SportsNetUSA Blogs

SportsNetUSA.net may have a new “King of the Prognosticators.”  It seems this person had predicted the NAIA Player of the Year (after only six games into the season), also with a little help from his son, which GSAC team would be in the NAIA final game on the women’s side, and was one game away from getting his sleeper pick into the last four teams remaining in the NCAA field.  You all know and love him but we won’t say his name because we don’t want to stroke his ego too much. Speaking of those final four teams that survived and advanced, the unknown “mid-major” finally has a legitimate chance to cut down the nets when it is all said and done. Kudos to the Butler Bulldogs for being what Gonzaga was supposed to be for the last ten years.

We have heard recent grumblings about reseeding the NCAA Tournament field as each round is completed to make it fair for the top seeds. This suggestion comes off the heels of possible filed expansion to 96 teams. There is no need to reseed the brackets. The tournament is fair as is. Upsets are part of the reason this event is so exciting, anticipated and the best three weeks in sports. As far as expansion, if teams don’t qualify as one of 65 teams, do we really want to see them? If teams win the games they are supposed to win, then a chance at being one of the 65 should not be a problem.  Every year teams and coaches and fans whose teams are left out complain that if their team got a chance to dance then their team would win it all; maybe, maybe not; but every tournament is filled with drama and the best team may not always win but like Kurtis Blow said, “these are the breaks.”

Finally, in honor of the bracket, here are my matchups in the best afros in sports tournament:

1.  Oscar Gamble (baseball)  vs.    8.   Robin Lopez (basketball)

2.  Julius Erving (basketball)     vs.    7.  Bake McBride (baseball)

3.  Darnell Hillman (basketball)  vs.  6.  Carlos Valderama (soccer)

4.  Ben Wallace (basketball)        vs.    5.  Flo Hyman (volleyball)

I know there are many more players that I may have missed but these are the eight that I am going with. For pure iconic glory, Julius Erving would get the vote. Oscar Gamble would get the “pick” for sheer mass and the afro puffs. Darnell Hillman would be my choice for the cleanest. It is a difficult decision because there could be an upset along the way like a 5 or 6 seed. That is why I will leave it up to you and pick your favorite afro.

I agree with Saints head coach Sean Payton, I hate the NFL overtime rule change also. There is no reason the sudden death overtime rules that are in place now should be changed.   So the coin toss winner kicks a field goal on its possession, the other team gets to ball. If the next series ends with another field goal, play will continue under the current sudden-death rules. If the team winning the toss immediately scores a touchdown, the game is over.  This sounds exactly like the rules we made up when we were playing football in the street and one team didn’t feel like losing, we simply made up rules as we played.

This now means not a single defensive player can make more money than any single offensive player in the league, including place kickers.  

This rule change means to players and fans that defensive players aren’t important enough to decide the outcome of a game. This is a professional sport. The players are getting paid large sums of money to do a job on offense and defense. The rule changers think this will make it a fair outcome to conclude a game. Please. Life is not fair and neither are sports. If a team loses the coin flip, suck it up and stop the other team. If you lose, do better next time in regulation.  So it wasn’t fair for the Saints to win the NFC Championship versus the Vikings because they kicked a field goal? The object is to win the game, by a field goal or touchdown and it is up to the opposing team to stop any advancement. For example in the same game, shouldn’t the Vikings have not turned the ball over, capitalized on Saints miscues, or simply stop the Saints from scoring?

Proponents of the rule change will look at the statistics and tell you that more times than not, the team calling the correct flip and winning the toss will win the game. Owners wanted to produce fairer results. That is a nice sentiment but it discredits the focused intensity and 100% effort during a football game. Players already take plays off and shuffle through games, why not keep the sudden-death sense of urgency in order ensure players playing at an optimum level instead of thinking there is always another chance.

