Ups & Downs

First a down;

 
Oh, Cliffy....    I was told it was bad to be hit by the stupid stick, but methinks you might have been hit by the whole stinkin' tree.   Wow....no wonder the coaches have held back praise, they don't know what Nacho is going to do next or if he'll be able to stay on the field.  He seems to run the gamit from All-American punt returner to All-American idiot.   We can only hope for maturity to set in real soon! 

And an up;

Can you believe the way my Tigers are playing??   Half a game out of first at this writing.  Justin Verlander with a 9 - 3 record, 2.54 ERA, do I smell an All-Star start?

Sorry, went old school (1968, to be exact).   Keep up the roar!

Another down;

Whoa, Vancouver simmer down now!    If your goalie had kept his mouth shut, you may have stood a chance.  But let's limit the rioting (sure, this suggestion coming from a guy who loves a city famous for Devil's Night riots....)



Back up again (and a biggie);

Nicklas Lidstrom picked up the Norris Trophy for the top defenseman in the NHL - for the 7th time.  Not bad for a 41 year old who has played 19 seasons. Best news, he just signed on to skate for another year!

A Problem To Address

We have gone on about so many of the ills in sports recently that I have one that has long been shoved aside because of its horrific nature. 

It is cannibalism!  

From Mike Tyson's ear bite

 

to

Alex Burroughs finger chomp

   We have a problem.   Is it because we pay these elite athletes so little that they can't afford a decent meal?   Are the owners starving the players?   Are promoters keeping fighters locked away to make them fight like hungry dogs?   I dunno, but maybe we can take up a collection for these guys to pick up a burger and fries or something.  

Wow.....

What Are We Doing??

Recently I was reading the newspaper and saw an article on the local high school's spring football,  SPRING FOOTBALL????   Are you kidding me?   That is a college thing, not a high school thing!   Why do we insist on stealing youth from our young people?   Let kids be kids for a while.  Let them enjoy down time and do the things they won't get to do when they move into the responsibility of the adult world.  If this state's athletic governing body had any guts, they would set up a calendar with definite starting and ending times for each athletic season.  A calendar with dates that don't have seasons that overlap or allow for multiple seasons of one sport.   Sure, it has been a while (OK, quite a while) since I was a high school athlete, but I can't remember one season spilling over into the next - and there was at least a week between seasons.  Coaches encouraged you to play more than one sport.   Not now, coaches want you to specialize in their sport.   The pressure on coaches at the high school level is far too great.   Too many "supporters" (you know the ones who applaud you when you win and ask for your hide when you lose) have built up a pressure cooker for our high school coaches.   After all, every parent has a kid headed for a big time scholarship, right?   Better check the stats Dad, only 6% of high school footballers will earn a scholarship to an NCAA institution and only 1.7% of those will end up in the NFL.   Geez, get off their backs and just let the kids play, yeah the word is play, you know fun and all?  Stop making it a drudgery and stop trying to relive your glory years (or lack thereof).

WOW, soapbox stuff, huh.   I need to calm down.   Finally, I leave you with a line from John Cougar Mellencamp's reminiscing song Cherry Bomb;

"That's when a sport was a sport......"

We need to move back to those days.