The Big 10, the Big 12, the Pac 10 and our way of life

We all know the recent machinations realigning some of the major conferences in college athletics are all about money. We take cherished “amateur” sports associated with our institutions of higher learning and milk them for every dime. How quintessentially American. I don’t actually have any particular beef with finances driving universities to seek a better deal. […]

Spike Lee sports a special Yankees championship cap

[picapp align=”left” wrap=”true” link=”term=NBA&iid=7939913″ src=”5/d/7/0/NBA_All_Star_165a.jpg?adImageId=10325689&imageId=7939913″ width=”234″ height=”294″ /] Check out the slick New York Yankees cap that Spike Lee wore to the NBA All-Star game last night in Dallas. I hadn’t seen this one before. It celebrates the Yanks’ recent World Series triumph — the 27th in franchise history — and notes the years of […]

Don’t bother Tiger Woods, officer. He’s sleeping.

[picapp align=”left” wrap=”true” link=”term=Tiger+Woods&iid=7029112″ src=”9/9/1/c/2009_Australian_Masters_8b90.jpg?adImageId=7920619&imageId=7029112″ width=”234″ height=”150″ /]Before the Tiger Woods story erupted this Thanksgiving weekend, I’d been ruminating on the differences between elite athletes and us mere men and women. Highly paid pro athletes like Woods in golf or Alex Rodriguez in baseball or LeBron James in basketball exist on a plane at which most of us mortals […]

PicApp gets the cap wrog

WordPress, which I dearly love, recently introduced PicApp images for use on our blogs. I just signed up and in my first search – for “baseball” — was pleased to find photos of celebrities and athletes wearing baseball caps and golf caps. The first image to catch my eye was this one of singer Katy […]

All hail, King (LeBron) James!

It’ s been years since I’ve paid anything more than cursory attention to the NBA playoffs, and what’s drawn me in this year is the intriguing possibility of a finals matchup between LeBron James of the Cleveland Cavaliers and Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers. I don’t know what lies ahead in the Eastern […]

NCAA Selection Sunday: A curmudgeonly take on “The Dance”

The annual “Selection Sunday” ritual of choosing teams for the NCAA men’s basketball tournament is this weekend, and I am officially going on record to say I loathe describing the tournament as the “the dance” or “the big dance.” What a lame cliche. Let’s put a cap on it, so to speak. That objection aside, […]

Seattle without the Sonics, and other sad tales of the NBA

Having been born with virtually no talent for basketball, I suppose it’s not a huge surprise that basketball ranks fairly low on my list of favorites. As far as I can recall, I’ve only had one NBA team cap my entire life. That was a nifty green and black Seattle Supersonics cap, but it went […]

Marquette basketball: Hardwood warriors

On a Friday afternoon 30 years ago this past spring, I officially accepted a fellowship to enroll as a graduate student at the Marquette University College of Journalism. The next day, the Marquette basketball team, the defending NCAA champions, were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs by Miami of Ohio. In a way, […]