Sports

Sports Watcher for the Weekend of 6/14-15

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All times PDT.

Saturday
8:50-11 AM: UEFA Soccer, Euro 2008, Sweden v. Spain (ESPN2). Because my dad will kill me if I don’t mention this quickly.

1-3 PM: College track and field, national championship (CBS). I find it strange that not all NCAA Championships are on TV somewhere. The real surprise was finding out that the golf championships are not nationally televised. CBS College Sports televises the women’s water polo final but not the golf final? Let’s get with the program! (I wonder if this has anything to do with golf not being an Olympic sport?)

4-7 PM: College baseball, College World Series, Georgia v. Miami (ESPN). I recently saw a discussion on “Around the Horn” wondering why the MLB draft isn’t as big as the NFL and NBA draft. Two factors I didn’t hear in that discussion: going straight from high school to the pros is WAY more popular in baseball than it ever was in the NBA, which depresses the popularity (and quality) of college baseball. And second, THE MLB DRAFT OCCURS BEFORE THE COLLEGE WORLD SERIES PROPER HAS EVEN STARTED! That makes it more of a crap shoot, no?

Sunday
11-2:30 PM: NASCAR Racing, LifeLock 400 (TNT). Ah, what’s two and a half hours off of US Open coverage? It’s been a while since I mentioned the stock cars.

12-6 PM: PGA Golf, US Open, final round (NBC). It’s golf in primetime! Wait, it’s not the Masters? I don’t care if it’s still a major, I’m only watching the Masters! Wait, it’s got Tiger in it? I don’t care that when he leads a major, he wins so easily it’s boring; count me in! Casual golf fans might be the most fickle in sports.

6-8:30 PM: NBA Basketball, Boston @ LA Lakers (ABC). Story of the Finals: Team A leaps out to a big lead. Team B comes roaring back. One team wins. Lather, rinse, repeat.

One quick thought on the Belmont

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Did I really hear Brent Musberger say that perhaps the Triple Crown races could be spaced out?!?

Is it possible that part of the reason we’ve had so many Derby and Preakness winners falter in the Belmont is because these horses should maybe be moved to being bred for more endurance… for the sake of winning the Triple Crown?

That balance between needing a lot of speed to win, but being able to hold up long enough to do it thrice in less than two months, is part of what makes the Triple Crown one of the greatest feats in sports. If it was intended to reward speed alone, it would consist of just one race.

If the horse racing community decides to reward speed alone even more by spacing out the Triple Crown races, they’re doing the exact opposite of what they should do. They shouldn’t legitimize the years-long bastardization of the sport.

Here’s a thought: Is a de-emphasization of the Triple Crown in order?

Sports Watcher for the Weekend of 6/7-8

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The first time I filled out most of this schedule, including all the comments on the French Open women’s final, the second paragraph of the UFC write-up, and all the college baseball and IndyCar stuff, I lost it all because I pre-scheduled all the posts with pre-qualified championship info, once a post is scheduled Blogger stops autosaving drafts, and the Internet connection I’m using is fritzing out all of a sudden. DSZGFJBD JGGHFXGDFMS HVCJHJXGD!!!!!!!~!!!~!!!!!

It’s moments like these that are the ONLY reason I keep strongly considering getting a job and moving out of my mom’s place and into a place where I can have my own Internet connection instead of stealing a neighbor’s.

Ahem.

As I was saying. All times PDT.

Saturday
6-9 AM: Tennis, French Open, includes women’s final, Dinara Safina v. Ana Ivanovic (NBC). Okay, I’ve heard some things about these two, but really, do you really think either one of them is really a household name in the US? Most people are going, “Dana Sana wha? Ana Vana wha?” At least it doesn’t involve 3-seed Jelena Jankovic. Who? Exactly.

9-12 PM: College baseball, NC State v. Georgia or Wichita State v. Florida State (ESPN2). Wait, is ESPN regionalizing the super regionals? And Coastal Carolina plays North Carolina on ESPNU at the same time as well!

