ESPN Commercial for World Cup is Awesome Message of Unity

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I was delighted this morning when my weekly update email from my favorite news magazine, The WEEK, showed up with a story about and a llnk to a brilliant TV commercial done by ESPN to promote the upcoming FIFA World Cup in South Africa.

Take a minute to watch and listen. And when it comes to the end, think, not just “FIFA World Cup” but “the world and all beings in it.” Inspirational.

Posted via email from danshafer’s posterous

June 11, 2010 · Posted in Sports  
　　　　

One Mind, Two Sports Editors: Should We Care About This Stuff? (tag: Sports))

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Thanks a lot, Michael Rosenberg of Sports Illustrated. Thanks to you, the two sports fans that live in my head are back at their bickering again. I thought I had them safely retired. But then they read your piece today about the three Big Stories That Probably Shouldn’t Be On The Sports Pages.

Now I can’t shut them up.

Your comments about the news media coverage of Tiger Woods’ scandalous sexual conduct and his behavior at and after the Masters this week, Ben Roethlisberger’s legal problems concerning his sexual conduct, and Dallas Cowboys’ owner Jerry Jones inebriation-induced mouthing off to some fans were right on. Or completely out of line. We’re still debating.

On the one hand, I’ve long thought that the way media treats sports celebrities in particular was just out of whack. If a guy who is CEO of a bank gets caught in flagrante delicto with a woman not his wife, the story doesn’t show up on the Business Page. It’s either on the front page, in general news, or not at all. Similarly, a doctor who embezzles funds from Medicare doesn’t have the news splashed on the Health page, but in the news section. But an athlete who does anything even vaguely “wrong” and you can bet the sports pages will be the primary, if not only, place you’re likely to find out. That seems wrong on a couple of levels. First, it assumes that nobody who doesn’t read the sports section cares about stuff athletes do. That’s demonstrably not the case in my own house. Second, it assumes sports fans will want to read about the alleged misconduct. That is also demonstrably wrong in my own house.

Except for the Other Guy in my head, who thinks the preceding paragraph is pure unadulterated BS.

He says that these people (mostly men but there was that ice skating scandal a few years back) are legit sports news by virtue of their fame in that field. He thinks that not only is it true that “real sports fans” care about that stuff, but that only someone who follows sports would both want to know about it and appreciate its potential impact on a team or a sport or, in the case of Woods, an entire industry. Or several entire industries, apparently.

So there are really two questions here. First, is celebrity a reason to make people fair game for news coverage of literally everything they do? Second, is it right to put news about an athlete engaging in unrelated activity that is immoral or illegal in someone’s eyes, on the sports page or does it belong in the general news area? This second point is more important than it appears because if you decide this news belongs in the general news area, you make the editors who choose what to cover evaluate the story in the context of everything else going on in the world that day. In that context, most of this stuff is junk. But if you say, “This is a sports story. How important is it compared to all the other real sports stories we have to cover today?” then you make it orders of magnitude more important just by the narrower comparison.

I feel right about that. So, listen up, Other Guy. Shut up. Go back to sleep. Who asked ya?

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April 15, 2010 · Posted in Media, Sports  
　　　　

NFL Tweaks OT Rule, Still Far Short of NCAA’s Great Approach

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Starting in the post-season to the 2011 season, NFL overtime games will be decided slightly differently. Sudden death becomes sudden-sort-of-almost-death.The new rule specifies that if the team that wins the coin toss scores a field goal on that possession, the other team has a single possession in which to either re-tie the game with a three-pointer or win it with a TD. The rule applies only to post-season, at least for now, and only to the first possession, but it’s a step in the right direction. Almost 60% of all OT games were decided by the coin flip and won by a field goal. That has always seemed like a dumb way to decide a game, particularly one that can end a team’s season.

I’ve never been able to figure out why the NFL doesn’t adopt the NCAA overtime rule. In college ball, the teams effectively play mini-games of one possession each. If Team A scores a TD in its first possession, Team B gets a shot at tying the game. If Team A scores a field goal, Team B gets a shot at tying or winning. But Team B always gets a final shot before losing the game. They also remove the kickoff from the mix, allowing each team to start on the opponents’ 25-yard line. It just seems like a much fairer way of deciding a game between two obviously equally matched teams.

Still, I’ll take the new NFL rule. I hope they extend it to regular-season play soon and that they keep tweaking the OT rules to introduce more fairness into the game.

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April 6, 2010 · Posted in Football  
　　　　

Will Baseball Run Out of Asterisks?

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A new technology is making its halting debut this Spring Training season. It gives batters another new advantage that will likely result in artificially higher batting averages as well as prolonging careers. This is, it should be noted, the same effect (though perhaps to a lesser degree) as the use of steroids, a chemical way of increasing batting averages and prolonging careers that has resulted in one of the biggest brouhahas in the history of the game.