The NFL also passed a safety rule for the upcoming season that enhances the safety of a defenseless player. The key rules change for player safety bars a defenseless player from being hit in the head or neck area by an opponent who launches himself and uses his helmet, shoulder or forearm to make contact. Previously, those kinds of tackles were banned against receivers who couldn’t protect themselves, but now it will apply to everyone. This is a great rule change. Simply look at Donovan McNabb last year scoring a touchdown and being hit late while he was on the ground and the play had commenced. The NFL should go one step further and ban those type of hits from being the lead on post-game highlight shows. It is nice to make a rule but the NFL still condones those types of hits when they are deemed highlight material.

I just had the pleasure of hanging out with some friends from my days of past. Yes, those people who grew up in a political atmosphere of lies and deception. And for some reason, every time we get together, the word honesty jumps into our conversations.

Can someone tell me why in the world of sports, Coaches have to play the game of rhetoric instead of just laying the facts out in front of us? Please, this is not the world of politics or a world economic council deciding the fate of the world. This is the world of sports, a world that some people still naïvely think of as pure. No matter how you look at the world of sports, would it not be refreshing if there was a feeling of straightforwardness when someone steps in front of a microphone.

I guess I would think that most spokespeople for a team, usually the coach, would want that respectability for the general audience, especially for the fans of the team he or she represents. It must be that most of the coaches do not think we have the moral strength to hear the truth about the teams we love. That if they give us the plain, naked truth, that we will flinch or runaway.

Ah, how refreshing would it be to watch a game, ask the coach a question and just get the true to life picture of the game everyone was watching. Now, before any of you start writing responses and point out one or another isolated instance from this or that coach, please stop. Send me examples of colorful press conferences where coaches laid it out for us about their teams. I am talking about coaches that, game after game, lay out factual, unimpeachable statements about their teams. When coaches do that, they bring respectability to the team and to the players on that team.

Are you not tired of hearing from a coach, when their team cannot score in traditional high scoring sporting event:  “We just played against the most incredible defense today. No matter what we did, we couldn’t score.” Coach, we saw the game, and we as fans saw numerous opportunities for your team to score.  “We just didn’t execute well today.” In other words coach, your team stunk, and you got out-coached by the coaches across the field. “We just didn’t play well enough to win.” Well coach, there are people out there that do not make enough money to pay all their bills each month, but they find a way. They do not give cliché answers.

See coach, you really know why your team didn’t win. So show me a little moral strength, have a little good faith in us the fan, and show us that we are worth the truth. Please, after you are genuinely candid with us on what did or did not happen in the game, do not worry if we question what you did on the court, field, and diamond that night.

Have I encountered a few coaches that are exact, legitimate, unquestionable, true to life, honest as the day is long?  Yes I have, and I respect every win they cherish and I feel bad for every lose they suffer with after a game. They are the coaches that get to stand up there in front of me and talk about the dynasties they have created, and tout all the championships they have won. But they are few, and for most of us, they are the coaches that we remember thru out the years. But again, they are the few.

So, come on coach, the next time you are asked a question with a microphone in front of you, if you are on a national program, local show, college station or even in the parking lot with an overzealous fan who loves the team as much as you, do us all a favor when you answer the question, have faith, show us your virtue, be true-to-life, be unimpeachable, legitimate and unquestionable… just tell the truth.

Ok, Tiger Woods is back and we, as true golf fans, have to ask is it for the betterment of golf, or is it the fact that at the end of the day he might be taken for half of everything he has made in all his years as a professional.  Some here at Sportsnetusa.net are going to claim that as a traditionalist, I am rooting for the Golden Bear’s record to stand until the end of time. They will even say they saw me gloat when Tiger stepped away from the game of golf for personal reasons.

So let us clear the air, I love the game of golf, it is a game that can be played from when you are a little child until you are a grown person who can barely walk. You can be competitive with your mother, father, sister, brother, grandparents and absolute strangers. You can be perfect or you can be so/so, and for the majority of those you play with, they think it is a heck of a game no matter what level they play at.

