Author: Beau Dure

The guy who wrote a bunch of soccer books and now runs a Gen X-themed podcast while substitute teaching and continuing to write freelance stuff.
soccer

Single-Digit Soccer: The score is always 0-0

Posted on by Beau Dure

Perhaps Caddyshack was ahead of its time. Chevy Chase’s character just went out and played golf — very well. Score? Nah. Didn’t keep it.

A lot of youth soccer leagues don’t keep score in the early ages — in our case, we don’t keep track until U9. And the travel leagues don’t keep standings until U11. (Oddly enough, our U9 house league had standings on the Web for all the world to see.)

In Canada, they’re going a step farther. Under age 12, no scores, no standings. (UPDATE: Here’s some info about the plan as a whole, which addresses far more than scores and standings.)

In a country in that loves its hockey fights, such a plan is going to draw some flak. Fighting back against those critics is player-turned-commentator Jason deVos, who issued a strongly worded defense of the plan against what he calls ignorance and misinformation.

Jason is a sharp guy who does his research, and I’m sure a lot of the critics (Don Cherry? Really?) don’t fit that description. He’s got some backup from a thoughtful Toronto Star column on competition vs. cooperation, A couple of other columnists, including Duane Rollins, think the plan’s backers are losing the PR war. There’s no question that some of the concerns raised in this plan are valid.

But to give a sneak peek at the book I’m writing now, I’m a little skeptical about turning off the scoreboard. And that’s based not on Don Cherry’s macho notions of sports but on my experience coaching a wide range of kids — some exceptional, some decidedly average.

One point from the deVos column:

This pressure-filled environment has nasty repercussions for children. Rather than fostering their natural creativity and curiosity about the game, it stunts their development. In such an environment, children are not free to make the mistakes that are necessary for learning to occur. They play the game with a sense of dread, fearful that a mistake will lead to a goal against or a lost game.

Valid concern. But does that pressure go away when the parents aren’t writing down a score? Jason and others concede, correctly, that the kids know what’s going on. I’ve seen kids in U8 games get upset when things aren’t going their way, even though I shut off all discussion of score-keeping. “When we kick off again, the score’s 0-0.”

So the pressure of mistakes is still there. What we lose in the Canadian plan is the accomplishment of winning.

Last season, the first season my U9 team had scores, we had a rough regular season. Then we played a season-ending tournament in which everything suddenly came together. We beat two teams that had beaten us in the regular season to reach a final against a third that was unbeaten through nine games. We won that one, too.

The scoreboard critics say such things mean more to parents and coaches than they do to kids. I’m not so sure. My kids were experiencing the thrill of victory. One parent told me, “He’ll remember this for the rest of his life.”

Another consideration deVos raises:

They have taken an adult competition format, involving promotion and relegation, and imposed it on children.

My impression of promotion and relegation in youth soccer is that it’s there to keep teams of similar ability grouped together. You won’t have any 10-0 blowouts, regardless of whether anyone’s officially counting the 10 goals. And elite U10-U11 players will be challenged rather than relying on a handful of tricks and athletic ability to overwhelm a bunch of kids who haven’t developed yet.

One way to do this without putting too much pressure on kids is to keep the division structure opaque. I played for a U14 team that was “promoted.” To this day, I don’t know what we were promoted from or to. Division 1? Of what? Was there a Premier League above that? Was this all of Georgia or just Atlanta-through-Athens? Good thing the Web didn’t exist in those days.)

(One possible irony, though I can’t find enough detail on the Canadian plan to confirm this: Will they still have tryouts for elite teams? If so, are we just substituting individual accomplishment — making an elite team — for team accomplishment such as winning?)

And is the best course of action for elite players the best course for everyone? Steven Sandor isn’t so sure:

Not keeping score will, if done in an elitist manner (which, unfortunately, our insular Canadian soccer tends to do pretty well) drive the average kids away. But, there’s no doubt that the no-score system helps the elite kids.

In other words — the vast majority of kids playing soccer at age 11 aren’t going to be professionals. Many of them won’t even play at age 14. That scares a lot of soccer people to death, but really, it’s OK. A lot of 11-year-olds play several sports and then choose one on which to focus at age 14. (For me, it was running, which was a really stupid idea in retrospect.) When I talked with MLS draftees last month in Indy, most of them had done exactly that, laying down their basketballs and baseball gloves in their teens.

So for these kids, all they’ll remember of soccer is a bunch of scoreless games, all designed to prepare them for a future that they weren’t going to pursue?

The best axiom I’ve heard for youth sports is simple: “Let kids be kids.” The soccer community tends to forget that youth sports are supposed to be a kid’s activity, not just a breeding ground for future World Cup players. A lot of these kids want to play games and tournaments with trophies on the line. Why rob them of that experience? “Because the rest of the world does it,” frankly, isn’t a good argument. And you’re still going to have good coaches helping players improve while bad coaches just try to win, even unofficially, by any means necessary.

I think there’s a creative way to address the valid concerns deVos and others are raising. We’re already doing a lot. We delay scorekeeping and standings for a few years already. Even when we start traditional league play, we rotate kids through different positions and spread out the playing time, giving everyone a complete soccer experience.

Maybe it’s as simple as having a lot of “exhibition” or scrimmage games that don’t count toward standings, then a tournament at the end of each season. Maybe it’s something more clever than that.