12-3 PM: Ultimate Fighting Championship, UFC 85 (PPV). It’s a bit odd for UFC to be running events every other week, and then not necessarily show the same people each week. Oh wait, this is in London. Odd schedule placement might be to be expected. Well, I’m still keeping an eye on things.

While we’re on the topic of MMA, the verdict is in from EliteXC, and, well… whether or not it outperformed the Stanley Cup Finals depends on your definition. But expect it to tumble in the future after Kimbo Slice lost his aura. Meanwhile, look for World Extreme Cagefighting – essentially UFC’s equivalent to the Nationwide Series (see below) – to potentially make an appearance in future Watchers; I missed their show on Sunday, which most MMA-heads would say put EliteXC to shame. Of course, that “cagefighting” bit can’t be good for building legitimacy.

3:25-4 PM: Horse racing, Belmont Stakes (ABC). Skip the mindless pregame and cut straight to the race. I’m not sure if they’ll be off before or after 3:30; if I had to guess, it’d probably be after, but you might want to tune in a little early just in case. WILL BIG BROWN WIN THE ELUSIVE TRIPLE CROWN OR WILL HE JOIN THE SCRAP HEAP OF A GAZILLION PREVIOUS OVERHYPED DERBY/PREAKNESS WINNERS THAT FLOPPED IN THE BELMONT JUST SINCE AFFIRMED OR HELL JUST IN THE LAST TEN YEARS?

4:30-7:30 PM: College baseball, Arizona v. Miami (FL) or Stanford v. Cal State Fullerton (ESPN). Yes, I know it conflicts with the event below. I would have done the Nationwide Series race but I’m not doing the Sprint Cup race. The nearest ESPNU games’ start times are 3 and 6 PM. Sue me.

7-9:30 PM: IndyCar Series, Bombardier Learjet 550 (ESPN2). Last week’s race was on ABC coming out of the Indy 500 in a year where ratings are up because of the merger. The ratings: .8. Did I mention that USA Today ran an article around the time of the Indy 500 saying that IndyCar could very well run down NASCAR?

Sunday
6-11 AM: Tennis, French Open, includes men’s final, Roger Federer v. Rafael Nadal (NBC). How many times have these two squared off just at the French? How about some dap for Gael Monfils making it all the way to the semis before running headfirst into FederTron 2000? I remember when he was a sensation in the boys’ tournament…

1-4 PM: LPGA Golf, McDonald’s LPGA Championship, final round (Golf Channel). WTF is the final round of a MAJOR still doing on the f’ing Golf Channel? I mean, I knew it was on the Golf Channel a few years ago, but I thought they’d corrected that injustice! Virtually every PGA Tour event has its final round on broadcast; what does it say that one of the top four women’s event is considered less important than, well, ANY men’s event? When can this come up for renegotiation? The LPGA needs to correct this injustice… back when it happened in the first place!

(Incidentially, it appears to technically be the “McDonald’s LPGA Championship Presented by Coca-Cola”. That’s as bad as the “Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim”. Also, what the hell is with the sports news cycle acting like the US Open is THIS weekend?)

6-8:30 PM: NBA Basketball, LA Lakers @ Boston (ABC). Obviously, I shouldn’t have to say anything more.

Sports Watcher for the Weekend of 5/31-6/1

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All times PDT.

Saturday
9-2 PM: College Softball, College World Series, second round action (ESPN). Quick format explanation: Teams that lose in round 1 play a second first round game, then play the second round loser from the other half of the bracket. Then they move on to the semifinal tomorrow, but if the team that lost a game wins the first game, they play a second game. It’s really simple! The best-of-three final gets played over the next three days.

5-7:30 PM: NHL Hockey, Detroit @ Pittsburgh (CBC/NBC). For a while there were reports that NBC was decreasing its Stanley Cup Finals commitment so low that some potentially deciding games would be cut. Buf if you cut a deciding game, make it Game 4. If it’s 3-0, it’s a sweep if it ends and that’s boring. If it’s 2-1, well, it’s not a deciding game, is it?

