For years, my interest in the Olympics has been tangential: I’ve been excited to hear about world records and great achievements, but haven’t actually been interested in watching the Games themselves.
This year, I’m completely entranced by the Olympics in Beijing.
I’m not quite sure what caused this shift, but rarely have I been so enthralled by a major sporting event that wasn’t the Super Bowl or the World Cup. Over the past few days, I’ve been looking at some of the things that really caught my eye at the Olympics in 2008.
Last up (fittingly): Last-Place Finishes.
Canada kept it close, but once again, the host nation China has outclassed every single country — in last-place finishes. There’s a fantastic blog called DFL that keeps track of last-place finishes at the Olympics, and Canada came up big this year with eight dead-lasts. China finished with fourteen.
You can laugh all you want, but finishing in last place is no laughing matter. The fact is, not only are these athletes representing their country on the biggest stage — and you’re sitting in your underwear watching them on TV — but they also finish what they started. The DFL listings do not include athletes who do not complete their events. From the FAQ:
“Better DFL than DNF,” someone once told me — the implication being that it’s better to finish last, so long as you finish. Those that came last were at least able to put a mark on the board — a mark that we can compare ourselves (and the gold-medal winner’s results) against. We’re celebrating the last-place finish, not searching for the athlete most deserving of our derision.
Again, it may seem ridiculous, but celebrating last-place finishes is important because we’re celebrating the worst of the best, which is always better than celebrating the best of the worst. Like the blog says, “they’re there, and you’re not.”
For years, my interest in the Olympics has been tangential: I’ve been excited to hear about world records and great achievements, but haven’t actually been interested in watching the Games themselves.
This year, I’m completely entranced by the Olympics in Beijing.
I’m not quite sure what caused this shift, but rarely have I been so enthralled by a major sporting event that wasn’t the Super Bowl or the World Cup. Over the past few days, I’ve been looking at some of the things that really caught my eye at the Olympics in 2008.
Next up: Gymnastics.
If there’s one thing that is guaranteed to catch my attention, it’s controversy. This year, the gymnastics at the Olympics have been rife full of controversy, and it has been captivating.
By now, it’s pretty evident that some of the Chinese gymnasts are much younger than the minimum age of 16 years old. The Chinese attempt to hide it by deleting documents and forging passports is doing nothing but making it worse. Time to fess up, China.
I won’t even talk about the ridiculousness of the judging or the absurd tie-break procedures — or the fact that Nastia Liukin was robbed — but this year’s gymnastics has been rife with controversy, and because of that, the competition has been extremely compelling.
Oh, and the highlight of my Olympic viewing experience? Shawn Johnson’s huge smile as she won the gold medal on the beam. I’ve never seen someone that happy and truly appreciative of their experience. Awesome.
Does controversy make you more interested in an event, or is it bad for sports in general?
For years, my interest in the Olympics has been tangential: I’ve been excited to hear about world records and great achievements, but haven’t actually been interested in watching the Games themselves.
This year, I’m completely entranced by the Olympics in Beijing.
I’m not quite sure what caused this shift, but rarely have I been so enthralled by a major sporting event that wasn’t the Super Bowl or the World Cup. Since yesterday, I’ve been looking at some of the things that really caught my eye at the Olympics in 2008.
Next up: Michael Phelps.
Oh, we all know he’s more fish than human, but even that can’t explain the remarkable feat of Michael Phelps.
Phelps’ real achievement isn’t winning eight gold medals in one Olympic games — though that is amazing — but instead making millions of people across the world care about swimming again.
For a lot of people, swimming is something you do at the beach, or those classes you take when you’re young. Competitive swimming isn’t heavily televised in North America, and it surely doesn’t dominate water-cooler conversations like the Brett Favre trade.
Michael Phelps made competitive swimming cool; Phelps’ medal hunt made it normal for swimming-related headlines to dominate news broadcasts and talk shows. Swimming now isn’t just something that is done by guys that shave their legs — it is the pinnacle of athleticism.
