The Penn State scandal, the media and irony

This is a vacation week for me, and I’m catching a lot more sports talk on TV and radio than I usually do. There’s plenty of pontificating about the horrifying Penn State sexual abuse scandal, and I’ve heard a number of comments along the lines of, “We’ve built a monster in college football by all […]

An extremely slim connection to Stanford bowl game glory

Congratulations to Stanford for their no-doubts 40-12 victory tonight over Virginia Tech in the Orange Bowl. The Cardinal were led by standout quarterback Andrew Luck, a sophomore who must weigh the prestige of a Stanford degree against the lucre of a big-bucks NFL contract. I have the most tenuous of connections to young Mr. Luck, […]

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. […]

No, thanks. I’ll pass on the chips (Fiesta Bowl 2010)

[picapp align=”left” wrap=”true” link=”term=Boise+State&iid=7455313″ src=”6/1/2/4/Tostitos_Fiesta_Bowl_0155.jpg?adImageId=8797792&imageId=7455313″ width=”234″ height=”317″ /] On my television screen, the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl tonight looked more like the Ugly Uniforms Bowl. As one of my Twitter buddies pointed out, TCU players looked like walking eggplants. And although the pants in this photo appear orange, on my screen the Boise State players looked […]

The Rose Bowl – A Midwestern perspective

As a child of the Big Ten Conference, I believed the Rose Bowl was a place of magic, enchantment and, inevitably, frustration and resignation. With piles of snow outside our homes in suburban Cleveland, we’d tune in to the game as the sun was setting in Eastern time. We’d watch in fascination as 100,000 people […]

Hitting the baseball perfecta

Inspired by a few trips to the betting window over the years, I’ve developed a system of rating how good a sports day I’ve had. To hit the daily double, my two favorite teams – the Cleveland Indians and San Francisco Giants – must win. That happens fairly often (although the Tribe didn’t exactly give […]

A salute to John Madden

John Madden announced today that he’s retiring from the broadcast booth, and that was major news. Madden is one of the greatest football broadcasters of all time, and I’d rank him among the greatest sports broadcasters overall. His energy, enthusiasm and wit pair wonderfully with his knowledge of football and life at large. He announced […]

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, […]

Presidents and baseball caps, 18th Century division

This isn’t, technically speaking, a cap in my collection. But it’s too cool not to count. My mother-in-law and I have traded gag gifts at Christmas over the years, and yesterday I received a University of Virginia T-shirt with the crossed-saber logo on the front. But the back is what really matters. It depicts our […]

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, […]