Next Time You Have 7 Digits of Disposable Income...

You might want to consider this purchase available at www.neimanmarcus.com.

Thanks to Jason Sobel of ESPN.com I now know that next time I have 7 digits to spend on something just for me, to say nothing of a yard big enough in which to build it, I can have Jack Nicklaus personally design a 3-hole practice course in my backyard. After designing it and supervising its construction, the Bear himself will even play a quick round with me.

Some of us can only dream the dream, I guess.

For those of us with a bit less to spend this Christmas, here's a nifty gift coming it at under 30 bucks. Apparently, it's real.

Miscellaneous Golf Thoughts and the Ryder Cup

I was chatting with my buddy Bitner earlier this morning and we were getting to talking about the Ryder Cup before we were both rudely interrupted with actual responsibilities to attend to, it being the middle of a work day and all. I hadn't hit on golf yet, so I thought I'd take a moment to give my thoughts on the Ryder Cup and on golf generally. For some good preview reads on the tournament, check out ESPN Rick Reilly's article (here) and Jeff Bradley's comparison of the two teams' approaches to the tourney (here).

Patriotic-type events are always fun. It's probably the biggest reason we like the Olympics, even when we have no interest in gymnastics any other time of year. (Thank goodness for reality TV's ability to provide subjectively-judged inane competitions--otherwise what would we do?) American athletes generally with American golfers as no exception typically are among the top in the world. Nonetheless, in the Ryder Cup, the American team is winless since 1999 in this biennial event against the European team. (As a note, if you believe in karma, the 1999 American team provided a pretty poor display of sportsmanship after that victory.)

U.S. Ryder Cup Team courtesy ESPN.com

The big story is that Tiger's not going to be participating, though his record in the Ryder Cup is surprisingly dismal. It's definitely not what you'd think from THE Tiger Woods. So, with the American team as quite an underdog, the consensus is that even if Tiger were there, the European team trumps the Americans in chemistry year after year after year, and that translates to a far superior performance in this team-oriented tournament.

Bradley's article spends a good time dealing with that, and he points out that while the Europeans grow up playing team-oriented golf, the Americans grow up as favored sons trained in a more individual mindset. On the Euro tour, it's apparently not uncommon for all the players to end up at the same hotels, eating at the same restaurants, and drinking at the same bars, it's more common on the American tour for players to charter private jets and travel with their own family entourage of family, nannies, etc. and stay at any number of hotels.

I think that's just sad.

Not that I'm expressing any pity for the uber-wealthy PGA tour golfers, but I think it's a shame that the professional golf experience is so disconnected from the average-joe golf experience. I think that in pickup basketball or beer league softball, there is some relationship between what the professionals enjoy about their sport and the amateurs enjoy about their sport, regardless of the disparity in talent and compensation.

Now, one of the things I enjoy most about golf is that it's the ultimate competition of self against self. Few of us are good enough to provide real competition against each other, and while golf is easily the greatest sport around for reconciling divergent skill levels to provide genuine competition via the handicap system, most of us concede that the occasional friendly bet is about all the competition we really can handle. For the most part, you play against yourself. You play against your last round or your best round, or even your last best shot.

That being said, the reason that most of us stick with golf despite how poorly we play is the camaraderie. Most of our rounds look a lot more like this...

3 European Team Players courtesy ESPN.com

...than like this:

2 American Team players courtesy ESPN.com

In the end, the poor American team performance is embarrassingly bad any way you look at it. It'd be bad enough if they just lost. It's worse that they lose and have that loss explained by a selfish, spoiled, "I'll-find-a-way-to-put-an-I-in-team" mentality that reflects the worst of American stereotypes. Some American players lately have even complained that, since it's not a paid event, they feel like "slaves" for a week. Never mind that they're wined and dined for the whole week, get the opportunity to be ambassadors for and representatives of our country, and play some of the most competitive golf available. That sure sounds like slavery!

I hope that this year's different. There are some good young players on the American team this go-around. The tournament's at a great course, the weather's supposed to be good, and the whole setup should favor the American strength of driving distance and putting. Best of luck, boys! Try not to embarrass us too badly.

Sports Weekend Wrap and Other Thoughts

May I just say that it's a welcome thing to say hello to the football season? ESPN's Mike Greenburg made the comment that he's pretty certain football season exists when it does to ease the grief of a departing summer. This California boy is struggling to adapt even after 10 years of having actual seasons, and fall appears to have made an early arrival in Colorado. Certainly, I can agree with Greenie's point as I couldn't be happier for football season.

