We somehow managed to get through the first installment of this series without even mentioning the Braves’ big offseason acquisitions and namesakes of this very series, Justin and B.J. Upton. The brothers did not wait to let their presence on the team be made known, however. Continue reading
Last night, Louisville outlasted Michigan to win the national championship game. A few thoughts as we awake from our Rick-Pitino-is-getting-a-tattoo nightmares: Continue reading
Sometimes I like to rag on the Wall Street Journal (recent examples here and here), but when their lead sportswriter comes out in agreement with an expressed opinion of mine, for the same reason, no less, you can be sure I’ll link to the article. From their NCAA tournament championship preview article today:
You will watch Monday night’s final even though there were some dodgy calls at the end of those Saturday games. Syracuse got hit with an offensive foul call in the final minute, down just two points. Now there are people who believe it was an honest-to-goodness charge and people who believe it was not a charge, arguing that the Michigan defender was not set, and the proper call would have been a block, sending the Orange to the line with a chance to tie. It was not the worst whistle or the best whistle ever—it was simply not clear. What is clear is that referees truly enjoy calling the offensive foul—it’s a showy call, with a flashy arm maneuver that looks like a dinner theater actor pointing the way to the restroom. Perhaps the solution to the pervasiveness of offensive foul calls is to make it less exciting to call. If a referee only got to slightly rub his or her temples, would ringing up a charge lose its appeal?
Read the whole article here. Watch a truly absurd officiating moment that would have lead this post had it been a charging call in a college game here.
Things aren’t quite what they used to be around Hockeytown this year, and with realignment looming, it isn’t even clear that the Red Wings will get to seek needed playoff revenge against the Predators this year, much less turn the tide against the Blackhawks. Right now, the Wings season in one play looks something like this:
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Ten Years After was a British blues-rock band centered around guitarist Alvin Lee, who died last month. Twenty years after his team played in the national championship, Chris Webber, the central figure of Michigan’s Fab Five, hasn’t returned from an infamous timeout that is an inescapable part of his legacy. Tonight, the Wolverines are back in the national championship for the first time in exactly twenty years, and while all five members of the Fab Five will be here in Atlanta tonight, as far as we know, only four of them will be inside the Georgia Dome to watch the game.
Last night, friend-of-the-site Jalen Rose laid out the situation and made a public appeal to C-Webb:
Are you a basketball fan? Is it March Madness? Then why don’t you come down to ALDLAND’s Podcast Warehouse. We have a comprehensive podcast discussing the Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight games as well as our predictions for the final weekend of college basketball before you have to watch baseball all summer (your mileage will vary on how much you enjoy that). You know what they say: come for the discussion of the Final Four, stay for the discussion of the Frozen Four. Will the nerds from Yale (pronounced Yah-Lay) win? How about the total bros from Qunnipiac? Or maybe that other school? Did you know there’s a school called UMass-Lowell? Well now you do.
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Download the ALDLAND podcast at our Podcasts Page or stream it right here:
For some reason, some people thought that a mere geolocational shift away from the siting of most of my favorite teams would lead to a sudden abandonment of lifelong allegiances. While that idea plainly is ludacris, I’ve always been interested in what’s happening within my immediate locality, so it’s only natural that I would want to xzibit that sort of content in addition to continued addressing of my non-spatially bound interests. These are concepts that can coexist in my mind and on this site, but you don’t have to take my word for it, because there’s photographic evidence of this unity after the jump.
Mike McNeil can detail how the culture of big-time football works in a fast-growing community of 53,000 under the thumb of its major industry: Auburn University athletics. In an economic impact survey by the school in 2007, the report stated: “a conservative estimate of Auburn football’s direct visitor expenditures is more than $79.6 million during seven home events. That spending generates some $173 million in economic impact.” The university tentacles reach everywhere as the leading employer in Lee County. Chris Hughes, the judge who is scheduled to sit on the bench at Mike’s trial next week, is an Auburn University alumnus. According to his website, he once worked at the university coliseum and his sister is an Auburn University professor. The school is a massive construction zone these days thanks to public funding and the largesse of wealthy alumni, many of whom sit in luxury boxes at Jordan-Hare Stadium, seating capacity 87,451.
As part of the BCS-dominant SEC, Auburn athletics feeds off the more than $3 billion earned by the conference through network and cable TV deals and will be part of an incoming stream of millions more with the SEC TV Network set to launch in 2014. “They recruit you by telling you what you want to hear: You’re family; you’re like a son to me,” says Mike. “But the reality is your class schedule is planned around football, not the other way around. It’s a business and there are players on the payroll.”
McNeil is not alone in understanding how Auburn football operates as an underground society beneath the NCAA’s radar. “Auburn does whatever Auburn wants,” says Thorpe. In interviews with more than a dozen players from the BCS title team, a portrait emerges of a championship tainted by allegations suggesting a program going off the rails. … Read More
(via Roopstigo)
Sometimes the Tigers can’t win for winning. Detroit opened the 2013 season on the road in chilly Minneapolis with a 4-2 victory, a win for ace Justin Verlander, and a save for closing committee chairman Phil Coke.
So you know it isn’t just me, independent sources call Verlander “the best pitcher in baseball.” Independent sources also have a way of being wet blankets, which is what the Wall Street Journal was when Continue reading
The rules of golf coverage on ALDLAND are simple: keep it to things only tangentially related to the miserable game of golf, and feature people like Bubba Watson and Brandt Snedeker in those contexts whenever possible.
Watson is the defending Masters champion, and he’s a Georgia alum who, unlike his alma mater, has never had trouble maintaining his own, unique sense of style, thanks to things like his pink driver and homespun approaches to the game and haircuts.
As the internet discovered today, though, he really has ratcheted it up a notch in the leadup to his Masters defense:
What’s surprising is that this may not even be Watson’s most exciting vehicle.
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Previously
Bill Murray, a character on course
Brandt Snedeker, a presence at tailgates
Urban golfing in Detroit
Jungle Bird
Bubba’s other ride
ALDLAND 