My Life is Running 64 Miles Per Hour

A blog post is long overdue as spring break and professors cramming in midterms and mid-term papers all within a week of each other have taken up much of my time. With that, I still have managed to keep up with March Madness. My MLB preview blog will have to take a backseat due to a March that has in fact been nothing less than mad.

Before I begin my break down of the tournament, I just want to say a few things about my road trip over spring break with my dad. It was as if I escaped prison for a week; I mean it was nothing less than awesome. As you may know, my school is not the best place to meet people with an interest in sports, so going on a week long road trip with my dad, who’s almost as nuts about sports as I am, and also meeting up with my brother along the way has been the highlight of the year so far. Usually people base their road trips around which cities they are going to visit and what sites they want to see. Not us, we based it solely around the times the tournament games were being played so we could stop at the appropriate sports bar or hotel. Buffalo Wild Wings in Pittsburgh, ESPN Zone in Chicago, a hotel in Milwaukee, and my brother’s house complete with HDTV near Cincinnati. We managed to visit the Louisville Slugger Factory along the way where I purchased a signed Derek Jeter slugger. I kind of had to; if I didn’t it would be like going to Germany and not tasting the beer or going to Amsterdam and not... never mind. I would write more about the trip but the blog post would just be simply too long to read.

Ok, on to the tournament. Now as you can see above, my bracket doesn’t look too bad. I have a few hiccups, mainly in the Big 12 conference: Texas, Texas A&M, and Kansas. The funny thing is that I knew the Big 12 conference wasn’t that strong and I even mentioned that to my brother when he was filling out his bracket. I know this conference very well due to my life-long affection for the University of Texas but I thought that Kevin Durant and Acie Law would be too clutch to go against, I was wrong.

The problem I noticed with Texas all year besides the fact that their starting five is new this year and all very young, is that they cannot pass for the life of themselves. This has got to be one of the worst passing teams I’ve seen. D.J. Augustin will be good in the future but not this year; he was a huge problem for the Longhorns. The team passes around the perimeter where they usually gun the ball or Durant drives up for the lay in. As soon as they try to pass inside, they turn the ball over from either a bad pass or the inability to get open. This is exactly why they lost in the Big 12 championship against Kansas, they blew a 22 point lead because they started to gun the ball in the end of the 1st half and the beginning of the 2nd half and missed most of their shots. You can’t win games if you don’t know how to pass the ball; this is such an underrated concept in both the NCAA and the NBA. The only reason why I picked them to go on to the Elite Eight was because of Durant and the fact that I was seduced by the idea of him carrying his team the way Carmelo did in Syracuse five years ago.

As for Kansas, as you can see, I really struggled with the West region, I hated that bracket and I knew it would get me into trouble. I didn’t like UCLA, Kansas, or Pitt, so I had to go with the lesser of the evils. Since Kansas was the only one out of those three that won their conference tournament, I decided to go with them.

The rest of my Final Four I was pretty confident in. I knew Florida would definitely be there. I knew that Georgetown was too talented and big to not get in either. When your best guys are 7’2” (Roy Hibbert) and 6-9” (Jeff Green), only foul trouble can keep you out. Ohio State was another team I was very confident in even though their two best players are both freshmen, Greg Oden and Mike Conley Jr. However, they did have two scares in a row against Xavier and Tennessee; by the way these were two of the best games in the entire tournament. Last night’s UNC-Georgetown game is up there too.

From what I’ve seen so far, I can still confidently stand by my prediction of Florida over Ohio State in the championship. I think Florida can easily take care of UCLA (By the way, I still can’t name one player from UCLA’s team). With Ohio State and Georgetown, (which should be an amazing game) I think it’ll come down to the battle of the big men and you can’t really go against Greg Oden in that situation.

Florida can take care of Ohio State in the championship for a number of reasons. First, they already did earlier this year. Second, Florida has a ridiculous experience advantage. The starting five for Florida consists of all seniors (Joakim Noah, Al Horford, and Lee Humphrey) and juniors (Corey Brewer and Taurean Green). The starting five for Ohio State consists of two seniors (Ron Lewis and Ivan Harris), one junior (Jamar Butler), and two freshmen (Mike Conley Jr. and Greg Oden). Oh and this just in, Florida is trying to repeat as champions. And finally, Florida will come out victorious further proving that Florida is better than Ohio State in every aspect from football to basketball to vacation spots to counting up election votes. (Oh man, I’m turning into my dad by making a reference to politics in every subject :-\) Even if I am somehow completely wrong about all of this you can be rest assure that Saturday and Monday will be nothing less than amazing.

Sports Moment of the Week

March Madness has taken over Division II as well believe or not. The championship game between Winona State and Barton was crazy. Winona State was up 2 points. Anthony Atkinson of Barton makes the basket, then Bobby Buffaloe of Barton steals the ball from Zach Malvik of Winona State, tips it right to Atkinson as he makes the layup to beat the buzzer making Barton College Division II champions. The madness part about it was that all of these events took place within the final 11 seconds of the game.