The important part is to continue the discussion, not to end it with a concrete plan handed down from Canada’s Olympus. Daniel Squizzato puts it well: “Don’t confuse legitimate criticism of the (Canadian) plan with an outright aversion to change.” Change is good. Realistic change is better.

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mma

The Ultimate Fighter 17, Episode 5: Sonnen the good guy?

Posted on by Beau Dure

The funny thing about this season: Chael Sonnen is making it difficult to hate him.

His pep talks to his team feel sincere and inspiring. He does a twist of the Hoosiers scene measuring the height of each basket, telling his fighters about a researcher finding people had no trouble walking across a 2×4 when it’s down on the ground but unwilling to do it when it’s suspended between two ladders. It’s not the fight making you nervous, he says — it’s the environment, with “Uncle Dana” watching.

While he drops the occasional Muhammad Ali rhyme (“How you gonna deal with the team of steel?”), he isn’t trash-talking. He and Jon Jones have had a cordial relationship throughout. They agree far more than they disagree. (We’ll see if that changes when the time comes to pick the wild cards.)

He’s impressed with Team Jones’ Bubba McDaniel, praising him for running on his day off and saying he wanted to push for a wild-card slot for whoever faces him.

This week, he called on his cool friends to help out. He got Ronda Rousey on the phone to talk with a smitten Kelvin Gastelum, promising to come out to Vegas to teach a session if he upsets Bubba McDaniel. (He does, and she calls back again while his teammates tease him.)

More surprisingly, he brought in Mickey Rourke, who has been a bit more successful as an actor than he was a boxer but is eager to tell stories of dealing with adversity. “Discipline into my life came very late,” he says to an attentive group of fighters.

In today’s MMA Fighting live chat, Luke Thomas said we may be seeing the real Sonnen now that he has talked and postured his way to comfortable positions as an analyst who is getting his third title fight. He no longer needs to do the act.

The counterargument to that would be that Sonnen did some bad stuff that wasn’t part of the act. His non-UFC career led him to court. He had a muddled testosterone-therapy case that may have affected the performance against Anderson Silva that vaulted him up the UFC respectability ladder.

But if that’s in the past, and this is “the real Sonnen” with a bit more maturity and responsibility, then a lot of people are going to like him.

Oh, and then his fighter upset Bubba. Not a bad fight at all, though Bubba broke down in tears of disappointment afterward. Kelvin, blasted by Josh Sannan as having “the worst diet in the house,” looked solid on his feet and terrific on the ground. After a first round that featured more sweeps than the 1-vs-8 matchups of the NBA playoffs (“Quit floppin’ around!” yells Sonnen from the corner), Kelvin established better control in the second round and eventually sunk a deep rear naked choke on the startled veteran.

Sonnen called it the best fight of the tournament so far, again complimenting Bubba. “One more for the bad guys,” he says, still willing to play the heel even if he isn’t acting like one.

We didn’t see much in the house other than an entertaining game of charades. Bubba didn’t participate, opting to stare at the fire and reflect on his troubled youth. “The law sometimes doesn’t agree with me.”

We also hear once again that Kelvin is the youngest fighter in TUF history. Not true. His TUF bio gives his age as 20. Patrick Iodice, who fought in TUF Smashes, is still just 19.

The next fight is Tor Troeng (Sonnen) vs. Josh Sannan (Jones). Sonnen says they made the matchup because everyone else in the house is scared of them. Everyone’s also scared of Uriah Hall. Maybe they should just let Hall fight the Troeng-Sannan winner?

But earlier in the episode, we see that all is not well with the show’s favorites. Samman is dealing with a few injuries to his finger and knee, and he asked the Team Jones coaches not to pick him next if Bubba gains control for the team. Jones appreciates the communication but worries that the better fighters are starting to dictate things on the team.

And in the scenes from the next episode, Josh is describing a nasty hamstring injury in his past. Over on Team Sonnen, Uriah Hall is falling into the old way of annoying TUF teammates, punching too hard in training. Ouch.

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olympic sports, winter sports

Monday Myriad, Feb. 18: Slalom and shoot

Posted on by Beau Dure

Headlines of the week:

– Ted Ligety won the giant slalom, his best event, for his third title at the Alpine skiing World Championships. Then 17-year-old Mikaela Shiffrin won the slalom. That’s four golds and a bronze for the USA in 10 individual events.

– Tim Burke took silver in the 20k individual event at biathlon’s World Championships, which were otherwise dominated by Norway (eight golds in 11 events — two individuals and two relays each for Tora Berger and Emil Hegle Svendsen).

– The Netherlands’ Sven Kramer won his sixth straight world allround speedskating title. Fellow Dutchperson Ireen Wust won her fourth overall, the last three in a row. Jonathan Kuck has the best U.S. finish, 13th.

– The MMA ladders are in the process of being updated after the weekend’s Bellator and UFC events, in which two bantamweight belts were defended.

A few links, tweets and videos on those stories and more:

http://storify.com/duresport/monday-myriad-feb-18-storify-edition

Upcoming:

– Feb. 20-24: Cycling (track), World Championships
– Feb. 21-March 3: Nordic skiing, World Championships
– Feb. 23: UFC 157: Rousey vs. Carmouche (women’s bantamweight title)

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olympic sports, winter sports

Curling championship contests, quickly collated

Posted on by Beau Dure

The shocker so far from the U.S. curling championships: 2006 bronze medalist Pete Fenson (and top American on the 2012-13 World Curling Tour money list) is out. He finished in a five-way tie for third, then lost the first tiebreaker this afternoon to Heath McCormick.

