Sacrilegious Super Bowl?

Tuesday, the NFL owners decided that East Rutherford would host Super Bowl XLVIII. With some fan reaction and uproar, you would have thought Roger Goodell said the game was going to be in Australia and no American fans would be allowed in the stadium.

The game will be played in potentially cold weather for the first time since it was 39 degrees at Tulane Stadium for Dallas’ 24-3 beatdown of Miami in Super Bowl VI.

There have been mixed reactions on the notion of the cold weather Super Bowl. Here are my responses to some of the statements I’ve heard on this:

“It’s unfair to warm weather or dome teams to play a Super Bowl in cold weather”
Unfair? Football is the only one of the big four sports where weather can truly wreak havoc on the outcome of the game. A snowstorm, wind or rain can completely alter the makeup of a game plan. However, this variable is completely thrown out in the sport’s championship game. Weather is an element throughout the rest of the playoffs, so there’s no reason why it’s unfair that it remains one in the Super Bowl.

“Goodell just loves New York and it will get anything it wants”
The New York market is one of the largest in the NFL. Outside the game itself, the Super Bowl is about the buildup and hype of the week leading up to it. For fans and corporate folks, part of the allure is Super Bowl week. What better place to have that than in New York? I do not think there will be any complaints of people who are bored. Does spending the week in Detroit, home of Super Bowl XL, sound like a more appealing option? Yes, it has a beautiful domed stadium in Ford Field, but it’s cold there too and is not the entertainment Mecca that New York City is.

“There will be a blizzard and the Super Bowl will be a terrible, low scoring game”
Okay, it’s a possibility. But from some of the highlights and clips shown, you would think it snows every winter weekend in the tri-state area. I’m from Long Island. Yes, it does snow occasionally in New York during the winter. We do get blizzards sometimes. But this is not Buffalo. It does not snow copious amounts on a regular basis.

I personally think it would be fun to watch a Super Bowl with a field covered in snow. The biggest weather concern should really be wind. The Old Meadowlands was notorious for swirling winds that could completely neutralize passing games. I can remember a lot more games in which Eli Manning, Chad Pennington or Mark Sanchez could not throw the ball through the thick wind than games in which there was even a dusting of snow on the field.

“There will be plenty of empty seats if it’s a cold February night”
The Jets and Giants have played on plenty of cold December or January nights. It has not kept fans away. Week 17 of this past season the Jets and Bengals played in 20 degree temperatures (excluding wind chill) and the fans were still there. This is the Super Bowl. The fans will be there. The corporate ticket holders will still be there.

For the people who don’t like it, calm down. It is one Super Bowl. The NFL may start to incorporate a cold weather city into the rotation once every five or ten years but I do not see it becoming a trend. This is a special circumstance. It’s a huge market building a brand new outdoor stadium and getting a chance to showcase it.

And really, the Super Bowl is a made-for-TV event, for the fans to sit at home with a bunch of friends, watch on a big TV, eat food and watch the commercials that advertisers pay big bucks to have tons of eyes on. If it’s cold in East Rutherford, it will be like watching any other late-season game on the cozy confines of your couch. And we can only hope for some images as awesome as Tom Coughlin, Green Bay, 2007.

Props to the NFL for doing something different, and doing it in the states, not across the pond in a thriving futbol locale.

Ho-hum playoffs?

Something seems a little off about this spring’s version of the NBA playoffs.

It’s the middle of the Conference Finals and I find myself barely invested in the proceedings.

Are these playoffs really that boring?

Only one series has gone seven games, the 1st round duel between Atlanta and Milwaukee. While it went the distance, it did not produce any memorable moments and the seventh game was a clunker.

Four series have ended in sweeps. Only two series, Thunder/Lakers and Celtics/Cavs, have been somewhat compelling. The rest have been ho-hum. Try to remember a game, a shot, a moment that really stands out from these playoffs.

You’re hard-pressed to think of one, right? After a few minutes thinking, the only ones that come to mind are Pau Gasol’s series-winning tip-in with under a second left in OKC, Paul Pierce’s winning shot in game four against Miami, and the image of LeBron tearing his jersey off after the Cavs’ season ended in Boston.

That’s all I can come up with through the first 70 games of these 2010 NBA Playoffs.

Maybe these playoffs just seem a little flat because last year’s were so good. There was the all-time classic seven game Bulls/Celtics first round series that featured multiple spellbinding moments, four games decided in overtime and five games by three points or less.

There were the scrappy Rockets, without T-Mac and Yao, taking the Lakers to seven games. There was LeBron’s three-point buzzer beater in game two of the East Finals. Then in the NBA Finals, there was Courtney Lee’s just-miss on a perfectly executed inbound play that would have silenced the L.A. crowd and won game two.

