(Honolulu Blue Hat Tip to Deadspin.)
The guy from Biff’s gang thinks Ziggy Anash is a poor man’s Russell Westbrook.
2013 NFL Draft: The Detroit Lions’ future is so bright, their draft pick had to wear broken 3-D glasses
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Big changes afoot in Hockeytown?
The Detroit Red Wings have the longest active playoff-appearance streak– twenty-one years– in all of professional sports. With two games to go in the regular season, they barely are hanging on to the final playoff spot in the Western Conference. The way this season has gone, failing to make the playoffs couldn’t be called a surprise, but the end of their postseason streak would be monumental for a historically great franchise.
As big as that seems, even bigger changes may be on the horizon for Detroit. Buried at the bottom of the ESPN.com story on last night’s win over the Los Angeles Kings was this note:
Chris Ilitch, president and CEO of Ilitch Holdings, which owns the Red Wings, said progress is being made on a new arena for the team.
(By way of background, Chris Ilitch is the son of Mike Ilitch, owner of the Detroit Tigers and the Little Caesar’s Pizza empire.)
I have been fortunate enough to see the Red Wings play in person three times– at Colorado, at Nashville, and at Chicago, plus the Red & White game in Grand Rapids— but never in the epicenter of Hockeytown: the legendary Joe Louis Arena.
I can’t imagine most fans will be happy to hear this news. For me, knowing that little is likely to stand in the way of the winged wheel of Progress, all I can do is redouble my efforts to make it to the Joe before time runs out.
[Cross-posted at Winging It In Motown. -Ed.]
ALDLAND Podcast
Not a lot going on in the sports world these days with the MLB still getting into the swing (heh) of things and the NHL not quite to the playoffs yet. Co-host Marcus “Primetime” Paschall and I have scraped the bottom of the barrel and come up with some discussion of the thus far lackluster NBA playoffs, which is really more of a discussion of hypothetical future playoff matchups. But it will still be fun for you because what else do you have to do? Work? Hang out with family? So listen as we dig into the meat of the NBA playoffs and talk about the excessive NFL Draft coverage on ESPN.
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The voice of West Michigan sports moves on
Even though I no longer live in the listening area, I still tune in to WBBL– “West Michigan’s Sports Leader”– from time to time when I want a dose of local perspective on Michigan-based teams, and I did so this morning, expecting to hear “Bakita & Bentley,” the station’s usual morning show. I heard Ray Bentley, but the other voice was one I didn’t recognize. At first, I assumed it was someone filling in for the show’s usual lead, Bret Bakita, but as the conversation between Bentley and “Doc” continued, I began to get the feeling that the two were working on developing a more lasting rapport between each other and with the listening audience. Bakita was never mentioned as being out sick or on vacation. Before leaving for work, I found this story, which confirmed that Bakita had left the show and the station.
This isn’t the death of Pat Summerall— the voice of the NFL, along with John Madden, for a generation– or even the departure of Paul Finebaum from WJOX— the temporary silencing of the voice of the SEC– but Bret Bakita was WBBL, and WBBL was West Michigan sports radio. He joined the station in early 1994, and he was the most prominent on-air voice across the station’s programming for the nineteen-year period that ended in late February of this year. Keep reading…
Bay of Cigs: Jet Set (Sigh?)
Airships are away in the Detroit Tigers empire as I write. After a crash landing at the final destination of the team’s only West Coast trip, the Tigers limped back to the Motor City, and promptly (indeed, retroactively) placed Octavio Dotel, who has been pitching without a functioning elbow since Oakland, on the disabled list. In immediate need of bullpen reinforcements, GM Dave Dombrowski & Co., air traffic controller furloughs be damned, revved up the sky fleet. The first move was to bring the franchise’s top relief prospect, Bruce Rondon, in from Toledo, something that admittedly is unlikely to require the services of a jet airliner. But then! Wheels up! Jose Valverde is on a flight to Detroit RIGHT NOW! The town and team turned on the once-perfect (49-0!) reliever after a down year last season, but now, in their need, redemption? The front office is mum for now, but the implication from Valverde’s comments this evening is that, at the end of his short-term minor league contract, he will sign a one-year contract with the club in Detroit.