Unlike with other sports, golf historians, golf announcers and golf fans celebrate those who were great and those who are great by today’s standards.  Golf fans look at the best of all time and put them towards the head of the pack during conversations. They can talk of the greats at length, and do not look at a particular player from a particular time and try to claim that he is the greatest unless his accomplishments can be validated, with the proof in the pudding. 

So, should it bother us that Tiger is coming back to the game of golf at The Masters?  The Augusta National course was the idea of all-time great Bobby Jones.  Jack Nicklaus won his first green jacket in 1963, and in 1986 became the oldest winner (46 years, 2 months, 23 days) when he picked up his final one in 1986.  In between Nicklaus won in 1965, successfully defended his title in 1966, and picked up victories in 1972 and 1975.  “The Big Three”, Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Gary Player won The Masters 11 times from 1960 to 1978.

To think of the history associated with the golf course, to think of the greatness of Tiger Woods and to watch the immortal Golden Bears record withstand a charge from a Tiger of any generation, why wouldn’t we want Tiger to start his comeback at The Masters?

It has been our pleasure at SportsNetUSA.net to broadcast a variety of different sports on different levels throughout the years. With each year, new announcers have passed through our studios and our sporting events, each with their own style and flair. Some announcers have been appreciated and some have just been totally ignored by our listening audience. As the years have passed, we too have taken a listen to our announcers and have found those that we follow with each spoken word. And we have discovered others that neither understand what a spoken word is, nor can they properly pronounce any of them.  Which brings us to that long debated dilemma:  WHAT DOES A GOOD ANNOUNCER, BE IT PLAY BY PLAY OR COLOR, SOUND LIKE AND WHAT SHOULD THEY DO?

Paint a picture with words? Understand the nuances of the game? Be able to fit fifty cent and nonsensical words into a descriptive pattern? Be a fan or be a player? Should we look for more announcers who are like a Howard Cosell partnered up with a Don Meredith? “Monday Night Football” in 1970 allowed Howard Cosell to trade barbs with his down-home sidekick, Don Meredith, a breezy ex-Cowboys quarterback, even though, at the time, Curt Gowdy was the top announcer on a national level. Yet, most young people cannot relate to the old fashion barbs and tossing of political rhetoric that flew from Cosell’s mouth and landed at the feet of Meredith.

Most young people think announcing was born on a national level with John Madden. Madden exploded onto the scene with CBS. Where Cosell was caustic, Madden was funny and charismatic.  Where Cosell’s tone was one of business, Madden’s was carefree and every day.  He grabbed viewers’ attention with a football nomenclature not heard before by blending an infusion of coaches on the practice field, and bellowing fans. “Whap!” “Bang!” “Doink!”.

Broadcasters that are living and dead, from eras past and present and have varying styles, have one thing in common: They are as much a part of the way we experience sports as the events themselves. All you have had to do is listen to Vanguard University Basketball, Anaheim Jr. Ducks Ice Hockey or Sacramento City College Football on Sportsnetusa.net and you would realize that we at SportsNetUSA.net are just like you. We are the fan that just happened into your living room, kitchen, car or office at work. We are the cut out cardboard figure of the parent sitting behind the microphone. We are also the heart, soul, dreamer, wisher and cheerleader for those who are out on the court, field, diamond and track.

So I ask again, to all my fellow broadcasters, voices, keepers of the flame, those who spread the word, what makes those announcers you like, listen too, and hang on every word, what makes them the ones that we listen too? I wish I knew, but I can tell you that some of the following people are those I have followed on the national level Howard Cosell, John Madden, Brent Musburger, Al Michaels, Dick Enberg Curt Gowdy, Keith Jackson, Bob Costas, Jim McKay, Dick Vitale, Joe Buck Marv Albert and of course, Vin Scully. And to those few that I have named here, let us thank them for those indelible sporting moments that defined our sports, with their magical statements behind the microphone.

