More logo trouble for the University of Georgia?

Posted on April 2, 2013 by AD

One of ALDLAND’s first investigative reports involved the recognizable “G” logo that appears on the University of Georgia’s football helmets, among many other places. The symbol also appears on the helmets of the Green Bay Packers and Grambling University. As it turns out, it was the Packers who first started using it in 1961, and they subsequently licensed it to Georgia and Grambling.

Today, Georgia’s athletics department unveiled a “new secondary mark that Nike has helped us create.”

Perhaps coincidentally, Nike also sponsors Butler University athletics. Both schools’ mascot is the bulldo/awg.

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Related
Who first owned the G?

NCAA Tournament: Onto the Final Four

Posted on April 1, 2013 by AD

In terms of the success of pre-tournament predictions, this has to be one of the maddest Marches on record, right? Or, as you can see above, maybe it’s just me. Marcus maintains the first place position with the slimmest of leads, and with no points remaining on the board for him, he is barely clinging to that lead. Any of the top four entries could win it all, but WrckMTech has by far the best shot of winning it all, retaining three of his or her final four teams, both finals teams (the favored Louisville and Michigan), and national champion (the Cardinals). Brendan and Baddeus Thaddeus have identical brackets from this point forward, but neither of them likely are able to catch WrckMTech.

Click the image above to expand it, and review all the bloody details here.

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Upton Abbey: Episode 1 – Beginning, as we must, with Chipper

Posted on April 1, 2013 by AD

In addition to an ongoing feature on the Detroit Tigers– this year entitled Bay of Cigs— this season, with opening day at hand, it’s time to reveal a second series, Upton Abbey, to cover the Atlanta Braves.

Just as the 2013 edition of the Tigers feature started with a look at those who had left the team, this series begins with one of the most notable departures in franchise history, Chipper Jones, who retired after his nineteenth MLB season, all with the Braves.

While players with long, successful careers sometimes find themselves wanting to return to the game as the first season following their retirement, in Jones’ case, it was another team’s general manager who was trying to prod the star back into action. Continue reading →

Bay of Cigs: A Tiger is a Tiger is a Tiger

Posted on March 29, 2013 by AD

Buster Olney reports:

Justin Verlander and the Detroit Tigers have reached agreement on a new contract that could exceed $202 million, sources told ESPN’s Buster Olney.

Verlander’s deal, which would make him the highest-paid pitcher in the game, is for seven years and worth $180 million, sources said. A vesting option for an eighth year could push the deal to $202 million.
…
Verlander, who would have been eligible to become a free agent after the 2014 season, had recently said he wouldn’t discuss a new contract if a deal didn’t get done by the end of spring training.

Verlander celebrated with a baby tiger (above). Additional details are not known.

In other pitching news, the team sent relief prospect Bruce Rondon back to the minors and announced they’ll begin the season with a “closer-by-committee” approach. The seven-member committee reportedly does not include Rick Porcello, who was listed as part of Detroit’s starting rotation. As mentioned last time, I was a bit concerned that management might give him the relief job, but since then, Jonah Keri assuaged my fears about that prospect,

http://twitter.com/jonahkeri/status/316643566006972417

and yesterday’s announcement makes it look like that possibility will not come to pass. Still, it would be nice to have one go-to guy who is reliable, even if he isn’t quite the unicorn on a waterslide that was 2011 Jose Valverde. Look to people far more qualified than I to say whether GM Dave Dombrowski, a personnel master of the first order, can bring in someone capable of holding down the job. For now, though, I think Dombrowski has earned a weekend off after locking up Verlander for the meaningful future.

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Previously
Bay of Cigs: The Departed – 3/14

Sweet Sixteen preview: Florida Gulf Coast rides the Freedom Train into the Elite Eight

Posted on March 28, 2013 by AD

The first half of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament’s octofinals is tonight. Marquette-Miami. Arizona-Ohio State. Syracuse-Indiana. La Salle-Wichita State. Tournament darlings Florida Gulf Coast don’t play until tomorrow, but the number of profiles of their team already is growing at an exponential rate. I’ve criticized Jonathan Mahler before, but his latest for the still-mysterious Bloomberg View is fun:

If you’re wondering how Florida Gulf Coast University became the first 15th seed in the history of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament to advance to the Sweet 16, look no further than the ur-text of the school’s economics department: “Atlas Shrugged.”

Embedded in this long, ponderous novel — required reading for all undergraduate economics and finance majors at FGCU — is the formula for transforming your college from a bunch of trailers on a swamp into the most talked-about school in the country. It’s simple, really. All you need to do is practice what Ayn Rand called “rational self-interest.”

Don’t waste your time wooing Nobel laureates to your faculty or trying to recruit National Merit Scholars to a college they’ve never heard of. Do what any self-respecting entrepreneur would do: Devote your resources to building a first-class Division I basketball program.

It’s not going to happen overnight, but FGCU pulled it off pretty quickly. It might have happened sooner, were it not for that great bane of Rand and her acolytes: regulators. The Eagles basketball program started in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics and had to apply more than once before being accepted into the National Collegiate Athletic Association — at the Division II level. Even after being granted permission to move up to Division I, the team had to wait three years before becoming eligible for postseason play.

Read the rest here.

Can the FGCU Eagles drive their freedom train into the next round? Tune in tomorrow night to find out.

