August 27, 2026

A Love Story:Madden and Favre Retire Together

Isn’t it ironic that John Madden who today announced his retirement from broadcasting and Brett Favre who Madden would adopt if he could have retired in the same year.

Sorrow and Remembrance Hits the MLB World

We are seeing that even the greats are not invinceable with the recent occurrences in MLB. The passing of two very colorful and honorable legends of baseball gives the feeling of sorrow covering the sports world like a fog.

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It’s not that we lost an up and comer in Nick Adenhart just last week via a tragic accident, but now losing Hall of Fame voice Harry Kalas and one of the greatest stories of baseball in the 70’s in Mark ‘the Bird’ Fidrych.

What made Harry Kalas a bigger than life figure in Philly was his passion for every pitch of every game. He coined the phrase ‘Outta here’ when someone hit a homer as well as introducing the world to Hall of Fame 3rd baseman as Michael Jack Schmidt when he hit his 500th homerun.

Taking over for John Facenda as the voice of NFL films was not an easy task but Harry made the transition seamless.

Hall of Fame voice of the LA Dodgers Vin Scully said it best, “If there is one thing I’ve learned in all my years, and I haven’t learned much,” the 81-year-old Scully told his listeners, “but the one thing I’ve learned, don’t even waste your time trying to figure out life.”

In Mark Fidrych he gave baseball a shot in the arm in 1976 when his on the mound antics made him the Rookie of the Year and got him the distinct honor as the first player from any sport to be on the cover of Rolling Stone.  A two-time All-Star Fidrych was killed on his farm in Mass while working on his dump truck.

The Baseball and sports world have lost a trio of men who had gave us a reason to love sports and realize how much life is so precious.

Play Ball!!!

Ryan Howard will again hit more home runs than any other National League player and Johan Santana will win the NL Cy Young award.

Not exactly upsets, there. More intriguing picks run in more intriguing categories. Who will be the first manager fired? The first GM? Who will be the breakout hitters and pitchers? The free-agent flops? How many victories will the Yankees get from CC Sabathia in the first year of that landmark $161 million deal?

My Predictions for personal awards

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AL MVP – Josh Hamilton

NL MVP – David Wright

AL Cy Young – Josh Beckett

NL Cy Young – Johan Santana

AL Rookie of the Year – Matt Wieters

NL Rookie of the Year – Jordan Shaefer

My Team predictions

AL Pennant Winner – NY Yankees

NL Pennant Winner – Los Angeles Dodgers

World Series Winner – New York Yankees

I am into Beavers on Ice

No No .. put your nasty mind to sleep.

I am not talking about Oksana Baiul, or Nicole Bobek , Katerina Witt or even Tanya Harding…although she’d do ya

Bemidji State’s magical run through the NCAA Midwest Regional continued Sunday as the Beavers advanced to the Frozen Four with a 4-1 decision over Cornell at Van Andel Arena in Grand Rapids, Mich.

Three unanswered goals in third period capped the incredible run for the Beavers who become the first 16 seed in tournament history to advance to the Frozen Four since the field was expanded to 16 teams in 2002.

Lets put this into perspective.. This is bigger than George mason going to the Final Four a few years back.. more like Canisius going to the Final Four.. or even bigger than IUPUI playing Florida for the NCAA Football championship..

If ever you had an itch while sports is in transition with MLB starting, Masters and NCAA BBall ending is to watch something different check into the Frozen Four next weekend and pull for a true underdog.

It’s Going, Going … Did You See Where It Went?

The Mets and the Yankees together have spent more than $2 billion on new stadiums partly to bring fans much closer to the action. But that access comes at a cost. For the best views, fans will have to pay eye-popping prices to sit on the field level and in the decks behind home plate in seats angled toward the infield.

Fans on tighter budgets, though, will have to settle for seats in far-off sections, some of which have obstructed views of the field.

Mets fans learned this the hard way on Sunday, when St. John’s and Georgetown played the first game at Citi Field. Steven Gottesman, who has a 15-game ticket plan, went to see his four seats in Section 533, Row 15, near the top of the upper deck down the left-field line. To his “shock and horror,” he could not see the warning track or about 20 feet of the outfield from the left-field line to center field.

“In other words, I will only know if a home run is hit if I am listening to a radio at the game or I wait to see the sign from the umpire,” Gottesman, 45, said in an e-mail message. “If Endy Chávez made his catch in this new stadium and I had been there, I would not have seen it.”