You often will hear on SPORTSNETUSA.NET the bantering of Title IX, Pedal to the Metal, Big E, Stick boy, and The Franchise about sports; where they were, how far they have come and where they might be going as a viable, competitive, watchable product to the public. Some of our honored group would go so far as to tell you that Hockey and Pro Basketball are on the rise.  But let us be realistic, the more butts you can plunk into seats the more whatever product you are watching will look more popular.

Take for example this past Sunday (3/7/2010), just in the LA/O.C. market alone on cable television, you were offered 20 college basketball games. Throw in four high school games and three pro games and you would say the sport is popular. But how true is that statement and how true are those numbers? If a marketer were to call the average sport’s viewer and ask if they watched a basketball game there is a very good chance that they watched a few moments of one of twenty games. If you do that in enough markets it makes the game seem as if it is growing in popularity. This kind of chicanery is played by many major sports throughout the country and we, the viewers, are supposed to buy into popularity over boredom.

STATEMENT FROM NEILSEN RATINGS: 
The National Basketball Association has achieved a rapid rise and fall in television ratings since the 1997-1998 NBA season, when ratings for the NBA Finals achieved a record high, to the 2002-2003 NBA season, when ratings for the same event hit an all-time record low.

Blame for this rise and fall has been pinned on the destructive NBA lockout which occurred right after the 1998 season. The lockout wiped out thirty-two games of the 1998-1999 season and caused fan apathy. As well as heavy competition from prime time programming such as American Idol, the CSI franchise, and Dancing With The Stars.

Despite the fall in ratings, the NBA’s regular season ratings average is only slightly lower than Major League Baseball’s, and ratings for the finals continue to outdraw competing events that occur during the same month, golf’s U.S. Open and the Stanley Cup Finals.  So why do my compatriots continue to try and tell me how popular a sport is that seems to have no popularity at all?

It is this, my partner TITLE IX is the voice for one of the more successful woman’s program in college basketball, Vanguard University. He has the luxury to watch a product that is superior on a daily basis and that influences his perception of the game. On the other side of the table is The Franchise who works with a major professional organization in basketball and also has the
pleasure of touting some of the best young talent on the high school level. Ah, to wear rose colored glasses. The trifecta of this group, is the wishful announcer of Cal State University Fullerton Basketball, the Big E. Okay, I know that is a giant leap from the other two; at least they have something to root for on a high school, pro or college level. Let me give credit where credit is due. CSUF has made it to the tournament before and Big E is a “half full glass” type of person.

But gentleman, the door is starting to close and it will continue to close on your sport and others when the foundation of your sport and its fans forget what made yours and other sports famous … history.  History is a lost story in basketball, we only hear of number 23. History is a lost sport in hockey, we barely ever hear of number 99. And in baseball, the history stopped.  So guys, your sport is not as popular as you’d like to think, because no one cares about who did what whenever. Well I guess I should not say that. I, at least, know three who care.  It’s just that they need to yell a little louder.

By the way Mr. Neyland my all-GSAC team is the following:
Teresa Kamp: Fresno Pacific
Becki Huddle: Vanguard University
Kelly Boeke: Vanguard University
Lisa Faulkner: Vanguard University
Kelly Schmidt: Vanguard University
Erin Kella Point Loma
Colleen Planeta: Point Loma
Lindsey West: Azusa Paciific
Stephen Patten: Azusa Pacific
Sonia Ackerman; Cal Baptist
Gittie Mejer: Concordia
(Whomever I missed I know TITLE IX covered)

