Let’s see … I’ve done projections for archery, athletics, badminton … let’s call up the spreadsheet and see what’s next:
Baseball!
Oh … right.
Baseball and softball are gone from the Olympic program because, as we all know, it’s easier to turn an 18-hole golf course into an Olympic venue than it is to put a fence around a small part of an Olympic green and have baseball and softball games. Or something like that.
That still leaves us with a few team sports: Basketball, field hockey, soccer, handball, volleyball (beach and indoor) and water polo. (We’ll save synchronized swimming for later.)
Happened across (via a former Duke roomie’s Facebook feed) this compilation of “the best dunks in NCAA history.”
I don’t want to be that guy who stumbles across a list of best guitarists and says, “How could you leave out Blind Elderberry Pie?! Jimi Hendrix just stole everything from him!”
I will, however, point out the following:
1. Charging could’ve been called on about half these dunks.
2. This guy rounds up tons of clips of guys dunking on other guys, yet he misses Phil Henderson over Alonzo Mourning, showing us how to dunk over someone without charging:
Yes, I’m a Dukie, but even the selections involving my school are questionable. The Dahntay Jones dunk in the top 10 is OK, but I’d argue for a few items from the Robert Brickey catalog instead.
And two of the honorable mentions should be in the top 50, maybe the top 10. Grant Hill’s alley-oop off a pass that frankly got away from Bobby Hurley was just insane.
And as one of the commenters put it — if Jerry Stackhouse’s dunk against Duke’s Parks and Meek is “honorable mention,” there’s no reason to keep watching.
Sixteen years ago, I felt a few pangs of withdrawal. I had been able to watch maybe half of the World Cup games on my little TV in my little living room in my little apartment. After that dreary final … nothing. No MLS. No regular European broadcasts. No women’s soccer.
Sunday, an hour after bidding farewell to the group of friends who came over to drink Dutch and (blech) Spanish beer while we gorged ourselves on food and watched a final that was a little less dreary, I went back into our HDTV room downstairs and flipped to Fox Soccer Channel. WPS — Washington Freedom vs. FC Gold Pride. And while the officiating was just as atrocious as the worst of what we saw from South Africa, I could rest assured that I was still watching soccer. As I’ve said elsewhere, U.S. soccer fans have been enabled. We can watch all weekend. And all week. Sorry, Tim Dahlberg, but we don’t need your permission.
And because we’re sports geeks who watch and comment on every competition shy of the foosball games downstairs (for the record, I was able to play an actual game against someone tall enough to see the table for once, and I won twice by a 10-2 count), we have much else to follow as well.
Women’s soccer: USA’s revenge over Ghana! The USA start play Tuesday in the U-20 Women’s World Cup, and it’ll be an upset to end all upsets if Ghana duplicates its 2006 and 2010 2-1 men’s victories. Dive all you want. Not going to happen.
Cycling: Lance Armstrong is now fourth in the Tour de France … on his own team. We can see if Team Radio Shack regroups to give Levi Leipheimer a push for the final podium, but more realistically, we’re looking at a Cadel Evans-Andy Schleck-Alberto Contador shootout.
Olympics (winter and summer): We’ve seen speedskaters take up cycling. Bobsledders recruit from football and track. So can skeleton veteran Katie Uhlaender make it back to the Olympics in weightlifting?
Volleyball: The U.S. men made a nice run at the World League final six, beating Russia in the first match of two in the final weekend. But the pool leaders came back for a 3-1 win in the finale, and the USA didn’t qualify as the “lucky loser” second-place team.
Basketball: Gold medal for USA U-17 men.
Track and field: Tyson Gay beat Asafa Powell in the highlight of the Diamond League’s stop in England.
Poker: We’re down to 2,557 players in the World Series of Poker Main Event. Exiting gracefully on Day 2B were poker legend Doyle Brunson, baseball great Orel Hershiser, Seinfeld‘s Jason Alexander, Phil Ivey and Chris “Jesus” Ferguson.
Some of the names we’ll be watching on Day 3 (which is really Day 7, but they have four Day 1s and two Day 2s to accommodate the crowd):
– Bruce Buffer, UFC cage announcer
– Hank Azaria, Apu and many, many other Simpsons voices
– Johnny Chan, two-time Main Event winner
– Chris Moneymaker, 2003 surprise winner who helped start the poker boom
– Joe Cada, defending champion
– Daniel Negreanu, top poker pro and lively Twitter personality
– Allen Cunningham, like Negreanu a former WSOP Player of the Year
– Frank Kassela, sure to be this year’s Player of the Year
– Jennifer Harman, top poker pro
– Phil “Unabomber” Laak, one of the better nicknames among poker pros
– Vanessa Rousso, Duke grad like me but obviously much smarter
– Jack Ury, age 97
– Gabe Kaplan, Mr. Kotter
Sunday was a rest day at the WSOP, but they’ll be back on the Tour de France’s rest day Monday. Strange how that works.
