I am really surprised that those mighty protectors of all things noble and good – - and inoffensive to anyone and everyone – in the NCAA have missed out on this one. Those are the folks who forced schools to change their nicknames because they might have been offensive to some – but not all – Native Americans. These are the folks who try to regulate or at least put boundaries on the kinds of signs that might appear at NCAA games or on the themes of halftime shows by some collegiate bands. These are mightily sensitive folks; you would have thought they would have acted by now.
You see, the NCAA gives out an award every year to the best pitcher in college baseball and they call it the Roger Clemens Award. Now if the NCAA will force changes in team mascots and try to limit the expression of students at NCAA events on the possibility that someone might be offended, don’t you think they ought to change the name of that award? Might not someone, somewhere, be offended by the allegations of steroid and HGH use followed by an assertion that Clemens and an underage girl had a relationship of some kind? What about the feelings of those potentially offended folks? Shouldn’t there be some kind of appreciation for their outrage at NCAA headquarters?
As the tawdry part of the Roger Clemens story continues to play out in the media, I am amazed at how the mighty have fallen. Two years ago, Roger Clemens name was being associated with Christy Matthewson and Walter Johnson and Sandy Koufax as one of the great pitchers of all time. Now his name is being associated with Jerry Lee Lewis and Luis Polonia. Sic transit gloria mundi.
There was a column in the LA Times earlier this week by Wallace Matthews. It puts a perspective on Roger Clemens situation without any grand rhetorical flourish. I commend it to your reading.
According to a column by Craig Smith in the Seattle Times, a high school pitcher in Spokane Washington struck out 21 hitters in a 7-inning game. Do the math. He struck out every batter. Two years ago, a columnist might have allowed himself to do a huge extrapolation and refereed to this kid as “the next Roger Clemens”. I don’t think there is any great temptation to do that today…
Staying with baseball pitchers for a moment, here is a quick quiz courtesy of Dwight Perry in the Seattle Times:
“Barry Trotz” is:
“A. The coach of the NHL’s Nashville Predators.
“B. A digestive-tract disorder that afflicts Giants fans whenever Zito takes the mound.”
After the Chicago Cubs lost to the Washington Nats by a shutout, Cubbies’ manager Lou Piniella did a post game interview on cable TV for the Chicago area. According to the Chicago Tribune, he said:
“When you don’t score runs, it definitely increases the other teams’ chance of winning.”
I should say so. Since baseball allows no tie games to exist, if you don’t score the chances that the other team will eventually win are 100%.
There are headlines proclaiming that the European Champions League title will be contested between two English soccer teams. Manchester United will play the winner of a Liverpool/Chelsea match in Moscow for the European Cup. Here is another potential “first” for this match up – even though I would not know how to gather the data to prove it:
If the final teams are Manchester United and Liverpool, not only will this be the first time two English teams have played for the championship, but also this has to be the first time that both teams in the finals would be owned by Americans.
I haven’t seen any reference to that in any of the British papers that I scan online but if this happens, I will expect to see a reference to the intrusion of those bloody colonials into “the beautiful game”. After all, those blokes over there don’t know football from a foot stocking…
High definition television has to be the best thing that has happened to the NHL in the last 50 years. Ratings for the NHL on NBC were up 11% this year and ratings on Versus are up more than 25% for the playoff games so far. Be careful about reading too much into ratings increase on Versus; the number was trivially small to begin with so a 25% increase is really a very small increase in viewers. But it beats a decrease by a mile!!
NBC also announced that it will exercise its option to do NHL games next year putting the NHL on Sunday for at least 10 games. This may not be as good as having ESPN pick up the telecast rights – and putting the full ESPN cross-promotional hype machine on the case. But it beats no TV exposure other than Versus by a mile!!
Here’s what I think would really make hockey more exciting on TV – now that Hi-Def allows you to follow the puck easily. If the league were to contract to somewhere between 16 and 20 teams and put another three or four teams in Canadian cities where the fans really care about the game, there would be energy in all of the games. I’ve never been to Winnipeg or Regina so I don’t know if there are sufficient numbers of fans there to garner TV ratings for games involving those teams but I just know that the fans in the building there would be passionate hockey fans and I would be able to sense that as a viewer at home. Watching a game with the local fans in Atlanta or Florida or Columbus? Not so much…
Finally, Greg Cote had this item in the Miami Herald recently:
“Dale Earnhardt Jr. has opened a new bar, Whisky River, in Charlotte, N.C. Cannot confirm the bar aims to be a place where people can come in, relax and feel like they haven’t won a race in 70 consecutive starts.”
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…