What does all of this mean for a should-be frontrunner floundering in third place in the weak AL Central with a .500 record? Even though it’s early, and fans of baseball teams that struggle early love to rail against “small sample sizes,” we can set aside results and other numbers and acknowledge that the bullpen was working way too hard this month, and two fresh, if unsteady, arms are sure to provide at least temporary relief for a staff that seems like it could use a collective deep breath. For Rondon, my hope is that he’s ready for the big leagues. For Valverde, I just hope he has enough left to allow the coaches to use him in a way that helps the team. That may be ending this jet-set flourish with something of a sigh, but let it be, in part, a sigh of relief as you remind yourself that at least it wasn’t Brennan Boesch’s birthday flight that landed at DTW this evening.
Keep reading to find out who else will be on a flight to Detroit this week…
Wrapping up the 2013 Masters
Just over a week ago, Adam Scott became the first Australian to win the Masters, beating Angel Cabrera in a sudden-death playoff to claim the green jacket. It’s true that such a playoff in a major golf tournament always is exciting, but the way we arrived at this one– Scott holding steady as numerous golfers faded back to (in Cabrera’s case) or below him on the leaderboard– felt a little anticlimactic. Still, among those leaders, Scott did the best job of holding steady while the course conditions did anything but, and after near-misses on his putts all day, he finally sunk them when he needed to on eighteen and the playoff hole.
A big thanks to guest blogger Luke Watson, who stopped by to lend ALDLAND the benefit of his golf acumen and insight as a guest blogger. (His posts are here and here.) Back at his own site, Hotdogs and Golf, he recently published a very thoughtful post-Masters post that’s worth your time.
While Luke’s collaboration with this site was the big media story of the tournament, another story about a broken golf collaboration has received almost no attention anywhere but these very pages. Continue reading
On paying college athletes: Schools’ obligations under the status quo
Last week, Clay Travis argued, credibly, that all Wonderlic Test scores should be made public. For whatever reason, these scores are the only NFL combine results not made public. Every year, though, someone leaks a few of the scores to the media, and this year was no exception. According to the testing company, a score of ten indicates literacy, while a twenty indicates average intelligence. The three leaked scores were a twelve (Justin Hunter, Tennessee), an eleven (Cordarrelle Patterson, Tennessee), and a seven (Tavon Austin, West Virginia). Travis explained his larger takeaway point:
So all three of these wide receivers tested borderline literate, and substantially less intelligent than an average security guard would test.
Yet all three receivers have been eligible to play college football for years.
Isn’t this prima facie evidence of academic fraud? I mean, if you can barely read the Wonderlic test, how in the world have you been eligible at a four year college without significant cheating?
Travis goes on to writhe in the muckety muck of “academic fraud . . . one of the great untold stories of major college athletics” and cast now-common aspersions on the NCAA.
It’s the NCAA that tends to bear the brunt of the building criticism of the college athletics status quo from the likes of Travis and his former employer, Deadspin, and the NCAA probably deserves most of that criticism. On this issue, though, it’s the schools themselves that deserve a critical assessment, not the NCAA.
The boom-bust cycle that is the volume of the discussion over whether college athletes should be paid is in a boom phase at the moment, but the substance of the conversation has not changed much over the years. Those in favor of paying college athletes point to the large revenue streams college athletics produce for schools and the NCAA and argue that it’s wrong that the athletes are not allowed to share in those profits; those opposed argue that the student-athletes are being compensated in the form of a free college education. The two sides actually seem to agree, at least implicitly, on the fundamental premise that college athletes should be compensated, and their disagreement is with the degree to and manner in which the athletes should be compensated: Proponents want new cash payments, perhaps held in trust, for the students, while opponents believe a free education constitutes sufficient compensation.
Test results indicating that students are flirting with illiteracy after three or four years of college are evidence that schools are not even keeping up their bargain to provide student-athletes with an education.
