Author: Vin

Vin is a Philly boy who shouldn't be invited into your house because he'll judge you on your book and music collection. He owns Dawkins, Utley, Iverson, and Lindros jerseys, which is all you really need to know about him. He can be reached at [email protected].

Categories
College Basketball

Everything you need to pick your brackets

OK folks, you can go a few ways with your brackets this year. You can rely on the advice of the “experts”, you can do your homework and look at trends and matchups, you can let your dog do the picking, or you can simply choose the winner based on mascots and school colors. I highly recommend the last two methods but here are some links for you.

Expert Advice:

Trends and History:

Random Picking:


Categories
Soccer

Googling Ashley Cole


Nobody really knows how Google truly works. It’s magic. You just type in a phrase and sometimes you get what you want and sometimes you get something really um… wrong. Sure, people know how to manipulate google search results (try searching for failure) but the way the algorithm works is too complicated for us morons.

Well, Ashley Cole, a soccer player in England, and his lawyers are not happy with Google because when you search for Ashley Cole, you get “See results for: Ashley Cole gay”. Here’s what happened. A British tabloid ran a story about gay sex involving some Premiership players but didn’t name anyone. Somehow, everyone thought Ashley Cole was involved so they all kept googling “Ashley Cole gay”. According to Google CEO Eric Schmidt, results “sometimes shows related search queries based on what other users have been asking for.”

The best part about this is that because his lawyers are inquiring into it, more and more stories are hitting the web that involve the words “Ashley Cole” and “gay”. Bingo, more search results. It only gets worse from here on out for Ashley, but it’s highly amusing for us. To be fair though, Cole’s fiancee, Cheryl Tweedy, is smokin’.

[Forbes]: Schmidt’s Google Queried By Soccer Star’s Lawyers

Categories
General Sports

Odds and Ends for Monday Mar 13 2006: Nude Cycling is bad

Remember the Seinfeld episode with good naked and bad naked? Well, nude cycling is definitely bad naked. The nude bike ride held yesterday in the Tasman district of New Zealand got a lot of press lately because the Mayor of the town wanted the police to arrest the nude cyclists. But the police sergeant declared that the naked ride was not illegal. Illegal, no, ugly, yes.

[Philly.com]: Curt Schilling (still an asshole) hits batter with fastball, blames batter.

[NY Post]: Marbury criticizes Larry Brown for not letting him score more.

[Fox Sports]: All time best sports mustaches. (Why didn’t we think of this?)

[High Above Courtside]: Why Duke Sucks

Categories
MLB General

Who hired Bill Leavy to umpire the WBC?



wtf, ump?

(Oh, I know the Bill Leavy jokes will get tired soon enough but I’m using it for all bad reffing until the start of the NFL season.)

Well, folks, remember when we called the WBC a joke? Now, I’m sure the Japanese think so too. A tag up play turned from a run scored for the Japanese team to a controversial inning ending double play when the home plate umpire ruled the man at third left early. Replays show he didn’t leave early. So instead of being up one run, the game was still tied and then in the bottom of the ninth, A-Rod comes through in the clutch and gets the game winning RBI single.

The Japanese team was less than pleased. Why would the home plate umpire overrule the third base ump who was right there? Makes no sense to me.

Let’s see, 22 of the 32 umpires working the WBC are American. Most of em are second rate minor league umps. Are they biased or just incompetent?

[Fox Sports]: WBC could face major ump controversy

Categories
Arizona Cardinals

Edgerrin James loves money, hates winning



C.R.E.A.M.

That’s the only conclusion I can draw from Edge signing a $30M contract with the Arizona Cardinals. Now, I realize that he wasn’t going to win anything in Indy either because they have that choking problem, but he’s guaranteed not to win anything in Arizona.

Every year, we hear about a resurgence in the desert and how the Cardinals are for real this year. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 15 times and I’m dumber than Vince Young. The Cardinals have never been and will never be a championship team. I realize I stand to upset the 37 Arizona fans in the world but they know I’m right.


We’re serious about winning,” Cardinals vice president Michael Bidwill said. “The new stadium allows us to do some things that we haven’t been able to do before.

Like what, Bidwell, losing in a brand new stadium?

Edge can spin this any way he wants. It’s clear as the stuff that Barry Bonds used that he went to Arizona for the cash.

