Category: Sports
Sailing Over The Water On a One Man Foil
Why Hockey Is Hot
When NBC agreed to broadcast a few regular season and playoff weekend games and the Stanley cup finals in prime Time, NHL viewership was so weak that the network didn’t even have to pay the usual “rights fees” that sports leagues usually can demand.
So why is NBC getting record TV ratings for Hockey this year? For years hockey has struggled on television. As a kid after screaming myself hoarse at Ranger games in smokey Madison Square Garden, trying to watch a game on TV was excruciating. As hard as it was to see the puck, sometimes even the camera man would lose the puck.
So what changed? …the size of TV screens. With the spread of large-format, hi-def TVs, you could actually follow the fast-paced action. So a sport, which grew up on frozen ponds in cities like Chicago, now has a rabid fan base in the Sunbelt, with many local junior leagues.
NBA Ownership – The World’s Most Exclusive Club
NBA teams are clearly ego purchases, but rich guys hate losing money … and that’s about ego, too. In 2010 and 2011, six NBA franchises sold or changed hands, and another four were practically thrown on Craigslist.2 That’s one-third of the league. A steady stream of billionaires crunched numbers and came to the same conclusion: Unless it’s a killer market, the NBA isn’t a good investment. During 2011’s lockout, Philly sold for a measly $280 million as the league frantically looked for a New Orleans buyer (and didn’t find one).
Everything flipped in December of that year, after the NBA negotiated an owner-favorable collective bargaining agreement (and then some) that included a 50-50 revenue split, shorter long-term deals and a more punitive luxury tax system, as well as a pay-per-view event in which David Stern and Adam Silver poured Dom Perignon on each other’s heads and danced over the ruins of Billy Hunter’s career. Fine, I made that last one up. From there, everything kept breaking the NBA’s way. In no particular order …
• The economy rebounded (at least in rich guy circles).
• LeBron became the league’s most famous and talented superstar since MJ, right as we suddenly had the deepest pool of under-27 stars in 20-plus years.
• The 2013 Finals went down as one of the greatest Finals ever, followed by a LeBron-Durant rivalry emerging that could and should carry the rest of the decade.
• Americans stopped caring about PEDs and started worrying about concussions right when everyone should have started worrying about PEDs in basketball (a sport that rarely has any concussions).
• The YouTube/broadband/iPad/GIF/Instagram/Twitter era turned basketball into a 24/7 fan experience — just the ideal sport for the Internet era, the kind of league in which your buddies email you a bizarre Kobe Bryant tweet, an endearing Spurs team selfie and a ridiculous Blake Griffin dunk GIF in the span of three hours (and by the way, that happened to me yesterday).
• A new multimedia rights deal is coming soon … and it’s going to easily double the current deal.
(Repeat: easily double it.)
And I didn’t even mention basketball grabbing the no. 2 spot behind soccer as the world’s most popular sport. I’m not sure when it happened, but it happened. Buy an NBA franchise in 2014 and deep down, you’re thinking about stuff like, I wonder if fans from 250 countries will be paying for League Pass 20 years from now? Throw in the other breaks and that’s how you end up climbing from here …
Why College Quarter Backs, Like Tim Tebow, Fail In the NFL
Well before high school, youth coaches identify big, fast African-American kids and play them at quarterback—often in a system designed to take advantage of their athleticism, not develop the child\’s football ability. The ones who grow into top varsity players get scouted as \”dual-threat quarterbacks\” by the recruiting-industrial complex and play for college coaches who want to use them in similar roles.
Oakland Raiders quarterback Terrelle Pryor told Jerry McDonald of the Bay Area News Group he \”never really knew how to throw a football\” until he hired a personal quarterback coach this past offseason. Yes, Terrelle Pryor: A 6\’4\”, 233-pound, cannon-armed, former No. 1 overall high school recruit, former multiyear BCS-power-program-starting quarterback entering his third year in the NFL, and nobody bothered to teach him how to throw a damned football until he went out and hired a passing coach himself.