I keep hearing LeBron James wants to change his jersey number from 23 to 6. James says “[Jordan] can’t get the logo, and if he can’t, something has to be done. I feel like no NBA player should wear 23. I’m starting a petition, and I’ve got to get everyone in the NBA to sign it. Now, if I’m not going to wear No. 23, then nobody else should be able to wear it.” Michael Jordan is arguably (if you’ve listened to Friday Nite Mics then you’ve heard the arguments) the greatest basketball player of all time. He has won six championships, six Finals MVPs, and five regular season MVPs but he is not Jackie Robinson. He doesn’t hold a candle to Robinson’s cultural impact. Jordan is a basketball and marketing icon, but he didn’t change the landscape of professional sports. For James to change his number from what he feels is respect for Jordan to number 6 shows his lack of basketball history. Lebron also said “I just think what Michael Jordan has done for the game has to be recognized some way soon,” James said.  There would be no LeBron James, no Kobe Bryant, no Dwyane Wade if there wasn’t Michael Jordan first. Without Julius Erving, who wore number 6, there would be no Michael Jordan. But didn’t someone else wear #6 that won 11 championships, was a pretty decent player in his own, arguably the greatest basketball player ever and most likely the greatest defender and played during an era that changed America? For LeBron to change his number out of respect to Michael Jordan, he should think about changing it to a number not #6 out of respect for Bill Russell and the history of the game.

Speaking of Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant should be mentioned in the same breath. I know everyone at www.sportsnetusa.net will disagree.

Here is my top 5 MVP candidates:
1. LeBron James
2. Carmelo Anthony
3. Kevin Durant
4. Kobe Bryant
5. Dirk Nowitzki

I was thinking recently of a game the Buddha of Babble and I played during our 3am journey from Jackson to the Nashville airport a couple of years ago; the Hall of Fame game. This is a list of nine that should be in the basketball Hall of Fame.
*Artis Gilmore: dominating in the ABA and didn’t drop off when he came to the NBA. Top ten in rebounds, blocks, games and   number one in field goal percentage.
*Dennis Johnson: nine straight All-NBA Defensive teams, three time NBA champ, one Finals MVP
*Gus Johnson: besides being my Uncle Popsie’s favorite player, prototype power forward, think Gayle Sayers impact on the hardwood
*Jerry Tarkanian: Long Beach St. is still living off the recognition he brought to the program, more coaching victories than Ralph Miller, John Chaney, Norm Stewart, Ray Meyer and more championships
*Oscar Schmidt: five-time Olympian for Brazil, one of the best players never to play in the NBA
*Rebecca Lobo: catalyst for UCONN dominance, National Champion
*Frank Selvy: 100 points in a college game, three time all-American
*Hank Gathers: 2nd player in NCAA history to lead in points and rebounds in the same season, average for NCAA career 33 points, 14 rebounds

The most impressive sports team during the last few years has been the UCONN Huskies Women’s basketball team. At this moment, they are at 70 consecutive wins and counting and a national championship during the run. If Maya Moore stays for her senior season, she will be considered one of the all-time greats.

Speaking of all-time greats here is my All-time Golden State Athletic Conference Women’s Basketball Team:
*Kelly Schmidt, Vanguard University: four all conference selections, two-time GSAC Player of the Year, four-time all-American (three 1st team and one 2nd), NAIA Player of the Year
*Jessica Richter, Vanguard University: three all conference selections, two-time GSAC Player of the Year, three-time all-American
1st team, NAIA Player of the Year
*Lisa Faulkner, Vanguard University: two all conference selections, GSAC Player of the Year, NAIA Player of the Year, two-time all-American 1st team, NAIA single season assist leader (385)
*Gitte Mejer, Concordia University, all-American 1st team, three-time GSAC Player of the Year
*Sonia Akkerman, Cal Baptist University: all-American, three-time GSAC Player of the Year
Honorable mentions: Lindsey West and Cindy DeYoung (APU), Jamie Gast (CUI), Lesley DuBois (TMC), Colleen Planeta (PLNU), Katie Hardeman and Becky Gibb (WC)

If the NCAA really cared about “student-athletes” missing class time, the NCAA would not consider expanding the Field of 64 to 96 teams. The tournament field is fine the way it is structured now. Proponents say expanding will lessen the cries of those that missed the cut. Even if the field grows, there will always be one or two teams that feel left out. I thought the NCAA wanted full-time “student -athletes” not athletes that only go to class when the time is convenient to the NCAA; which is October to the first week of April.