I speak, of course, of NBG, which stands for the New Batting Glove. This apparel enhancement boasts the presence of a brand-new material called AIC (Advanced Impact Composite). This substance is said to reduce the pain impact on the hands of making contact — either with the bat or the hand — with a pitched ball by about 60%. SIXTY FREAKING PERCENT! Steroids, at their best, perhaps improved a hitter's bat speed and muscle mass something like 15-20%. And people are being banned for life for using it.

Of course, this glove has already been approved by Major League Baseball. Sure. Wonder if Non-Commissioner Selig is getting a commission on sales. 

I'm calling for a temporary ban on the new glove while a scientific commission headed by MSNBC's Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann and made up of all admitted or convicted steroid users and The Science Guy can study the actual effect of this new gimmickry on our beloved and pristine national pastime which has never before allowed the admission of a new technology like this to screw up the pitcher-hitter relationship. Oh, except for all the new bat manufacturing tricks that have occurred since the 1930s. Oh, yeah, and there was that stupid idea of raising the pitcher's mound. Who came up with that one? And the well-known but always-denied "juiced ball." But of course those were all just "minor adjustments" right? Not like steroids that were fine, thank you, fine until someone had to open their big mouth and point out that even though they weren't banned from baseball they were illegal substances in some jurisdictions. 

Crank up the asterisk machine, boys! We're gonna have a ton of new hitting records to flag when the dust settles from this one.

(Thanks to my buddy Tony Seton for the pointage on this one.)

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March 4, 2010 · Posted in Baseball  
　　　　

I Would SO Love the Saints to Win Today, But…

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I love New Orleans. I mean really love it. I love all the stuff everyone else loves: music, food, ambience, people, history….the whole nine yards. And I, like most people who have spent time there, have a lot of my own special memories that keep me romancing the place in my mind and my vision.

This afternoon my time when the Saints take on the Indianapolis Colts machine in Super Bowl LXIV in Miami, I will be hoping and praying and meditating and mojo-ing for them to beat the tar out of the smart-alec, technocratic Peyton Manning bunch. I really will. I've scoured the Web and found a few intrepid souls who think the Saints might not only have a realistic shot today but that they might even win this one.

But I'm suspicious that the Colts will prove too much for my second-favorite football team on the planet. "Whodat" is likely to turn into "Who WAS that?"

In many ways, this game epitomizes the numerous dichotomies in our American culture. It's the efficient technocrats against a bunch of "just guys" whose style is more freelance. It's the perennial and historical winners against the perennial and hysterical losers. It's regimented Sousa marches against invisibly disciplined jazz. It's method vs. passion.

If I've learned anything fundamental about America's socio-political makeup in the past decade, it is that as a people we seem to prefer streamlined, passionless bureaucratic efficiency over the sometimes messy and undisciplined serendipity of the impassioned compassionate leader who somehow manages to do the Right Thing almost accidentally. We prefer predictability over surprise, clear-cut "good" and "bad" guys in a world of infinite shades of gray.

In that world, my Saints don't have a chance. But I hold out one hope and that is that the power of hope and joy and love and bliss and belief can and sometimes does overcome the ruthless efficiency of the Machine. If that happens today, you can be sure of one thing: I'll be shouting and screaming and doing what passes for dancing in my life. If the likely outcome comes out, though, I'll congratulate the Colts and tune in on TV Tuesday when the Saints have their Super Bowl win-or-lose-because-we-love-you parade in the Big Easy. Meanwhile, I'm going to see if I can find a recipe for white chocolate bread pudding like they make at The Palace in the Quarter and put on a little Terrence Blanchard.

Y'all enjoy.

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February 7, 2010 · Posted in Football  
　　　　

This Guy Thinks the Niners Make the Playoffs This Season

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This story out of the Bleacher Report predicts that the San Francisco 49ers will sport a 10-6 record this year, good enough to in the title in the pathetic NFC West. Contributor Joey Grisso manages to qualify his prediction with enough “ifs” to create a blanket excuse for falling short. ” If Frank Gore has a good year and Vernon Davis makes up for some lost ground over the years, and if Patrick Willis continues to dominate on defense,” then all the Niners need to do is figure out their QB situation, he opines.

Pretty gutsy prediction with the schedule they have. I see them at 9-7 at best. Now that may be enough to win the division and put them into the playoffs but it’s more likely given their recent history that a catastrophic injury comes up and ends their season early. At least the odds against boneheaded coaching decisions are way up with Mike Singletary doing the head coaching chores. But there is no good QB solution on the horizon and without a top-flight winner calling the signals, the team will not amount to much.

May 25, 2009 · Posted in Football  
　　　　

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