Irish Trojan in Tennessee

How to be a bandwagon fan

By Brendan Loy

SportsPickle's DJ Gallo writes a handy guide to being a bandwagon fan for ESPN's Page 2. Money quote: "don't let [people] anywhere near your car. They might get the wrong impression when they see that your bumper is covered in Red Sox, Yankees, Lakers, Celtics, Cowboys, Patriots, USC football and Duke basketball stickers. As though it's your fault that you have deep, childhood ties to all those teams!" Heh.

Speaking of which, hey, how 'bout those Cubs? ;)

Spectacular bird

By Brendan Loy

Today at the U.S. Open, Tiger Woods needed a birdie on the 18th hole to force a playoff tomorrow with Rocco Mediate. So, what happened? Well, what do you think happened? This is Tiger Woods we're talking about. Of course he made it. Here's the video:

Sweet.

UPDATE: Tiger did it again, and won.

Belmont Stakes open thread

By Brendan Loy

Tonight at 6:17 PM EDT, Big Brown goes for the Triple Crown at the Belmont.

The horse who was expected to challenge him, Casino Drive, injured his hoof and won't be racing, so Big Brown would seem to have a pretty clear path to the first Triple Crown in 30 years.

I'm not sure if I'll be watching live or not; we're going with Barb to Dixie Stampede at 4:00, and may not be back in time. But I'll be TiVoing the race, and will try to enter a self-imposed news blackout (cell phone off, etc.) from 6:15 on, if I'm not in front of a TV yet. :)

Go Big Brown!!

UPDATE: Big Brown finished dead last after jockey Kent Desormeaux pulled him up during the stretch -- he was running third at the time, though losing ground to eventual winner Da' Tara -- because Desormeaux believed something was wrong with Big Brown. "I had no horse," Desormeaux said. "This horse is the best I've ever ridden. Something's wrong, and I took care of him."

Noted equine veterinarian Larry Bramlage appeared to disagree with the jockey's snap judgment that something was wrong with Big Brown. "He looked fine during the race," Dr. Bramlage said. "All I saw was when Desormeaux slowed him down. The veterinarian inspection team did not find anything wrong with him and he was not lame."

Big Brown entered the race with a cracked hoof, but it was patched yesterday and trainers had been convinced the "very minor" injury would not affect him.

In any event, Da' Tara, the longest shot in the field at 39-1, won by 5 1/2 lengths. Denis of Cork, my horse of choice in the Derby because of his Irish name and his Notre Dame connection, came in second. Anak Nakal and Ready's Echo finished in a dead heat for third place.

Hockeytown

By Brendan Loy

The Detroit Red Wings are Stanley Cup champions.

NBA time warp

By Brendan Loy

It's official: the NBA Finals will feature the league's top seeds in a 1980s-style clash of titans: Lakers vs. Celtics.

Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines!

By Brendan Loy

The Indy 500 is underway. Danica Patrick is in 13th place right now. For Danica's sake, here's hoping Hillary Clinton didn't place any bets on her. :)

UPDATE: Title changed (from "Gentlemen and lady, start your engines") after Lisa pointed out that there were three women in the race: Patrick, Milka Duno, and Sarah Fisher. All three crashed and did not finish, and Patrick was distinctly unhappy about it. Scott Dixon won the race.

Two down, one to go

By Brendan Loy

As expected, Big Brown easily won the Preakness, and will have a shot at the Triple Crown in the Belmont three weeks from now. Here's today's race:

Big Brown will be the first horse to arrive at the Belmont with a chance for the Triple Crown since Smarty Jones in 2004 -- and if he achieves it, he'll be the first to do so in 30 years, since Affirmed in 1978. Eleven horses since then have won the Derby and the Preakness but lost in the Belmont, six of those between 1997 and 2004. (Silver Charm did it in '97, Real Quiet in '98, Charismatic in '99, War Emblem in '02, Funny Cide in '03 and Smarty Jones in '04.)

