7.09.2009

Local Sports

It's time for my bi-yearly, local sports rant. PEDs Is anyone in the nation still unaware of what Performance Enhancing Drugs are? Are we all clear that they are a form of cheating? Are high school, college, and professional athletes desperate to get a step ahead, or are they just stupid? Recently, Manny Ramirez, arguably one of the best right-handed hitters ever, certainly of his generation, was suspended for 50 games for testing positive for a drug that only has two uses: (1) feminine pregnancy issues and (2) coming down from anabolic steroids. Wanna guess which one Manny was using it for? Sad. Way to crap on your legacy, Manny. Now I'm waiting for the list of local high school athletes to come out declaring them ineligible for PED use. What ever happened to playing for love of the game? BCS If you've been hiding under a rock, you wouldn't realize that the Senate recently held hearings on whether the Bowl Championship Series violates Federal Law in the form of the Sherman Antitrust Act. The thrust of the Act is to prevent monopolies from forming and businesses from engaging in anti-competition agreements (conspiring to fix prices, exclude future/potential competitors, etc.). There's enough to this that even the Wall Street Journal has picked up on it and questions whether the BCS is a legitimate operation or a pseudo-academic racket. For me, the issue at hand can be boiled down to one simple example of unfairness (the very type of example the Sherman act was intended to forbid and prevent): The Washington Huskies Football team, owners of the worst record in college football last year at 0-12 (with an ignominious loss to the BYU Cougars because of a last-second blocked extra point), made more money from the BCS than any teams outside of the Automatic Qualifying Conferences, including the recently hapless Fightin' Irish of Notre Dame. That includes The University of Utah Runnin' Utes, who not only went to a BCS Bowl Game, the Sugar, they beat their opponent, the oft-#1-ranked Alabama, handily. The game wasn't even close. Yet, for being the only undefeated team at the end of the season, the Utes not only received less money than the Huskies, they didn't even get to play for a championship. Something stinks in Indianapolis... Carlos Boozer That's a picture of Carlos Boozer playing typical defense. Recently, Carlos had the option to leave Utah and pursue "more lucrative" pastures. Not surprisingly, no one wanted to pay the narcissistic, crunch-time folding, bull fighter defending, turnover maestro more than the 12.5 million dollars he stands to make next year in a Jazz uniform. HEY!!! Carlos! Play some defense, and maybe we can win! You're generally the biggest, strongest guy on the court. Heck, you grew up in Alaska! Can't you just, you know, man up a little bit and earn the $30,000 dollars per hour that you're paid? Did I just write $30,000 an hour? Excuse me. I have to go vomit. ...and finally, a ray of sunshine: US Soccer I realize this isn't necessarily local sports news, but man, how cool was the Confederations Cup for US Soccer fans?! Even though I'm generally pretty ambivalent about soccer, especially in the U.S. Professional League--MLS, I ADORE international soccer matches, especially when they concern my teams: The United States, England, Norway, and Brasil. How cool was it then for the US to scoot out of the qualifying round (after losing twice and then getting in solely because they beat Egypt 3-0 and Brasil beat Italy 3-0 (nothing else would have let them in)) and then beat #1 ranked Spain 2-0 to reach the finals?! Very. Extremely. Sublimely. But then, to cap it all off, the Yanks had to go and blow a 2-0 lead to Brasil in the final. Moral victory? I guess. But man, how long can we ride on moral victories?

4 comments:

Jerkolas said...

Don't worry ebv I can assure you that all that money is going to a good use here at UW. Why I bet we even get a win this year. Progress!

Something stinks with the BCS, but thats not new news right?

Oh and how about Manny being applauded when he returned...from suspension...for cheated?

Yeah for US soccer, but come on the real story is what has happened to Argentina.

Unknown said...

You are absolutely kidding me. You write an entire post about sports (in the month of July, no less) and you neglect to mention the Tour de France? Granted, the event is not local, but we've got some locals participating. It is the most widely attended sporting event in the world with 15 million spectators lining the street each year...and it's all happening right now.

To the local stuff. First, let's talk Levi Leipheimer. Although he now lives in California, he graduated from Rowland Hall so there's your local connection. He's won the Tour of California multiple times, took 3rd overall in France and is now riding with Lance Armstrong and Alberto Contador on the Astana team which will win in France...just you watch. Currently, Astana riders Contador, Amstrong and Leipheimer hold the 2,3, and 4th place spots.

Now if you don't mind, we'll finish off with our very own David Zabriski? When he's not training in Europe, you can find Dave here in the 801. This Olympus High School alumni is riding with the Garmin-Slipstream Team in this year's tour. Although we're not sure if we'll see him take the overall Tour title, in 2005 he set the record for the fastest ever time trial in the history of the Tour, averaging 33.97 mph. Dave is in 35th place, 5 minutes down from the yellow jersey.

Today was Stage 7 of the Tour. The riders have covered 1040km out of 3500km.

There. Now your sports rant and rave is complete. :)

SGarff said...

When I first found out that Manny was trying to "increase his female fertility." I was so sad. I don't have many heroes in sports but, Manny was pretty close. I guess it would be a lot worse if it turned out that Stockton used steroids. But now I'm just angry. As much as my Dodgers need him, we shouldn't welcome him back.

Major league baseball is a joke. The penalties are so minor that they are basically asking players to cheat. You wanna stop cheating? Fine someone more than they make in just a few games. Suspend them for more than just part of a season. Redact the stats they got while on the juice.

I'm starting to get pretty angry now, so I won't even say anything about the BCS.

Ok, just one thing: Harvey Perlman did you really say "I can say certainly that the system allows every team an equal right to be number one or number two, if they are successful on the field"? Did you really say that? you forgot to add that there are no homosexual people in Iran and that Mark Sanford was hiking the Appalachian Trail.

Ru said...

Yeah, good old Manny Ramirez. Comes back from his 50-game suspension (already a joke) to massive fanfare on July 4 (even bigger joke). Every sports analyst talking about his "return" made it sound like he'd just had surgery on his rotator cuff - "He'll only play if he's ready." Poor kid, I didn't know coming off steroids was so rough.

In other news, some guy named Lou Gehrig retired 70 years ago, apparently after his game seriously went to hell. Too bad he didn't know about lady hormone ... just sayin.