Red Sox are Sportsmen of the Year
Thanks to Eric at Off Wing I found out the Red Sox won Sports Illustrated’s Sportsmen of the Year award. Oh, and their fans too, I guess.
I’m never a fan of the “team” win in awards like these. I’d rather see David Ortiz win than the Red Sox. This is similar to the Time Person of the Year last year, when it was “The American Soldier”. I respect the soldiers, but I’m looking for an individual to win these types of awards. The team win or the generalization just seems like a committee couldn’t make up their minds and took an easy out to try and appeal to the biggest amount of people possible.
It doesn’t make the Sox a bad pick - if you’re going to pick any team from this past year, I’d put them on the top of the list.
I can only assume now that if the White Sox or Cubs win the World Series they will win the award (along with their fans).
The Sox are the third team to win. The 1980 US Olympic hockey team wsa the first, and the other was the 1999 US women’s soccer team. Not that any of these were as big a cop-out as the “Athletes Who Care” of 1987.
Life Expectancy
Life expectancy is always a fun statistic for the media to throw out of nowhere to either scare you or make you feel safe. After all - what’s more reassuring than hearing your life expectancy is 76 when you’re 25? However, when you’re past “middle aged” they can give you a scenario that paints a very bleak picture.
Here’s a life expectancy calculator on MSN. But how accurate is that? An article on WebMD asks “Is Life Expectancy Overestimated?” The article is about a year old, but still relevant.
You don’t need me to tell you that you can live the healthiest life possible, and see a nice high life expectancy and then be hit by a bus.
Like the WebMD article mentions most of the numbers you see come from a “mortality life table”. That is, it’s not exactly the same formula they use to figure out life expectancy from birth, something I learned many moons ago in a statistics class in college that can return quite odd results as you get older. For example, you can receive a negative number once you reach a certain (very high) age.
Is there a point to any of this? Well, just try and live well, good or bad society-related numbers mean nothing to you, the individual.
Gambling Hedge Fund
Mark Cuban’s got an idea to start a gambling hedge fund. He makes a good number of comparisons between gambling and the stock market and points out how the two aren’t really all that different.
More importantly he’s reminded me to start putting up my hockey picks somewhere public and keep that record public. I do pretty well hockey-wise and hockey gambling information isn’t really as plentiful as other sports.
The reason I haven’t yet is two-fold: One, I wanted to script out a page with live odds. I’ve got that ready now, but of course, there’s no season. Two, I never wanted to “endorse” gambling. I think it’s fun, and I know there are plenty who do it, so I don’t shy away from putting up some ads or integrating the fake betting game I have into the forums on hockeyfights.com or KO Corner; but when you start posting your own picks, it brings it to another level, one I’ve never been sure I wanted to go to.
Still, it would be interesting to see how I do - and maybe pit myself against a couple of other fellow knowledgable hockey people and maybe a power ranking and prediction formula.
Thanks For the Bad Angle
Networks are always trying to add innovative new ways to present sports to the viewer. It’s not uncommon to see more and more camera angles during a game. While some may look nice if a play is normal, it’s also not uncommon to see them become useless fast. I’m currently watching the Colts-Lions game and after a Colts TD the Lions blocked the extra point kick. The camera was at such an angle that once the kick was block the ball was off-screen and we were left wondering what happened as the players just ran off-screen. While switching cameras mid-play like that is awkward, so is being left in the dark. Sometimes it’s easier to just stick with what works, especially when it’s a camera that can pan-out easily or follow the play. Did we miss anything? No, but it was irritating nonetheless.
Go to Mars Damnit
James Cameron writes an article for Wired Magazine about exploration and why we should not just be going into space, but to Mars and beyond.
I’m not one for heights, so I’ll probably stay here, but I would love some pictures and maybe a shotglass from the spaceport.
Being the Away Fan
Eric over at Off Wing writes about fan encounters, like when you wear the jersey of the away team to a game and you’re harassed - are you willing to go back for more?
I’ve had the pleasure of having someone start in with me because I was rooting for the Islanders at a Isles-Rangers game at MSG. No problem normally, I’ve had an encounter or two at MSG and the Coliseum for Isles-Rangers games - but this was at the very end of the game (when everyone was standing up watching the last minute of a close game, although he didn’t feel like it) and this guy had his kid with him. His son (or perhaps nephew I guess) was no older than 7. We had some words, but I kept it pretty tame and low-key, but was thinking the whole time “why is this guy starting in with me in front of his kid?” It was pretty disturbing and I don’t need to tell anyone that it sets a bad example.