Rugby: New Zealand sent what some in the U.S. media might call “a message,” dominating South Africa 32-12 in a Tri Nations matchup ahead of next year’s World Cup in New Zealand.
This weekend, we’ll have the biggest weekend of global soccer until the World Cup, with title deciders and playoffs. We’ll also have a new soccer stadium opening, something unexpected happening in a large soccer stadium, the first big cycling tour of the season starting and a UFC card worth a look.
Hour-by-hour for your couch-potato planning …
FRIDAY
3 p.m.: Basketball: EuroLeague Final Four, Barcelona-CSKA Moscow. Ricky Rubio still plays for Barcelona despite NBA recruiting efforts. Former Dukie Trajan Langdon has carved out a long career with CSKA. NBA Network
5 p.m.: Basketball: EuroLeague Final Four, Partizan-Olympiakos. Good WaPo feature today on Olympiakos’ Josh Childress. NBA Network
7 p.m.: Hockey: World Championships, Germany-USA (delayed broadcast, live online at 2 p.m.). The men’s tournament suffers from the absence of playoff-bound NHL stars, but they’re expecting a record crowd. World record. All hockey. That’s because they’re playing at Schalke’s soccer stadium and expecting a crowd of more than 76K. Universal Sports
SATURDAY
7:40 a.m.: Soccer (England): Promotion playoffs, first leg. Blackpool-Nottingham Forest. Two smaller clubs with a lot of top-flight history (including Forest’s back-to-back European triumphs) try to climb into the Premier League. Fox Soccer Plus
Eye on Soccer (Germany): Can Schalke make up a 17-goal goal difference and catch Bayern Munich for first place? Probably not. Hannover (Steve Cherundolo) avoids relegation with a win at Bochum OR a draw at Bochum and a Nurnberg loss/draw, but that’s not on TV. So you might as well watch Werder Bremen-Hamburg, with Werder trying to hang on to third place and a Champions League playoff spot. 9:30 a.m., GolTV
10 a.m.: Cycling, Giro d’Italia, first stage. Ivan Basso, Cadel Evans, Carlos Sastre and Alexandre Vinokourov are there. Reigning champion Denis Menchov, Levi Leipheimer, Alberto Contador and Lance Armstrong are not. See VeloNews preview, which has a guide to each stage. The opener is a prologue-style short, flat time trial. Universal Sports
Tennis: WTA final, Rome. Venus Williams lost 6-0, 6-1 to Jelena Jankovic and won’t face Serena Williams in Friday’s semis. The other side of the draw has the resurgent Ana Ivanovic vs. Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez. Tennis Channel
3 p.m.: Soccer (Spain): Sevilla-Barcelona, the biggest test left for Barca, which leads Real Madrid by one point with two games left3 p.m., GolTV
Real Madrid-Athletic Bilboa. 3 p.m. ESPN Deportes
4 p.m.: Soccer (MLS): At the same time, Seattle-Los Angeles is the first of the national broadcasts. TeleFutura
Toronto-Chicago and Salt Lake-Philadelphia. Direct Kick/MLSSoccer.com
7 p.m.: Volleyball: NCAA men’s final: No. 12 Penn State at No. 1 Stanford. ESPN
Soccer (MLS): Columbus-New England. FSC
Soccer (Mexico): Playoffs, second leg, Monterrey-Pachuca. Eighth-seeded Pachuca (Jose Francisco Torres) lead 1-0 after first leg. Telemundo
Soccer (Mexico): Playoffs, second leg, Chivas-Morelia. Morelia lead 4-2 after first leg. 9 p.m., Telemundo
10 p.m.: MMA: UFC 113 has a rematch of the controversial light heavyweight showdown between Lyoto Machida and Mauricio Rua. We also see if Paul Daley’s trash talk has managed to rattle Josh Koscheck so much that Kos forgets to put his hands up and lets Daley punch him out. And Kimbo Slice and Matt Mitrione compare progress in their ongoing MMA education. Pay-per-view / Yahoo! Sports online / FloTV mobile
SUNDAY
11 a.m.: Soccer (England): Final day for the Premier League. Chelsea leads Manchester United by a point (if tied: Chelsea leads by nine in goal difference). So the likely clincher is Chelsea-Wigan. Fox Sports Net AND FSC
Manchester United-Stoke, which will be very interesting indeed if Chelsea isn’t winning. Fox Soccer Plus
Other EPL games are all going at the same time. Arsenal is fighting to hold third and an automatic group-stage Champions League berth over Tottenham Hotspur, which is two points back and has clinched at least a Champions League playoff berth. Arsenal’s game also gives one last chance to check in on Clint Dempsey, playing for the visitors. Arsenal-Fulham (delay), 1 p.m., Fox Soccer Plus
Cycling: Giro d’Italia, second stage, 10 a.m., Universal Sports
1 p.m.: Soccer (Mexico): Playoffs, second leg, Toluca-Club America. 2-2 after first leg. Telemundo
4 p.m.: Basketball: EuroLeague final. NBA Network
A bit of play on the field at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Atlanta Beat's stadium. (Courtesy WPS)
