Recently
Basketball on Aircraft Carrier Offers Different Kind of Flight
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 …Read more.
Realignment? MLB Has So Much More to Work On
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, …Read more.
Draft History Indicates Padres Picks in Trouble
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, …Read more.
Sweetening Scholarships Won't Affect Big Divide
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 …Read more.
more articles
|
Flu Puts Soccer Out Of Reach for Fans in MexicoThey call soccer the opiate of the masses, a necessary diversion from the perils and pessimism of everyday life, the great escape. Which makes the current outbreak of swine flu — "influenza porcina" in Spanish — all the more depressing for Mexico. It has infected thousands and likely killed hundreds. It has paralyzed the world's second-largest metropolitan area. It has closed schools until May 6. It has decimated the tourist industry. And now it has reached its nefarious tentacles into futbol, the most sacred of pastimes in a nation of 109 million, the one place people could, for a few hours at least, abandon their fears and frustrations. Officials from Mexico's soccer federation, the FMF, made the grim announcement Tuesday: Fans can't attend games this weekend. Three games in Mexico's 18-team premier league were played behind puerta cerrada, or closed doors, last weekend, two in Mexico City and one in Pachuca. Now all nine games this week — one today, six Saturday, two Sunday – will be. Mexico City club Cruz Azul was supposed to host Atlante on Wednesday in the finals of the CONCACAF Champions League, the region's annual club championship. That game has been postponed until May 12. The CONCACAF Beach Soccer Championships scheduled to open Wednesday in Puerto Vallarta? Postponed indefinitely. On Monday, the remainder of the CONCACAF region's Under-17 championships at Tijuana's Estadio Caliente was scrapped. Semis were supposed to be Wednesday and an expected U.S.-Mexico final Saturday. On Sunday afternoon, Tijuana's second division club reclaims Estadio Caliente for its final regular-season game. That will go on as planned at 1 p.m. ... without fans. They'll have to settle for watching it live on the Internet on the club's Web site (www.xolos.com.mx) or on delayed television. The playoffs for promotion to Mexico's premier league begin May 10, also at home. The fate of that game will be decided late next week. “Yes, it affects us,” Mario Trejo, the sporting director for Mexico City club Pumas, told Mexican TV. “But it is more important to prevent the spread of the disease ...
Record newspaper estimated that the nine games this weekend in Mexico's top league would draw a combined 182,000 and generate $1.7 million in ticket revenue. Add in parking and concessions, and the figure swells to $3.5 million. The other consideration is teams, in the thick of the race for playoff spots, having to play in empty stadiums and not having their usual home-field advantage. On Sunday, Club America hosted UAG Tecos before 105,000 vacant seats in Mexico City's Estadio Azteca and lost 2-1, essentially extinguishing its postseason aspirations and igniting Tecos'. The natural solution would be to suspend the entire week's games and simply resume when the national health emergency is lifted. That way clubs wouldn't absorb millions of pesos in lost revenue, and fans could bask in the spring sunshine, drink cerveza and watch their beloved club battle on the field below. “To suspend the league,” FMF General Secretary Decio de Maria said, “would be very complicated.” This is Week 16 of the 17-week Clausura season. The regular season concludes May 9 and 10, followed by three rounds of playoffs where teams play twice a week. That takes them through the end of May. World Cup qualifying, so crucial to Mexico given its poor start and recent coaching change, resumes June 6. There is another qualifier June 10. Pushing back the league season a week or two would mean new national coach Javier Aguirre would be in the unenviable position of yanking players from clubs during the league semifinals or finals. And canceling games altogether would mean massive losses for the TV networks that are the lifeblood of federation (translation: It ain't going to happen). So puerta cerrada it is. The crisis has even reached England. Mexican star Carlos Vela plays for Arsenal. Vela wasn't at practice Monday, and reporters asked coach Arsene Wenger why. Wenger explained that Vela had some friends from Mexico visit him recently, and the midfielder was told to stay home from practice — a de facto quarantine — until team officials could be certain he wasn't infected with influenza porcina. Vela received clearance Tuesday and wason the roster for Wednesday's game, a ray of hope in an ever-darkening storm. Mark Zeigler writes about soccer for The San Diego Union-Tribune. Contact him at mark.zeigler@uniontrib.com. COPYRIGHT 2009 THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE.
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
