Sports Roundup from Creators Syndicate

Basketball on Aircraft Carrier Offers Different Kind of Flight for 06/24/2011

Fri, 24 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

By Nick Canepa

Gigantic basketball players weren't comfortably made for Navy ships. They weren't even made for a comfortable fit on gigantic Navy aircraft carriers. They fly coach, it's on Air Sardine.

The height limit may be 6-8, but even the aerially impaired know navigating through the maze of passageways and bulkhead knee-knocker openings even on a carrier can be safe only i ...

Updated: Fri Jun 24, 2011

Realignment? MLB Has So Much More to Work On for 06/17/2011

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

By Nick Canepa

Realignment should be reserved for automobiles and spines, not baseball. They're constantly massaging this game. They should leave it alone.

But there is discussion about it in Commissioner Bud Selig's court, talk of realignment, eliminating divisions and removing a franchise from the 16-team National League and adding one to the 14-team American, making things ev ...

Updated: Fri Jun 17, 2011

Draft History Indicates Padres Picks in Trouble for 06/10/2011

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

By Nick Canepa

Not since the Dust Bowl have we seen infertility on farms to equal those plowed by the Padres. Nothing has worked. They've rotated their crops, tried both cheap and expensive fertilizer, changed owners, changed GMs, changed scouts, changed hired hands, changed rainmakers, changed scarecrows.

Too scary.

It may sound harsh to inform those position players th ...

Updated: Fri Jun 10, 2011

Sweetening Scholarships Won't Affect Big Divide for 06/03/2011

Fri, 03 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

By Tim Sullivan

Jim Delany has launched a trial balloon that a lot of people have mistaken for the Hindenburg.

The Big Ten commissioner wants to sweeten the deal for scholarship athletes, to divert some of his conference's bulging coffers into the pockets of the perspiring, to expand the traditional grant-in-aid to cover "the full cost of attendance."

And from ...

Updated: Fri Jun 03, 2011

Fair to Say That Pay for College Athletes Not Fair at All for 05/27/2011

Fri, 27 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

By Nick Canepa

Figures.

It took end-of-the-world caterwauling from the doomers to create an earthly convulsion that could move collegiate swells who aren't easy moved to begin dialogue on paying their athletes for performance. A breakthrough?

Under normal conditions, I'd say: "Hooray and hallelujah. It's about time." But in this climate, where the rich get rich ...

Updated: Fri May 27, 2011

U.S. Tennis Just Isn't Very Good Right Now for 05/20/2011

Fri, 20 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

By Nick Canepa

You get the stuffed animal on the top shelf if you can name the American men and women currently ranked among the top 10 tennis players in the world. Time's up. If you have no answer, it's still the right guess. There are none. Zero. Nada. Zilch. Love.

And it's never happened before.

The tennis lords and ladies began keeping these rankings in 1973, and now ...

Updated: Fri May 20, 2011

Zen Master's Serene to the Bitter End for 05/13/2011

Fri, 13 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

By Tim Sullivan

Phil Jackson leaves basketball with neither a bang nor a whimper, but that same, smug smile.

He sat behind a microphone Sunday afternoon in Dallas like a benevolent, bespectacled deity, amused and almost ambivalent about the antics of lesser and more mercurial beings. His above-it-all tone suggested he had watched his Los Angeles Lakers embarrassed and eliminated ...

Updated: Fri May 13, 2011

MJ-Kobe Debate Somehow Pops up During Playoffs for 05/06/2011

Fri, 06 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

MJ-Kobe Debate Somehow Pops up During Playoffs

LOS ANGELES — It is an argument for another day. Kobe Bryant is not yet finished with basketball, not by the longest, off-balance, fingers-in-the-face shot he has ever attempted.

You can't make comprehensive comparisons between a work in progress and a finished product, particularly when that finished product is Michae ...

Updated: Fri May 06, 2011

After Losing Leverage, NFL Owners Might Be Forced to Punt for 04/29/2011

Fri, 29 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

By Tim Sullivan

In a decision with profound implications for the future of professional football as we know it, Cleveland running back Peyton Hillis has prevailed in the popular vote to determine the cover art of Madden NFL 12.

Video football is as alive and well as high-def computer graphics can simulate, even as the real thing founders in lockout limbo. Similarly, the NFL draft ...

Updated: Fri Apr 29, 2011

Adrian's Gonzo Contract Exhibit A in Baseball Inequality for 04/22/2011

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

By Tim Sullivan

Adrian Gonzalez may be slow, but there is poetry in his motion. His baseball swing qualifies as a thing of beauty, appraised at $154 million by the Boston Red Sox.

The seven-year contract extension signed by San Diego's expatriate first baseman exceeds the highest price ever paid at auction for a work of art. It is worth more than the priciest of Picassos, more tha ...