Preakness today; Big Brown is big favorite

By Brendan Loy

The 133rd Preakness is at 6:15 PM EST tonight. Kentucky Derby winner Big Brown is an overwhelming favorite against a decidedly weak field. ESPN's Bill Finley writes:

Against a group of competitors better suited to a race like the Ohio Derby than a Triple Crown event, [Big Brown] can regress by several lengths and still beat this field easily. He is the only Grade I winner in the field and only one of two horses (along with Gayego) to crack the 100 mark on the Beyer Speed Figures. The competition stinks.

The only way to handicap the race is to pick the winner of the other race, the 12-horse contest for second place. From a betting and handicapping standpoint, that's a pretty interesting, wide-open event. I've got it down to five horses: Macho Again, Tres Borrachos, Kentucky Bear, Riley Tucker and Giant Moon. I will use this quintet underneath Big Brown in every exotic wager imaginable.

Incidentally, Finley predicts Big Brown will lose the Belmont in three weeks. If so, he'd be the eleventh straight Derby-Preakness winner to lose the Belmont with a Triple Crown on the line.

Halperin plays the Eight Belles card

By Brendan Loy

I expected commenters on my blog to pick up on the Hillary Clinton-Eight Belles analogy in the wake of the horse's second-place Kentucky Derby finish (behind, ahem, "Big Brown") and tragic post-race death. And it figures that Wonkette would also pick up the story, and give it a headline like "Hillary's Horse Dies Embarrassingly." But I'm a little surprised to see Time's Mark Halperin discussing it -- with an unmistakable air of amusement -- on his widely read election-news clearinghouse, The Page:

YOU CAN’T MAKE THIS UP
Hillary Clinton enthusiastically picked a filly named Eight Belles to win the Kentucky Derby and compared herself to the horse. Eight Belles finished second. The winner was the favorite, Big Brown. Eight Belles collapsed immediately after crossing the finish line, and was euthanized shortly thereafter.

Er, well, yes. However, I think we can all agree, Obama and Clinton supporters alike, that whoever finishes second in the Democratic presidential race, we all sincerely hope they aren't, um, euthanized immediately after the deciding delegate vote is cast.

(On the other hand, I suppose if Hillary were to merely break an ankle during, say, a balloon fiasco following Obama's victory, that would complete the analogy without anyone dying -- since humans aren't generally "put down" after breaking limbs. If they were, a certain South Bend tennis net would have been my undoing!)

Anyway, The Huffington Post has more.

Um, and R.I.P., Eight Belles. Election-related snickering aside, it really is quite sad.

Derby time!

By Brendan Loy

The Kentucky Derby is about to begin. I'm rooting for Denis of Cork because of his Irish-sounding name and Notre Dame connection. My second choice is Smooth Air, because of ESPN's sappy human-interest story about 70-year-old trainer Bennie Stutts. Go Denny & Bennie!

Once again, I'll miss Dave Johnson's call. "And down the stretch they come!"

UPDATE: Big Brown (the favorite, and Obama's third-place pick) won the Derby. But the big story is the tragedy that befell second-place finisher Eight Belles (the filly, and Hillary's pick). Eight Belles suffered a devastating injury, and had to be euthanized immediately after the race. Denis of Cork (my pick) finished third.

No candidates at Kentucky Derby

By Brendan Loy

The Kentucky Derby is today, Saturday. Post time is 6:04 PM Eastern.

Alas, my vision of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton making dueling appearances at the racetrack -- in anticipation of the Kentucky primary, two weeks and three days hence -- will not be fulfilled. But Chelsea Clinton will be there! And Hillary did briefly don a Derby hat during a visit to Louisville on Thursday.

Well, it looks better on her than it would on Barack, I suppose. :)

Meanwhile, both candidates have announced their Derby picks, taking the concept of the political "horse race" beyond the metaphorical. Obama is picking Colonel John to finish first, Pyro to finish second, and Big Brown to finish third. Clinton has only announced her first-place choice: Eight Belles, the lone filly in the race. Heh. Girl power!