In fact, if this year’s Finals has shown anything, it’s that if you’re going to cut any game, in any sport’s best-of-seven series, deciding or non-deciding, from broadcast, make it Game 3. After the first two games, everyone was thinking the series would have little suspense and would be done quickly. I have to imagine that depressed viewership for Game 3, despite the currently-reported relatively strong ratings. Now viewership will pick back up again for Game 4. I think a structure putting the first two games on broadcast, priming the pump for everyone to watch, and the last two or three games on broadcast, makes sense.

9-11 PM (both coasts): EliteXC Mixed Martial Arts, Saturday Night Fights (CBS, both coasts). The only place this doesn’t interfere with hockey is on the West Coast; otherwise it’s merely an honorable mention. This thing better knock my socks off in the ratings or it will not get any sort of a protected spot in future Watchers.

Sunday
2-10 PM: French Open, 3rd round action (Tennis Channel). I write this a day in advance. I have no clue what to expect.

10:30-3 PM: NASCAR Sprint Cup Racing, Best Buy 400 (FOX). I will be watching the IndyCar race starting at 1, but I’m sure you’ll go gaga over this without me. I’m a bit distressed at the most logical reasons why ESPN still doesn’t cover NASCAR as much as its popularity suggests it should, that is to say, on shows like Around the Horn and Pardon the Interruption.

5:30-8 PM: NBA Basketball, Detroit @ Boston, if necessary (ABC). Hey, Detroit residents don’t need to decide between basketball and hockey anymore!

If Boston wins Game 6:
5-8 PM: MLB Baseball, LA Dodgers @ NY Mets (ESPN). Because I have to make some mention of OMG JOE TORRE’S COMING BACK TO NEW YORK EVEN THOUGH HE ISN’T PLAYING HIS FORMER TEAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111!!!1111!!1111!!!!eleven!

Can I mention that in my hunting around the world of sports, looking for something, ANYTHING to fill any conceivable hole in the schedule, the Sports Watcher is still a labor-intensive excersize that still drains a lot from me, even with the ability to finish it a day or so in advance? I may abandon it again in August or so when the Little League World Series dies down.

I have an inkling of an idea to do a rundown of EVERY sporting event on TV, not just one for each timeslot. But of course that would be MORE work. A part of me wants to refer people who want that sort of thing to HD Sports Guide, but a) it doesn’t include end-of-time-slot info and b) it only includes HD stuff. And if I do that, I might as well do a schedule of EVERY SINGLE SPORTING EVENT BEING PLAYED ANYWHERE EVER. That would be beyond my capacities and would probably mean a whole other web site. You might find Sports TV Insider or DirecTV’s My Game Schedule useful, though.

I may do a Watcher-like rundown of just stuff on each sport’s own network. If you have any suggestions for how to reform the Watcher, leave a comment and I may have a poll up next week, running until I finally do end the Watcher again in August.

Sports Watcher for the Weekend of 5/24-25

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Read this post to get introduced to Sports Watcher. Basically, I run down what a sports fanatic would watch if he wanted to watch as many sports as possible over the weekend. That means only one sport in a given timeslot, as many sports as possible, and as important a contest as possible. All times PDT.

Saturday
9-11 AM: College lacrosse, Syracuse v. Virginia (ESPN2). In one of my previous stint of Sports Watcher posts, I noted that the Frozen Four seemed to be the biggest college sport that wasn’t football or basketball. If ESPN is any guide, baseball, softball and lacrosse may give it a run for its money. Of course, that may just be ESPN looking for any spring championships to fill time. The final, incidentially, isn’t until Monday. The second semifinal, Johns Hopkins v. Duke, is out because otherwise I get no baseball.