I’ve worn my Islanders jersey to the old Spectrum in Philly, myself and a friend were told we were going to be thrown off the top level, but it was just a couple of drunk fans looking to draw attention to themselves (we traded barbs, no big deal); same goes for a few other places and jerseys. I’ve witnessed a decent amount of fan scuffles - it just doesn’t make sense to start a fight at a game. You pay how much money to sit there and watch it - why even jeopardize that?
But here’s a flip-side: my girl and I went down to Florida and took a trip up to Tampa for a game. We went with her aunt and uncle, loyal Bolts fans. We didn’t wear jerseys, but had on a couple of t-shirts and she had a hat on. There were a good number of Islanders fans there, and except for one pair of people I didn’t witness anyone yelling back and forth. Pretty calm all around. I sat there and thought “wow, this is nice” - everyone can come and root for their team with no worries about being attacked. However - the crowd was pretty calm about everything. Only on a couple of occasions did they cheer at all and they certainly needed some coaching from the p.a. system to cheer/chant. I wasn’t used to the dullness that sometimes accompanied the game. So I guess kinda tame is good, but too tame wasn’t much fun either. Does an overall tame and a no-threatening-the-away-fans attitude go hand in hand? Well, I’d have to assume it does in general. I’m sure there are a good number of exceptions, but if we were to make a generalization, I think that would be the safe one.
Some random related thoughts: I’ve never been the away fan at a football game; the only pro basketball game I ever went to was up in Toronto against the Knicks, who I was rooting for, no problems there, but we were a large group; and for baseball I’m a Yankees fan, which makes me evil anywhere, but I’ve never really had a problem and I never wore any Yankees stuff to a non-Yankees game (so all National League teams are out). Actually, I’ve never worn the attire of a team that’s not playing the game unless it was a hat or shirt of a defunct team.
I was press covering the Sabres for a season and attended many other games during my college years up in Buffalo, and I’d say it was probably one of the better mixes of cheering for the home team and tameness towards the away fans that you’ll see, but every arena has its moments.
Please Unplug My Former Host
Not so long ago I had shared hosting. I was originally with one company, who was bought by another, and then another. I then switched upon receiving horrible service, landed on my last shared hosting company (who was quite good) before moving to my own servers.
So one of the first companies - all one-in-the-same to me has a server (or more) that is basically a virus relay. I receive numerous emails a day from this one IP - all viruses. They have a few other things in common: they are only to domains and email accounts I had while hosting with this company and all of the spoofed “from” addresses are from other domains hosted at this company (or formerly hosted there).
I did what I hope most responsible people would do: I wrote them a polite email letting them know what’s happening and how and suggested they look into it. No response. So I wrote another email. No response.
At this point I’m pretty disgusted. I know they’re receiving my emails and they’re willingly letting this continue. I’ve gotten messages numbering in the teens (at least) within one day. I safely delete them - but I do wonder just how many other machines they’ve infected by letting this continue. I know the phrase “depraved indifference” is usually reserved for murder charges, but it’s quite fitting here.
I’ll have to simply block their IPs from delivering mail to me as I’m tired of receiving this stuff. If I were lawsuit trigger-happy and had some free time I’d probably have a fun case to attempt to set some precedent too, any hosting company that willingly allows viruses to be spread should have some action taken against them.
This is StarWarsCenter.
Even when one’s interest in ESPN and SportsCenter is in the decline, you still have to point them to the good stuff. The “This is SportsCenter.” campaign is one of my favorites. String those together and you have more of an entertaining show than some of the other highlight reels we see.
Sent to me by the almighty Fitz, we have the latest spot, from starwars.com (video on page).
Enough Madden
Not the video game, of course, you can always get more of that; but this is in regards to John Madden himself.
Brian Baldinger, on Fox Sports, writes Madden ‘stifled’ by Michaels.
Brian reminded me of just how lucky we are to have Al Michaels there. His piece was almost a thank you note in my eyes to ABC. Madden seems like a great guy, no doubt. I also don’t doubt he knows his football better than almost anyone. But that doesn’t mean I like to hear him ramble on and on like Madden can do. If you don’t contain him you wind up feeling like you do after playing a few games of EA’s Madden-titled video game - very, very irritated. The words repitition and forced come to mind, and it’s two things we just don’t need more of on MNF.
Take a Nap
Working? Tired? Falling asleep in that meeting? Go take a nap. Seriously.
The Wired story.
I’m not the kind of person who could fall asleep anywhere other than my bed unless I’m completely exhausted, but I guess that’s the point, isn’t it?