7 p.m.: Soccer (WPS): The Atlanta Beat will play their first home game in the first stadium built for a women’s soccer team. Or two, technically, since it will be shared with Kennesaw State University. The 8,300-seat stadium can be expanded to 16,000 for concerts, but generally, you won’t see much else in the stadium. No X Games tearing up the field (Home Depot Center, LA), no football lines somehow creating divots in the field (RFK Stadium, DC), no artificial turf, etc. You could argue that it’ll be more soccer-specific than many MLS “soccer-specific” stadiums. All White Kit has a cool selection of photos and boldly predicts that the Beat, buoyed by their first home game and a festive atmosphere, will rise up out of last place with a win and go on to beat (ugh … still hate that unintentional pun) FC Gold Pride in the WPS final in September. FSC / iPhone / WPS site
Soccer (Mexico): Playoffs (second leg), Pumas-Santos Laguna. Santos lead 2-0 after home leg. 6 p.m., Telemundo
We’re Americans, with a capital ‘A’, huh? You know what that means? Do ya? That means that our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country in the world. We are the wretched refuse. We’re the underdog. We’re mutts! … We’re mutants. There’s something wrong with us, something very, very wrong with us. Something seriously wrong with us – we’re soldiers. But we’re American soldiers! We’ve been kicking ass for 200 years! We’re 10 and 1!
– John Winger (Bill Murray), Stripes
America may be the biggest and most powerful country the world has seen since Britain decided to quit naming most of the world after its monarchs, but we still love the underdog. No one’s making a movie about the big school with the great facilities that won the Indiana high school basketball championship as expected.
Once upon a time, Mike Krzyzewski and Duke were the underdogs challenging the long reign of Dean Smith and North Carolina in the ACC. No one had a clue of what was to come. True story: In a freshman dorm at Duke in the fall of 1987, someone said it was a shame we had all arrived after all the good basketball. And no one doubted it.
That’s changed a bit. The well-mannered runners-up with the unruly trend-setting crowd have become champions once, twice, three and now four times. By 2001, most people were sick of seeing Shane Battier on ESPN, no matter how likable and admirable the guy was. And seriously, what was up with that “Who’s your daddy Battier” chant?
Duke is also seen as a place of privilege, and as a standout Salon piece points out, Americans have mixed feelings about that. They’re not even consistent in how they apply that prejudice to basketball. Why would Duke be any more evil than Georgetown, another private school where the rent is a lot higher than it is in the crime-infested neighborhoods around Duke?
SportsMyriad is one week into its existence, and I’m keeping it in “soft-launch” mode for another day or two. The idea here is to do mostly original content, and that takes time to bring to fruition. When you’re still catching up on household things like paying taxes and trying to finish up an expense report for a former employer, that content doesn’t just spring up. And while you can’t tell from looking at it, I have put a lot of time into the “design” here.
Once I’m up to speed, you’ll still likely a get a weekday morning roundup. Like so …
NEWS
– Soccer: Sure, the big game had a couple of controversial calls each way, but Chelsea looked outstanding in winning at Old Trafford to leapfrog Manchester United and take first place in the Premier League with five games to play. Arsenal is still just three points back.
The lead also changed hands in Germany, with Bayern Munich beating Schalke. (AFP)
– Tennis: Andy Roddick took his first win at a “Masters 1000” tournament, the most recent name for the not-quite-majors, since 2006, beating Rafael Nadal in the semis and rolling past Tomas Berdych in the final. In an era dominated by Nadal and Roger Federer, Roddick should get full credit for trying everything he can to break the stranglehold. He even raised some money for Chilean earthquake relief over the weekend. The women’s winner in Key Biscayne: Kim Clijsters, who wiped out Venus Williams. (USA TODAY’s Weekly Net Post, a great roundup of the tennis scene)
– Cycling: Fabian Cancellara powered away from Tom Boonen for an epic win in the Tour of Flanders. Lance Armstrong, George Hincapie and Tyler Farrar all finished with the lead pack. AP says Lance was thrilled with his ride, but is anyone concerned that Lance had no teammates there? (VeloNews)
– Curling: Rough going for Pete Fenson and the USA so far at the World Championships. (USOC)
– Rowing: Cambridge shocks Oxford to win the Boat Race. (Telegraph)
THOUGHTS
– College basketball: Mike and Mike this morning were all over two stories, both affecting me as a loyal fan of my hometown and alma mater’s teams. First was Donovan McNabb to the Redskins, about which I have no useful comment. The second: NorthJersey.com reports, in an anonymously sourced story curiously buried on their site, that the New Jersey Nets’ incoming owner, Mikhail Prokhorov, is prepared to offer Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski between $12M and $15M per year to be coach and maybe GM.