I doubt the interest will linger, and I’m sure swimming will be relegated to its niche relatively soon, but I’m glad Phelps was able to make a whole nation — heck, the whole world — rally around an athlete that wears Speedos more often than Levi’s.
Do you think Phelps’ remarkable Olympic results will invigorate long-term public interest in swimming?
For years, my interest in the Olympics has been tangential: I’ve been excited to hear about world records and great achievements, but haven’t actually been interested in watching the Games themselves.
This year, I’m completely entranced by the Olympics in Beijing.
I’m not quite sure what caused this shift, but rarely have I been so enthralled by a major sporting event that wasn’t the Super Bowl or the World Cup. Over the next few days, I’ll be looking at some of the things that really caught my eye at the Olympics in 2008.
First up: China.
Apart from the fact that they are completely dominating the medal standings, there has a lot been said about the host country this year. The protests at the torch relays were the first events that piqued my interest in the Games.
China rebounded from all the protest talk to host one of the most beautiful Opening Ceremonies I’ve ever seen, albeit one marred with controversy about faked fireworks and a girl not pretty enough to sing.
The sporting venues and other support structures around Beijing and other parts of the country are being praised as being architecturally stunning — and it helps that the Chinese athletes that have been competing in those venues are exceeding all expectations. All in all, China has been a wonderful host for the Olympics, able to temper controversy with beauty and elegance.
The only major concern I’ve had (and this may have been a concern at other Olympics, but I’m not aware as none of the previous ones have been as captivating as these Beijing Games) revolves around the empty seats I’ve seen at venues on the television broadcasts. The reason for the empty seats baffles me: perhaps China has done a better job of marketing the Olympics to the international television audience than it has inside its own country?
What do you think of the job China has done in hosting the Olympics?
As a die-hard lifelong New York Jets fan, it’s no surprise that the recent trade of Brett Favre to the Jets was some of the best news I’ve had in years. Not only will Favre, one of the greatest quarterbacks to play the game of football, help bolster the image of the green and white, but will also give the Jets a realistic chance to make it to (and succeed in) the playoffs this season.
Let’s be honest. I’m more than just a fan of The Chad: he’s also one of my heroes.
Sure Pennington owns the highest career and single-season passer ratings in Jets history. That’s great. But numbers can’t adequately describe the impact that the veteran quarterback has had on my favorite pro sports team.
In an age where sports is more business than play and athletes are more concerned about fattening their paychecks than playing hard, Chad Pennington stands out as a football player that plays with heart. Through the injuries, the slumps, and the unending criticism by some of the most vicious media (it’s hard to play in New York, in any sport) in the world, Chad has shown nothing but resilience, dedication, sportsmanship, and the desire to do the best that he can do.
Say what you want about his physical limitations (and there were many). Pennington was able to overcome those limitations because of his willingness to play as a team, because of his drive to make everyone else around him a better player, and most of all, because of his astute knowledge of the sport of football.
I’m glad that we have Brett Favre on the Jets, and I truly believe that the green and white will be hoisting the Lombardi Trophy this season under Favre’s leadership. I am sad however that Chad Pennington, one of the greatest team players the Jets have ever had, won’t be there to enjoy the spoils of the work he’s been putting in, year after year, to make all of us in the Jets nation proud.
I’m going to take a page out of Fireman Ed’s book here and give it up to one of my favorite Jets — heck, favorite football players — to ever step on the field:
Two Sundays ago, I spent the entire afternoon watching coverage of the Kentucky Derby on NBC.
I gawked at the Hat Parade, laughed at Terrell Owens’ popcorn comments, quivered in anticipation as the horses approached the posts, and sat enthralled as Big Brown blew away the competition as the colt raced towards the finish line.
And yes, I cried when the filly, Eight Belles, fell after her second place finish and had to be euthanized.
Finding a scapegoat
In light of the Eight Belles tragedy, PETA had decided to start a media firestorm to convince people that horse racing is cruel.
Now, I’ll acknowledge that PETA, in the past, has done a lot of great things with regards to the treatment of animals. I just think that this time, they’ve gone too far.
For some inexplicable reason, one of the major points in PETA’s campaign has been to call for the suspension of Eight Belles’ jockey Gabriel Saez, as well as the banning of her trainer from ever training another horse.