Seattle Sonics soap opera gets new twist

By David K.

To be perfectly honest, I really don't much care for the NBA.  I'd rather watch an NHL game than an NBA game (NFL and MLB beating both, MLS coming in a distant last place).  When I heard that the Sonics had been sold to a group of investors from Oklahoma City, I didn't much care if they stayed in Seattle or went to Oklahoma (which, despite what we were told by this new group, was really what everyone assumed would happen).  There were exorbitant demands for public funding of a new arena followed by efforts of other local cities to come up with competing offers.  The mayor, the legislature and the governor all chimed in, and in the end, it looked like the Sonics were as good as gone.  But this week it got much more interesting.

First came e-mails that were obtained from Clay Bennett and the other owners of the Sonics that showed, despite their promises of a good-faith effort to work out a deal to keep the team in Seattle, that they pretty much intended to move the team all along.  It certainly showed what most of us believed all along, that these Oklahoma City investors were lying through their teeth, but it still probably is not enough to keep the team in Seattle, as basketball commissioner Howard David Stern seems to fully support the efforts to oust the team. 

The latest twist is probably the most unexpected.  Former owner and Starbucks founder Howard Schultz is planning to sue Bennett, alleging that he broke the good faith agreement that was part of the deal to sell the Sonics to the OK City group in the first place.  He is not seeking financial damages; he just wants to roll back the deal.  It will be interesting to see how this all plays out. 

Notre Dame loses in hockey title game

By Brendan Loy

Notre Dame's magical, unexpected run through ice hockey's NCAA Tournament ended one step short of a national title, as Boston College beat the Irish 4-1 last night.

I neglected to post about this last night (sorry!), but on a different post, several commenters complained that the Irish got screwed by a wrongly disallowed goal that totally changed the momentum of the game. *sigh*

Regardless, and despite the loss, an amazing run for the Irish.

ND, Michigan battle in Frozen Four

By Brendan Loy

The Frozen Four is underway, and Notre Dame leads Michigan 3-2 with 10:44 left in the second period. It was 3-0, but Michigan just scored two rapid-fire goals to get back in it.

Liveblogs here and here. The game is being televised live on ESPN2. Winner gets Boston College in the national championship game Saturday. GO IRISH!!! BEAT SKUNKBEARS!!!

UPDATE: Michigan tied it at 3-3... then Notre Dame just took a 4-3 lead with less than 9 minutes left.

UPDATE 2: Tie game 4-4, with 5:21 left. Ugh.

UPDATE 3: Overtime. And, alas, I have to go to bed. Go Irish.

UPDATE 4: IRISH WIN!!!! (Okay, so I didn't actually go to bed...) WOOOHOOO!!!

UPDATE 5: The Associated Press is mean. Check out their lede:

Michigan has Notre Dame's number on the football field. Not so the ice.

Jeez! Is that really necessary? The Irish hockey team makes it to the national championship game for the first time ever -- upsetting the #1-ranked team in the country, and becoming the first #4 seed ever to advance this far -- and the first sentence of the AP article takes an irrelevant shot at the football team? WTF?! Is Brian Cook working ghost-writing for the AP or something?

Moreover, it's inaccurate. Yes, Michigan beat Notre Dame -- badly -- in 2007 and 2006, but the Irish won easily in 2005 (when Michigan was ranked #3 in the country, the Irish just #20) and in 2004 (when ND was unranked and Michigan was #7). Michigan won in '03; Notre Dame won in '02. That makes them 3-3 in their most recent series. (They didn't play from 1998 to 2001.)

If you want to go back further, the Irish are 12-11-1 against the Skunkbears since the series was renewed in 1978 after a 35-year hiatus. Michigan leads the overall series 20-14-1, but somehow I don't think the Wolverines' 9-2 record between 1884 and 1943 was what the AP reporter had in mind.