Pro football has evolved into a passing game. There’s simply much more upside to throwing, and today’s modern offenses demand a quarterback who excels at breaking down defenses and delivering an accurate ball. It’s hard for someone who’s spent their entire career—really, their entire life—being told their speed and agility are their meal ticket to put them on the back burner. It’s hard to be a consistent, effective, efficient NFL quarterback when you’re blessed, or cursed, with athletic talent
via Is QB Mobility More of a Curse Than a Blessing in the NFL? | Bleacher Report.
Basketball Diplomacy
Marlin Sinks Boat
Not all the details are in, but apparently the captain began backing down on the huge fish, a common practice in big-game fishing when a fish is taking line. He puts the boat in reverse to chase the fish.
One commenter on Marlin Magazine’s Facebook post who apparently had some knowledge of the incident said that the captain fell as he was backing down on the fish at full throttle. The boat took on too much water and, finally, there was no correcting the situation. So, indirectly, the fish sank the boat.
Marlin Magazine reported that the boat went to the bottom of the sea and everybody on board was rescued by the photo boat. And, of course, the fish got away. Or as Marlin Magazine put it on its Facebook post, “Marlin Wins!” Thanks Randy Marks
via A hooked marlin sinks a fishing boat? Well, something like that.
New Record Big Wave Surfed
McNamara surfed another giant wave in Nazaré, Portugal last Monday, Jan. 28th after breaking the record for surfing the biggest wave ever ridden (78ft) in 2011 also at Nazaré.
According to The Guardian, his friend Mennie said that “Everything was perfect, the weather, the waves,”. And added “Cotty and I surfed two big waves of about 60ft and then, when Garrett was ready came a canyon wave of over 90ft. The jet ski was the best place to see him riding the biggest wave I’ve ever seen. It was amazing. Most people would be scared but Garrett was controlling everything in the critical part of the wave. It was an inspiring ride by an inspiring surfer.”
McNamara also shared his enthusiasm at Twitter by writing “Thank you for all your support. It means the world to me. Today was an awesome day and so fun to be out there.”
Check the video of McNamara’s deed. Although not complete – yet – it’s quite impressive to see how can someone face such a huge wall of water and live to tell the experience!
via McNamara surfed another giant wave in Nazaré, Portugal – All About Portugal.
What It Takes To Be an NFL Gladiator – Jason Taylor
Everything is lined up to get the unhealthy player back on the field — the desire of the player, the guy behind you willing to endure more for the paycheck, the urging of the coaches and teammates, the culture that mocks and eradicates the weak and the doctor whose job it is not necessarily to keep the player healthy but healthy enough to be valuable to the team, which isn’t the same thing at all. The doctor gives the player the diagnosis and the consequences on the sidelines with in-game injuries, without the benefit of an MRI, and then the player makes a choice with the information about whether to take a pain-masking shot. And the choice is always to play.
“Damn right,” Taylor says.
You never know if all those needles — and Taylor took a lot — produce more pain. Science has linked Toradol to plantar fasciitis (the aforementioned torn tendons in Taylor’s feet), so Taylor might have been taking one painkiller … that helped create a different pain … and thus required a different painkiller. That was certainly the case after his compartment syndrome. He developed a staph infection that required that catheter to run from armpit to heart with antibiotics. He’d hook himself up to it for a half-hour a day, like a car getting gas, letting the balls of medicine roll into his body. Then he concealed the catheter in tape under his arm so that an opponent wouldn’t know he was weak. Opponents will find your weakness, At the bottom of a fumble pile, a Buffalo Bills player once squeezed the hell out of Taylor’s Adam’s Apple to try and dislodge the football. Anything you read about the PICC line catheter (peripherally inserted central catheter) Taylor used will tell you to avoid swimming or weightlifting or anything that might get it dirty or sweaty. Taylor was playing with it in for weeks while colliding in the most violent of contact sports. Doctors told him it wasn’t a good idea to play with it in. He ignored them. Read the whole sobering interview from the link below.
via Dan Le Batard: Jason Taylor’s pain shows NFL’s world of hurt – Dan Le Batard – MiamiHerald.com.
Spectacular Ice Caves in a Swiss Glacier
British adventure photographer Robbie Shone descended into the Gorner Glacier near Zermatt in Switzerland to capture spectacular pictures of ice caves
via British photographer Robbie Shone explores beautiful ice caves in a Swiss glacier – Telegraph.