In the women’s tournament, three teams tied for first, so they ditched the usual Page playoff system and had two semifinals, with the losers going to a third-place game and the winners to the final.

Between the five-way tiebreaker and the women’s muddle, the schedule is difficult to track, so here are the remaining games and broadcast times all in one place.

(Updated with Thursday results and Olympic trials qualification)

(Times converted to Eastern)

Thursday

9 p.m. (TESN.com stream)
– Men’s tiebreaker: Heath McCormick def. Mike Farbelow
– Women’s semifinal: Courtney George def. Alex Carlson
– Women’s semifinal: Erika Brown def. Allison Pottinger

Friday

10 a.m. (TESN.com stream)
– Men’s Page playoff 1-2 (winner to final, loser to semi): Tyler George vs. John Shuster
– Men’s Page playoff 3-4 (winner to semi, loser out): Brady Clark vs. Heath McCormick

3 p.m. (Universal Sports)
– Women’s bronze medal: Carlson vs. Pottinger

9 p.m. (Universal Sports)
– Men’s semifinal: T. George-Shuster loser vs. Clark-McCormick winner

Saturday

10 a.m. (NBC Sports Network)
– Women’s final: C. George vs. Brown

4 p.m. (NBC Sports Network)
– Men’s final: T. George-Shuster winner vs. semifinal winner

About the women’s teams — two loaded with experience, two loaded with youth:

– Six-time national champion Erika Brown has an all-star team. Vice skip Debbie McCormick competed in the 1998 and 2002 Olympics, then skipped a team to win the World Championships in 2003, then returned to the Olympics as a skip in 2010. She won the U.S. title each year from 2006 to 2009, going on to take silver at Worlds in 2006. Jessica Schultz won a 2005 world title and competed in the 2006 Olympics with the famous Cassie Johnson team (come on, you remember). Ann Swisshelm was on the 2002 Olympic team and has been to Worlds four times, winning with McCormick in 2003. Team won two of four events on the World Curling Tour.

– Allison Pottinger, Nicole Joraanstad and Natalie Nicholson are the other three-quarters of McCormick’s 2010 Olympic team. Pottinger also won the 2003 world title with McCormick and Swisshelm. Joraanstad was with McCormick through the four consecutive U.S. titles; Nicholson also was there and won a couple more before that. The lead is Tabitha Peterson. The whole team is the defending champion and played together at Worlds last year. Reached final of Iron Trail Motors Shootout.

– Alexandra Carlson took bronze at the 2010 World Juniors. Her teammates: Monica Walker and sisters Kendall Behm and Jordan Moulton.

– Courtney George was an alternate on Cassie Johnson’s 2006 Olympic team. Teammates Aileen Sormunen and Amanda McLean have World Junior Championship experience; Julie Lilla is a 21-year-old college student.

About the men’s teams:

– 2010 U.S. champion Tyler George (fourth at Worlds that year) actually doesn’t throw the final rocks — 2010 Olympic veteran and 2008 World Junior champion Chris Plys (an entertaining guy to follow on Twitter) handles that. Teammates: 2008 U.S. champ Rich Ruohonen, 2009 U.S. runner-up Colin Hufman. Won the Iron Trails Motors Shootout this season.

– John Shuster has been to two straight Olympics. He was on Pete Fenson’s bronze medalist team, then became a skip himself and made it back in 2010. Jeff Isaacson has been with him several years, including 2010. Jared Zezel and John Landsteiner are students who joined up last year. Won the St. Paul Cash Spiel this season and reached final of Madison Cash Spiel.

– Brady Clark plays a lot of mixed doubles with his wife, Cristin, finishing as high as fourth at Worlds as the couple won USA Curling’s Team of the Year honors. His teammates here are former pole vaulter Sean Beighton, Darren Lehto and Phil Tilker. Reached final of Seattle Cash Spiel.

– Mike Farbelow turns 50 next month but has had his best results in recent years, finishing second at 2010 nationals. Teammates: Kevin Dereen, Kraig Dereen, Mark Lazar.

– Defending champion Heath “Heater” McCormick has the same teammates as last year: Bill Stopera, Martin Sather, Dean Gemmell. Team wears garish jerseys with numbers and names, like a minor league hockey team.

Olympic implications:

(Earlier versions of this post didn’t quite have this right. See the full criteria if you want all the details.)

The top two teams from the 2012 have already qualified for the 2013 Olympic trials, to be held in November in Fargo, N.D. The team must have three of the same four athletes who earned the spot.

Top two women’s teams last year:

– Pottinger, Joraanstad, Nicholson, Peterson
– Cassie (Johnson) Potter, Jamie (Johnson) Haskell), Jaclyn Lemke, Stephanie Sambor

Top two men’s teams:

– McCormick, Stopera, Sather, Gemmell
– Pete Fenson, Shawn Rojeski, Joe Polo, Ryan Brunt

So here’s the situation:

Women: Only two spots remaining, and only the winner of the final is guaranteed a spot. A committee will choose the fourth team based on World Championships, World Curling Tour and U.S. Nationals in the past three years. This year’s runner-up would certainly be a contender, but so would Carlson (particularly if she wins bronze here) and Patti Lank.