A few reasons why Coach K would be unlikely to move:
1. He doesn’t need the money. If you’re a pro football player with 5-10 years of peak earning potential, then yes, you go to the highest bidder. If you’ve been coaching for more than 30 years and can go another 5-10, you’ve already accumulated enough money to do pretty much anything you want to do.
2. He loves where he is. Durham is his family home. He works with Duke’s business school. He loves being part of a campus setting.
3. He’s healthy where he is. This is a guy who has been through hip replacement already. Want to put him through 82 games (plus preseason and playoffs) of flying all over the country?
4. He has already won at the “highest level”? Even if you consider the NBA a higher “level” than college basketball — debatable, considering how different the jobs are — Coach K has already won at what he would consider a higher level than that. The patriotic West Point guy coached Team USA to an Olympic gold medal that recent history has shown is no sure thing. Once you’ve done that with pro players, what’s the point of trying to prove you can do that in the NBA?
Dick Vitale, who may love Duke even more than this two-time graduate does, quickly dismissed the idea. He won’t be alone.
Yes, it’s rare that SportsMyriad will delve into sports that already covered ad absurdium elsewhere, but being a fan of international sports tends to give you a perverse interest in how to organize leagues and tournaments. Should MLS be a single table? How much tradition would the Premier League wreck with a 37th game overseas? Is the Page playoff system the greatest playoff innovation ever? (Answers: Yes, a lot, and absolutely.)
So with the NCAA pushing a 96-team basketball tournament to national consternation, it’s hard to ignore the controversy without putting in a totally different idea.
And here it is …
Keep the tournament proper at 64 teams. Have play-in games that vary in number each year. The reason that number will vary: The play-in games will be for regular-season conference champions who didn’t win their conference tournaments and didn’t earn at -large bids.
This year, we had six such teams — Stony Brook (America East), Jacksonville (Atlantic Sun, which had a four-way tie), Weber State (Big Sky), Coastal Carolina (Big South), Kent State (MAC), Jackson State (SWAC). That would give the tournament three play-in games for a total of 67 teams.
The advantages are:
1. The regular season would mean something in every conference. As it stands now, in a lot of leagues, the conference games are meaningless. Any team in a weak conference has to make a big statement in non-conference games early in the season to have a shot at an at-large bid. When that doesn’t happen, the conference record means squat. Make the regular season a race for an NCAA bid, and it’s a bit more interesting.
2. The conference tournament would still be meaningful. Notice that no conference champion would play in the play-in games. So a regular-season champion still has incentive in the conference tournament.
Expanding to 96, mostly through at-large bids for the major conferences, accomplishes none of this.
And the NIT, now joined by the CBI and CIT, can be interesting. A North Carolina-Dayton NIT final is much better than a dreary matchup of ninth-place major conference teams for the right to be whacked in the “second round” by a top seed. The three non-NCAA tournaments do what football bowl games are supposed to do — create good matchups and a nice postseason treat for many schools.
Next week: How to fix the Champions League. What? That’s not broken?
– The Champions League continues today at 2:30 p.m. ET with Bayern Munich-Manchester United (FSN) and Lyon-Bordeaux (FSC), but Wednesday’s action will have a somber tone as CSKA Moscow takes the field two days after a subway bombing that killed 39 people. The club has asked to wear black armbands (Reuters). (TV listings – Soccer America)
– CSKA Moscow’s basketball team, where Americans Trajan Langdon and J.R. Holden have carved out long careers, is in action today in the Euroleague quarterfinals against Spain’s Caja Laboral. CSKA leads the best-of-5 series 2-0. (Euroleague)
– Back to soccer’s European elite — Chelsea’s Didier Drogba has a two-match European ban. (BBC)
– Break up the U.S. men’s rugby sevens, which beat Thailand 62-0 and will play in another Cup quarterfinal. Will the USA turn into a rugby power now that the sport’s in the Olympics? (USOC)
– Tony Benshoof is the Terminator of luge. He’s having back surgery and says he might return for another season. (AP)
– Dana White talks often about the Internet being the future of broadcasting, and maybe he’s not kidding: The Ultimate Fighter will have tons of archival footage and extras online. (FanHouse)
– South Africa’s Carter Semenya, whose gender is still in question, has not been cleared to run. (AP)
– The collection of strange Diego Maradona headlines continues: He was treated at a hospital after being bitten by one of his dogs. Are the media too obsessed with him, or is his life that strange? (Reuters)
Duresport.com 