How the unfortunate incident at Churchill Downs has anything to do with the jockey is beyond me, and I’m an avid horse racing fan. Yet, PETA continues to show its ignorance and stubbornness by trying to make its point through a scapegoat.
A perfect example of PETA’s inanity was demonstrated when spokesperson Nicole Matthews came on to Mike Tirico’s ESPN Radio show and refused to address Tirico’s questions about the jockey and instead decided to read off her talking points cue cards.
Tirico: Did he do something that other jockeys haven’t done in the recent past?
Matthews: Well, horse racing is a dirty, greedy money game.
Tirico: That’s a big picture question, Nicole, and I understand that and we can get that for a brief moment in a minute. But come back to my point. Did he do something that somebody in the seventh race at the Derby didn’t do?
Matthews: Well, you know, thoroughbreds are raced on hard dirt surfaces, too young and too often and they’re whipped viciously as they come down the stretch.
Tirico: Let me try my question a third time. Did he do something that a jockey didn’t do in the sixth race at Churchill Downs Saturday. You can say you don’t know, it’s okay.
Matthews: [inaudible] horses is a standard practice, of course.
If PETA continues to be this ignorant and can not even respond to a rational question with regards to their complaints, they immediately lose any credibility with regards to anything they can say about horse racing.
Making room for change
The idiocy of PETA’s arguments (and yes, I did say idiocy, because it can not be described as anything else) aside, I will agree that the horse racing industry need to make a few changes in order to protect the health and well-being of the horses. Most people believe that banning whipping will be an excellent first step, but my major concerns do not revolve around the races themselves, but in breeding.
It is no secret that race horses are bred for size and speed; other factors such as strength and endurance are not priorities for horses running in high-stakes races that are usually just a few furlongs. This means that many horses are not bred for long careers, but instead for big finishes in lucrative races.
PETA should have targeted these kinds of breeding practices that are creating weaker (albeit faster) horses instead of trying to scapegoat a jockey that has done nothing wrong but do his job, and do it well. Even a small bit of research would have helped them realize that they’re taking the wrong approach; apparently PETA doesn’t value research as much as public demonstrations.
I love animals, but next time PETA opens their mouth to say anything about any issue, I’m tuning out. And it’s entirely their fault.
As a former Georgetown student, it’s no surprise that I’m a huge Hoya basketball fan.
Their Final Four appearance last year was not a flash in the pan as many have been suggesting: they recently won the Big East conference for the second year in a row (no easy feat in one of the best conferences in the nation) and are in position to win the Big East tournament and make a strong case for a high seed in the NCAA tournament starting later this month.
The game for the regular-season crown was sweetly indicative of what the Big East is about.
It was brutal and ugly and beautiful all at once. Shots were harder to come by than Kleenex at a Brett Favre news conference, and the unforced and forced errors rivaled those of a crummy tennis match. Ten minutes in, the score stood at 10-7. Georgetown had five turnovers, Louisville six. Louisville went 15 consecutive possessions in the first half without scoring; not to be outdone, Georgetown all but blew an 11-point second-half lead with three cough-ups on three trips down the court.
But for people reared in the heyday of the league, there was nothing painful about it. It was exactly right.
I’m extremely proud of my Hoyas this year, and have been wearing my GU t-shirt all season. Before I break out into the fight song, check out this great site celebrating 100 years of Georgetown basketball. Let’s make our 100th year special by winning the national title.
I’ve always been intrigued by innovative ideas that are integral to the development of human capacity and potential, particularly when it comes to healthcare and the alleviation of poverty.
PlayPumps allow local communities to access clean drinking water without the necessity for intensive labor, electricity, or fuel that usually comes with drilling a water well. Instead, they “harness the power of children playing” in order to pump water to the places that need it most. Watch this video for a quick explanation.
Sure there are several issues — child labor, misuse, advertising, etc. — that come from having such a project, but the fact remains that the installation of these pumps is bringing clean water to communities where this water was otherwise difficult to obtain. The discussion around the ethical and social issues behind this technology is one that needs to happen, but the underlying result of the project is noble.
