You're welcome, ESPN

This week the college football writers of ESPN.com unveiled their proposal of how they would fix the current mess known as the BCS. It is suspiciously like My plan to fix college football that I posted here three years ago. Both plans call for a complete overhaul of college football by eliminating the BCS and current conferences. Both call for a top tier of 40 schools divided into four conferences based solely on geography. Both plans call for a playoff of the four conference champs to determine a national champion. Both plans call for poor performers to be relegated to the second tier at the end of each season. Where did ESPN get their idea? Let's just say I have my suspicions. To be fair, there are a few differences between the proposals. Whereas my plan calls for three tiers of 40 teams, their plan calls for a first tier of 40 and second tier of 80. Also, I suppose I hadn't gone as far as to name my conferences. Theirs are named after legendary coaches. Too bad our plans have no chance of being implemented. That is to say my plan, posted here in the blogosphere, has no chance. ESPN's clout gives their plan maybe a one half of one percent chance of being implemented. My Map: ESPN's Map:

Entertainer of the Month: Rich Eisen

November's Entertainer of the Month is former ESPN anchor and current NFL Network talking head Rich Eisen. Before I explain the selection, allow me to give some relevant background information. First, I am a sports fan, but a selective one. I follow a lot of different sports, but for many of them I only sit down and watch during the playoffs. Professional football falls into this category. I'm really big into college football and after wasting large portions of my Saturdays watching it, there isn't much time left over for the NFL on Sundays. So instead I watch the 90-minute NFL GameDay Final on NFL Network. It's hosted by Rich Eisen, Deion Sanders and Steve Mariucci. Eisen is capable; Sanders, surprisingly, is not as annoying as you might expect; and Mariucci is professional. So if Eisen is only "capable," why is he being honored here today? Simply put: he is not Chris Berman. Before I got access to the NFL Network, I was forced to get my NFL highlights from SportsCenter which unveils its weekly game recaps by way of countless bad puns from legendary buffoon Chris Berman. He's been at ESPN since the beginning and let me tell you, his shtick has worn tired. So congratulations Rich Eisen for being a palatable alternative to Chris Berman. You are John's Entertainment News Web Log's Entertainer of Month.