Men: The men have five spots in the trials — maybe. There are two ways they get five:

1. The top two in this year’s nationals will qualify. If one of them isn’t McCormick, then that’s two new qualifiers for a total of four. All four of those teams will go to trials, and the committee will pick a fifth.

2. If McCormick is in the top two, then they’ll only have three qualifiers from the 2012 and 2013 nationals. They will get a fourth, selected by committee. They’ll only get a fifth if the USA has two teams IF the USA has two teams in the top 20 in the World Curling Tour Order of Merit over a two-year span. (This year, they’re nowhere near. And last year, they were nowhere near.)

So the bottom line is that both men’s finalists will make it to Sochi, and the committee will choose another. If McCormick is one of those finalists AND the USA can somehow get some teams into the top 20 (maybe Fenson and McCormick could play and win every remaining event), the committee will choose two teams.

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olympic sports

Wrestling’s way forward: Grappling in, Greco and whining out

Posted on by Beau Dure

wrestlingNow that we’ve picked our jaws up off the floor from the IOC vote to squeeze wrestling out of the Olympic rings, let’s see what arguments work and which ones don’t.

As you’d expect in the free-for-all, speak-before-reading atmosphere of the Interwebs, commenters on various sites have come up with some stupid responses. But some educated observers also might be missing the boat.

Argument: The IOC is just trying to be the X Games.

Winter Games, sure — they’ve added all kinds of snowboard and freestyle skiing events.

Summer Games? The last sports added were golf and rugby sevens. The sports most likely to be added next are baseball/softball, karate or squash. Don’t recall seeing those sports covered at EXPN.

Argument: They should just get rid of ping pong.

Ahem … table tennis beat wrestling in most of the numbers cited in the 2009 IOC report. I’d doubt wrestling made up that much ground in four years. For one thing, table tennis has a staggering 190 national federations to wrestling’s 167.

Wrestling does have one argument in comparison to table tennis and badminton — in the two racket/paddle sports, everyone’s playing for silver medals behind China. The IOC should be (and might be) telling those federations to step it up internationally, just as they have to women’s hockey and now-excluded softball.

(The IOC hasn’t issued a 2013 version of that 2009 report, but they have made the criteria public.)

Argument: They should just get rid of modern pentathlon.

In a head-to-head vote between wrestling and modern pentathlon, sure, wrestling has a stronger case. But modern pentathlon has a case for inclusion as well — a better one, I’d argue, than most of the sports bidding to get into the Games this fall.

(Incidentally, one report going around yesterday suggested the IOC may add three sports this fall. I haven’t confirmed it, but I think that’s a misreading. The Olympic programme is growing by three sports — golf, rugby, and sport-tba-this-fall. Every official release I’ve seen mentions no possibilities beyond that. If you see something contrary, please let me know.)

Argument: They should get rid of race walking or trampoline or synchronized swimming.

Those are specific events within established sports. In those case, the established sports are track and field, gymnastics, and swimming. Go ahead — try to get one of those three sports evicted from the Games.

If you want to argue to exclude those events, fine, but it’s a separate argument. You’re not going to convince the IOC to bring back wrestling to replace the 32 trampoline athletes you’re kicking out of the Games.

Argument: The number of sports is just so arbitrary. Why are they doing this?

The goal is to keep the Games from growing out of hand so that future host cities won’t be totally bankrupt for decades. But yes, the number of sports may be a bad way to do that. Track and field has 47 events with roughly 2,000 athletes from roughly 200 countries. Modern pentathlon has two events with 72 athletes. Archery has four events with 128 athletes.

That’s the human toll. Then there’s the logistical toll. Rio is building a golf course to accommodate a new sport. Wrestling just needs an existing gym and some mats.

Argument: In 2008, wrestling had Olympians from a bajillion countries, while modern pentathlon had less than 30.

Modern pentathlon has exactly two events with 72 total athletes. Wrestling has seven weight classes in two men’s disciplines for a total of 14, then four weight classes for women. The USA alone had 17 wrestlers in London. Kazakhstan had 15.

Yes, wrestling has a good “universality” argument — 29 different countries won medals. But don’t compare those apples to modern pentathlon’s oranges.

Argument: This is just a slap in the face of the USA, the most successful nation.

Not quite. The big dog in the Olympics is actually the Soviet Union/Russia, which is listed as separate countries in most records. The USA is a strong second in the all-time table but hasn’t led the medal count in this millennium. There’s a reason Rulon Gardner’s win is considered a colossal upset.

That said, my former USA TODAY colleague Christine Brennan raises a good question today: When will the USA, whose companies’ cash props up the Games, start exerting its influence?

Russia’s gearing up for a fight to keep wrestling in the Games. Japan and Iran can’t be happy, either. Maybe U.S. sponsors could provide the tipping point?

(And in case you think these political adversaries can’t team up, check the U.S. wrestling team’s travel itinerary for February. And an Iranian newspaper is calling the USA, Russia and Iran “the axis” to stand up and defend wrestling.)

Argument: International wrestling federation FILA was too complacent.

We have a winner.

Bloody Elbow’s Mike Riordan:

FILA exists to prevent this very thing from happening. If they can’t prevent wrestling from being removed from the Olympic program, then they are failing at their existential purpose. How could they stand around and watch while other sports were lobbying the IOC? What the hell were they thinking?