I’ll make it a point to do some more research on PlayPumps and their model of social entrepreneurship before I decide to make a donation, but I just wanted to share this to show yet another example of how the smallest innovations can help change the world.
Let us, for a minute, consider the circumstances that caused Oklahoma State University football coach Mike Gundy’s exceptional tirade against sports media a few days ago. I’m aware that most of the readers of this site aren’t college football fans, so you might be in the dark as to the incident I am referring to in this post, so here’s a bit of context for you all.
This past Saturday, Jenni Carlson ran an article in The Oklahoman that accused quarterback Bobby Reid of being coddled, soft, and of not having the right kind of winning attitude in order to lead the football team. She claimed that while Reid was still technically the better quarterback on the team, OSU had decided to start sophomore Zac Robinson instead of Reid not because of his talent, but because Reid didn’t have the right attitude to win.
While the Cowboys did go on to beat Texas Tech on Saturday with Robinson at the helm, the only thing on coach Mike Gundy’s mind was Carlson’s article published earlier that day. Instead of talking about the win, Gundy went on a tirade against the sports media, most of which is captured on this video below:
I fear that Gundy’s outburst may have escalated the situation to a public level when it could have been dealt with in a much more subtle and effective way, but I do feel that this is a good time to comment on sports media and student athletics, and the role each of these bodies have to play in concert with each other. As much as I think that Gundy’s histrionics were excessive, I also believe that Carlson (and other members of the media who are not immune to this error) was out of line in her comments.
Columnists are opinionated people
I’ll be the first person to argue that the job of a sports columnist is to have an opinion. Anyone can attend a game and report on what happened: the reason that we value certain sports writers over regular beat reporters is because they have an opinion — an opinion shaped from either experience, research, or insight — that shapes their perspectives, which they then share with us, the spectators and readers.
Whether they are writing about the National Football League, the College Bowl Championship Series, high school Friday night games, or lunchtime pick-up games on the elementary school yard, reporters need to express this opinion in order to make their story unique, engaging, and worth printing. The question of whether or not we agree with that opinion is irrelevant; as long as the insight is expressed, the story is valuable. Sports writers offer a perspective that game statistics alone can never convey.
In that light, you can’t fault Jenni Carlson for speaking her mind: she had an opinion about Bobby Reid, and she conveyed that opinion in her article. Coach Gundy’s assertion that he doesn’t read newspapers because the media has become too critical of athletics is ludicrous. This kind of criticism is the fuel that athletic programs require in order to maintain their prominence in the public sphere: before you get people talking about you, you need to give them something to talk about. If it weren’t for the media speculation — the reporters, the columnists, the fantasy leagues, the analysts — the entire BCS wouldn’t exist, and Gundy would be unemployed.
Gundys’ claim that Reid is “not a professional athlete” might be true, but is completely irrelevant to this argument. Much like a professional athlete, who deserves to be criticized by the people paying his salary, Reid is a scholarship athlete at a state school — his education is being funded by taxpayers and therefore needs to be accountable. While I’m not claiming that all student athletes need to be treated like pros, I do feel that they need to be cognizant of the fact that they are representatives of their academic institutions and athletics programs, and this will involve media speculation and criticism.
Reid may understand this, and has remained mum throughout the whole affair, but his coach must be deluded to think that just because his player is barely old enough to drink alcohol legally, he is immune to public scrutiny. Mike Gundy’s postgame comments, when taken in this context, seem much more childish and immature than his own quarterback’s actions.
Coaches protect their players
Of course, I can still understand Gundy’s fury: Carlson was perhaps unnecessary vitriolic in her assessment of Reid. While I will uphold the journalist’s right to criticize the athletic-related actions of any athlete, I do not agree with making sarcastic and personal jabs at any individual that are completely unrelated to their on-field performance. Stooping to that level is not only unjust, but cruel, and I can therefore understand Gundy’s passion (but still not the content of his response) in his press conference reply. After all, a coach must protect his players against unwarranted personal attacks.
