Last week in Chicago, Major League Baseball's owners conferred over the merits of contracting franchises that barely register an electro-cardiograph reading. On average, Montreal lured 7,364 highbrows to Olympic Stadium every night to witness the best in big-league ball, featuring pop icons Rob Ducey and Darwin Cubillan, among others. Lowly Florida isn't much better, finishing the season at 76-86.
Like any other sport, college football leaves itself open to scrutiny. Are the players truly amateur? Maybe not.
Gentle friends of the weekly monologue, I am here to serve you. You may skim past my byline, and avert your eyes from my hideous mug (that manages to turn my brown eyes green!), but this space is reserved for our collective sports experience.
Uh oh, America. Now you've done it. When whispers wafted about a possible Michael Jordan return, you chided and ripped, questioned and frowned.
Saturday, in the span of roughly 10 hours, a league commonly teased as "Florida State and the other eight" turned into FS-eeww and a band of unheralded and undaunted upstarts. Traditionally, schools like Maryland, Wake Forest and North Carolina boast about as much football luster nationally as Geraldo Rivera does journalistic credibility. If Saturday's startling, if not downright jaw-dropping, results are any indication, though, the aforementioned and their conference counterparts won't be blips for long ... more like fixtures on every fan's double Doppler. To think Clemson would fall, 26-24, at home to a Virginia team that needed every hair on its chinny-chin-chin to top I-AA Richmond is surprising enough.
America is a nation of speed and efficiency, invention and progression, industry and ingenuity. Most of all, it is a nation in motion, forging ahead, foot glued to the clutch beneath an "ain't nobody gonna take my pride, ain't nobody gonna hold me down, oh no ... I've got to keep on movin'" mantra. When the horse and buggy no longer sufficed, we cranked out a Model T.
If football is synonymous with war, then Happy Valley is college football's ground zero. It is here - nestled among the Commonwealth's mixture of mountains and valleys - that Joe Paterno has erected a football republic of Spartan fortitude, capturing two national titles and notching five perfect seasons.
I never understood how a bigger house, a faster car or a sleeker suit could cure the emotional distress caused by death.
If it's dangerous living you seek, then do yourself a favor. Forget those childish, ESPN-concocted X-Sports (you know, all that skysurfing balderdash), and please don't stake your name and fortune to mercurial dot-com ventures.
The summer months are frequently disparaged as sports' dog days, and deservedly so. From mid-June until early August, every mainstream game save baseball decides to hibernate, leaving casual fans and ardent zealots alike with a sporting landscape rivaled in its exhilaration by "Meet the Press" marathons. But not this summer. Conspiracy theorists are running out from the hills of Montana and onto sports pages nationwide.