The High Road to Taos (via Stio)
“When I got to New Mexico that was mine. As soon as I saw it that was my country. It fitted to me exactly, ” Georgia O’Keefe to Alfred Steiglitz 1940.
Saturated colbalt contrasts the stucco wall the shade of pimentón de la vera. The history, precision and elegance of the Northern New Mexico captured my heart. After meditating on the landscapes of O’Keefe’s New Mexico, I climbed through the Santa Fe Sangre de Cristo Mountains, winding down state road 503 along a historical route called The High Road to Taos.
The Solomon Extreme Freeride Championship, at Taos Ski Valley, began the next day and I was anxious to compete for the very first time, but I found strength and inspiration in the enchanting landscape of Northern New Mexico. … Read More
(via Stio)
King in the North(west)
In my quest to bring you more columns on teams you could not care less about, I am starting a semi-regular column on the Seattle Mariners. The Mariners have been my favorite team since I got into baseball, largely due to a fondness for Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball on SNES. I still maintain that it is one of the best games of all time, although it is obviously not on the level of Game of Thrones or my personal favorite game of all time, Mass Effect 2. This column was really also just an excuse to make another Game of Thrones pun, which I’m super good at. Like yesterday I posted this recipe for direwolf shaped scones on Facebook and called it Game of Scones. How great is that?
Anyway, the Mariners just wrapped up a series against AD’s second favorite team, the Detroit Tigers. The Tigers won 2 out of 3, although all three games were fairly competitive with Wednesday’s game going to 14 innings. The one win the Mariners got was against Justin Verlander. Go figure. Although there is a fairly large talent gap between the two teams (a 150+ million dollar payroll can do that), the Mariners have had a lot of success against the Tigers in recent years so this was kind of a disappointing result for Seattle. Still, you can never be too disappointed beating Verlander and I was doubly happy because he is on one of my fantasy teams and he turned in a solid start despite losing the game. Woof, this is reading like a Live Journal post, huh? Or at least what I imagine a Live Journal post would read like.
Coming into the season I thought that the Mariners could be a surprise team a la the 2012 Orioles or Athletics given the acquisition of some offensive firepower in Mike Morse and Kendrys Morales. This of course assumed that their young core of Dustin Ackley, Justin Smoak and Jesus Montero would make a leap, which has not happened yet. The Mariners have also been bit by the injury bug, having several regular players go on the disabled list. Things could still turn around, and the fact that Seattle gets a good number of games against the Houston Astros could be the difference if they want to snag a wild card over an AL Central or East team. Still, their league worst offense over the past several seasons must make strides, and that is no given.
A Mariners post wouldn’t be complete without a mention of the King in the North(west), Felix Hernandez. Felix is off to a stellar start to the 2013 season, and continues to prove that he is one of the top pitchers in the major league. Is another Cy Young in his future? If I could see into the future I would tell you, but I can’t, so I won’t.
That’s it for my first Mariners column. I don’t blame you for skipping over it, because I doubt it interests you very much. But if you read through the whole thing, here is a stellar gif of Khal Drogo as a reward. Who do you guys think would win in a fight between Khal Drogo and the Mountain? Let me know in the comments.
ALDLAND Podcast
Spring means a lot of things, but mainly it means Game of Thrones and baseball. Those are easily the two best games of all time and both promise to be very exciting as spring turns to summer. Who are your guys’ favorite Game of Thrones characters anyway? Why don’t you tweet @ALDLANDia and tell us some characters and things you like about Game of Thrones? Baseball is also happening, and it is also exciting. Jayson Werth even uses the Game of Thrones intro music as his walkup song! How cool is that? Join cohost Marcus “Primetime” Paschall and I as we go division by division and provide you with the most comprehensive preview of the MLB season that is also two and a half weeks late. But don’t blame us, because we had other stuff to do like watch Game of Thrones and come up with theories on Game of Thrones. Seriously I come up with like at least three theories a day, it’s not even funny.
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Download the ALDLAND podcast at our Podcasts Page or stream it right here:
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