Some Yankee fans will have it even worse. That is because the 1,048 bleacher seats in Sections 201 and 239 have views partly blocked by the walls of the Mohegan Sun Sports Bar, which sits above Monument Park behind the center-field fence. Fans in Section 201, for instance, will not be able to see left field and, in some cases, even third base.

ny-yankeesThe Yankees are mounting five flat-panel screens on each side of the restaurant’s outer walls so fans can see on television what they miss live. After Newsday reported that these sections had obstructed views, the Yankees said they would charge $5 for seats there, less than the $12 that season-ticket holders will pay for other bleacher seats.

Alice McGillion, a spokeswoman for the Yankees, said obstructed-view seats were always supposed to cost $5 and that an invoicing problem led to the mix-up that had them originally being offered for more than twice as much. (The Yankees’ Web site does not reflect the new, lower prices.) Fans there will also get access to other parts of the park and to the Bleachers Café, which is above the sports bar.

“In the old stadium, you had no place to eat and you came in and stayed there,” McGillion said, adding that fans will be able to buy beer, which was not sold in recent years in the bleachers at the old stadium. “People can get up and watch the entire game from the cafe, plus there will be TVs.”

As for the Mets, they continue to maintain that there are no obscured-view seats in Citi Field, despite what some fans were contending after Sunday’s game. Fans might miss a play or two, the Mets conceded. But, they added, the game action will be replayed on the scoreboards and the fans are closer to the field to begin with.

“Whenever you bring seating closer to the action, and put seating in fair territory, there will be certain angles where you lose a sightline here or there,” said Dave Howard, the Mets’ vice president for business operations. “That’s typical in new ballparks, but a little different for our customers because Shea didn’t have much of anything like that.”

Howard admitted that the seats in Section 533 are angled in such a way that fans will be unable to see the warning track and some of the field. He said the team has no plans to lower its ticket prices or label the seats in question as having obscured views.

Seats in many ballparks have blind spots. But Mets and Yankees fans are angry now because the teams did not tell them about the obstructed views before they sold them the tickets. Until recently, fans could not visit the stadiums and had to rely on three-dimensional representations on the teams’ Web sites.

“How they ended up building brand new stadiums and not realize this is a head-scratcher,” said Jim Holzman, president of Ace Ticket, the official reseller of Boston Red Sox tickets. “Here they are with all these high-end seats to sell and they dropped the ball on the cheaper seats.”

The Red Sox, Holzman said, routinely mark their tickets when the seats have obstructed views. That helps the first fans who buy them, but does not necessarily inform fans who buy them when they are resold on StubHub and other ticket-selling sites. That means Mets and Yankees fans who buy their tickets from these sites could be in for a shock, too.

The problem is thornier for the Mets because Citi Field has only 42,000 seats, 26 percent fewer than at Shea Stadium. (The new Yankee Stadium will have 53,000 seats, a 5 percent decrease.) At Shea, seats in the last rows of the loge and mezzanine decks were discounted because the roofs above them obscured views of the field.

But because Shea was so much larger, opportunistic fans could often find better seats sometimes just a few rows away. With far fewer seats at Citi Field, some fans may end up standing in concourses to get better views.

Fans in the bleachers in the old Yankee Stadium, which was routinely sold out, learned to compromise.

“You were clearly giving up views and really being able to call balls and strikes and see close plays,” said Jason Fenton, who had season tickets in the right-field bleachers until 2005. “I would clearly prefer three rows behind the dugout. But you’re buying the tickets in the hope that you can go to the World Series.”

And while the Yankees may have disappointed some fans in the new bleacher seats, the team stands to earn money from the naming rights to the Mohegan Sun Sports Bar and the food sold inside and above it. And fans seem to be willing to put up with their seats’ defects if the price is right. Those $5 bleacher seats at Yankee Stadium are sold out for the season.

All Hail The King of Memphis

And on April Fool’s Day, Mitch Barnhart will introduce John Calipari as the basketball coach at Kentucky.

This is the show-stopping conclusion to a two-year running prank Barnhart has been playing on the populace, showing what a wacky jokester the publicly bland athletic director really is.

Seriously, see if this isn’t short-sheet-the-bed hilarious: In two years, Kentucky has gone from paying national championship-winning coach Tubby Smith $2.1 million a year to reportedly forking over $31.65 million plus incentives over eight years for a coach with less bling on his finger and more bones in his closet.

With a Billy Gillispie train wreck in between.

Mitch, you’re killing us! Enough with the tomfoolery!

But seriously, Mitch, given the embarrassing failure of the Gillispie era, let’s hope this one goes better. At least you got what you most needed: a big name who actually said yes, and quickly.

Of course, the quick part didn’t really play to your favor last time, did it? Hopefully, the exhaustive “fit” check on Calipari in the vast expanse of time between Friday afternoon (when Gillispie was fired) and Sunday morning (when word first got out of your impending meeting with Calipari) came back to your liking.