FILA was either negligent or reckless here, as they either disregarded a risk they were aware of or never noticed a risk they should not have missed. They totally and irrevocably soiled their metaphorical sheets and mattress.

Veteran Oly journalist Alan Abrahamson:

(Wrestling) ranked low in the TV categories as well, with 58.5 million viewers max and an average of 23 million. Internet hits and press coverage also were ranked as low.

For all of wrestling’s claims of “universality,” moreover, the sport — while immensely popular in places such as the United States, Japan, Russia, eastern Europe, former Soviet bloc nations, Turkey and Iran — doesn’t really offer up that many Asian, African or Latin athletes. Which longtime observers such as Harvey Schiller, the former baseball federation president, pointed out, also noting that it simply is “not great TV.”

Moreover, the IOC report also observed that FILA has no athletes on its decision-making bodies, no women’s commission, no ethics rules for technical officials and no medical official on its executive board.

There’s this, too, though the IOC report doesn’t mention it: FILA is virtually invisible on Facebook. In the year 2013, that is almost indefensible. (Quick aside from BD: Their website is, even by the poor standard of international federation sites, an absolute mess.)

Pentathlon — given a warning in 2002 — got with the program, so to speak.

It cut its competition schedule from five days, to four, to one. It instituted the use of laser pistols instead of regular guns. It also played politics, an IOC essential, with UIPM first vice president Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr. now sitting on the IOC board.

FILA did virtually nothing.

(That’s a long excerpt, but please, read all of Alan’s piece.)

What’s the way forward? Let’s go to another point from Mike’s piece:

In 2002, an IOC review essentially told FILA to get rid of a wrestling style (i.e. Greco) because having two was confusing the casual viewing audience. FILA stood up for itself and retained both styles. I believe that the IOC’s decision to eliminate Wrestling may be something of a power move designed to show other sports what happens when their wishes are not complied with.

Wrestling purists may hate this, but it’s probably time to ditch Greco-Roman wrestling.

But wrestling can also take a more positive step and add something else, a discipline that touches both the ancient world and the modern:

Grappling.

FILA already runs grappling competitions. They were a bridge for 2009 world champion Sara McMann from her Olympic wrestling career to her MMA career.

Some MMA fans and promoters still harbor delusions of getting MMA in the Games. As we’ve seen this week, the politics of getting into the Games aren’t pretty. Getting into Madison Square Garden, by comparison, is a lush walk on rose pedals. And by the time they add headgear and other restrictions so that athletes can fight a complete tournament in two weeks, it won’t look like MMA.

Grappling, though, incorporates a lot of MMA elements. And it’s an easy addition to the program. Just scratch out “Greco-Roman” and write “grappling.”

Also, grappling may attract more women. Judo is nearly gender-equal. Wrestling is not, and Greco-Roman has no women at all. That’s important.

So wrestling could add an existing discipline to its existing program, appeal to modern MMA fans and harken back to the pankration days of yore.

And making such a move would give the IOC a way to “change its mind” while saving face. They could say wrestling has acceded to their demands for change. That’s an easier decision to spin than the “lots of people got mad and lobbied us” outcome.

Win-win-win-win. At the very least, worth a shot if it means keeping a traditional Olympic sport in the Games.

3
mma

The Ultimate Fighter 17, Episode 4: Rap, rap, rippety rap …

Posted on by Beau Dure

Maybe we shouldn’t pick on Kevin Casey, the fighter/rapper who finagles an easy matchup in which he’ll take no damage and then proceeds to spend most of the fight on his back doing nothing of interest. He’s clearly quick-witted and thoughtful. He easily wins the rap battle in the house, and his video isn’t that bad:

But if you keep chanting “Never surrender, no retreat, God, way of life, etc.” in your video, shouldn’t you … back it up? With something?

Here’s how the episode unfolded …

Adam Cella returns from his KO in a hospital gown and seeks out Uriah Hall. The fact that he’s in the shower doesn’t keep him from stepping in to mess around with Hall, who seems relieved and genuinely happy that Cella’s up and joking around. Though maybe a little nervous to be standing naked behind a shower curtain.

Moving ahead: Kevin Casey rationalizes his decision to take Collin Hart instead of Bubba or someone else, saying he came in with an eye injury and wants to avoid taking more damage. Meanwhile, Bubba pumps up Collin with some confident talk.

Hart’s backstory is typical: Fought a lot in elementary school, got suspended a lot. If we improve public education in the USA, will our pool of MMA fighters decline?

Casey apparently has rap videos online. See above.

Gilbert Smith throws it down, and we have a rap battle in the house. It’s not bad. More rappers need a sense of humor like this. The housemates enjoy it, too.

Before you start to think Casey is just a funny rap dude ducking Bubba, we get his backstory. Casey studied with some Gracies and vowed to keep going in MMA after Rockson Gracie’s death.

Now a TUF first: The power went out! But all the camera crews still have power, so we get a little toilet paper prank from Team Sonnen. It doesn’t go well, by Team Sonnen’s admission. Hart is still angry because they had set a rule of not messing with each other’s sleep. Hart’s weight cut may also be making him a bit irritable.

Josh Samman says he would bet his house on Hart. Then Hart flips off Casey at the weigh-in. Hall: “Nobody saw that coming.”

