By The Beachwood Sweaty Gear Affairs Desk
A glove affair.
Posted on November 9, 2010
The Cubs’ Crappy Undercover Boss
By Steve Rhodes
Even I’m amazed every week at how Undercover Boss reveals just how out of touch America’s corporate suite is with the companies they run and the employees they rule over. Are they really so clueless about their own organizations?
Yes. Yes they are.
And the latest case in point really hits home: Cubs co-owner Todd Ricketts looked as if he’d never worked a hard day in his life last night.
Dude.
Posted on November 8, 2010
SportsMonday: Bears Win Doesn’t Totally Suck
By Jim Coffman
My wife is a Patriots fan and we both went into Sunday’s action convinced that our teams were in no-win situations. Lose to bad opponents (the Pats were taking on the woeful-for-years Browns) and the standard amount of post-loss aggravation is at least doubled. Win and no one is impressed. After all, those guys haven’t even won a game yet (that would be the Bills of course – the Browns had at least scratched out a few wins in the season’s first eight weeks).
But we were half wrong. The Bear win felt like a win.
Posted on November 8, 2010
The College Football Report: The Case Of Kid Cameron’s Elite Preparation As A Commodity In A Poorly Regulated Market
By Mike Luce
In a week that featured an enormous intergalactic frozen peanut, post-game Tweets on trash talking, and some sort of election hubbub . . . how happy are you that we can return to the agents-recruiters-and-cash-under-the-table issue in college football? What a relief, right? To think we might be focused on, say, Utah versus TCU this Saturday. Or LSU against Alabama. No, by all means, let’s dig our shovels into the muck, lift up a scoopful and say, “Here. Smell this.”
Posted on November 5, 2010
TrackNotes: Lookin At Lucky
By Thomas Chambers
It’s time to run.
Post positions have been drawn and morning line odds are posted. And like feuding children, the four top runners in the Breeders’ Cup Classic have been separated up and down the Churchill Downs starting gate.
Quality Road (post 1), Blame (post 5), Zenyatta (post 8), and Lookin At Lucky (post 12) will attack the Classic from different angles. This is a fine field, but not truly great. Its best description would be competitive, as any one of these four could win 2010 Horse of the Year. That’s what will make this a great race.
Posted on November 5, 2010
Playbook Czar Preview: Bears at Bills
Fantasy Fix: Detroit’s Forgotten Men
By Dan O’Shea
No one was picking the Detroit Lions to win their division this year, with such proven powers as Green Bay, Minnesota and, er, Chicago, standing in their way. But the Lions, after years of misery, had something like a buzz about them coming into this season, with a solid receiving corp, a promising running back and a second-year quarterback who was not afraid to fling it.
I liked QB Matthew Stafford in particular as a pre-season sleeper pick for the draft, but he was injured in Week 1 and the Lions have been up and down ever since. With Stafford’s stellar return in Week 8 (four TDs), the fantasy stock value shot up for a whole pride of Lions.
Here’s who you should be picking up or trading for:
Posted on November 3, 2010
The Cisco Kids
By The Beachwood Mitch Kramer Affairs Desk
Giants win the World Series; cute city celebrates.
1. San Francisco’s Finest.
Posted on November 2, 2010
SportsMonday: As The Seasons Turn
By Jim Coffman
Local teams trump national events, at least for Chicago sports fans. When faced with a choice between watching Derrick Rose and the Bulls hosting the Pistons or whoever wasn’t injured for the Hawks taking on Minnesota versus viewing the World Series on Saturday, baseball took the bronze. The brand new basketball season and the still young hockey campaign held more far more allure than the final gasps of the diamond death march.
The turning of the sports seasons was the best part of growing up a Chicago sports fan in the 70s. Not happy about a current season – and we were almost never happy about the baseball or football seasons during the first half-dozen years of this delightful decade – you at least knew the next campaign was right around the bend. This was especially important in the fall, as baseball season after baseball season wound down ingloriously and football season after football season started with virtually no hope for Super Bowl contention. The Bears and the Blackhawks, on the other hand, put great teams on floor and ice early in the 70s. They didn’t win championships of course – let’s not get too crazy – but they boasted a series of compelling teams.
Posted on November 1, 2010
The College Football Report: Dementia Pugilistica
By Mike Luce
As viewers and fans of an inherently violent game, at what point are we morally obligated to object, to stop watching, to stop buying merchandise and to demand that the officials (administrators, coaches, athletic directors) make changes to the game to protect the players?
While not always stated as directly, the damage done by playing football on players has been the topic of discussion for several weeks. For example, Michael Sokolove authored an opinion piece for the New York Times’ “Week In Review” section (from Sunday, October 24) titled “Should You Watch Football?” about the quandary of watching – and being entertained by – a game “whose level of violence is demonstrably destructive”. (Sokolove’s opinion seems to be “it depends”.)
Much of the hand-wringing results from a weekend of nasty injuries in college and pro football. Last Saturday, Rutgers University defensive tackle Eric LeGrand suffered a traumatic spinal cord injury during a kickoff return against Army. As of this writing, LeGrand remains paralyzed.
Posted on October 29, 2010