I know in your research you came across many people who love Cal — they love the success, the coaching acumen, the energy, the charisma, the community generosity, the battler’s spirit, the dreamer’s ambition. I’ve heard those things myself from many people I respect in college basketball.
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But I’ve heard a lot of other things, too. So before you two ride off to restore the glory of Big Blue Nation, a few questions for the AD:

Why didn’t you hire Calipari two years ago, or even entertain him as a serious candidate? Surely it wasn’t because Gillispie had a better coaching record — he didn’t. Surely it wasn’t because Gillispie is a better people person — few can match Calipari’s outgoing personality and zeal to sell his program on every platform.

So if Calipari was interested — and plenty of basketball insiders said he was at the time — what was the problem? Was there something else that made you leery?

Would the apparent change in your perception of Calipari as a UK coaching candidate have anything to do with the fact that your own six-figure job is very much on the line after the Gillispie fiasco? And maybe now it’s time to play ball with the boosters who see Cal’s excellent record in Memphis and want to win big again? No matter what baggage he brings to Lexington?

Look, we all know Calipari brings plenty of wins with him. Over the past four seasons, he racked up 137 of them — the most wins of any four-year stretch in college basketball history. That included four Sweet 16s, three Elite Eights and a national title game appearance. Compare that to Kentucky, which in the same four-year span won only 84 games, didn’t win an SEC title, didn’t make a Sweet 16 appearance and failed to make the NCAA tournament this season for the first time in 18 years.

Celebrate good times…C’mon!

Just wanted to give a shout out to Stone Cold the master of SU as it is his birthday today!!83valvano

Birthday Pix

Zona +9.5

*****TarHeels -7.5

Oklahoma P

How far can ODU go?

There are 8 games in the NCAA tournament over the next 2 days and none bigger than the James Madison vs Old Dominion barn burner in the College Insider Tourney.
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Think of it this way.. when either of these teams win tonight they could actually be playing longer than a 1,2 or 3 seed in the NCAA Tourney.

This is like during the Bowl season you have this side Bowl season where the other 60 teams who were 5-6 or worse get a chance to extend their schedule.

Isnt the NCAA and the NIT enough? Do we have to have this CI Classic being played where you cant even watch it on TV.  In an era when the DII Womens Final Eight is on TV this ‘classic’ is not even being televised. And how ‘classic’ is it?

Anyway.. I gave the 6.5 and took ODU along with:

*****Nova +2

Purdue +7.5

Pitt -7

Love the WNCAA!!!

So it is a Tuesday and all you have on TV is the President, Simon and Simon, NIT or the Women’s NCAA Tourney. Well I decided to make it a night and bet a 3 team parlay which included Oklahoma, Maryland and Florida..

Suffice it to say I hit the parlay and enjoyed it as much as Andy Griffith reruns.

I got to say that I had to watch the Oklahoma game till the end as they had to cover an 11.5 pt spread and 4 time Consensus All American Courtney Parris, yes Bubba Parris’s daughter and the girl who said that if they dont win the championship she will give back $60k in scholarship, well she for the 3rd time in her career did not have a double double.  Of course.. I bet them and she pulls that mess.  Well it worked out and I think I have found my wagering calling.

Pat fuming over 1st round loss

Pat fuming over 1st round loss

A side note.. Bitch of the Day Award goes to Pat Summit. After last year’s National Championship just about her entire team left and this year for the first time in her 28 years as head coach she lost in the 1st round.  What does she do? She has called practice till the NCAA says they cant practice anymore to prove she is pissed.  What she is all bent out of shape about is now UConn and Gino Auriemma, her arch nemesis has the upper hand with 16 straight Sweet 16’s when Tenn had the record at 28.

WOW!! Imagine this happening in the mens game.. Ummm not.

Football or Futbol?

C’mon.. WTF is going on with America’s game?

With the new rule change to again protect the QB the defense is going to have to become more passive when going after the passer.

Due to what happened to Tom Brady last year when Brady suffered a torn ACL in his left knee on a low hit by Bernard Pollard with 7:27 left in the first quarter of the first game of the season. All Pollard did was rush the QB, get blocked and just like he has been taught all his life was crab to the ball and make the tackle.

Now with new rule changes this same play would probably be a TD as the defensive player will have to get up while being held and hit the QB around the waste.. all this within 5 seconds from the time of snap.

Without this injury would anyone know who Matt Cassel is? would he be now making over $14mill? No.. but thats football..

Whats next? having those soccer slideline guys run out with those mini stretchers?