Back at the house, Collin struggles at first to explain the middle finger. He then pegs it to his interrupted sleep. Casey gives a little bit of a lecture on professionalism, saying older fighters (Casey’s 31) sometimes need to remind younger fighters (Hart’s 22) of their responsibilities. Hart doesn’t reply, except in confessional, where he’s still mad about his interrupted sleep.

Fight time: Hart immediately rushes Casey and takes him down, landing in half-guard. Casey improves to full guard and ties him up. Casey stands and clinches, and the fighters demonstrate why the IOC got bored with Greco-Roman wrestling. Yell “knees” all you want — this is still boring as hell.

Round 2: Casey comes out swinging. Hard. Hart clinches, and somehow, Casey’s face starts spurting blood. Head butt? After a struggle, Hart takes him down in half-guard, then briefly gets side control. Then nothing. What does a guy have to do to get Herb Dean to stand ’em up?

Decision time: Hart wins unanimously.

Jones says the fight went perfectly. Sonnen says Casey settled into a position and waited for a mistake that never came. Dana White noticed that Casey did very little after his two offensive flurries, like “he didn’t even try to win this fight.” Sonnen is blunt, too: “Kevin Casey never showed up.”

Hart apologizes to Sonnen for the finger, saying he meant no disrespect. Sonnen doesn’t really care.

Then Hart gets on a treadmill. They weren’t kidding about his cardio. Dude’s a serious athlete.

Fight announcement. Jones has regained control. Will he blunder again, as he did in Episode 1?

He picks Bubba, as hinted earlier, against Kelvin. Who? Has this dude been on camera at any point this season? Let’s check the Episode 1 recap … he didn’t even say much in that one.

Ah … Sonnen reminds us he’s the youngest fighter in the history of the tournament. Sonnen says Bubba’s the favorite but that Kelvin can push the pace. Let’s hope so.

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olympic sports

Wrestling’s biggest fight: Getting back in the Games

Posted on by Beau Dure

Modern pentathlon seemed to be the likeliest sport to be eliminated from the Olympic program. Then perhaps taekwondo. Maybe an outside chance of one of the Asian-dominated net sports, badminton and table tennis.

Wrestling? If you saw that coming, consider taking your psychic talents to Wall Street or Vegas.

“A surprise decision,” says the AP. “A shocking move,” says Yahoo’s Maggie Hendricks.

But is it a final decision? Maybe not.

AP puts it like this:

Wrestling will now join seven other sports in applying for inclusion in 2020. The others are a combined bid from baseball and softball, karate, squash, roller sports, sport climbing, wakeboarding and wushu. They will be vying for a single opening in 2020.

The IOC executive board will meet in May in St. Petersburg, Russia, to decide which sport or sports to propose for 2020 inclusion. The final vote will be made at the IOC session, or general assembly, in September in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

It is extremely unlikely that wrestling would be voted back in so soon after being removed by the executive board.

If the federation facing the axe was the tiny modern pentathlon federation or the dysfunctional taekwondo federation, then yes, getting back in the Games would be nearly impossible.

But wrestling’s federation, FILA? Don’t be too sure. To mangle John Paul Jones’ famous quote, FILA has not yet begun to lobby.

And the international outcry is sure to be monstrous. Have you ever wanted to see the USA and Iran join forces? Get ready, ’cause here it comes.

The facts are on wrestling’s side. The last time the IOC went through this process, they released their report on each sport. A few numbers for consideration (from 2009, but it’s hard to imagine too much has changed since then):

  • Wrestling has 167 active national federations. Other sports: Archery 139, equestrian 133, field hockey 122, triathlon 116, modern pentathlon 104. (Taekwondo, surprisingly, has a healthy 186.)
  • The “average minute of TV coverage” of wrestling in the 2008 Olympics was watched by 29.5 million people globally. Field hockey: 11.8 million. Fencing: 24.3 million. Badminton: 21.2 million. Team handball: 23.3 million. Sailing: 24.5 million. Triathlon: 19.4 million. Modern pentathlon: 23.1 million. Even tennis was lower: 26.1 million. (Swimming, gymnastics, weightlifting (?!) and track and field are the big draws, as you’d expect — 40 million to 65 million. Table tennis was also over 40 million, so the people complaining about “ping pong” might want to adjust their arguments.)

Now wrestling is battling for a spot against the combined baseball/softball bid, karate, squash, roller sports (speed skating), sport climbing, wakeboarding (a modified version that will confuse the heck out of U.S. viewers) and wushu. That’s a battle wrestlers should be able to win.

Then the other sports can get back in line and hope the IOC comes to its senses next time and reverses its ludicrous decision to add golf, where the costs far outweigh the benefits. Perhaps other federations can merge, as baseball and softball are doing, to try to sneak another sport into the Games.

So take heart, wrestlers. There’s a lot of time left on the clock.

 

2
olympic sports, rugby, soccer

Monday Myriad, Feb. 11: Ligety, Ligety

Posted on by Beau Dure

Headlines of the weekend:

– The USA’s Ted Ligety won his second gold medal at the Alpine skiing world championships, adding the supercombined to the super-G. Super.

– Norway’s Emil Hegle Svendsen won the sprint and held on to win the pursuit by a few millimeters over France’s Martin Fourcade at the biathlon World Championships. You just might see a highlight clip farther down in this post. The best U.S. finish so far: Lowell Bailey moved up from 32nd to take 13th in the men’s pursuit.