Time still remains for these playoffs. The Suns could still come back from a deficit that not many opponents of Phil Jackson-coached squads have. The Magic could still come back from 3-0 down, a feat that no NBA team has ever accomplished. And who knows…maybe the Finals will be a classic duel between the Celtics and Lakers. It was a pretty good Finals the last time those two met two years ago.

For now, it’s the series finale of 24, even the confusing conclusion of Lost, that are more exciting. Tonight’s Celtics/Magic game was a step in the right direction, with the first overtime of the playoffs. Let’s hope it starts a trend for the coming three weeks.

HS Baseball Playoffs: Elliott leads Wheelersburg to Division III final

Experience on the mound can make the difference in any game, especially a playoff game. Wheelersburg had that Wednesday.

Senior Andrew Elliott struck out 10 batters to lead the Wheelersburg Pirates to a 5-2 victory over the Piketon Redstreaks in a Division III semifinal game at Athens High School.

Elliott threw a complete game, surrendering just two runs on two hits. His control was strong, as he had just one walk and one balk along with his ten strikeouts.

“I kept getting in the strike zone and all my stuff was working. Everybody got behind me,” Elliott said.

Elliott struggled in the second inning but bounced back after that. In the final five innings, he retired 14 of 15 batters he faced. Of those 15 batters, he struck out eight.

Pitching in the playoffs is not an unfamiliar place for Elliott.

“He’s one of our seniors who has been through the wars with us. He pitched our semifinal game here last year,” Wheelersburg head coach Michael Estep said.

On the other side, it was freshman Zach Farmer pitching for Piketon. Farmer had both good and bad moments, striking out six but walking eight, balking twice and throwing three wild pitches.

Piketon head coach Gene Bumgardner knew what he was getting sending out the freshman.

“He’s a first team All-District player. Just putting him in that situation, if I had to do it all over again, I would do it again. That’s how much faith I have in Zach [Farmer] that he’s going to get the job done,” Bumgardner said.

It is experience that will only help Farmer going forward.

“I think that this is just going to help him grow up a little bit. We had some mistakes out there on the mound and some things that are not his signature but I would take Zach against any pitcher in Southeast District,” Bumgardner said.

Despite the control problems, Farmer did a solid job keeping his team in the game. In five innings, he gave up four runs, working himself out of trouble multiple times.

“I would have liked to see our offensive performance be a little more on the greedy side. We had some opportunities where we maybe could have broken the game open with a big hit or two and we weren’t able to get it,” Estep said.

After a while, the squandered chances began to get frustrating.

“I told them I was getting tired of seeing ones up there. But in the tournament, you’ll be happy getting away with a win,” Estep said.

The 26-1 Pirates were a definite favorite coming into the game, facing a 13-15 Piketon squad. But down 2-0 in the second inning, Wheelersburg faced some adversity. Estep’s experienced bunch did not let it burden them.

“We have six seniors that have been here with us in these type of games for the past couple years. There was no sense of panic. I think if anything our intensity rose a notch,” Estep said.

In the bottom half of the second, Wheelersburg chipped into the lead with Bryce Hall scoring on a Farmer error. The Pirates subsequently scored one run in each of the next three innings, with Hall leading the way. He finished the day as the team’s leading batter, going three for three and scoring two runs.

While Hall gave him run support, Elliott felt some pressure on the mound, with past experience working both for and against him.

“You always feel a little jitters inside of you. It’s not as bad but since I’m a senior it kind of makes it a little worse just because I want to perform so well and I don’t have another chance,” Elliott said.

While Elliott helped put Piketon’s season to an end, Wheelersburg moves on to Friday’s Division III Championship game. It will face the winner of Wellston/Chillicothe Huntington.

“We’ll see who it is. I guess we’ll start worrying about it now a little bit. But we’ll enjoy this one on the way back and then have a good practice tomorrow to get ready for Friday,” Estep said.

A Summer's Prelude

In New York, concrete jungle where dreams are made of, it’ll make you feel brand new.

That song we've all heard a few too many times but still kind of like popped into my head tonight as the final seconds ticked away in the Celtics/Cavs game.

The 2009-10 season is over for LeBron James. Again it has ended short of the ultimate goal, a championship.

So now, we wait. It’s 47 days ‘til free agency begins.

I know that from the LeBron Watch countdown clock on ESPNNewYork.com.

The circus has now officially begun.

Yes, the speculation will be out of hand. It’s already beginning to build. And you can be sure that LeBron will milk this for all it’s worth.

