courses are built for the big show, for the men,” said Kim
Lamarre of Canada, the bronze medalist in slopestyle skiing, where the
competition was delayed a few times by spectacular falls. “I think they
could do more to make it safer for women.”

Compare
the sports with downhill skiing, in which women have their own course,
one that is shorter and less difficult to navigate. Or luge, in which
female sliders start lower on the track than the men. Or ski jump, in
which women were finally allowed to participate this year, but only on
the smaller of the two hills. The Olympics have a history — sexist,
perhaps — of trying to protect women from the perils of some sports.

But equality reigns at the Extreme Park, even to the possible detriment of the female participants.

Actually, equality doesn’t reign. Because the inferior and uncompetitive female athletes don’t compete against the superior men. But the young women are such stupid herd animals that they will literally kill themselves in their incoherent denial.

“I see it every contest,” Cusson said. “Unless they are forced to hit
the smaller side, the best ones will always go for the bigger jumps.
They want to prove to everybody that they are capable. And then all the
other girls will follow.”

As usual, the end result of feminism is more dead and injured women. If one simply judges by the consequences, it should be obvious that feminists hate women far more passionately than even the most virulent misogynist.

They can’t even compete in competitive leisure pastimes without half-killing themselves and requiring surgery, but they’re going to hold their own in combat, where the enemy is actually trying to harm them?

Hall of Fame 2014

Canton makes room for seven more:

Giants defensive end Michael Strahan led a seven-member class into the Pro Football Hall of Fame Saturday. First-ballot eligible Seahawks tackle Walter Jones and Buccaneers linebacker Derrick Brooks joined Strahan among the modern era finalists, along with Cardinals and Rams cornerback Aeneas Williams and Bills wide receiver Andre Reed.

The two seniors committee candidates, Raiders punter Ray Guy and Falcons and Eagles defensive end Claude Humphrey were also elected

I don’t see how Strahan got in before Charles Haley. I don’t think there is a coach alive who would take Strahan over Haley, but Strahan is Big Media while Haley is, to put it mildly, an unusual guy. Ray Guy is more of a symbol than anything, so I don’t really have a problem with that. It’s the Hall of Fame, not the Hall of Statistics, after all, and if you’re going to name a punter from back in the day, he’s the first one you think of.

I’m glad to see Reed get in over Brown. I never thought all that much of Brown while he was playing and certainly never worried about him.  Not an exciting class, but not a problematic one either. Jerome Bettis shouldn’t get in, neither should Marvin Harrison. Both good players, but neither of them were great.

Super Bowl XLVIII

So, I’m told there is a game today. And, let’s face it, this is the matchup most fans of the game wanted to see. If Peyton Manning is going to cement a legacy as a champion, rather than a choker, it’s much more interesting to see him try to do it against the best defense in the NFL.

Historically, the best defense has defeated the best offense. Defense wins championships and all that. So, one has to lean towards the Seahawks on that basis, I think. While DVOA has Denver as the top offense and Seattle as the best defense, it also shows the Seattle offense (7) being better than Denver’s defense (15). Russell Wilson hasn’t looked great in the playoffs, but the San Francisco defense was capable of making anyone look average and the New Orleans defense was much improved over the disaster of the year before.

As I’ve said several times over the course of the playoffs, I haven’t seen a defense intimidate wide receivers like this Seattle defense since the 2000 Ravens. If Manning can get Welker working across the middle early, that will be the sign that Denver can solve the Seattle secondary. If not, well, we may be seeing the same alligator arms we saw in the NFC Championship game.

And if you’re one of those commenters who feels the need to inform us that you’re not interested in the NFL every single freaking time those of us who are interested in the sport are discussing it, just go away already. Neither I nor anyone else cares about what you do or don’t like. Deal with it.

It’s not broken, so why not fix it?

The NFL playoffs this year were exciting. The best teams advanced to the Super Bowl. Naturally, this doesn’t prevent the meddlers from insisting on “improving” things. Unfortunately, it turns out that one of those inveterate meddlers is the NFL Commisioner:

“We currently have 12 teams qualify for the playoffs, as you know. We are looking at the idea of expanding that by two teams to 14,” Goodell said at his State of the League press conference. “There’s a lot of benefits to doing that. We think we can make the league more competitive. We think we can make the matchups more competitive towards the end of the season. There will be more excitement, more memorable moments for our fans. That’s something that attracts us. We think we can do it properly from a competitive standpoint.

And then the complaints will start that the #1 seed has too much of an advantage, so two more teams need to be allowed in. The crazy thing is that the people whining about the need for seeding have been complaining about 8-8 teams making the playoffs, but adding more teams is only going to increase the likelihood of that happening.