The Thing I Love The Most About The Kabaddi World Championship??? The Commercials

I have followed sports for my entire life and have come to the realization that the worst time of year has to be the few weeks after the Super Bowl. My reasons are simple;

1. Football is over
2. Baseball Spring Training is a month away
3. College Basketball means nothing until "March Madness"
4. The NBA Playoffs are as long as the NBA season so why watch now?
5. NHL ???? (see number 4)
6. Daytona 500 (renamed the Danica 500) is three weeks away
7. Golf? Please...... unless, of course, Kenny G. wins the Pro-Am at Pebble.... U Da Man Kenny!!!

So I looked to a foreign land and found the sport of "Kabaddi". The best I can figure out, it is a mixture of "Red Rover", "Tag", and the kid's game of seeing who can hold their breath the longest. I am not clear on all the rules, but I figure that we will see Eli Manning compete one day and somehow he will win the Kabaddi Championship......... Enjoy the highlights!



Was Brian Bosworth A Prophet?

 It was the 1987 Orange Bowl and the swaggering Oklahoma Sooners were thrashing the underdog Razorbacks from the University of Arkansas. This is one of those games where everyone who was watching knew the outcome beforehand, the only question was how bad the beating would be. (The Sooners eventually won the game 42-7)

Standing on the Oklahoma sideline was All American Linebacker Brian Bosworth. The "Boz" was the most polarizing college football player of his generation. Always good for a quote, Bosworth never shied away from controversy and this game would be no different. The man who would be voted on the "All Century College " team and voted as one of the "Top NFL Flops" of all time was about to go Prime Time.
With network cameras on him, Bosworth unveiled a t-shirt with NCAA written in big letters. Under the letters was "National Communist Against Athletes". It would be his last stand. Even fellow goofball Barry Switzer had seen enough and the kid who in 1986 made both the NCAA Football All American team and the Academic All American team was gone.

I thought of Bosworth this week when there was a report from the Associated Press which read;

"One possibility is the four-team playoff, or the so-called plus-one approach, that would create two national semifinals and a championship game played one week later. The original proposal, made in 2008 by the commissioners of the Southeastern Conference and Atlantic Coast Conference, was emphatically shot down by the leaders of the Big Ten, Pac-10, Big East, Big 12 and Notre Dame.
The BCS title game pits the nation's top two teams based on poll and computer rankings.
But momentum is clearly growing for a larger playoff system.Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany acknowledged this week that he would now consider the prospect of a four-team field."

"Four years ago, five of us didn't want to have the conversation," Delany told reporters earlier this week. "Now we all want to have the conversation."

Really?  So,Now let's see..... Delany who may match Bosworth in ego size may support a playoff. Long a bully due to the influence of the Big 10, what Big Jim sees, is the handwriting on the wall and it is all about the cash. A playoff format is coming and you can bet, Delaney sees that the Southeast Conference and eventual Big 12 will dominate the games for years and the cash will flow to those conferences.

Remember when each team had a 10 game season and then a bowl game? Then we got the "Kick Off Classic", then all teams could schedule 11 games, then a conference championship game was allowed. All decisions are based on money. Funny that riches make us all forgetful.

And in recent news, while coaches break contracts, don't finish seasons and in some cases leave schools in the midst of sanctions....... The NCAA has tabled any discussion of raising the $2000 yearly stipend athletes receive because of abuses it might cause.

Somebody call The Boz.......... He was right all along

Anyone Still Aware LSU And Alabama Have A Game?

Remember back when the college football regular season ended?  You might not, because a lot has gone on since then.  Things like Christmas and such.  Well, when the regular season ended there was a big controversy over who deserved to play in the BCS National Championship game.  LSU was a given, but their opponent was the subject of heated discussion.  Anyway, Alabama won out, and we looked forward to an SEC rematch with everything on the line.

But have you ever found yourself in a situation where you and your wife planned a Saturday night out, and you looked forward to it for a week, but as Saturday wore on you had so much going on that before you knew it, it was 7:30?  So you just say forget it, lets just split a frozen pizza and watch a movie?  You still end up having a good time together, but it ain't steak.

That's a long-winded, run-on type of feeling I have about the National Championship game.  In the 2 days before the game there will be 4 NFL playoff games.  Instead of a build up to the NCAA game, it will be more like a denouement to the NFL weekend.  I'll watch, but not with the intensity that I might watch if the game was played a week before.

I know this is an old-man type of opinion, but I don't know why the NCAA season can't end on January 1.  OK, I do understand.  Television, especially ESPN, has to get their money's worth.  Still, I'm a big fan of the Cotton Bowl, but there's no reason for it to be played after the BCS bowls.  And I really don't see any point of having SMU and Pitt play on January 7.  Having games after the BCS games makes the BCS games seem not as important as they should, doesn't it?

For a league that brings in gobs of money, which presumably means it has some of the smartest minds in sports working for them, the NCAA sure does know how to screw up its football postseason.  What is the main talk going to be on Sportscenter and sports radio on Monday?  It's going to be the NFL playoffs, not the NCAA Championship game.  Maybe the NCAA doesn't care.  They're bringing in so much money anyway, right?  But that sure does seem short-sighted.

It would have been so great to have had 3 weeks of discussion about who should be playing against LSU immediately followed up with the game.  Instead, we get 3 weeks of discussion followed by 2 weeks of holidays, and now it's hard to find anyone outside of Louisiana and Alabama that is fired up about the game.

I don't think I'm saying anything new, but watching Sportscenter waste time on January 7 breaking down SMU/Pitt was too much for me.