Olympic Recap

I know it's been a while since I posted, but I've been on vacation. My trip ended two weeks ago, but my vacation ended yesterday. The Games of the XXIX Olympiad just came to a close, to borrow from yearbooks everywhere, what a wild ride it's been. Below are my thoughts and observations in no real organized order. The Rivalry: In many ways the Olympics peaked in 1988 when we saw the last Olympiad before communism fell. That year the United States finished third in the medal count behind the Soviet Union and East Germany. Four years later the US was second behind the Unified Team, but with the cold war over it was clear the US would no longer be the underdog in the Olympics. Now it seems that the Americans are the favorite in every event, at least among the few events NBC shows. I miss the Soviets and East Germans, who played the part of the bad guy so well, better than Notre Dame, the Lakers, the Yankees, the Cowboys or the Patriots. Even the Australian swimmers seemed less formidable than in previous Olympics. In fact, I was sad to hear that Ian Thorpe had retired, because I loved to root against him. A huge part of being a sports fan is rooting for the underdog, and in today's Olympics the underdog is rarely wearing the stars and stripes. That's why I'm not ashamed to admit rooting for a few athletes from other countries, even when their events featured Americans. Consider Kirsty Coventry, the swimmer from Zimbabwe who has now won seven of her country's eight medals ever. When she brought home a gold medal in 2004, her war-torn country observed a few days of peace in her honor. While it would be wrong of me to claim that medals mean more to some athletes than others, it is clear that gold medals can mean more to some countries than others. (Trivia: The United States has won 2,514 medals in the history of the Olympics). A lot of times it's national heroes versus millionaires. I do not mean to sound unpatriotic, but I do long for a viable rival, and it would now appear that China is just the country to step in to that roll. When the dust settled, the US had claimed the overall medal crown (110-100), but China won more gold medals (51-36). I'm excited to see what both countries can do at a neutral site in 2012. Volleyball: What a year to be fan of the American Volleyball with double gold in beach volleyball and a gold and silver on the court. I was especially in to Rogers & Dalhausser. May and Walsh were good too, but it's kind of hard to take the women's beach game seriously with those uniforms. The men's hard court team had an amazing run to the gold, although Sherstin didn't like watching them because while at BYU she had a roommate who was dating Rich Lambourne, the US libero. We won't go into more details than that. Michael Phelps: Congratulations are in order for Mr. Phelps, his coach and his mother. Most of all, however, congratulations are in order for NBC, which is happier than anyone else the way the swimming competition turned out. In fact, the way they hyped up the story detracted somewhat from the moment. Anything less than 8 golds would have been a failure so when he succeeded, the accomplishment was a little diminished, at least from a spectator's point of view. Gymnastics: I hate gymnastics. I suppose it was inevitable that, considering how much of it NBC had jammed down my throat, I would eventually gag on it. I can even trace it back to the specific moment I vomited: The 1996 Gymastic Gala when Alexei Nemov took off his shirt to do a pummel horse routine set to Snap's "I've Got the Power." Since then I have refused to watch any gymnastics. This year was no exception. So my only comment on the 2008 gymnastic competition is Nastia Liukin has a funny name. Usain Bolt: Jamaica has emerged as a viable rival for the US in sprinting. In the six sprint events (Men's and Women's 100m, 200m and 4x100m relay), Jamaica came away with five gold medals, a silver and two bronze. The US managed zero gold, two silver, two bronze and two dropped batons. The Jamaican grabbing all the headlines was Usain Bolt who set the world record in both the 100m and 200m. That guy is just plain fun to watch. Baseball & Softball: For the foreseeable future, both of these sports will no longer be a part of the Olympics and I can't say that I'm disappointed. Softball's out because of US domination, which is rather ironic considering Japan snuck away with the gold. And Olympic baseball is a joke. The United States—you know, the country that invented baseball—always sends a bunch minor leaguers who can't cut it against the Cubans or Koreans. I will say this, while they're at it, there are plenty of other sports that don't belong in the Olympics either, mainly equestrian, sailing, trampoline, synchronized swimming and rhythmic gymnastics or any event where gobs of makeup are worn (cough-gymnastics-cough). I do not in any way discount the skill and dedication required to compete in these events, but you don't see billiards, darts, Nascar or cheer leading in the Olympics either. The Coverage: If you couldn't tell by now, I'll go a head say that I think NBC's coverage was poor, despite what the ratings might suggest. Most of my complaints are centered on the live vs. tape delay. I get that NBC paid a billion dollars for the rights and they have to save the marquee events for prime time. While I would have liked to see more stuff live, my bigger problem is NBC showing highlights of certain events and then showing those events later. Similarly, NBC often showed matches out of order. If I'm watching the a beach volleyball semi-final where the announcers are saying that the winner will take on Team X, you can't follow that match up with Team X playing Team Y in the other semi-final and expect me to watch. Worst of all, however, were the ill-timed commercial breaks. I don't know how many times I was watching a tape-delayed soccer game that had a goal scored during a commercial break. Can someone explain the logic behind that? If it's tape delayed, you can pause the broadcast for a commercial break. In the talking heads department, my award for worst announcer of the games is a tie between soccer's Marcelo Balboa, who talks in second person more than any announcer ever, and track & field's Ato Bolden who thinks we tune in to the Olympics just to hear him talk (check out his piece-of-crap web site where he, not surprisingly, talks about how great he is). All that negative ranting aside, I love the Olympics and look forward to 2010 (Vancouver), 2012 (London), 2014 (Sochi, Russia) and 2016 (Chicago, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro or Tokyo).

¡Viva España!

Since my occupation is essentially stay-at-home dad, I was able to watch the entire UEFA Euro 2008 tournament. Though I tend to root against European teams in international competition, it was still a fun little tournament and I got into it. To me, the big story had to be Turkey. Their three come from behind victories and narrow defeat at the hands of Germany provided for some very entertaining soccer. I also found a great deal of enjoyment watching the Netherlands destroy France and Italy in back-to-back games. The other major story was Spain's ability to finally win a major international tournament for the time in several decades. Truth be told, I found myself rooting for Germany in the final even though I dislike Jans Lehman, who essentially pulled a Rex Grossman as his team got to the finals despite his best efforts. I'm not disappointed that Spain won, it's just that I can't bring myself to root for teams with hair like this and Spain was third only to Italy and Czech Republic in that department (for those of you keeping score at home, Argentina is world champs of bad soccer hair). The TV coverage was decent. Adrian Healy, Derek Rae, Tommy Smyth and Andy Gray are all solid broadcasters. I thought it was a little cheap on the part of ESPN, however, that none of them was actually in Europe. Rather, they just gave their commentary from the studio in Connecticut. One final thought: it was interesting how good Brazil looked in this tournament. That is to say, the many Brazilian players who found loopholes to become eligible to play for these European countries looked good. It gets me all the more excited for the World Cup in Serth Efrica in 2010.