Updated: Fri Apr 22, 2011

Sports Scandals New to the University of San Diego, but Not Nationally for 04/15/2011

Fri, 15 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

By Nick Canepa

Cheating has been a staple longer than unleavened bread at Seder. Safe to say it's been going on in sports for 4,000 years, probably when 10 prehistoric European men tossed rocks into pterodactyl nests and one of them took a bribe. Sports long have been vulnerable, because people good and bad gamble on games. Particularly susceptible have been the colleges, where so many ...

Updated: Fri Apr 15, 2011

Lincecum Throws Fastball By Game's Conventional Wisdom for 04/08/2011

Fri, 08 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

By Tim Sullivan

Bruce Bochy's first impression of Tim Lincecum was bewilderment.

Here was this shaggy-haired kid with the build of a skeleton, so slight that he might blow away in a mild breeze, as peculiar to a baseball clubhouse as a string quartet.

When the manager of the San Francisco Giants first beheld the club's scrawny pitching prodigy in spring 2007, his reflexive ...

Updated: Fri Apr 08, 2011

Royalty's Majesty Usurped by Mid-majors in Final Four for 04/01/2011

Fri, 01 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

By Nick Canepa

The sheet covering the bed of the NCAA Basketball Tournament's bracket has been ripped and torn. Used to be you could bounce a nickel off of it. There would be a few wrinkles along the way, creases formed by Cinderellas, but for the most part it was pretty well made, with hospital corners.

And rarely was the Final Four turned inside-out. It is now. And who knows? Th ...

Updated: Fri Apr 01, 2011

With a Friend Like His Trainer Anderson, Bonds Doesn't Need Any Others for 03/25/2011

Fri, 25 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

By Tim Sullivan

We are asked to believe the unbelievable, that Barry Bonds' friendship could be worth multiple trips to jail.

We are asked to believe Greg Anderson has held his tongue with no inducement except loyalty; that he has refused to cooperate with the perjury prosecution of baseball's home run champion without hesitation or remuneration; that he has already spent more t ...

Updated: Fri Mar 25, 2011

NFL Players, Owners Prove It's Not a Game -- It's a Business for 03/18/2011

Fri, 18 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

By Tim Sullivan

Sure, I'd like to see Dean Spanos' books. I'd like to know exactly how many relatives he has placed on the Chargers' payroll, and at what price.

I'd like to know what he spends on shoulder pads and laundry detergent and medical professionals, particularly on the eminent Spin Doctor, Mark Fabiani. I'd like to know how much interest the Chargers make off of your seas ...

Updated: Fri Mar 18, 2011

Buckeye's Coach Sure Blew a Mighty Big Call for 03/11/2011

Fri, 11 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0800

By Tim Sullivan

Jim Tressel is smarter than this. He has to be. The head football coach of The Ohio State University has to know that concealing evidence of NCAA infractions can be more serious than committing them, maybe almost as serious as losing to Michigan.

He has to know that it can't end here.

He has to know that anyone capable of slicing through all of the Buckey ...

Updated: Fri Mar 11, 2011

Possible NFL Lockout Could Splatter 'Golden Egg' for 03/04/2011

Fri, 04 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0800

"I fear we've killed the goose that lays the golden egg." — Gene Klein

It was 1982, my first season covering the Chargers full time. Just my luck, it was a strike year. I knew as much about labor law as I knew about motherhood. The NFL was spewing propaganda like Joseph Goebbels, and the players were clams with tetanus. It was tough, totally one-sided. Frustrating.

Updated: Fri Mar 04, 2011

For All His Flaws, Kobe Always Plays as If the Game Matters for 02/25/2011

Fri, 25 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

By Tim Sullivan

LOS ANGELES — Here's something you don't see every day: a backcourt violation charged to a player who had penetrated all of the way to the opponent's baseline.

But the NBA All-Star Game is not much like other games, and oddity tends to be the order of the day. When Deron Williams stole the ball from Rajon Rondo late in the first quarter of Sunday's spectacle ...

Updated: Fri Feb 25, 2011

Aztecs' Fisher Brings Sanity to March Madness for 02/18/2011

Fri, 18 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

By Nick Canepa

San Diego State's men have been playing basketball since 1921. They never have won an NCAA Tournament game. Their coach, Steve Fisher, has. He knows the drill. He knows the layout. He knows what it takes to survive the grind. He knows the difference, because there is one.

It's just that his success came at Michigan, where he took over the Wolverines to the 1990 Tour ...

Updated: Fri Feb 18, 2011

'Super' Memories From Iceopolis, Gougetown and Snafuville for 02/11/2011

Fri, 11 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

By Nick Canepa

DALLAS — Remembrances of the first North Texas Super Bowl Week (which, unfortunately, after drawing 103,000 for the game, will be back once the greedy NFL owners get a load of those $$$$$$):

THE ICE STORM

It hit early in the week, and the area never really recovered. Dallas basically was paralyzed. Cities in the southern United States ...

Updated: Fri Feb 11, 2011