Paul Shirley Is Awesome

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/columns/story?columnist=shirley_paul&page=Journal-43&lpos=spotlight&lid=tab2pos2

First of all, I didn't put this link in here specifically for this article. I put it in to introduce ya'll to one of the great writers of our time: Basketball Player Paul Shirley. I can't believe I forgot about him and have subsequently missed the first 42 installments of the Paul Shirley Journal on espn.com. He's been a journeyman basketball player who's bounced around different NBA teams and international leagues. I'd also be willing to bet he's one of the most intelligent, candid players we've had in the NBA in recent years. He really gives you a great inside perspective on life in the league.

My favorite quote from him came a few years back when he reminiscing about how he used to be smarter: "As I spend more and more time around basketball players, my brain power continues to diminish, which is not helping. I have been on a slow burn since college, where I was at least encouraged to spend half the day around semi-studious (okay, in my case, uber-studious, with the whole engineering thing) types, and my brainpower probably benefited. After four years of professional basketball, with the expected level of intelligence seeming to drain from the ranks as the don’t-go-to-college-since-you-can-get-the-guaranteed-money-now trend has taken hold, my brain is a veritable mush. The only thing left up there are a few quotes from Tommy Boy and a dozen ways to cover a pick-and-roll." I never thought I'd hear something about the NBA so uncensored from someone who was currently in the NBA. Maybe they didn't appreciate that comment and that's why he's no longer in the league.

Coaching Carousel

Ya'll have undoubtedly heard all the rumors about our beloved men's basketball head coach, Billy Donovan, leaving to coach Kentucky. But this post isn't going to be just about that; it can't be, it'll make me too upset. No, what this is about is coaches changing jobs in general. I was reading an Andy Katz article about the coaching carousel rumors flying around right now (http://insider.espn.go.com/espn/blog/index?entryID=2814569&searchName=katz_andy&univLogin02=stateChanged) and then I read Pick's post about players who transfer and I was struck by how little sense it all made. Sure, this argument has been around for decades, and it will rage on for centuries after we're gone, but really; why do coaches get to leave a job whenever they feel like it when players (both collegiate and pro) are stuck in their respective places? Now I'm not saying that a college basketball player transferring from one D-1 school to another should be able to play immediately, that would be carnage, but why don't coaches have a similar penalty. I mean, sure, there are clauses in most contracts that make coaches pay back some of the money to the school they're leaving, but there's about a 0% chance that the school they're going to doesn't pick up that tab. I don't know, it just seems like coaching contracts are just for show, and in the end, they don't actually represent a lasting commitment. What do ya'll think?

UF Swimmer Dominates

In keeping with Sam's theme of stealing topics that Pick could be posting on his blog, I'd like to talk about one of my bowling students, who just happens to be a dominating swimmer at this university. Freshman Gemma Spofforth of England travelled across the pond (she didn't swim it, but I'll bet she could have) to do two things: dominate collegiate swimming and learn to bowl. Step 2 has already been accomplished and Step 1 is coming along nicely. Here, read up.

http://www.gatorzone.com/story.php?id=11816&html=swimmingdiving/women/news/20070310112200.html&sport=swimw

and

http://www.gatorzone.com/story.php?id=11803&html=swimmingdiving/women/news/20070309114200.html&sport=swimw

The first article talks about how she won a national title in the 200m backstroke, breaking a UF record in the process. The win made her the first UF swimmer to win an individual national title in a backstroke event in 17 years and "the first UF freshman to win an NCAA crown since Allison Wagner won the 400 IM in 1995" (Gatorzone.com, 2007). The second article details how she broke the UF record in the 100m backstroke 3 times in 2 days. Yes, you read that correctly, she just kept beating the time herself. Amazing

I'm aware that this article doesn't particularly raise any sociological or legal questions, but I feel it's necessary to recognize true greatness when it comes along. Especially, when it's one of my students.

Recruiting.....

While conducting my daily cavity search of any article I may find mildly interesting, I came across this.....
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/story?columnist=forde_pat&id=2811417&sportCat=ncb.

It talks about the path of two basketball players from a Detroit high school to the University of Oregon. Forde, the writer, makes some not-so-subtle implications that an assistant coach was hired solely because of his connection to a guy nicknamed "Worldwide Wes" who is firmly entrenched in the Detroit basketball scene. The article goes into more detail, but I'll let you read ir for yourself.

The issue that this brings to light is that of college recruiting. It seems as if every big program has some sort of recruiting-related scandal in their history: the Fab Five for Michigan basketball, Auburn football being on probation in the early-to-mid 90s, and SMU football getting the death football back in the day. But it's not even those instances which make the most interesting stories; it's the "legal" things coaches do that make the best stories: Billy Donovan flying to North Carolina to stand in the parking lot after one of Shavlik Randolph's high school games just to wave to him and then getting back on a plane and flying home, Arkansas football hiring Mitch Mustain's high school coach to be their offensive coordinator so they could get Mustain and some of his highly-regarded teammates, and whatever Donovan did to get South Dakota-native Mike Miller to Florida that sent Roy Williams (who was at Kansas at the time) into conniptions.

There's no real reason to believe that it will ever clean up. And for the sake of stories like these, I don't want it to, I just want UF coaches to continue to be good at playing the game.

online sportswriters

So I'm back again with another opportunity to take up the precious few hours of your day with sports entertainment. I present, Bill Simmons' (better known as the Sports Guy on espn.com's Page 2) running diary of the NCAA tournament......