Carlson’s points about Reid’s nervousness and injuries were well-founded — drawing an seemingly unconnected link between his athletic performance and the fact that his mom was feeding him chicken, however, was inappropriate. Indeed, her line questioning Reid’s off-field character — “Or does he want to be coddled, babied, perhaps even fed chicken?” — based on an incident in a parking lot was the perfect example of bad journalism and can not be defended. I understand that Carlson may have been using technique to make her article more evocative, but certain kinds of embellishment — particularly those that lead to unnecessary defamation — have no place in sports reporting. Save that for the politicians and mudslingers.
Gundy’s accusation that many of Carlson’s claims were untrue is an important one. If Carlson was in fact lying, or even just fudging the truth, in order to sell more copies of the paper, the editor of the Oklahoman should be held accountable for publishing untruths. Journalistic integrity is primordial to the profession, and any kind of blemishes to this integrity needs to lead to serious consequences, not only for the writer, but for the entire staff of the publication.
Fans make the final decision
It is clear to see that both parties are in the wrong in this situation: Coach Gundy in his content but not his passion, and Jenni Carlson in her disregard for integrity and civility but not her right to have an opinion. In the end, it is the Oklahoma State University athletics fan that is the final arbiter — disregard Carlson’s journalistic authority or disregard Gundy’s athletic authority? — and will ultimately choose what side of the equation is the correct one.
Going forward, I think the editors of The Oklahoman need to look at what kind of content is being printed in their publication and ask themselves what kind of damage this incident has done to their credibility and act accordingly. I also think that coach Gundy needs to look at the ways he deals with conflict and stress and ask himself what kind of damage his outburst has done to his authority and act accordingly.
“Whether or not you’re being praised or being criticized, you really have to maintain an even-keel approach. Good or bad — it’s always going to be there.”
As I type this right now, we are eight games into this year’s NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship Tournament, and so far, all eight of the teams I called to win in my bracket have picked up their ever-important wins. For those of you who are interested, here are a few links to who I’ve picked through each round of the tournament, and a look at my final four: Midwest | East | South | West | Final Four
For those of you that are still a bit confused as to what is going on, every year I make my predictions on the NCAA March Madness Tournament based on a few factors:
Did I attend the school?
Have they been playing well in the regular season?
What conference do they play in?
Are they one of my regular schools I support? (Kentucky, UConn, Maryland)
Do I know anyone that went to the school?
What is their ranking?
Clearly, as you can tell from this list of factors, it isn’t surprising that I picked my former college, Georgetown, to win the tournament; luckily, this year, they’re actually one of the best teams in the NCAA so it isn’t such a long shot. For those of you who struggled to complete your brackets this year, I’d suggest coming up with a similar list of criteria and just go with it. For example, Matt Thomas’ list of criteria is pretty intriguing, and has led to a pretty exciting bracket.
As the tournament began, my brother made a very astute observation: the NHL and the NBA would be much more exciting if they followed a similar playoff strategy as NCAA Basketball. A short regular season would rank all the teams in the league going into the final playoffs, and each team in the league would have a chance to play in a do-or-die bracketed tournament to decide the league champion. Logistically, it may be hard to set up at first, and I’m sure the players’ union in each league would have a public outcry, but in the end, both those leagues would benefit greatly from the hype that comes from a bracketed tournament.
Surfing the web with brackets in mind, I found a book on Amazon called The Enlightened Bracketologist, which turns the art of having an opinion into a sport. Pretty interesting idea, if you ask me. In response to the book, Slate came out with some interesting interactive brackets to help you decide the best ad slogan of all time (Just do it), the greatest film deaths (Bambi’s mom shot by hunters), the most poignant ‘where were you when’ moment (9/11 attacks), and the most ridiculous marital argument (When are we going to get married?). Go and try them out and have some fun with them. And then go watch some NCAA basketball.
I won’t even talk about the ridiculousness of the judging or the absurd tie-break procedures — or the fact that 
Sure Pennington owns the highest career and single-season passer ratings in Jets history. That’s great. But numbers can’t adequately describe the impact that the veteran quarterback has had on my favorite pro sports team.