Let the Fiery Madness Begin

Euro 2008, the world's fourth most watched sporting event in any given four-year period (behind the World Cup, the Summer Olympics, the Winter Olympics, but ahead of the Super Bowl) is underway in Austria and Switzerland. Since I have no horse in the race, I will jump on Croatia's bandwagon because their team's anthem is "Fiery Madness" (seen below, 3:56) and it was written by their coach. I will have more comments on Euro 2008 at the tournament's conclusion.

Super Bowl XLII

I don't have much to say in the form of commentary on the game. The Super Bowl long ago stopped being about football. Besides, it was a New York team versus a Boston team. It's too bad they both couldn't lose. This will probably go down as one of the greatest Super Bowl games ever, which is a shame, because only the fourth quarter was any good. The rest of the game was really boring. As for the commercials, which we all know are the best part of the Super Bowl anyway, there were only seven commercials worth commenting on. The rest of the companies wasted their money in my opinion, which we all know, counts for nothing. For the past few years T-Mobile has run a series of ads featuring Dwayne Wade trying to get into Charles Barkley's Fave 5. During the Super Bowl, he finally succeeded, but with unforeseen consequences. The series is funny, but has gone on too long. I'm sure this particular ad will get replayed to death on TNT and ESPN during NBA games. FedEx once again delivered a solid ad. Their giant carrier pigeons were a nice touch. The best thing about FedEx commercials, is that afterward, you still remember that they are plugging FedEx, instead of other ads that are funny but the message gets lost. The E-trade ad with the talking baby that rents a clown was dumb and certainly nothing new, but I laughed anyway. Shaq as a jockey was kind of funny, but that's not even the best Vitamin Water ad. The older one featuring Brian Urlacher and Michael Strahan playing badminton was better. A few years ago Pepsi Twist managed to bring the Osmonds and the Osbournes together for a commercial. With perhaps an even greater dichotomy, Bridgestone had an ad featuring both Alice Cooper and Richard Simmons. I never thought I'd see that. Plus, I caught myself laughing when the driver of the car accelerated toward Mr. Simmons. It was another year of uninspired ads from Budweiser. The only exception was the cross-promotional ad for Semi-Pro featuring Will Ferrell. That one was funny. My favorite commercial of the Super Bowl was the Audi ad that parodied the famous horse head scene from The Godfather. What's better, is the actor in the commercial was Alex Rocco, who was actually in The Godfather. Granted, he played Mo Greene and not the studio boss from the original scene, but it was still a nice touch.

Soccer Week

With Shark Week over, I decided to move on to another themed week. Since David Beckham is trying to make soccer sexy in America, I thought I'd try Soccer Week. Before I get into that though, I like to take the time to comment on Beckham. I'm not sure what to think. On the one hand I'm not a fan of "Becks" or anything that comes with as much hype as he has and I think it could be somewhat amusing seeing him fail. I'm also not a fan of the L.A. Galaxy, although that's probably the result of built-in prejudice against sports franchises from New York and L.A. On the other hand, I am a soccer fan and even an MLS fan (although not as much now that I no longer live in Salt Lake). I would love to see soccer grow in stature in the US, but I'm realistic. As TV's Craig Ferguson said "Some people think that Americans will discover soccer through David Beckham being here, which is ridiculous. I think Americans discovered soccer years ago and went 'eh.'" To commemorate Soccer Week, I have been watching various soccer movies over the past few days. I started with The Miracle Match (aka The Game of Their Lives), the true story of the 1950 US Soccer Team that went to the World Cup in Brazil and upset heavily favored England 1-0. In my opinion it's right there among history's greatest sports upsets. They didn't go on to win it all like the 1980 Olympic Hockey Team, but the mere fact that these guys were all amateurs playing against English pros says a lot. After that I skipped ahead a few years to watch the documentary Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos. For those of you unfamiliar with the Cosmos, they were one of the professional soccer teams in the North American Soccer League. Back in the 1970's the US decided it was ready for soccer and formed a league. Things didn't take off until the Cosmos managed to sign Pele. It was interesting to see the parallels between Beckham's arrival in America and Pele's. (Disclaimer: I do not consider Beckham and Pele to be on the same level in terms of skill or accomplishment, only in terms of hype and celebrity.) The problem with the NASL was it expanded too quickly (28 teams compared with 13 currently in the MLS) and couldn't hang on to its TV contract with ABC. That combined with the millions of dollars teams like the Cosmos were throwing at international players doomed them to fail. Hopefully MLS has learned something. The signing of David Beckham suggests they haven't. Next I moved into the realm of soccer fiction by watching Goal!: The Dream Begins and its sequel Goal II: Living the Dream. If FIFA were to make a movie, it would be exactly like these two. They chronicle the life a young Santiago Munez as he goes from being an illegal Mexican immigrant living in L.A. to a European soccer star playing in the UEFA Champions League. The story lines are full of cliches, but the action is probably as good as any soccer movie out there. There are even plenty of cameos from stars like Beckham, Zidane and Raul. I then scaled things back a bit from soccer's second biggest stage (the third installment about Santiago playing in soccer's biggest stage, the World Cup, is due out next year), but kept with the current theme and watched Bend It Like Beckham featuring a pre-Pirates Keira Knightley, a pre-ER Parminder Nagra, a pre-Tudors Jonathan Rhys Meyers, and, despite the title, no David Beckham. It's a fun little movie with a ton of story lines all over the place. Other soccer movies I recommend include Victory (or Escape to Victory) starring Michael Caine, Sylvester Stallone and Pele, The Cup about a group of Buddhist monks who watch the World Cup (it was the first movie to ever come out of Bhutan), The Other Final, a documentary about a 2002 match between Bhutan and Montserrat, the two lowest ranked teams in the world, and of course Air Bud: World Pup. Other soccer movies I've seen in the past include Shaolin Soccer (from Kung Fu Hustle's Stephen Chow) and countless kid soccer movies like The Big Green and Will Farrell's Kicking & Screaming. Next year I will hype Soccer Week better and make it more of an event.