– England took their second win in two matches in rugby’s Six Nations Championship. So what if it was the lowest-scoring game in Six Nations history?

– The U.S. women’s tennis team fell out of the Fed Cup. Missing Serena Williams, Venus Williams and Sloane Stephens might have been a bit of a factor. A bit.

– Julia Clukey took second in women’s singles and the U.S. team took second in the team relay as the luge World Cup ran on U.S. ice at Lake Placid.

– Meryl Davis and Charlie White won the ice dance at figure skating’s Four Continents Championship, which drew a strong field in some events despite the upcoming World Championships being higher priority.

The TeamUSA.org wrapup has the rest of the weekend in Olympic sports. A few more things to peruse, Storify permitting:

http://storify.com/duresport/monday-myriad-feb-11-storify-version

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olympic sports

Save modern pentathlon

Posted on by Beau Dure

The Winter Olympics are taking on an X Games feel. Even the older sports are modernizing — biathlon has caught on with TV-friendly pursuit and mass start competition, and luge has added a cool relay event.

The Summer Games don’t have as much room to grow, and IOC President Jacques Rogge has been in more of a trimming mode. If we’re adding a sport, Rogge and company believe, we must cut one.

And that’s reasonable. The Summer Games have outgrown most cities’ capability to host them.

Not that the IOC’s decisions on cutting and adding sports have been reasonable. Rio won’t have softball, but it’s scrambling to build a golf course. Then organizers will have to deal with security for the whole area.

Baseball and softball have joined forces in an effort to get back in the Games, competing against karate, squash, wushu, sport climbing, wakeboarding and roller sports. But before one sport is added, one must be eliminated.

One wrinkle to consider: The IOC groups its sports according to the governing federation. That means all the aquatic sports (swimming, diving, water polo, synchronized swimming) are one sport, just as the two wrestling disciplines (freestyle, Greco-Roman) are a single sport. (That’s also why baseball and softball can go in together as long as they’re under the same umbrella.)

So if you’re thinking synchronized swimming should get the axe, think again. Unless the IOC decides to overhaul its bureaucracy on the fly, an entire sports federation will be taken out of the games.

The only realistic cuts are taekwondo, controversially added to the Olympics ahead of karate, and modern pentathlon.

On the surface, modern pentathlon would be no great loss. It’s an esoteric and expensive sport requiring access to a pool, a shooting range (now modernized to lasers), fencing equipment, and horses. Britain has managed to boost participation to five figures, but it’s hard to imagine that sort of interest elsewhere. In the USA, it’s not exactly a popular youth sports option.

The argument for saving it is that it preserves the legacy of modern Olympic founder Baron Pierre de Coubertin, who introduced the sport to the Games. Perhaps that’ll sway some sentimental people within the IOC,

Another argument: Modern pentathlon uses existing facilities (no extra stadiums, baseball fields or golf courses) and adds less than 100 athletes to the Olympic Village.

I’ll add another: Modern pentathlon is a uniquely Olympic sport. Not like golf or rugby, the two recent additions that have lives outside the Games. Not like soccer or tennis, though they’ve carved out solid niches for themselves in the Games.

If the Olympics won’t be the pinnacle of achievement in a given sport, I don’t see the point in adding that sport to the program. If a sport is historically linked to the Olympics, I don’t see the point in removing it.

Modern pentathlon has adapted to modern times. All five events now take place in one day. The running and shooting have been combined, biathlon-style. In London, that meant half the competition (or three-fifths, if you count running and shooting separately) took place in Greenwich Park. In Rio, the idea is to run all five events in one stadium.

The numbers don’t favor modern pentathlon. A 2009 report on the existing Olympic sports found pentathlon lagging behind taekwondo and other sports in most categories — number of participating countries, media interest, etc. Europe likes it, but other continents are really interested. (That said, some of the sports bidding for inclusion are pretty weak as well.)

So the sentimental argument is all we have. But you’d think, given the low cost of keeping such a unique Olympic tradition alive, that would be enough.

Here’s a radical solution for solving the problem: Merge the pentathlon federation with the equestrian federation. Or the triathlon federation.

Silly, you say? Is it any sillier than having swimming, diving, water polo and synchronized swimming under the same federation because they all take place in water?

Perhaps such a move would violate the spirit of Rogge’s mandate to shrink the Games. But so does building a bloody golf course in Rio. And the point isn’t supposed to be the number of sports — it’s supposed to be the number of athletes and the number of events. With modern pentathlon, we’re talking about two events and less than 100 athletes. Tighten up the qualification criteria in swimming or track, and you’ll have the same net effect.

So you may say the Olympics don’t have much to gain by keeping modern pentathlon. Perhaps not. But they have less to gain by cutting it. Why dash the dreams of competitors to satisfy a bureaucratic statistic counting the number of federations who have a seat at the table?

4
mma

The Ultimate Fighter 17, Episode 3: Second-biggest KO in TUF history

Posted on by Beau Dure

Given all the hype about the knockout we know will take place at the end of the episode, it’ll be a challenge to keep us interested for the first 45 minutes.

Frank Mir somehow thinks Sonnen blundered by picking Team Jones’s Adam Cella to take on wonderstud Uriah Hall.

Team Sonnen is still ticked that Bubba McDaniel tried to call out Kevin “The King” Casey. Looks like Casey has some sort of cut, so they think it’s weak to try to get the injured guy to fight right away.

