Chicago -
By Jim Coffman
What was that sound? It couldn’t be fireworks could it? In the middle of February? Nope, it was the sound of Bears fans’ heads exploding.
Okay, okay, there were no reports of actual cranial combustion. But surely the loved ones of a significant contingent of Midway Monster backers had to be wondering if someone had bought a new clock over the weekend . . . because something was ticking.
Posted on February 25, 2008
By Tim Howe
This year marked the 50th Anniversary of “The Great American Race” in Daytona Beach, Florida, NASCAR’s season-starter. Fox Sports has the TV rights for this event, and does a generally decent job of covering the race itself (handling it better than their efforts on baseball, but not as good as their football coverage).
But the race itself was almost beside the point this year as two story lines dominated the pre-race coverage: Junior, and the 50th Anniversary.
Posted on February 19, 2008
By Jim Coffman
Anybody out there watch the NBA All-Star game on Sunday?
How about the Daytona 500?
I didn’t think so.
The former is abysmally bad basketball from start to finish. It is the worst game of the season. And yet, year after year it is apparently a very tough ticket. Nowhere in the world of sports is there a bigger disconnect between the actual amount of real sports entertainment generated by an event and the cost of a ticket to that event. And nowhere is there a better example of the triumph of spectacle over actual sport. I would rather watch a late-season Grizzlies-Timberwolves brickfest than the yearly “all-star” debacle where the only competition is to see who can throw the most ridiculous alley-oop.
Then there are the guys driving around in all those thrilling circles in Spring Breakville.
Posted on February 18, 2008
By Jim Coffman
Don’t look now, but the Bulls just had the best week of their season. Sure, they only won two of four, but they did it far from home (they were evicted from the United Center by an extended run of High School Musical on Ice – ouch, babe), and with several key contributors on the bench with injuries. The affected players, Kirk Hinrich (bruised ribs), Luol Deng (tendinitis in his Achilles) and Ben Gordon (sore shooting wrist) could very well return this week or next. But will the Bulls want to bench the guys who have made a difference for the better of late?
Most important, the effort that was so infuriatingly lacking at times earlier in the season was there all week. The Bulls beat Seattle and Golden State and battled before losing to two of the hottest teams in basketball (Portland and Utah).
Posted on February 11, 2008
By Eric Emery
The Super Bowl is over. At this point, I have good news and bad news. The good news: The game lived up to the hype. The bad news: The game generated an incredible amount of post-game hype. Let’s take a look.
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Topic: Bill Belichick leaving the field with one second left.
Hype: What a poor sport! (“Maybe he wanted to beat traffic,” Eli Manning told David Letterman.)
Reality: He had to take an urgent phone call from John McCain about Super Tuesday strategy. Besides, if someone had told him there was actually one second left, he would’ve found a way to win the game.
Posted on February 7, 2008
By Jim Coffman
How could this possibly have happened? How could a Giants team that barely squeaked past a feeble bunch of Bears in a December regular-season game possibly have pulled it all together and capped off one of the great playoff runs of all time with yesterday’s 17-14 victory? So many things had to go right for the underdogs. The Giants had to make so many plays and their favored, previously undefeated counterparts had to botch so many opportunities.
Any fan who watched the team from New York stumble and bumble through three-and-a-half quarters of futility against the Bears at the start of the season’s final stretch would have acknowledged that Sunday’s triumph seemed well beyond the pale of possibility. Quarterback Eli Manning finally put together a couple late touchdown drives to give the Giants a 21-16 comeback victory over the Bears back on December 2, but it looked like this team would no doubt peak by simply squeaking into the playoffs.
Then the Giants won at Tampa Bay, and at Dallas, and at Green Bay to advance to Super Bowl XLII.
And on Sunday . . .
Posted on February 4, 2008