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/NCAA/dayone&sportCat=ncb

......Yes, I know, it's ridiculous to think that a human being typed out their random thoughts during a 12+ hour day of basketball, but it happened. And his readers, myself included, loved it. But I'd like to go a step beyond and look out how editorial-style sportswriting has evolved. I'm not talking about the game reports where the action is summarized and stats are given, I'm talking about some guy's opinion on some aspect of the sport's world. When I was a kid, it was a column or two in the local paper (Martin Fennelly owns, by the way), now there are an innumerable amount of "sportswriters" giving us their opinion across the internet. Sports Illustrated actually wrote an article about the phenomenon that online sportswriting has become a few years back (Mr.Simmons was the cover boy). And it's only getting bigger. Want proof? I just gave it to you. This link doesn't take you to a thought-out, researched, intelligent article. It takes you to a guy's random thoughts while he's watching the same games as you are. That's just absurd. And what's worse, I've sat down and read all of it. Imagine if you had a court-reporter style situation going on in your living room during a big football game that you and a few buddies were watching. This person would just sit there and type everything that each of you says, and then, after the game, they'd post it on the internet. Do you really think anyone in their right mind would ever read that? Of course not, but that's just what we're doing. Absurdity abound.

By the way, me and 4 buddies uncensored watching any game would be entertaining reading. You cannot tell me any differently.

Grant

Someone Made A Lot Of Money

Last semester, I was doing an assignment that required me to research several universities' campus recreation/intramural sport websites. As I went from one school to the next, I noticed something, see if you notice it too....

http://recsports.ufl.edu/intramurals/leagues.html
http://www.uwf.edu/recreation/IntramuralSports/imtrack/leagues.html
http://www.campbell.edu/sl/Recreation/IM/IMTrack/leagues.html

....There, you see it? It's the EXACT SAME PROGRAM. Whoever designed and sold this thing is doing backflips into pools of money right now (keep in mind that I have no earthly idea how much they charged for it). If they were able to peddle this computer program to a university as large as Florida, as small as Campbell, and everywhere in between, how many schools must use it? I remember seeing at least half a dozen when I did the assignment, and that was out of about nine websites that I went to. I highly doubt that the creators of this program are batting .667 across the nation, but they must be doing pretty well for themselves. I really should have taken a computer program writing course in high school, I could have easily thought up something like this, but I could never have executed it. Weak.

Grant

Mark Cuban's Blog

The next time you're sitting in your office and you either a) have nothing pressing to do (but honestly when does that ever happen) or b) really don't want to do any of the work that you need to (much more likely), check out Mark Cuban's Blog: http://www.blogmaverick.com/.

I've always thought a little bit of Mark Cuban can go a long way, and that I didn't need to read more of his whining about NBA refs and how Dirk should have won 8 straight MVPs. However, his blog is entertaining, insightful, and surprisingly educational. He made his fortune through the idea of broadcasting live games and events on the internet, and since then has diversified his interests; purchasing Landmark Theatres, a chain of 58 arthouse movie theaters and co-founding HDNet, the first high-definition satlellite television network, among other things.

Now what does this have to do with his blog? It means that he has at least a decent knowledge base in many different areas, which makes for very interesting writing. Clearly, I scan for the basketball-related articles first (he went to Indiana, so I hope he'll have some posts about the tourney soon), but I definitely take the time to read his technology-related articles as well. They're normally related to internet technology (he thinks Google was crazy for buying YouTube), so they're in an area where my knowledge is lacking, and I feel like I've learned quite a bit just from reading it for the past few days. I strongly suggest checking it out.

NBA Marketing in China

In a recent "Sunday Conversation" on ESPN, the interviewee was Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban. He spoke about a number of things: his fines being money well spent to make sure his point was heard, how he "almost" sold the team after the finals last year, how he and Stern are cool with each other as long as they don't talk about touchy subjects (in Cuban's words; sex, religion, and politics with NBA officiating falling under the category of religion), and other entertaing stuff. However, the topic that really caught my attention was when he said that the NBA's biggest problem was marketing, that "the league is doing more to convince a kid in Bejing to watch the NBA, than they are a kid in Louisville" (Cuban, 2007).

First of all, he's absolutely right; the NBA hasn't truly trumpeted its product since Jordan retired in '98 (the second time) and the lockout of '99. It's almost as if they feel that the league will never recover from those two marketing nightmares in the span of about a year. Either way, I was intrigued by Cuban's comments so I decided to search for information about the NBA's marketing campaign in China. I haven't found a whole lot yet (I'm definitely not done investigating this), but I did find a somewhat recent article that reported that the NBA now has an "Official Dairy Product of the NBA in China." Not just that, but the Iceman George Gervin was in Bejing to help make the announcement. Ridiculous. Check out the article here: http://www.nba.com/news/mengniu_070121.html?rss=true.

This blog is going to be about sports. More precisely, me showing off how much I know about sports. Or, more accurately, ya'll worrying about how much I like sports. I'm going to try to tie everything we do in this class to sports, no matter how much of a stretch it is. I will try to bring every conversation that we have back to sports, no matter how little they apply.

Clearly, a lot of this is tongue-in-cheek, but behind every joke there is some truth. And I probably will do what I just said more often than not.

Enjoy.

Grant