I won’t lie. I don’t have a very good attention span, even under normal circumstances.
I flip through TV channels constantly (while at the same time reading a book and listening to the radio), forget people’s names before I’ve finished telling them mine and produce epic works of doodle-art instead of taking notes during classes.
If I pay attention to something for more than 15 seconds straight, it must be damned interesting.
But there is never a time of year that this problem reaches more epidemic proportions than the first week of March.
Spring break, March Madness, spring training, the NHL playoff hunt, tournament time in college hockey, the Bucks starting to fall apart … there’s so much to be excited about — so much to divide my attention.
Yet I can’t quite seem to give anything enough attention to spit out my normal 1500 words, so for this week’s column, I’m gonna cover the gamut.
BCS ups ante: Apparently when the entire world was crying in protest to the “Bowl Championship Series” committee’s refusal to procure a real national championship game last season, they not only refused to listen, but also in fact decided it would be fun to piss people off even more. In something of a mocking rebuke to the “One-More-Game” chants that filled stadiums during championship week in January, the BCS has added one more game.
Unfortunately, that game will have no championship implications. So, even though there is still no reasonable means of deciding the top team in the country, at least now we’ll get to watch some over-achieving mid-major school get slaughtered by some under-achieving major school in a “Bowl Championship Series” game. Bring on Bowling Green vs. Wisconsin.
Roiding up: Anyone else notice that, in spite of being listed for 15 or so MVP awards and couple hundred all-star appearances in the history books, juiced up stars like Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Jason Giambi and Ken Caminiti don’t have a single world series championship ring between them? Cheaters really don’t win.
Some would point out that there are exceptions to this rule. Mark McGwire, Jose Canseco and Gary Sheffield all have rings, and all have roided their ball-sacks to roughly the size and consistency of peanut shells. But none of the three gained their 50 lbs. in forehead weight until after their championship runs.
Cubbies still suck: Speaking of enormous foreheads, Corky McJuiceAlot and the Cubs seem to be everyone’s pick to win the National League this season. Has no one been paying attention for the past thousand years? How many times do the Cubs have to fail in a row for people to stop expecting them not to?
Retrieving Greg Maddux after he spent the prime of his career in a Braves uniform is a nice PR move, and Derrek Lee is a pretty decent hitter. But the Cubs’ problems last year didn’t come from not having enough above-average players; they came from not having players who came through for them when it mattered in the playoffs.
But now that they’ve added Lee (who hit all of .208 with 17 strikeouts and three walks in the postseason last year) and Maddux (who has an 11-14 record and only one championship in 11 career postseasons), the Cubbies are bound to do it, right?
All-overrated: I understand that every sports writer in the country has a hard-on for Coach K, but Chris Duhon, who was recently named a third-team all-American by ESPN.com, isn’t even the third-best player on his own team. Little Danny Ewing, JJ Reddick and Luol Deng are all better, and more important, players to Duke than Duhon.
The theory behind the pick seems to be that Duke is the best team in the country (even if they aren’t ranked in the top three), and someone must be responsible for that. More times than not, when you have four fairly good players, one of whom is a senior and a point guard, he’s going to get the credit, whether he deserves it or not.
Hobey voting: Fan voting for the finalists of the Hobey Baker award is over. Bernd Brückler had a nice last week, climbing to 13th in the standings, but couldn’t quite crack the top ten, despite the fact that he finished the season with a better goals against average (2.15 to 3.10), a better save percentage (.924 to .905) and more wins (17 to 5) than Alabama?Huntsville goaltender Scott Munroe, who finished 10th. Fans simply need to stop being allowed to vote if this is how they’re going to abuse the privilege.
Nightmare Job: ESPN’s reality series “Dream Job” seems to have taken a step forward from its previous season. There are at least four contestants on the show who would make good SportsCenter anchors, led, for my money, by Zachariah, who cleaned up his act last week and continued to out-write the competition.
What’s really amazing, though, is that every single one of the contestants (even including the Wendy’s Wildcard guy, who appeared to have never watched a sporting event in his life), is already a better and more likeable anchor than the show’s host, Stuart Scott.