12:30-4 PM: MLB Baseball, regional action (FOX). Mets/Rockies, D-Backs/Braves, Angels/White Sox. The Rockies stink after making the World Series last year, and the Mets having a .512 record (as of Wednesday) would be more impressive if they weren’t second-to-last in their own division. The other two games are more interesting, especially Angels-White Sox which pits two division leaders (again as of Wednesday) against each other, but I doubt as many people will get D-Backs/Braves as should.

5-7:30 PM: NHL Hockey, Pittsburgh @ Detroit (CBC/VS.). The NHL’s dream Stanley Cup finals for American dominance starts.

7-10 PM: Ultimate Fighting Championship, UFC 84 (PPV). Yes, there’s an overlap. It’ll start with dull undercard matches anyway, it’s not much of an overlap. Besides, I bet you can’t afford it anyway.

Sunday
10-1:30 PM: IndyCar Racing, Indianapolis 500 (ABC). Or as ESPN is calling it, “The 92nd Indianapolis 500 telecast presented by GoDaddy.com”. First of all, it’s not the 92nd TELECAST, TV not being arouns 92 years ago and all, and secondly, this is what they’re calling it on their ticker even when referring strictly to the race itself! But who cares? It’s all about unification, baby! And Helio winning Dancing with the Stars! And Danica winning her first race! Wait, the latter already happened on a race on ESPN Classic that wasn’t Indy?

Honorable Mention: 12-3 PM: Champions Tour Golf, Senior PGA Championship, final round (NBC). Sheesh. I once created an imaginary system where all the championships could be scheduled on one imaginary network, because usually there’s no more than one at a time (this later evolved into Sports Watcher). Key word, usually, because in 2006 the MLS Cup interfered with the Chase for the then-Nextel Cup. Now I’m considering having two tracks of Sports Watcher. Get more high-profile sports onto the main Watcher, you know?

2:30-5 PM: College softball, super-regional action (ESPNU). If you’re not familiar with college baseball or softball, super-regionals appear to be pairs of regionals. 8 teams advance from the super-regionals to the College World Series and get placed into a bracket only once they get there. Regular ESPN actually airs softball during the Indy 500!

Honorable Mention: 4-6 PM: College lacrosse, women’s championship (CBS College Sports). It’s not because of the softball that I bumped this, violating my all-championships policy in the process. It’s so early in the softball tournament that I wouldn’t cry to lose it. It’s because it just barely interferes with…

5:30-8 PM: NBA Basketball, LA Lakers @ San Antonio (TNT). A Celtics-Lakers final would be heaven for NBA brass and ratings, as much of a godsend as Pens-Red Wings is for the NHL; a Spurs-Pistons final would be hell. Keep a very, VERY close eye on the officials in both series.

Well, certainly one involving Bill Simmons, at least.

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Hold on, I’m about to go into super-nerdy mode for a moment here.

Popular ESPN.com columnist Bill Simmons has had a total of one column since May 1st, and the reason why is not a secret within the sports blogosphere, as much as ESPN may not want it to come out. When popular sports blog Deadspin inquired about his lack of columnage May 14, Simmons cited “behind the scenes bullshit” and claimed “certain promises were not kept” “within a few months” of signing a recent extension. Shortly thereafter, Simmons started up an off-site blog, albeit only posting old columns for the time being, and introduced one such column as having been “written right as I was starting to find a groove and my column was starting to resemble what it’s like now, only if nobody was killing five of the best jokes or making me re-write them so they weren’t as funny.

So it’s interesting to note that the Sports Guy’s latest ESPN column is basically a roundup of very short, quick takes on various sports (and non-sports) stories from the past month-plus. What may be a lot more interesting is this:

…[a]nd can ESPN organize a Josh Howard roast so I can stand on a dais and make
these jokes as someone like Jerry Stackhouse keels over in hysterics and does
the slumped-over-and-pounding-the-table routine? (Whoops, I forgot — you’ll see
Danny Moder leave Julia Roberts alone for the night with George Clooney before
you see ESPN get involved with another roast. Scratch that thought.)

