As I’ve written many times, our golf coverage is limited to ancillary matters like hovercrafts, mustaches, Jungle Bird, and the Dukes of Hazzard. With one of the most anticipated iterations of the Masters starting today, though, we thought it would be appropriate to bring in a guest blogger to cover the tournament in earnest.
Starting later this morning, Luke Watson of Hotdogs and Golf will share, from his experienced perspective, his insight on the 2013 Masters. Stay tuned.
USA Today reports that TNT is experimenting with an “all analyst” approach to its NBA broadcasts. On Thursday, former NBA players Steve Kerr, Chris Webber, and Reggie Miller will broadcast the Thunder-Warriors game without a play-by-play announcer. Although all three have national broadcasting experience, Kerr has been tabbed (by the network?) to “act as ‘point man leading us to breaks. Maybe a little bit of a traffic cop if the game calls for it. It is more like three former players having a round table (discussion) almost during the game.'”
The concept intrigues me, and I am glad TNT is willing to experiment with the traditional broadcast formula, but I was wondering why Kerr was designated as the one to steer the broadcast, until I remembered his role in anchoring another all-star trio.
The Wood Brothers?
More hear.
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)
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