2007 NBA Playoffs

Disclaimer: As a matter a full disclosure, I feel it necessary to point out that I grew up in Utah and therefore I am a huge Jazz fan. However, I now live in Phoenix and the Suns style of basketball has wooed me to the point where I now count myself among their fans as well. Now that the 2007 NBA Playoffs are over, I thought it would be a good time to recap the action. "But John," you're probably saying to yourself, "the playoffs aren't over yet. We still have to decide the Eastern Conference Finals and the NBA Finals." Let's stop and reflect for a minute. The San Antonio Spurs versus any team form the East. How about somebody just send me an e-mail when it's all done letting me know who wins. Let's begin with the first round. The big story is Golden State's dismantling of Dallas (my sympathies to Fatty and Jonny). While I'll agree the Warriors played some excellent high-energy basketball, I wasn't ready to anoint them the champs like everyone else. In fact, after they won the series in six games, I wanted the Jazz to beat Houston worse than ever because I knew that would mean a real chance of advancing the conference finals. The Utah-Golden State series showed that the Warriors' success over the Mavs was all about match-ups, which is why Utah had such an easy time with them in Round 2. I know, Golden State was right there in Game 1, should have won Game 2 and blew out the Jazz in Game 3, but after that, the wheels came off. Their performance in Games 4 & 5 reminded me of Game 7 of the 1994 NBA Finals where Houston defeated New York because John Starks couldn't hit a shot but refused to stop trying. Talk about one-dimensional basketball. It was as if Don Nelson really wanted to beat Dallas and after he did he just sort of exhaled and went in to semi-retirement for Round 2. Speaking of the Jazz, how can their fans not be excited for the future, especially after the way DeRon Williams emerged as some sort of 22-year-old hybrid of Jason Kidd and Steve Nash. Also, that bench is full young promising stars like Paul Milsapp and Dee Brown, two rookies who both played quality minutes. The fact that Jerry Sloan has never won Coach of the Year is a sham. This year it went to Toronto's Sam Mitchell. Please. The Eastern Conference is the NBA's answer to the NIT and should be treated as such. (In a related matter, the fact that the lottery awarded the top two picks to Western Conference teams suggests that things aren't likely to get better any time soon). The other half of the Western Conference bracket was just as intriguing, at least in the second round. After Phoenix dismissed the Lakers in five (oh, poor Kobe), and San Antonio did the same with Denver, NBA fans were treated to the true NBA finals. Seriously, with Dallas out of the way, did anybody have any realistic expectations of winning it all besides these two? Too bad David Stern and his cronies had to go and ruin it. I know a rule is a rule but so are traveling and lane violations and how often are they enforced? In essence, suspending Boris Diaw and Amare Stoudemire for almost leaving the bench after Robert Horry's hard fowl on Steve Nash rewarded the aggressor and punished Phoenix even though the two players really didn't do anything. What that ruling did is encourage thuggary in the NBA because it sends the message that if you send in a bench player to commit a hard foul, you've got a good chance of inciting your opponent into behavior that could result in suspensions. It really is a shame because Phoenix most likely would have won Game 5. Would they have won the series? I guess we'll never know. I've found it interesting how the Spurs have fallen out of favor with me the past few years. It was hard to root against David Robinson and Tim Duncan because of their attitudes and work ethic, but now Duncan has supplanted Dikembe Mutombo as the player with the most outlandish look of disbelief when whistled for a foul. Yes, Tim, when you grab a guy's elbow and clock him in the head as he goes up for a shot, it is a foul. How Tony Parker continues to get calls after driving into the lane and falling down baffles me. The rest of the Spurs are a lot like Detroit's bad boy teams of the late 1980's, but with a more international flavor. Bruce Bowen is a dirty player, despite what he says, and Robert Horry is nothing more than a cheap-shot artist, reminiscent of the legendary Rick Fox. For the most part, TNT and ESPN/ABC's coverage of the playoffs was poor. I think Steve Kerr is the best color commentary guy in pro basketball and Craig Sager is the be all and end all of sideline reporters. I found myself tuning in just to see what suit-shirt-tie combination he would wear next. Aside from them the coverage sucked. I know the NBA season is long, but did anyone else get the impression that the guys picking the camera angles were bored? That wire camera was vastly overused. Also, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a camera constantly fixed on Eva Longoria so they could cut to shots of her at a moment's notice. Of course, that way ABC can plug her show which happens to be on their network. The announcers were mostly pretty bad too, especially during the Western Conference Finals. Mike Breen is fine, but Mark Jackson and Jeff Van Gundy's playful banter and jabs at each other got old fast. Also, some geography lessions might have helped the announcers. At one point Breen, talking about Spurs center Fabricio Oberto, said he was in his second year in the NBA, but was 32 years old because he had played 12 years in Europe: six years in Argentina, one in Greece and five in Spain. Another occasion saw them talking about how when drafting Argentinian Manu Ginobili, the Spurs had a choice between him and another European player. The guys at ESPN Deportes need to slap their colleagues on the back of the head. I suppose it could have been worse. Had it been Bill Walton during every game I would have watched on mute. I've never been a fan of the three-man broadcasting team. The art of the two-man team is apparently lost on ESPN who had no less than 11 on-air personalities at Game 1 of the Utah-San Antonio series. At least none of them was Charles Barkley, the epitome of unprofessionalism. Below is a clip of the post game show following Utah's Game 7 victory over Houston in the first round (1:57). Sir Charles was too busy watching a boxing match to do his job.