In any event, 20-14 is hardly a massive advantage, and 11-12 isn't an advantage at all, nor is 3-3. However you look at it, you simply cannot construct an accurate historical reality in which "Michigan has Notre Dame's number on the football field," unless you're looking only at the last two years, which is rather myopic and hardly a sufficiently representative sample to make such a sweeping statement. Neither team has the other's number; they've been very even in recent years.

Maybe the AP's hockey writers should stick to talking about hockey. How about that.

Anyway, here's a better ESPN article about Notre Dame's amazing run to the national championship game. In hockey.

P.S. Now, if you want to say that USC currently has Notre Dame's number in football, thanks to six straight wins -- five of them blowouts -- that would be accurate. :) Likewise, it would have been accurate to say that the Irish had the Trojans' number back during their 13-year undefeated streak in the '80s and '90s. But no way does either ND or UM have the other's number right now.

A question for sports fans

By Brendan Loy

On this NCAA Tournament Eve, here's a question I've been meaning to pose to my blog audience -- or, more specifically, to the sports fans within that audience. What's the most devastating loss you've ever suffered as a sports fan?

After the jump, my answer to this question. But I'm really curious about your answers.

More racial silliness

By Brendan Loy

Like a duck in a noose.

Fight on! Beat the 'Noles!

By Brendan Loy

The NCAA women's soccer national championship between USC and Florida State is underway, live on ESPN2, and the Women of Troy lead the Seminoles, 1-0 with 30 minutes left.

UPDATE: 2-0 USC with five minutes left!!

UPDATE 2: WOOHOO!!! The USC Women of Troy are your 2007 national champions!!!

P.S. In other news, the USC women's volleyball team upset Texas on Saturday to earn a spot in the Final Four. Nice!

Irish, Trojans in NCAA semifinals

By Brendan Loy

...in women's soccer, that is. On ESPN2 right now, Notre Dame is playing Florida State in the first semifinal -- and with just over 22 minutes left in the second half, it's tied 2-2.

Up next? USC vs. UCLA, in the second national semifinal. Alas, that game is on ESPNU, not ESPN2.

Go Irish! Go Trojans!

UPDATE: Seminoles win, 3-2. So there will be no USC-Notre Dame title game. :(

UPDATE 2: USC stuns top-ranked fUCLA!! Woohoo!!!

The win broke a nine-game USC losing streak against the Bruins. Nice timing, ladies!! It also ended UCLA's overall 17-game winning streak, which dated back to mid-September.

So the tournament of surprises will end with a most unlikely pairing: the USC Trojans Women of Troy, ranked #9 in the final regular-season coaches poll, against the #14-ranked Florida State Seminoles in the national championship game, Sunday at 2:00 PM on ESPN2.

Fight on!! Stop the chop!!

In women's soccer, a very Brendan Loy bracket

By Brendan Loy

The women's soccer NCAA Tournament has reached the Elite Eight, and an astounding number of schools that I care about are still competing for the championship. Both of my alma maters, USC and Notre Dame, are still alive, as is my original home-state team, UConn. And my two least-favorite universities, UCLA and Duke, are still alive as well. The only thing that could have made the bracket any more Loy-o-riffic would be if my current hometown team, Tennessee, had beaten Portland in the Sweet Sixteen to set up a date with the hated Bruins.

As things stand, it's Portland that must visit UCLA, while USC travels to West Virginia, Notre Dame hosts Duke, and UConn visits Florida State, all on Friday evening. Potentially, we could have a USC-UCLA semifinal on one side of the bracket and a UConn-Notre Dame semifinal on the other. Will the Women of Troy need to beat both of their school's archrivals to win the championship? Heh!