Of course, Simmons is referring to an infamous incident during ESPN’s roast of their “Mike and Mike” personalities earlier this year, when Dana Jacobsen made some rather offensive comments while drunk. Okay, it’s not taking a shot because of Simmons’ own battles with ESPN, and that incident wasn’t even really ESPN’s fault, but am I the only one surprised, given what we’ve learned so far, that ESPN didn’t censor what could be considered taking a shot at the Worldwide Leader in Sports?

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Quick addendum

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I left out one option on the new poll asking what features you want to see added to Da Blog. I have been thinking, off and on, about a “playoff watch” – keeping track of where teams are in their quest to get into the playoffs. It would essentially be a generalization of the Week 17 Playoff Positioning Watch on the SNF Flex Scheduling Watch. I didn’t put it on the poll and I’m not putting it on now because it was just enough work that I don’t want to do it week in and week out, day in and day out, all year long for all sorts of sports. But if you want it, feel free and comment.

It truly is a vast wasteland.

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Look over my SiteMeter stats and it becomes glaringly obvious that since joining SiteMeter, my peak readership for Da Blog has been in November and December, when my college football rankings, SNF Flex Scheduling Watch, and (not next year) SuperPower ratings are in full swing.

The rest of the time, I barely break 100 readers for the whole month, or about 3-4 a day. By those standards, I shouldn’t be disappointed by the readership numbers for Sandsday!

Currently, the poll on the front page of the web site has the following most popular topics with 4 votes each: Sports (well covered), Movies (well, if I can get the Greatest Movies Project off the ground…), Video Games (evidently the Sandsday crowd), RPGs, Politics (forthcoming), and the current overall leader with 5 votes, Computing/Internet.

As for my original Da Blog Poll, asking what you’d like to see out of Da Blog, the three leaders in the clubhouse are: Short poems or stories I’ve written, TV Ratings Reports, and Sports Watcher. TV ratings reports are out of the question; they take too long and are too much work. I heartily recommend TV by the Numbers for much more in-depth coverage than I ever had in mind.

Sports Watcher is coming back on a provisional basis this weekend and possibly for good, aided by Blogger’s new Scheduled Posts feature, allowing me to work on the Watcher throughout the week instead of all at once on Friday. At this point, publishing short poems or stories I’ve written is a) probably going to be more a web site thing than a blog thing and b) will mostly be the ones I think are less publishable. My interests have shifted since writing them into more philosophic strains.

I’ve reposted the topic poll under the new mechanism, removing the three most popular items, and replacing them with four new ones: TV schedule reports (know exactly what’s going to be on direct from the source!), philosophical treatises, live election results based on my projection mechanisms (which are coming for November’s general election anyway), and random discoveries from the Internet. (I’m not a subscriber to StumbleUpon, but I was interested in the concept when I was semi-accidentially introduced to it.) Given the pace at which my polls get votes, this one will last until the end of July, although if I get enough votes suggestions from it will start filtering into Da Blog and the web site before then.

Now for another question. In a recent comment, someone suggested “send[ing my] posts to other bloggers”. (Ironically, this was in a post about my inability to get readers for Sandsday, not Da Blog.) Two problems with that: I’m not certain who to send it to, and I don’t want to feel like I’m spamming other bloggers. I am already on the blogroll of Sports Media Watch, but no place else to my knowledge; I haven’t had a response to any of my posts on a blog recognized by Technorati; and I’m a bit put off by the concept of blogrolls myself, partly because some of my interests are a little embarrasing for me to discuss, partly because it seems cliqueish, and partly because what I read is none of your business. Unless I decide it is. As a result, I have a bit of a beef with blogs like Awful Announcing that seemingly will only link to me if I link to them in a blogroll.