BYU's Cougars overcame an obstacle by logging their first big-game road win in a long time, but it ended with something of an anticlimax. Even after out-performing the Huskies in basically every relevant category, UW's guts and grit (hello, sports cliches!) gave BYU everything it could handle. UW's Jake Locker ended up driving the length of the field to score the potentially game-tying touchdown, and was so happy to do so that he got up from scoring and threw the ball high in the air as he sought out his teammates to celebrate. This was good enough to earn him a 15 yard penalty for unsportsmanlike celebration, which contributed to BYU's defense blocking the PAT and winning the game.

Did BYU deserve to win? Probably. Did the referees call the penalty according to the rules? Yes. The rules explicitly prohibit throwing the ball in the air the way Locker did and the zebras called it accordingly. Should the game have ended that way? Probably not. Look, as a BYU fan, I'm happy enough for the win, but I hate to see it tainted like that. It's sad that the rule exists in such a way as to rob the referees from being able to make a judgment call. Some rules unfairly force the referees to make such a judgment, but in this instance I wish they'd had more discretion. The kid was so stoked to have made a tremendous play. He didn't taunt. He wasn't staring down BYU's defense. He celebrated with his teammates. He seems like a class act. He's a team leader and his actions led to his team losing.

I'll grant that there was still one more play and his PAT unit let them down equally. I'll also point out that I dislike blaming officiating for anything. My limited high school football experience provided coaching that taught us that officiating is part of the game, and if you lose because of a close call you shouldn't have put yourself in a position that one call could make a difference, so suck it up. When it's all said and done, go Cougs, but sorry it had to end that way.

In other football news, I'm having a sports ethical quandary. I'm finding myself smugly satisfied that Tom Brady's out for the season with a knee injury. I recognize how truly evil that is of me. So evil that it must be pronounced "ee-ville; like the froo-its of the de-ville." I just can't help it. I've always hated Tom Brady. I was a Bledsoe supporter. I thought it was royally unfair that Bledsoe lost his job to injury just as he finally had the talent around him to hide his flaws. I hate the Patriots. They are the Yankees. They are a class unto themselves. They contribute to everything I've always hated about Boston sports. I'm using the word hate. And I admit that it's fully rooted in the jealousy that every man feels for good-looking pro athletes. He's too much of a pretty boy and gets too much hype for me to be my hero. Sports heroes need to be chippy, scrappy types, and he's just too good. There. I said it. I'm happy he's hurt. My buddy Bitner says I'm now more evil than anyone who's ever rooted for Barry Bonds, Randy Moss, or TO. That hurts, but I think I can live with it.

To change sports, yes, I shamelessly root for Manny Ramirez now. I hated him when he was part of the rising evil empire that is the Boston Red Sox, I thought it was ridiculous that he shoved a middle-aged traveling secretary to the ground for not being able to respond to an unreasonable request, but now that he's sporting my Dodger blue and going the opposite field against one of the best arms in the National League (not saying much, I know), I'll root for him.

On a note completely unrelated to sports, I'm having the worst time trying to get motivated this semester. During the summer I had the opportunity to work at a great law firm, and now that I've tasted the workplace, school has lost its luster. I just can't get into it. It's shameful how little I feel that my classes are preparing me for legal work when I learn so much more through the work I do at the firm. I'll save my rant for how professional school is just a barrier to entry for another day, but I'm feeling it now. At least there's football to look forward to this weekend.

Prediction for BYU v. UCLA on Saturday: Cougs win 35-26

Just for fun...

As a baseball fan, sometimes it's a matter of pride to also be a Dodger fan. This piece of nostalgia just about made me throw up in my mouth. But, it was all in good fun. Enjoy!

You Know It's Time for the Season to Start When...

You know it's time for football season to start already when this is the kind of story being reported:

http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-usc14-2008aug14,0,2415417.story

Headlined, "Trojans have a little problem," here's an excerpt:

Each day, it seems, another player shows up at USC football practice with a pained expression and an uncomfortable gait, feet spread wide, stepping gingerly across the turf.

They are victims of an ailment that has swept through the team during training camp, something that coaches refer to as "a skin irritation."

The players call it "jock itch."While dislocated kneecaps and high ankle sprains draw more attention, Coach Pete Carroll said he has never seen anything like the minor outbreak that caused key players to miss practice Wednesday.

As much as 25% of the team has been affected by the apparent run of tinea cruris, kicker David Buehler estimated. The condition seems to have spread by way of new compression shorts, or tights, worn under their football pants.