But a little later in the episode, in an uncomfortable van ride, Kevin admits to the rest of Team Sonnen that he doesn’t want to fight Bubba right away. Jimmy Quinlan thinks that’s a little wimpy. Casey, as he did in arguing with Bubba, keeps smiling but firmly refutes that notion.

Then we have the most innocuous trigger of a feud in TUF history. Even Uriah Hall, the only person actively feuding, seems to realize it’s silly.

Hall mentioned that someone was a “professional cooker.” Josh Samman said, “You mean chef?” Hall somehow ties it back to being bullied after moving to the USA with a thick Jamaican accent. This is a dude who’s going to have to lose a few chips on his shoulder before he gets married.

Over to Sonnen, who says Hall’s the best. Most talented, hardest worker, etc. But he could always beat himself up. He wants to win every competition in training. When Kevin Casey gets him in an armbar, he wants to roll with Casey again, right away.

Back to Cella, who refreshingly gives the opposite of the “I have to win to feed my family and avoid jail” speech, saying he can always go back to work for his parents’ heating and cooling company. Later, Hall indirectly answers him, saying he also has nothing to lose.

Jones warns Cella that Hall has broken an arm with kicks before, so if Hall starts throwing kicks, get him down and throw elbows. Jones say he has thrown so many elbows that he knows the human skull in vivid detail. He also knows not to throw 12-to-6 elbows, which led to a DQ and his only “loss” so far.

Back to Sonnen’s training: It’s offense, offense, offense.

Then comes one of the remarkable coaching conversations ever seen on TUF. Hall tells Sonnen he has some confidence issues in the past. Sonnen smugly says he could anticipate everything Hall was about to say, then opens up about his past problems, including his uncanny ability to lose by submission in the second round. He treated it “like an alcoholic” by confessing that he had a problem and seeking help from a sports psychologist and from Randy Couture. What he learned is that you can never get rid of that doubt, but you have to plow through it. “I can’t kill this off. I’ve gotta compete with it.”

Sonnen pontificates further: “Failure is always there, and it’s OK to recognize that.” If Sonnen hadn’t pleaded guilty to money laundering and stretched the truth about so many things in his fighting career, he’d be the best source of advice in the UFC.

Jon Jones and his dog stop by the house to visit with the team. They chat about what it would mean to make it in the UFC. Adam wants to prove something to those who thought fighting was a silly thing for him to do. Bubba wants to set an example for his kids. Dylan, the New Zealander, wants to do it for his brothers, a talented rugby player and talented musician who sank their careers with drugs. The last story gets to Jones, whose brothers have been remarkably successful.

On to the fight. We’ve been promised a stunning knockout, and it’s clear it would be a colossal upset if Cella did it.

For all the talk of Team Sonnen pushing the attack, Cella is the one initiating the early action, getting inside and setting up an active guard. Hall looks strong but whiffs with a wild spinning kick, and he doesn’t respond when Sonnen implores him to jab. Someone yells “Your second knockdown” when Cella falls from a Hall kick, but it’s really just a loss of balance. Hall looks strong and dangerous, but Cella is pushing the fight forward and more than holding his …

Ulp.

You’ve probably seen it by now. With less than 10 seconds in the round, Hall spins and lands his foot cleanly on Cella’s head. Hall celebrates for a second or two at most before realizing the whole gym is quiet. He looks down at the glassy-eyed, loud-breathing Cella with a look of shock and concern. “I’m sorry, Adam,” he says while the medical crew attends to Cella. Sonnen calls him over to the side. Dana White, whose reaction and bleeps were captured right away, has already paced partway around the cage and looks frightened.

After the ad break, Cella sits up. Applause. He answers a couple of questions. Applause. He stands. Applause. He recognizes Uriah but says he doesn’t remember anything.

Is it indeed the most brutal, shocking knockout in UFC history, let alone TUF history?

Instant one-kick knockouts aren’t that rare. Anderson Silva did it to Vitor Belfort. Gabriel Gonzaga did it to Mirko Cro Cop. Going back a ways, Shonie Carter’s spinning back fist took out Matt Serra. Brodie Farber fell harder from Rory Markham’s kick.

The TUF gym and cameras can capture more of the impact of a knockout. There’s no crowd to cover up the conversations between fighter and doctors. The other fighters in the gym go quiet when they realize someone is actually hurt.

So we can’t have this conversation without remembering Matt Riddle’s KO of Dan Simmler on the TUF 7 prelims. Simmler made an eerie moaning noise for a while. When he went back to the dressing room, he had no idea what happened, where he was or pretty much anything about his current circumstances. He was surprised to see coach Rampage Jackson. And he had a broken jaw.

By comparison, Cella recovered quickly and seemed to know everything except the circumstances of the knockout, which isn’t unusual.

Given that, we’d have to say Riddle’s knockout is still the most devastating in TUF history. But I don’t think anyone’s rooting for anything worse. Hall’s knockout is about as close as we’d want to see.

Fight announcement time, and Jones is absent, at the hospital with Cella. Sonnen picks … Kevin Casey! And he’s fighting … Collin Hart? Who?

Sonnen says Bubba was considered, and that he thinks that fight will happen, just not yet. Given that the only way that could happen would be for Bubba and Kevin to win their fights (or be wild cards), let the record show that Sonnen has predicted a win for Team Jones.

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