Life Imitates Art

Our story begins in 1903 with founding of the Pacific Coast League, a minor league baseball league that was once considered for "promotion" to the majors after WWII. One of the original members of the PCL was the Oakland Oaks who would remain in the Bay Area until 1956 when the New York Giants moved to San Francisco. The Oaks relocated to Vancouver and called themselves the Mounties. In 1970 the team moved to Salt Lake City becoming the Bees and then the Angels and then the Gulls. In 1985 they moved back to Canada becoming the Calgary Cannons. This is where things get interesting. In 2003 the team moved to its current location: Albuquerque, NM and held a fan-voting contest to choose a new name. It had been only two years since the Dukes had left town, but fans still wanted a new name. They chose Isotopes. The few naive people in New Mexico will say this is because the state deals with nuclear chemicals, but everyone else knows the name comes from a Season 12 episode of The Simpsons entitled "Hungry Hungry Homer." This is the episode that features Blocko Land, the amusement park made entirely of Blocko brand assembly fun blocks. The trip to Blocko Land marks the beginning of Homer's quest to help "schmoes with their problems." He talks a girl into asking Bart on date and helps the hair dressers at Hairy Shearers increase their razor-thin profit margins by switching from loafer lightener to mincing gel. He then moves on to his most daunting task of all, a hunger strike to bring to light the Duff Corporation's plans to move the Springfield Isotopes to Albuquerque. The highlights include Homer getting visited by the spirit of Cesar Chaves ("Why do you look like Cesar Romero?" "Because you don't know what Cesar Chavez looks like."), getting replaced by Paint-Drinking Pete and the brand new Isotope Dog Supreme with Mesquite-grilled onions, jalapeño relish and mango lime salsa, the kind of bold flavor they enjoy in Albuquerque. My reasons for telling this story are to spotlight the power pop culture has over the masses, and to remind people that The Simpsons was actually funny not that long ago.

