Recently in sports Category

This started out as a comment on Matthew Debord's post: U.S. Open Tennis: The American Tennis Boom Was a Fluke, but Huffington Post said my comment was 47 words past their 250 word maximum, so I thought I'd post it here

I have been playing and covering tennis for a few years and have worked at many print and online publications. Tennis is always a forgotten about piece of the sports section puzzle. If you wanted to find a typo, broken link etc. on a sports site, jumping into the tennis area is usually a good bet. I think the heads of the WTA and ATP tour need to sit down in a room and analyze what made the NFL America's current National Pastime. They have a condensed product (16 regular season games, as opposed to the schedules of MLB, the NBA and NHL) so every game is an event.

While McEnroe is getting press this week for complaining about the roofless Arthur Ashe stadium, if you gave him a choice between that roof for free and a greatly reduced tournament schedule, I promise you he'd pick a shorter schedule. And this doesn't need to come (completely) at the expense of the smaller tournaments.

Someone posted on my Facebook wall "should Maryland fire Gary Williams?" I post this as the reply I will give everyone. Hyperlinks are so much easier to post than repeated paragraphs ;-)

Gary has earned more slack than any coach in Division I. Any expectations people have for the program have only Gary to thank. He built this out of the rubble. Maryland basketball was as similar to our current economy as a college program could be when he got here. I used to get a ticket the day of a game and sit CLOSE to watch Walt Williams and Co. play. Yea we got played like suckers against Dook, but I also witnessed IN PERSON two Terps wins there that were amazing.

There is a real hypocracy that I feel many Maryland fans have when it comes to Gary. The reasons that they love to celebrate him and the team are completely forgotten about when they are down. If Gary wasn't a loyal alum, he would have left after watching the true colors of many of our fan base when the team got booed off the court during the Valentines Day loss to FSU a few years back before the team picked itself up and went on a historic string of victories that had cemented them as a team to be aware of at all times.

I know its been a while so it's hard for some people to remember, but the real bad times for this program were so much worse than they are now. I'll take 1999 - 2009 over 1986 - 1996 any day.

Yea Gary is abrasive sometimes and curses people out on occasion (I've even been on the receiving end of one or two of his yells and blank stares) but the bottom line is Gary IS Maryland basketball. His dislike of Duke is greater than most fans, and his sarcastic jabs at Coach K and the whole Carolina Elite of the ACC are priceless.

I miss Cole Field House, but I love the shiny new digs of Comcast Center. And while it might be nice to ponder who would also look good roaming the Maryland sidelines (Mark Few anyone) the thing is, Gary BUILT that shiny new building, and if he were to be ousted, it makes it very hard to make the RIGHT guy feel like Maryland is the best place for them to go.

Thanks for listening, and Go Terps.

My father-in-law, who one day will be blogging on his own, sent me this article, which really got under my skin.

"In a high-stakes struggle for control of NFL news in cyberspace, the league has prohibited news organizations from airing more than a total of 45 seconds per day of online audio or video of team personnel from its stadiums. The action could foreshadow other major sports leagues imposing similar restrictions."

But I have a way to solve this issue, or at least poke a stick in the eye of teams that enforce this.

What if some slick city council person in, say, Dallas introduced a bill that required teams that received TAX PAYER dollars to build the stadiums they play in, were required to renegotiate a deal with local media outlets for longer windows of time to show audio and video clips.

Sadly, I think I know what would happen.

The same spin a team uses to convince a blindly ignorant city that a new stadium would create thousands of new jobs would be used to convince the city that they really have their best interests at heart.

Still, if I'm D.C. Councilmember David A. Catania -- who opposed the new stadium for the Washington Nationals -- and I heard that Major League Baseball was considering such a policy, putting such a bill into the mix might be a little "screw you" pick me up to get me through my legislative week.

I pinged my wife with this little story on MLB.com

Me: "If Roger Clemens decides he does indeed want to pitch in 2007 and if he had to pick a team today, based on the requirements he has placed on the interested parties, he'd go to the Red Sox."
MrsSleepdeprived: we don't even have room for him!
MrsSleepdeprived: we seriously don't need him
Me: i'm thinking RSN doesn't want him
MrsSleepdeprived: i don't want to pay for him
MrsSleepdeprived: no
MrsSleepdeprived: since we don't need him
MrsSleepdeprived: plus that hat
MrsSleepdeprived: wtf

Hi Randy,

I'm 94.3 percent sure you aren't going to read this, but I thought I'd welcome you to my new home town anyway. I moved here about two years ago and I wanted to tell you it's great. The people here are wonderful and they LOVE their sports. Especially the ladies. I mean, I've never seen a town with so many informed about their favorite teams.

Anyway, there are also a lot of things that can drive high-priced athletes nuts in this town. But good news for you here, you've already taken a pay cut! Well played.

For the record, I'm a Nationals fan (and Terps, obviously). But my favorite announcers that are working today are, hands down, Don Orsello and Jerry Remy. I really can't imagine Vin Scully doing an episode like this justice.

Enjoy.