I was listening to Syracuse’s post-game press conference after Vermont shocked the Orange last Friday in the NCAAs. One player talked about how he wasn’t too disappointed because he and his teammates will now have more time to prepare for their midterms. Alright, that never happened. But they are student athletes. And they’re supposed to […]
Sports
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Bracketology: Take this job and shove it
You can do it on the Internet; in your office; in the high school halls; in the shopping malls; have you filled out your bracket yet? It seems like everybody — including people who think the NCAA was one of Roosevelt’s alphabet agencies — fills out a men’s basketball bracket. You can win a million […]
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How you play the game
J.P. Losman was making me nervous before he spoke last week at St. John Fisher College’s 5th Annual Conference on Sportsmanship. The 23-year-old Bills quarterback gave the keynote address before 246 athletes from 27 mostly Monroe County high schools. He seemed uptight, as quarterbacks coach Sam Wyche warmed up the audience for him. Losman’s hands […]
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Life on the sidelines
George Beahon wrote more than 5,200 sports columns during nearly a 50-year career for Rochester’s Gannett papers. Author Curt Gerling, in his 1957 book Smugtown, U.S.A., called Beahon “the poor man’s Red Smith.” Smith worked for the New York Herald Tribune and later the New York Times. Many people — even the 84-year-old Beahon — […]
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What’s in a name?
The Bills’ first order of business during the new J.P. Losman era is to change the second-year quarterback’s last name to “Winman.” Losman is pronounced LOSS-man, and that makes me uneasy. Hopefully, his name doesn’t reflect his on-field performance. My concern, unfortunately, has merit. I can think of three pro athletes whose real names sparked […]
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Whole-wheat football
Super Bowl XXXIX featured no fake mooning incidents, no Desperate Housewives and, most important, no wardrobe malfunctions. I didn’t see a single gratuitous cheerleader shot. Come to think of it, I barely saw any women, which has prompted me to demand the FCC launch a full-scale investigation into whether the Fox telecast was directed by […]
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Belly up
I find the Super Bowl to be an almost sickening celebration of corporate excess and gluttony. And I even covered the game a few months after September 11, 2001, when the festivities were supposed to be more subdued. I didn’t see anybody going without. People stuffed their faces at the pre-game Super Bowl brunch, at […]
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Women…
The public doesn’t seem to care much for female team athletics. It’s proven. From 1996 to 2002, organizers launched five major pro women’s leagues in basketball, soccer, softball, and volleyball, and only one — the Women’s National Basketball Association — remains. The top NCAA men’s basketball programs draw more than 16,000 to their games, while […]
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Getting schooled
Big Media has eroded local sports. These days, if an event isn’t shown on ESPN or a national broadcast network — if people aren’t talking about it on The Jim Rome Show — it’s widely considered minor league, unimportant nationally and locally. Many Rochesterians let national media coverage determine how they feel about this city. […]
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Out of control
I’m reflecting on the Bills’ 29-24 season-finale home loss to Pittsburgh, which kept Buffalo from the playoffs, and no song is more appropriate than The Hives’ Hate to Say I Told You So. Incidentally, this column coincides with The Hives’ song, just as Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon allegedly coincides with TheWizard of […]
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I might offend you, but…
Classic New York sportswriter and syndicated columnist Jimmy Cannon used to write a potpourri piece under the headline, “Nobody asked me, but…. ” His observations were sharp and often visionary. For instance he wrote in 1968, nobody asked me, but “all football has to do is play its games, and the baseball owners will chase […]
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Winning in one dimension
The Bills are 8-6 and might make the playoffs. That’s incredible because after the Patriots crushed them 29-6 on November 14, they were 3-6 and alive like a cemetery. Somehow they’ve won five straight. The secret, according to coach Mike Mularkey, was to play one game at a time. You see, earlier in the season, […]