It doesn’t help that both of the blogs I referred to in the previous paragraph are sports blogs and I don’t want Da Blog to just be a sports blog. So I welcome any advice in the comments on how to branch out and how to get more inbound links. And I’m starting a second poll question – the first multi-question Da Blog Poll – asking whether I should spam other blogs. Because it’s simple, this one’s only lasting through the end of the month.

This post has something to do with the Derby, but it isn’t about it. Well, maybe a little.

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Recently read:

NBC analyst Bob Neumeier correctly predicted favorite Big Brown would win. That
prompted NBC handicapper Mike Battaglia, citing confident Big Brown trainer
Richard Dutrow Jr., to say Neumeier “drank the Rick Dutrow Kool-Aid” — with
Neumeier adding “on the rocks.” Has everybody forgotten the origin of that
relatively young cliché?

Wait, I’m hardly an alcohol drinker (wouldn’t do it even if I was old enough), but aren’t “the rocks” just ice? It may be a bit of an off-color, mixed metaphor, and this probably wasn’t his intention, but it does seem to work…

(All I have to say about the death of Eight Belles is that, regardless of whether or not horse racing objectively needs to change anything, they need to do something or they could risk becoming absolutely dead, as people will see it as an insensitive sport where deaths of competitors are simply brushed off, even induced in some circumstances. At this point, Big Brown winning the Triple Crown, far from revitalizing horse racing’s popularity, could actually crush it, because a big reason for watching the Triple Crown – seeing a horse win it for the first time in 30 years – will be gone.)

The 2008 Mid-Major Conference

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Refer to this post if you don’t know what this is about or to catch up on the rules.

This year, four conferences produced multiple bids to the NCAA Tournament: the MWC, WCC, A-10, and Sun Belt. These conferences are guaranteed one spot each in the Mid-Major Conference.

Four teams reached the Sweet 16, all from different conferences. Of these, Davidson and Memphis did not come from a multi-bid conference, while Western Kentucky and Xavier did. From the Mountain West Conference, one team won its first round game while the other did not; from the West Coast Conference, one team won its first round game while the other two did not.

This leaves two spots in the MMC to be determined by my discretion, with no conference restrictions.

Without further ado, the eight members of the 2008 Mid-Major Conference:

Xavier (Atlantic 10)
Western Kentucky (Sun Belt Conference)
Davidson (Southern Conference)
Memphis (Conference USA)
UNLV (Mountain West Conference)
San Diego (West Coast Conference)
Butler (Horizon League)
Drake (Missouri Valley Conference)
Honorable Mentions: Illinois State, Kent State, Akron

The NIT didn’t really produce much in the way of MMC contenders – the only teams to make the second round from conferences without automatic qualifying procedures were Illinois State, Southern Illinois, Creighton, and Akron. All lost. That’s barely further than any remaining team in the NCAA tournament, all but guaranteeing Butler a spot – but Drake bowed out in the first round of the NCAAs to Western Kentucky. Those NIT teams lost in a round one-fourth the size of the round Drake lost in. After such a strong performance all season, Drake very easily could have been passed over within its own conference. But the only other mid-major team to win in the first round was Siena, which falls under the Northwestern State rule (one lucky win doesn’t get you an MMC ticket). George Mason or Virginia Commonwealth would have made the honorable mention list if VCU wasn’t beaten by another mid-major (UAB) in the NIT first round or if Mason was as strong an at-large contender as Drake.

Kent State came the closest to knocking off Drake. Love it or hate it, teams that make long NIT runs can only compete for MMC bids with teams that were better in the conference tournament if they were robbed of an NCAA bid. Unlike Appalachian “upset-Michigan” State last year, Akron was nowhere near NCAA territory and Illinois was a bubble team when Drake was a lock. And since Drake and Kent State had the same level of tournament success, and Drake was a 5 seed to Kent State’s 9 seed, Drake pretty much has to get the nod (even though you could penalize it for losing to a 12 seed to KSU’s 8 seed, but even then Drake lost close while UNLV blew out Kent State).