Nothing Could Be Finer Than to Have North Carolina in The Finals….

Well, next exactly. I have the Tar Heels to win it all. I have three of the Final Four. I am leading my NCAA pool after 60 games. But none of that is good enough.
Even if the Tar Heels win the national championship, I’m losing my pool to the winner of the Memphis-UCLA game. If [...]

Empty Seats at Yankee Stadium

As the Yankees get set to open their final season in the original (albeit renovated) Yankee Stadium, look ahead to what I predict will be the toughest ticket in New York sports history — Opening Day at the new Yankee Stadium in 2009.
Yankee tickets weren’t always tough tickets. Even during the great championship runs and [...]

What Are The Odds?

What are the odds? The Giants have played in four Super Bowls, all since 1987. In those games, they have faced two Hall of Fame quarterbacks — John Elway and Jim Kelly — a certain Hall of Famer to-be in Tom Brady, and rag-armed vagabond Trent Farris Dilfer.
Yes that same Trent Dilfer who has played [...]

Survive And Advance

March Madness….survive and advance….laying it all on the line, agonizing over a turnover, exulting after a long three. Sweating it out until the final buzzer.
College basketball players? Heck no, we’re talking about the pool players in NCAA tournament brackets.
It’s all about survive and advance at this point of the year, where one loss can turn [...]

Gotta Love The Drake….

….that is if you had Western Kentucky in your NCAA brackets….or if you knew The Drake before he broke up with the Drakette. Best game of the tournament so far, the Hilltoppers blow a 16-point lead with eight minutes to go in regulation, then come back to best Drake on an outrageous three-pointer at the [...]

Is George Mason This Year’s George Mason?

Is George Mason this year’s George Mason? It was just two years ago that Jim Larranaga’s 12th-seeded Patriots of the Colonial Athletic Association made a run to the Final Four before losing to eventual champ Florida in the national semis.
A nice story, but Cinderellas in the Final Four are about as rare as a snowy [...]

Comms Before the Storm: America’s Toughest Test

Enter at your own risk, At the center of the March Madness maelstrom, it’s the toughest test in America. The law boards, your first driver’s test or that final exam in quantum physics are cupcakes compared to this exercise.
It’s “Comms Before the Storm,” the IBM communications NCAA basketball pool.
One year ago, I picked the [...]

Perfectly Natural: The Odd Couple of Baseball

The cycle and the no-hitter are strange baseball companions, like Oscar Madison and Felix Unger, “The Odd Couple.”
Throughout baseball history, there have been 276 occurrences (30 before the turn of the 20th Century where batters have hit for the cycle — single, double, triple, home run — in the same game.
Over the same [...]

Top Ten All-Time Quarterback List

1. Johnny Unitas (Colts, Chargers, 1956-73)
A three-time champ with Baltimore, nine times an All-Pro, seventh all-time with 290 touchdown passes. Holds the NFL equivalent of Joe Dimaggio’s streak, 47 straight games with a TD pass.
2. Joe Montana (49ers, Chiefs, 1979-94)
Joe Cool, a third-round draft pick out of Notre Dame, won four Super Bowls in nine [...]

Quick Hitters IV — Observations of a Sportslifer

Before we rush out to canonize Josh Beckett just yet, let’s take a look at the numbers. At age 27, he’s won more than 16 games in a season just once (20-7) last year, and overall is 77-52 with a 3.74 ERA.
Yes he’s been dominant in the post-season (he’s been there twice, in 2003 and [...]