I read this in an another article and it’s really true. LeBron went straight from high school to the NBA. While college coaches surely showed interest in him, it was never a big secret that LeBron would bypass college. Now, LeBron gets to live the recruiting process out. He gets to be showered with attention by a bunch of teams vying for him.

I do not expect LeBron’s decision to be particularly quick. And right now, on May 14, I do not expect LeBron to return to Cleveland.

There is a lot of speculation about LeBron to Chicago. But I still in my gut believe it comes down to New York or Cleveland. He either remains loyal to the city that worships him, his home of Ohio or indulges himself in business and money aspirations in the Big Apple.

None of us really know what is going through LeBron’s mind. Even with my gut acclimations, I have no idea what he wants, if those factors are really involved in his decision. I have no idea if he feels an obligation to deliver Cleveland its long-awaited championship or wants to bring about a basketball renaissance at the Garden.

The next two months will be filled with speculation. But as a Knicks fan, this is all we have right now. There has been no hope since Patrick Ewing retired. The Big Apple has been without a big superstar for more than a decade.

Now is the time when that could change. So, we might as well indulge in the fun of this chase. After sitting through years of mismanagement, bloated contracts and miserable play, the summer of 2010 is a time where there’s finally some hope.

Hope is a strange concept for the Knicks. It’s been lost for a while. Sitting through draft nights, watching the Bulls use lottery picks for the steep price of Eddy Curry clogging up the Knicks' payroll, the court and his own arteries. And that’s just one example.

This could all be a bust. The Knicks could end up signing Joe Johnson to a max contract and wallow in mediocrity for seven more years. But for the next few months, I’ll be hoping the cap clearing, the years of Garden lifelessness, were all for something bigger, for the chance to be relevant again as an NBA franchise.

LeBron gives the Knicks that chance.

There will surely be plenty more to say about this in the coming months.

But for now, Jay-Z can say it best. LeBron needs to get out his iPod, get into the Empire State of Mind and think about what could be…

McKinley takes different route to the Convo

David McKinley is much like your typical walk-on.

He’s tough and a hard worker but spends most of game day on the bench.

However, the way McKinley ended up on a Division I roster…that’s a little different.

Being 5-foot-9, McKinley has faced adversity since he was the “shy, kind of chubby kid” that his girlfriend Kelsey Warren has known since middle school.

“He’s the same. It’s just unreal, going from watching him play in middle school to this DI gym playing…or even sitting,” Warren said.

It was Kelsey Warren’s older sister, Aly, who helped give McKinley that shot.

Near the end of his senior year, McKinley wasn’t sure he would be able to play DI basketball. Though he drew some interest from DIII schools, he had his mind set on one school.

“I had a conversation with David near the end of spring quarter last year and asked him if he had ever considered playing a sport in college. He said he would love to play basketball, but really wanted to go to OU and didn't think he could play Division I,” the elder Warren said.


He didn’t know it at the time but it was that conversation that started it all for McKinley.

Aly Warren played soccer during her four years as an undergrad at Ohio and later, helped as a student assistant coach for the varsity team. As a student-athlete and coach, Warren was in the Convocation Center a lot and exposed to all of the coaches and staff every day.

With her connections, she decided to see if she could help McKinley’s dream come to fruition.

It was a Saturday morning when Aly Warren sent head coach John Groce an e-mail. Less than an hour later, she was on the phone with him.

“He was full of energy and told me that it was crazy that I had emailed him because they were actually looking for a walk-on guard after losing someone on their roster that spring,” Warren said.

The Bobcats had actually lost two guards, with both Frankie Dobbs and Stacey Waters transferring after their freshman seasons.

From there, Warren acted as a liaison, helping McKinley, Groce and his staff communicate. Groce also had a relationship with McKinley’s high school coach at Dublin Scioto, Tony Bisutti. But it was Warren who paved the way for it all.

“He really has Aly Warren to thank because she’s the one that gave me his name and started the process of us initiating some conversation, trying to figure out if it was going to work,” Groce said.

But it was McKinley who had to put in the work to make it happen.

“In the summer, he invited me down to go to whatever open gyms I wanted. In the fall, it was like an extended tryout. I did the fall program of lifting, running, open gyms, workouts and at the end of the five weeks they told me I made the team,” McKinley said.

The process through which he made the team is not the usual.

“It was a lot different than most walk-ons. It’s usually just a one-day or two-day tryout for walk-ons,” McKinley said.

Groce is glad McKinley was there to fill a spot when the Bobcats needed it.

“I couldn’t be more pleased with him and what he brings to our team. He really brings an energy about him, a toughness and intelligence about him,” Groce said.

But it’s not just about what he does in practice or when he sees time on the court. McKinley, referred to as D-Mac by both Groce and teammates, is a favorite off the court.