[Yahoo]: Cardinals nab star running back in early free-agent splurge

Categories
College Basketball

2006 NCAA Tournament Odds

If you’re going to be in Vegas during March Madness, won’t you do us a favor and give us some live reports from it so we can both envy and hate you? For the rest of us, here are the odds for the top 16 teams to win the NCAA tournament. As of Monday, UConn is favored to win the tournament by the oddsmaskers, which basically guarantees they’ll lose.

#1 Seeds
Duke: 4-1
UConn: 5-2 (overall tourney favorite)
Villanova: 11-2
Memphis: 10-1

#2 Seeds
Texas: 14-1
Tennessee: 25-1
Ohio State: 18-1
UCLA: 12-1

#3 Seeds
Iowa: 45-1
N. Carolina: 12-1
Florida: 20-1
Gonzaga: 25-1

#4 Seeds
LSU: 28-1
Illinois: 20-1
Boston College: 25-1
Kansas: 25-1

You can get the full list here. By the way, the worst odds you can bet are 500-1: Air Force, Southern Illionis, NC-Wilmington, Kent State, George Mason, Bucknell, Wisc-Milwaukee, and Wichita State. If any of those teams won, Vegas would probably make a ton of dough.

Categories
General Sports

ESPN, what the F was that?

You’d think that sportscasters would know better than to say anything while a microphone was anywhere close to them. Chances are it could be on and chances are that someone is taping it. This might not rank up there with Casey Kasem’s infamous rant but expect someone to get fired in about 2 seconds.

Danyelle Sargeant was a bit flustered after a spate of technical difficulties and yelled out “WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?” on live TV. Ooopsies.

(Video removed by orders of ESPN)

Categories
San Francisco Giants

A note to the Barry Bonds apologists


I don’t think there is a soul left who thinks Barry Bonds didn’t take steroids, except possibly MC Hammer. However, the Bonds apologists will say that even though Barry took steroids, it wasn’t against the rules until last year so he didn’t really cheat and his records should stand.

Well, you’re wrong, and a June 7 1991 memo from MLB proves that. Just because the league didn’t test for steroids doesn’t mean it wasn’t banned.


The possession, sale or use of any illegal drug or controlled substance by Major League players or personnel is strictly prohibited. Major League players or personnel involved in the possession, sale or use of any illegal drug or controlled substance are subject to discipline by the Commissioner and risk permanent expulsion from the game.
…
This prohibition applies to all illegal drugs and controlled substances, including steroids…

So what’s your excuse now, Bonds fans? Are you going back to the argument that he didn’t know they were steroids?

Categories
College Basketball

Upsets puts us in the mood for the tourney


You hear that sound fellas? That’s the sound of a bunch of Davids readying the slingshot to slay the Goliaths in the dance. Either that or it’s the sound of me peeing my pants in anticipation. They’re very similar.

I love championship week. The Big East tournament already gave us the biggest upset of the week with Syracuse beating UConn on a buzzer beater by Gerry McNamara in overtime. This is going to be so much better when say, UNC Wilmington beats Memphis next weekend.

The story was even better in the Atlantic 10 where all the higher seeds were upset on Thursday. The biggest one being #6 ranked George Washington losing to unranked Temple by 15 points.

Need some upset picks in your bracket? ESPN Magazine came up with 5 teams that could pull off a big upset: Old Dominion, UNC Wilmington, Northern Iowa, Murray State, and Pacific. I love the name Salukis but Southern Illinois is a flawed team according to this article. Good luck in the pool. I’ve already resigned myself to losing so I won’t been too disappointed when a couple of my Final Four picks get wiped out on day 2.

Categories
NHL General

NHL Trade Deadline Deals

The NHL trade deadline has come and gone and like most things concerning hockey, no one seemed to really care. ESPN had a halfhearted report of all the last minute trades (a record setting number this year) but couldn’t muster the enthusiasm they had for the NBA trade deadline. Sad. The NHL is such a better game right now than the NBA. Well, for the 3 of us out there who still care, here is a roundup of the trades and reactions around the blogosphere.

[TSN.ca]: List of all trades this season by date.

[Off Wing Opinion]: At The NHL Trade Deadline…

[Hockey Rants]: Assessing the Deadline Day Deals

[Canucks Corner]: Deadline Day

[Puckupdate.com]: Trade is over