For what it's worth, in the final regular-season coaches' poll, UCLA was #1, Portland #3, USC #9, Notre Dame #11, West Virginia #12, Florida State #14, UConn #24, and Duke unranked. So I guess that means both the Irish and the Trojans will be favored on Friday. Go ND and 'SC, beat Duke and WVU!

Cultural imperialism, or just plain dumb?

By JLR

So I can't figure it out: is NFL commish Roger Goodell a cultural imperialist, or is he just missing the point?  Says Goodell:

Our goal is to translate America's obsession to the world's passion," he told reporters on Friday, two days before the Miami Dolphins face the New York Giants at a sold-out Wembley Stadium. "This Sunday is clearly just the beginning."

This is after the NFL's expansion league, NFL Europa (formerly known as NFL Europe) folded in June. With an average attendance of just over 20,000 per game in 2007 and only 6 teams, this translates into about 60,000 people per week who were actually interested in going to these events ... for the entire continent of Europe.  And the lowest attendance was held by the Amsterdam Admirals--the only team outside of Germany.  Maybe if Goodell had arranged for this game on Sunday between Miami and New York to take place in Germany, I wouldn't feel this way... But why continue to try to get the rest of Europe to go along with this sport?

Maybe they could have sold out the stadium 10 times over, but extended American Football experiments in Europe have failed.  And I don't know why Goodell seems to think that this is the best way to keep cramming American football down the throats of the rest of the world.

Friday night football, South and North

By Brendan Loy

There was a big-time high-school football grudge match just down the road from us this evening, as West Knoxville archrivals Farragut and Bearden played their annual game. The traffic was insane, and there were cars parked all over the place; the game apparently draws thousands. I didn't go, but it seems the home team, Bearden, lost a heartbreaker in overtime, 35-28. Farragut has now won eight consecutive games over the Bulldogs, dating back to 2001. (That includes two playoff games.)

Speaking of high-school football, back in Connecticut, Newington won its opener tonight, 30-12 over Hartford Public. Nice!

The start of the Indians' season got me thinking -- and I know anyone reading this who graduated from NHS in the late '90s or early '00s will find this just as mind-boggling as I do -- this year's crop of NHS seniors have never seen the Indians have a losing season. Never! To them, Newington has always been a winning team!

(After ten straight losing seasons from 1994-2003, including a whopping 3-38-1 record during my four years there, Newington has gone 9-2, 7-3 and 6-3-1 the last three years. And now they're 1-0 and counting. Go Indians!)

Passing of a legend

By David K.

Discussions around sports are often heated and contentious -- you need not look further than the comments on some of the posts on this very blog to see that.  It can be frustrating at times, but it's part of what draws people to sports as well.  Sometimes, however, in amongst the heated discussions, we miss something: the impact the game has on coaches and the players, especially the younger players.  College football clearly evokes passion, and the pros has its place, but in many ways I think high school football is the heart of the game and high school coaches are especially important.  In most cases, the coaches who work at that level do it not for the money, but for the passion.  Admittedly, there are some coaches at the high school level who are well compensated, but for most it's a little extra money that, spread out over the time spent, has them working at minimum wage...or less.

Yesterday morning Terry Ennis, one of the greatest high school coaches in the state of Washington, passed away after a five year battle with cancer.  The most amazing part is that he was doing what he loved up until the very end.  This past Saturday, Ennis coached the Wildcats of Archbishop Murphy High School to a 49-7 victory in a non-conference game.

Ennis is remembered not just for his football talent and focus on discipline and hard work, but as an inspiration for players and fellow coaches.  With a 287-87 record built over 35 seasons, he is the second winningest coach in Washington high school football. He won three state championships during his career, once with Cascade High School and two with Archbishop Murphy, a school that didn't have a football program until he started it in 2000.

We may argue, we may disagree, we may fight, but above all we should remember that we do it because we love the game.  And for a lucky few, like Ennis, they get to be a part of that game we all love until the very end.

Rest in peace Coach, you will be missed, but what you have taught us all will not be forgotten.