Tired of Keith Olbermann

It was recently announced that Keith Olbermann would be joining Bob Costas, Tiki Barber and The Bus on Football Night in America, the studio show that accompanies NBC's Sunday night NFL coverage. Let me be the first to say this sucks. Olbermann is a jackass. It doesn't matter on what side of the political aisle you sit, pundits are bad for America and Olbermann is right there with Rush Limbaugh among the worst. Those of you who have your SportsCenter blinders on and love everything ESPN, need to wake up and see Olbermann for what he is, a hypocrite. Case in point: A while back Donald Rumsfeld gave a speech equating Iraq War opponents to pre-World War II appeasers. Olbermann shot back saying "As a critic of the administration, I will be damned if you can get away with calling me the equivalent of a Nazi appeaser. No one has the right to say that about any free-speaking American in this country." I don't necessarily agree with Rumsfeld, but lets think about Olbermann's comment for a minute. What is free speech if not the right to say something about those who oppose you? Olbermann wouldn't bother me so much if he would pick a job and stick to it. As a pundit on MSNBC he's easy to avoid. Nobody really watches that channel anyway. It's when he ventures back into the sports world and airs his opinions that he comes off as unprofessional. Partisan punditry has no place in sports broadcasting. As a fan of the Dan Patrick Show on ESPN Radio, I have to change the station during the hour every day that Olbermann joins Dan. He's a poor broadcaster. He uses way too many words to get his point across and, politics aside, his opinions are usually way off. The fact that he's an admitted New York Yankee apologist doesn't help him either. As he joins Football Night in America, he will be in front of his largest audience ever. I would love to see him make a fool of himself and get yanked amid controversy. ESPN sure wasn't afraid to pull the trigger on firing Limbaugh from its Sunday morning NFL show after he said something stupid.

2007 NCAA Tournament

This year's NCAA Tournament was, to put it mildly, a little disappointing. The fact that the only first round upsets were two 11 seeds over 6 seeds (a 9 seed over an 8 seed doesn't count no matter how badly you wanted BYU to win), takes away from the fun. The subsequent rounds weren't much better as the lowest seed in the Sweet 16 was 7-seeded UNLV, who once they, along with Butler and Southern Illinois, were knocked out, left no one to cheer for. Ohio State's disgusting comeback over Xavier pretty much summed it up. To give some perspective, last year in the ESPN.com NCAA Tournament Challenge a total of four people out of 3 million participants correctly predicted the Final Four which consisted of UCLA, Florida, LSU and George Mason (seeds 2, 3, 4 and 11). This year's Final Four (two 1 seeds and two 2 seeds) was picked by 161,000 people. Sure, Kansas fans were happy to finally see their team get out of the first round after losing to 13 seed Bradley last year and 14 seed Bucknell the year before. But what about the rest of us? Give us our upsets! I don't mean to sound too bitter. The tournament wasn't all bad. There were some close games with exciting finishes, and a rematch of the College Football BCS Championship Game was kind of interesting particularly now that Florida owns Ohio State. It could have been worse. Duke or North Carolina could have won. It's hard to hate Florida. I think it's admirable that their starters stuck around for another year. Although, I can't get past how much Joakim Noah looks like a girl, specifically Lisa Bonet (Denise Huxtable from The Cosby Show). One positive about the tournament turned out to be the NBA's new rule barring players from entering the draft straight from high school. One year and done isn't a whole lot better, but don't doubt for a minute that Ohio State would rather have had one year's services from Greg Oden than none. The same goes for Kevin Durant and Texas. Plus, in looking ahead to the NBA Draft, I can actually say that I know who the top players are. As for CBS's coverage of the tournament, I guess I would say it was the same as always. I got tired of Greg Gumbel. Clark Kellogg is OK. Seth Davis should stay away from television and stick to writing. Jim Nantz was as solid as ever and while I don't much care for Billy Packer, I'll take him over Bill Raftery any day. Seriously, how in the world does CBS put up with that guy and they way he calls basketball games? He's been described as "a border collie with Tourette Syndrome." I've decided he's worse than Bill Walton, but I'm not sure if he's worse than Dick Vitale. That's a toss up. I think I'd give the annoyance edge to Vitale because while he and Raftery are both morons with frequent spurts of mind-numbing garble spewing from their mouths, Vitale's voice is grating even when he's not saying something stupid, as rare as that may be. Fear the day if ESPN (Vitale's employer) ever gets broadcast rights to the tournament.