Finally, something Americans have a difficult time extracting from Mexico

Posted on March 27, 2013 by AD

Unlike manufactured goods under NAFTA and drugs under a freer, if merely implicit, trade agreement, Americans seem to have the darnedest time extracting soccer “points” out of Mexico. As this story breathlessly explains, such points are “precious” and “rare,” and some wily north-of-the-boarderers finally managed to smuggle one out of the Valley of Mexico:

MEXICO CITY — The Americans were clinging to a scoreless tie, seconds away from earning a rare point in Mexico …

… and that’s all I can handle. I do think it would be cool to go to Mexico City and Estadio Azteca, but if I went all the way there for a game that ended in a 0-0 tie, I’d be trying to put some great spin on that too just to legitimate the expense and effort to myself, and when even NPR is repeatedly reporting on the abuse the home fans dish out on their American counterparts, I think I’ll wait until I can watch some local teams play the Aztec ball game as an impartial observer.

The second chapter of Sports on Earth

Posted on March 26, 2013 by AD

Back in August, I noted the launch of what then appeared to be a new heavy hitter in the high-end online sportswriting market: Sports on Earth, helmed by the well-known (for varying reasons) Joe Posnanski. After working out expected opening-day kinks, the site was getting off the ground nicely, and SoE has found a good niche providing current, day-to-day content in digestible bites by good writers. With those good writers and the backing of USA Today and Major League Baseball, the site seemed to be in a good place.

After just five months, though, Posnanski left without explanation, which had the effects of calling the site’s future viability into question and bolstering Posnanski’s reputation as a drifter. (His immediate destination was not a mystery, though: he joined NBC Sports to “writ[e] long-form stories” and a weekly column on Fridays called “The Big Read,” which seems like a painfully obvious play on “The Big Lead,” a popular, all-purpose sports site USA Today– Posnanski’s most recent former employer– bought a year ago. Weird.)

SoE lumbered on through the winter without a formal leader, and, really, seemed no worse for the wear. Spring arrived last week, Easter is this weekend, and yesterday, former “contributing writer” Will Leitch issued this announcement:

I am pleased to announce that next month, I will be joining the staff of Sports On Earth full-time, as a lead writer for the site. I’ve been writing for the site part-time since it launched last fall, but now I’m going to be there every day. It’s going to be my home.

My columns up to this point have been mostly media columns, but this is a more expansive role: I’m basically gonna be writing about everything, traveling all over the place, serving as the face (or one of the faces, anyway) of the site. I will also be hosting a daily podcast and will occasionally contribute for MLB.com, and certain columns will also be running in USA Today. Basically: I’m gonna be all over the place there.

Will’s writing voice has some built-in modesty to it, but the circumstances (including the fact that he is leaving his full-time position at New York magazine) make it clear to me that he has claimed Posnanski’s vacant seat as the head and face of Sports on Earth.

I think this is great news. Leitch remains a fresh voice in the media and sports realm, and he combines that with the experience that comes from operating very successfully and with perspective online. Will seems to have retooled and stretched out a bit since leaving Deadspin, and I think we’re at the point where we’re all going to benefit from his taking an in-earnest plunge back into the sports world.

Leitch’s first day in his new role is April 15.

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Previously
And then there were four: Joe Posnanski’s Sports on Earth joins the fray

NCAA Tournament: Onto the Sweet Sixteen

Posted on March 25, 2013 by AD

The first weekend of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament is in the books, and half of the teams are back home hitting them, their basketball days finished until next season. First, a look at which teams made it to the Sweet Sixteen, then a check on the standings in ALDLAND’s bracket challenge. Continue reading →

NCAA Tournament: Your second round gambling guide, courtesty of CBSSports.com

Posted on March 24, 2013 by AD

In a world in which we all kid Brent Musburger for alluding to Vegas-relevant information during his football broadcasts and supposedly place restrictions on (particularly, amateur) sports gambling, should we find it odd that the primary information CBS Sports (the very network contracted with the NCAA to broadcast the tournament) features about the NCAA basketball tournament games is the betting line for each game? This is Chris Christie panache without the volume, right? Or is this just what happens when we have reason to tear our eyes away from the Worldwide Leader and discover that there are established sports media networks capable of operating without ESPN’s illogical pretensions?

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As for today’s games, we have our first pairing of traditional powerhouses, an underrepresented bunch this March, when Kansas and UNC meet this evening. Expect Florida and Minnesota to be sloppy, and Florida Gulf Coast and San Diego State to be silly.

NCAA Tournament: Day 1 Recap

Posted on March 22, 2013 by AD

For the most part, everyone did what they were supposed to do yesterday, with a few exceptions. Some of the highlights:

Despite some fight from Valparaiso and surrendering turnovers in spades, Michigan State pulled away to a win in the tournament’s opening game.
Newly anointed Gonzaga nearly blew their opportunity and almost became the first #1 seed to go down in the first round, escaping with a win over a Southern team that would not go away.
Harvard University, which has so little going for it, finally found some success in the realm of sport, securing its first tournament win with an upset of #3 New Mexico.
New Mexico State also lost yesterday, making this article really sad.
Colorado State’s win over continually hapless Missouri was a yawner…until it wasn’t!
When will we stop underseeding the Pacific Twelve? Oregon pulled one of the least surprising 12-5 upsets ever by knocking off Eddie Sutton-less Oklahoma State, while #12 Cal eked one out against #5 UNLV.
As usual, I got greedy with underdogs in the early rounds, so the dispatching of UNLV and Belmont wasn’t too kind to my ALDLAND bracket. (If you’re a junkie, you can see the updated standings here. We’ll do a deep analysis after the first two rounds are complete.)

On that last point, keep an eye on Ole Miss and Wisconsin today, outcome to be determined by the severity of Marshall Henderson’s inevitable hangover.