Springtime Football

Recently a lot of hype has been brought up by the Arena Football League. At first, I didn’t understand why, all of a sudden, everyone is talking about the AFL. I mean, it was established over twenty years ago and was basically a development league for the NFL. Then I found out that ESPN partnered with the AFL to show their games on their network. To boost up ratings, they bring up the sport on Sportscenter, have special programs analyzing arena football, and built up a section for the AFL on their homepage. When ESPN gets involved with a sport, they’re not messing around, so I decided that I won’t mess with ESPN and go ahead and pay close attention.

Not only is arena football going to be televised on ESPN this year, but also, ESPN NFL analysts are going to be commentating the games. This is what really brightened my eyes. I watch NFL Live (the ESPN show that analyzes the NFL) all the time and I know Ron Jaworski, Merril Hoge, Sean Salisbury, and Mike Golic. These guys are great; they can take one play and sum up the entire season of that team’s strengths and weaknesses. So when these guys were announced to be the commentators of the games, my interest grew rapidly. Then, I found out that Mike Golic would be teaming up with his ESPN Radio partner, Mike Greenberg. Their radio show, Mike and Mike in the Morning, is just phenomenal; its comedy and sports wrapped together with a dysfunctional yet hilarious relationship. What more can you ask for? To able to listen to these guys one more day out of the week, is just an opportunity I can’t give up.

So onto the sport… I did a lot of homework and found out that this game has huge differences from the NFL. The three biggest differences are the fact that its played indoors on a much smaller field (half the size of an NFL field); the fact that there are walls located inbounds so the only way to run out of bounds is to be viciously tackled over a four foot wall (think hockey without the glass); and that there is a huge net on either side of the endzone, anytime the ball touches the net, it is considered in-play. So basically if you completely overthrow your receiver (e.g. Eli Manning) and the ball bounces off the net, if the receiver catches it, it’s a touchdown.

I think these differences are very appealing. I would love to see guys get smashed into the walls. I hate it in the NFL, when a guy who has no balls runs out of bounds because they don’t want to take on a hungry Ray Lewis sprinting towards them. In the AFL, you close your eyes, pray to God, and open them while sitting on a fans lap with a giant bruise in your chest. That’s a manly sport my friends.

Big hits are also complemented by big offensive production. In the NFL, if you score 35 points in a game, chances are, you’ll win (unless you’re the Cincinnati Bengals). In the AFL, you need to score at least 35 points in the first half to stay on pace to victory. The leading passing quarterback in the AFL last year, Clint Dolezel of the Dallas Desperados, threw 105 touchdown passes, that’s more than half of the NFL single season all-time record. Since the field is only 50 yards long, you’ll see a lot of action; a huge plus for the sport.

Another reason to get excited about the AFL is simply because it’s five more months of football! Why not get excited? Everyone is always depressed after the Super Bowl because we’re all going to have to wait until September to kick off the season again. Well, the AFL makes the wait so much less. The great part about it is the rivalries are still alive. A lot of NFL fans can root for the same team in the AFL and still hate teams in other cities. Take my Dallas Desperados for example; they’re in the same division as the New York Dragons and the Philadelphia Soul. Who do Cowboys fans hate most these days? The New York Giants and the Philadelphia Eagles. Other NFL rivalries in the AFL are the New Orleans Voodoo, Tampa Bay Storm, and the Georgia Force in the Southern Division. Also, all you Los Angeles and Las Vegas residents can finally cheer for a football team since you probably will never end up with an NFL team again…

Perhaps the greatest thing about Arena Football, the prices. Tickets go from $5 in the crappy seats to $80 near the inbound walls. If you’re an NFL fan with an $80 budget, you better bring your binoculars to the game because you won’t be able to tell if ants are building a colony or if Donovan McNabb just tore his ACL eating a donut.

With the season underway, do yourself a favor, go watch a few games this season. The fourth sport of America’s “Big Four” has been vacant ever since hockey went on strike two years ago so it’s now a race between hockey, the AFL, and soccer (golf doesn’t count because no one watches it unless Tiger is teeing up). The AFL seems to be leading the race right now and that means the sport can only get better with time.

Source: ESPN.com

Photo: ArenaFootball.com

Sports Moment of the Week

The Dallas Mavericks performance has been remarkable of late. Last week they won all of their games against the Atlanta Hawks, Minnesota Timberwolves, Cleveland Cavaliers, and Orlando Magic. Doing so, they became the first team in NBA history to have three 12-game winning streaks in their season. They are also on a franchise-best 15-game winning streak right now. Their record after an 0-4 start in the beginning of the season is now 50-5. They are only the second team in ANY sport to win 50 of 55 games (The Chicago Bulls did it in their 1996 championship season when they won a record 72 games). I personally don't see how anyone can stop the Mavericks from becoming champions this year.