USA 2, Mexico 0

Last night, Sherstin and I along with Matt Hansen went to a soccer "friendly" between USA and Mexico here in Phoenix. Why on earth they chose to play Mexico in Phoenix is beyond me. Before the game, reports said that it would be a pro-Mexican crowd so I was naively hoping for 60-40 in favor of Mexico. Try 80-20. Of the 64,000+ fans in attendance, more than 50,000 were cheering for Mexico. It was totally different from the USA vs Costa Rica World Cup Qualifier in Salt Lake. Not only were there more fans with green jerseys, but they were certainly louder. Anytime a US player would line up for a corner kick, he would get rained on by drinks from the stands. It was nuts, but the US won 2-0 continuing their dominance over their bitter rival here in the US. In fact, Mexico has not scored a goal on US soil in nearly eight years. US keeper Tim Howard deserves a lot of the credit. With the shutout he lowered his career goals-allowed average to 0.58 per 90 minutes, the lowest in team history. He had a great game. At the opposite end of the spectrum is the Mexican keeper. The posters for the game had the catch phrase "Come see the beautiful game get ugly." It certainly did. After the second US goal Mexican keeper Oswaldo Sanchez tried to cheap shot Eddie Johnson of the US. He stuck out his foot to trip him as he ran by, even the though ball was already in the back of the net. After the game the Mexican players stayed true to form by not shaking hands or exchanging jerseys, something they have failed to do the past several times they have lost to the US. It was a ton of fun, though, especially with the atmosphere the Mexican fans brought. Matt said "I've never wanted a team to win so badly." I know what he meant. As we were leaving the stadium, the Mexican fans were still blowing their horns, pounding their drums and waving their flags. Imagine if they had won.

Super Bowl XLI: My Thoughts

The Game The opening kickoff for a TD combined with six turnovers and a two point margin made for a great first half of football. It was all down hill from there. Even though I wanted the Colts to win, that second half was rather boring. I'm happy for Tony Dungy. He deserved to win a Super Bowl, especially after what happened to him in Tampa Bay. I don't really care about Payton Manning and his legacy, but I will say he is a solid quarterback. I also really like Marvin Harrison. In a league dominated by loud-mouthed, show-boating wide receivers, Harrison stands out as the consummate professional and I'm happy for him as well. What's interesting, is this was not the best Colts team in recent years. Last year's team was a lot better and the team from two yeas ago had a way better defense. Speaking of good defense, on the other sideline, Brian Urlacher (graduate of University of New Mexico where he played under defensive coordinator Bronco Mendenhall) and the Bears' defense were on the field way too long. Rex Grossman proved his critics right. He was probably the sole reason why the Colts were favored all week. If the Bears had even an average quarterback who made fewer mistakes to go with that killer defense (ie Trent Dilfer with the Ravens in 2001, Brad Johnson with Buccaneers in 2003), they probably would have at least been able to make the second half interesting. The Coverage Jim Nantz just misses being in my top 5 all-time greatest voice talents. He's probably the best in the business right now. It's funny to think that prior to joining CBS he was working for KSL in Salt Lake City doing local sports and calling Jazz games with Hot Rod Hundley. On the other hand, I got really tired of hearing Phil Simms' voice. He's better than some analysts, but Simms' constant gabbing made me glad to own a DVR. Also, in an era of just-because-you-can-doesn't-mean-you-should sports broadcasting, I was glad to see CBS not go too overboard with the TV production theatrics (the players' spinning introductions aside). As for halftime, what's the deal with The Artist Currently Known as Prince? Can someone explain why he/she/it is popular? I mean that Aunt Jemima do rag is not what I would have worn in that situation, but hey, my fashion sense has never been my strong point. The Commercials Once again, this year felt like sort of a let down. We saw way too many Bud Light ads that would have been only mildly amusing on a smaller stage, but when thrown in to the Super Bowl broadcast, just came up flat. The CareerBuilder.com ads weren't as good as their old ones with the monkeys. There were too many truck commercials, none of which stood out, and is anyone else tired of the GoDaddy.com ads? Don't get me wrong, you all know my stance on beautiful people, but—and this is just my advertising background talking—one hot girl in tank top will no other substance is not enough to sustain a three-year ad campaign. On the positive side, the short clip with Dave Letterman and Oprah was great considering their past feuding (or Dave's one-sided feud with Oprah). I also liked the Taco Bell Carne Asada ad with the talking lions and the voice of Ricardo Montalban (although that isn't even the funniest ad featuring Ricardo Montalban. He was in a great ad for Dunkin' Doughnuts coffee in 2003). Another great spot was for FedEx Ground (don't judge it by its name). But, my favorite commercial was the Emerald Nuts ad featuring Robert Goulet who "appears and messes with your stuff." I mean, Robert Goulet! That totally beats the Kevin Federline ad for Nationwide Insurance.