“He’s just goofy off the court. Not a lot of people would think he’s a jokester but he definitely is off the court. When you just meet him it takes a while to get comfortable with you and that’s when the real D-Mac comes out,” teammate Ivo Baltic said.

“He’s such a good teammate. He connects with everyone on our team, whether they’re big or small, scholarship or not scholarship, freshman or senior or junior. They all like him. They all want him to do well,” Groce said.

The same held true of McKinley in high school.

“I know that what he did for us went far deeper than just what he did on the court. He was a good friend and teammate to guys off the court. That aspect in addition to what he did on the court, I’ll always be grateful for,” Bisutti said.

Way before high school, McKinley’s interest in basketball, particularly Ohio University basketball, began. His father Joe graduated from Ohio and had season tickets, so McKinley was exposed to the Bobcats from a young age.

“We’d come down here every weekend pretty much when I was younger. I remember back when I was little watching Gary Trent and Geno Ford and all the way up to last year I’d come down to games still with my dad,” McKinley said.

Now, it’s McKinley playing at the Convo against Ford, who is Kent State’s coach.

“I watched so many games on that court and to be able to play on it was pretty surreal,” McKinley said.

Like the 5-foot-8 Ford who he watched as a kid in the Convo, McKinley too has had to overcome his diminutive size.

“If you don’t play like you’re bigger than you are, then you won’t succeed. Just doing little things like taking charges or diving on loose balls, that’s how a smaller person like me can contribute,” McKinley said.

When you look at Ohio’s Attack U team poster, McKinley is the little guy flanking the left side. Bisutti says his first thought upon seeing the poster was that he looked like “a middle schooler amongst the trees.”

While McKinley does not have the elite size or speed, his dedication and hard work gave him a chance this season.

“I’ll be honest with you, he’d probably tell you the same thing, he played a lot more this season than he or I would have been able to foreshadow at the point that we took him last fall. The great thing about him is I always know he’s ready and I can throw him in there and he’s pretty poised. He’s extremely valuable to our team,” Groce said.

McKinley is still your typical walk-on.

He played just 44 total minutes in his freshman season. But it was that one break, knowing that one right person, that gave him a chance to live a dream, and he’s open to whatever may come next.

“I would like to get more playing time and I’ll do everything to. But we have so many talented players that’s it’s going to be tough. I’m just going to do whatever I can, whatever the coaches need me to do to help the team,” McKinley said.

J470: Great Reporting

In talking to my boss at my internship this past summer, she described it best: the difference between news reporting and sports reporting is just in the statistics, numbers and teams you are reporting.

But at their cores they are the same. They are all about telling a story. It’s just who or what you’re telling that story about which changes.

As much as sports is about the games and moments on the playing surfaces that bring us into them, they gain a much greater scope. We become immersed in their players and what they do off the field.

We connect with them and want to know more about what makes them people. Then, there are scandals and controversies that come to light. And there are reporters who uncover these details. They might be doing it within the context of sport but it is just as serious as the matter that may be covered in the newspaper’s front section.

Woodward and Bernstein uncovered the Watergate scandal by investigating and digging deep, by questioning what other people would not question. While sports do not take on the same social significance as a presidential investigation, they should not be deemed irrelevant.



The investigation by the San Francisco Chronicle reporters hits on the very same lines of thinking that Woodword and Bernstein did. They uncover a story that serves an interest to the greater public. Fans of sports and non-fans of sports can all look at these types of stories because of their social relevance.

Sports reporters too are investigators. In the excerpt from Game of Shadows, there are numerous specific details uncovered such as the drugs used, the timeline and even as detailed as the drug alphabet used on the training calendars.

But sports reporting is also great writing. When reading ‘Eyes of the Storm’ by Gary Smith, you feel like Smith is telling you a series of stories about Pat Summitt, bringing you into her very life. With every so perfectly told detail you feel like you’re in Summitt’s living room, at her practice, feeling the emotions of Michelle Marciniak.



And in some cases, you do not even have to know the story’s protagonist to be transfixed by it. Unlike with Summitt or Bonds, before reading Ted Miller’s piece, I did not know who Anthony Vontoure was. But after reading Miller’s piece, I knew details of Vontoure’s life, what made him click, what made him laugh, what tore him apart at the end of his life.

Sports reporting is serious reporting. The article ‘Coaches Who Prey,’ reveals statistics of coaches who are harassing or assaulting young girls. It is eye-opening to read and something that the general public should know. Sports or not, these stories are compelling reads.

Ohio Spring Football Game

Read my article about the Bobcats' spring game at VanDelaySports...



Bates again in competition