My plan to fix college football

1. Eliminate the BCS and all conferences as we currently know them. 2. Organize all 120 Division 1A schools into 4 super conferences of 30 teams each based solely on geography as shown below. 3. Organize each super conference into 3 divisions or tiers of 10 teams. These tiers will come with a certain level of hierarchy. The top tier will consist of the best teams while the bottom tier will consist of the worst teams. 4. Each team will play the other 9 teams in its division with three games left for traditional rivals or other selected match ups. 5. At the end of the season, the champions of each conference's top tier will play in a four-team playoff with the winner crowned national champion. 6. All other teams will play in bowl games as they currently do. 7. The bottom two or three teams from the top tier will then be relegated to the second tier while the top two or three teams from the second tier will move up to the top tier and so on. The Resulting Benefits: It will eliminate controversy as to who should play in the national championship game. There would be fewer coaches abandoning schools on their way to the top as they would now be able to advance a mid-level program up to the top level. Similarly, it will appease the mid-majors as they would have a chance to move up to the big stage It will keep schools that don't really seem to be trying (ie Vanderbilt, Baylor and two thirds of the Big East) from piggy backing on the major programs for money It will preserve the importance that exists in every regular season game (something that a large tournament has failed to do in college basketball)

Zidane Simpson

Please note: This web log entry contains one or more embedded YouTube videos that no longer work since YouTube permanently disabled my account. I apologize for any inconvenience. Well, we can clearly see where Zidane leaned his tactics. After all, like people, some elephants are just jerks. You might say the same for certain French soccer players.

2006 FIFA World Cup Presented by Adidas

It was an OK World Cup. The fact that Italy won disgusts me. They should never have gotten past Australia. But you knew going in that a European team was going to win. The Cup has alternated between Europe and South America every tournament dating back to 1958. Anyway, here are some of my observations from the 2006 FIFA World Cup Presented by Adidas: I got really sick of Marcelo Balboa for a number of reasons, but mainly for his applauding players for falling after the lightest of fouls. Does he not realize that flopping is the single biggest problem with soccer today? Although, the worst announcer of the cup was Shep Messing. He's the Dick Vitale of soccer broadcasting. Luckily he was done after group play. Sadly, so was Tommy Smyth, the crazy Irish announcer famous for his blunt honesty and catch phrases like "a bulge in the ol' onion bag." I was rooting for Portugal vs France despite the way they played against Holland and my great dislike of Drama Queen Cristiano Ronaldo (the World's best flop artist). The thing I did like about Portugal is their coach, Luiz Felipe Scolari. I actually got my picture taken with him when I was in Brazil and he was a club coach there. It was in 2001 right before he was named Brazil's 2002 World Cup Coach. Our tour guide was a trainer for the team so he took us into the locker room after a game and we got pictures with a lot of the players, including Scolari and Argentina's Sorin. Sadly, I didn't bring my camera to the game so that picture is not in my possession but with someone who did bring their camera. Out of the 15 games that mattered in the knockout round, only twice did the team I was rooting for win: Argentina over Mexico and Germany over Argentina. Australia got screwed. So did Tunisia (vs Ukraine). Speaking of Ukraine, how about Switzerland being eliminated despite not giving up a goal in the entire tournament? Of course, a little more offense wouldn't have hurt and their showing on PKs vs Ukraine was worse than England's showing vs Portugal. Say what you will about Bruce Arena. He did take the US to new heights in 2002. However, this time the US was a disappointment, but I don't know that many other coaches would have done better. Landon Donovan was terrible, so was Claudio Reyna. I could go on. Speaking of the US, Group E (US, Italy, Czech, Ghana) turned out to be the group of death after all. The media kept calling C (Argentina, Netherlands, Serbia & Montenegro, Ivory Coast) the group of death. I'm sorry, but the group of death doesn't have 6-0 results and teams resting players carrying yellow cards on the last day. E was the group of death because it was the only group heading into the last day where any of the four teams could advance and any could be eliminated. No other group could claim that. They all had either at least one team guaranteed to advance or at least one team eliminated after two games. Further proof that soccer hasn't arrived in the US yet: during games ESPN would often cut away to show hoards of people gathered in famous plazas. During the US-Ghana game they showed Time Square which had maybe 50 or 60 people and cars driving though as if it were a normal day. I enjoyed the World Cup. I'm just glad that my school schedule allowed me to see so many games (most of my classes were in the afternoon). I look forward to South Africa 2010. After that the 2014 Cup will most likely be in Brazil. Sherstin and I are planning on being there.