Tailback Joe McKnight and receiver Travon Patterson were sufficiently afflicted to spend Wednesday's practice on the sideline.

"It burns," Patterson said.

Yes it does, Travon. Yes, it does.

Now can we get started with the season already!?

Title IX and other issues

My buddy Bitner posted an intersting food for thought about Title IX's impact on the academic athletic environment. I thought he handled it pretty tastefully. It's hard to be a guy and comment on such issues without coming off as a misogynist, but he handled it well. The upshot of his question was whether the aims of Title IX have been met in a way that does justice to all parties. Here's his post:

http://bitnersthoughts.blogspot.com/2008/08/gender-equality.html

I initially was going to comment, but it mutated into an essay that I put out now for your feedback.

It's always a tough call to determine at what point the cure has become more damaging than the disease. I think you'll find a lot of similar rhetoric with discussions of Affirmative Action generally.

As I read Bitner's thoughts I do sympathize with low-revenue sports who've lost their status with some universities due to Title IX. I can't for the life of me, however, figure out how you'd be able to sustain the needed level of women's athletics to provide the types of opportunities that Title IX shoots for without making cuts somewhere.

An interesting analysis might be whether the proliferation of women's athletics that Title IX enabled has in any way diluted the talent level within women's athletics generally. I'm not even sure how you'd quantify that, but maybe the increased availability of scholarships and the like has in some way had that effect much like expansion has diluted the NBA and MLB.

If that where the case, then maybe there could be justification for scaling back Title IX's administration. In defense of academic athletics generally, the theoretical justification has traditionally been that the development of the human body is an aim of a true university no less than the development of "academic" pursuits. Whenever universities feel that any program is no longer perfoming at a level consistent with their institutional aims, they don't hesitate to scale back funding and resources for those programs or eliminate them entirely, no matter what level of dismay that creates amongst that program's supporters.

You hate to reduce it to a purely economic analysis, and I think most people would argue that certain public policy goals can properly fly in the face of economic reasoning when those aims are important enough for society to pay for. Liberals in particular rely on this rhetoric all the time even while conservatives argue the opposite.

I, too, am curious about what your thoughts and Bitner's readers come up with.

Olympic Thoughts

My buddy Bitner recently posted a very strong commentary on sports v. athletic events. (Check it out at http://bitnersthoughts.blogspot.com/2008/08/sport-or-athletic-event.html) The short version is that if it's a competition whose winner is determined by judges, it's not a sport. If it's a competition determined by goals scored or the best time, then it's a sport. Pretty good breakdown, though NASCAR and to a lesser extent horse racing will always be up for debate.

To take the conversation on Olympic events in a slightly different direction, I'm pretty sure that I'm the only person in America who can't stand Olympic television coverage. I hate that we're so saturated with coverage of gymnastics in the summer and figure skating in the winter. I'm obviously in the minority since if the ratings weren't there, the networks wouldn't cover them. Then again, I'm not so crazy about reality TV in general and American Idol in particular, so I'm obviously in the minority on a lot of things TV.

For all of the reasons Bitner mentioned about how politically charged, subjective, and just generally unsatisfying the process of winning and losing is in those types of events, I don't enjoy watching them. Now, I'm not saying that we should cut to live coverage of the entire marathon event. But you can't tell me that watching someone hurl themselves over a 20 foot standard using a flimsy fiberglass pole isn't cool to see. Or that there's something oddly fascinating about Olympic-level table tennis. And who ever gets to see fencing?

I mentioned it with the pole vault, but I think that Track and Field generally is sorely underrated viewing. The very motto of the Olympics, "Citius, Altius, Fortius," is arguably best manifested in the Track and Field events and embodies some of the traits that Americans most look to in their heroes, particularly their athletic ones. We're all about "faster, higher, stronger," in America. It's what helped us cover our eyes from the steroid era in sports for so long.

That there is room in the Games for gymnastics, figure skating, diving, or what have you is not what the point I'm trying to make. There is. They are athletes performing at the highest level and why not let them? Besides, what would our lives be like if we hadn't all experienced the gut-busting unintentional comedy of hearing Michael Hamm talk for the first time in the 2004 games and sound exactly like Kerri Strug?

I just can't figure out why we're not equally interested in athletes (pure athletes, mind you, since the traditional name for Track and Field is "Athleticism) competing in other events, especially when those events are so cool.

For drama, you can't beat a 4 x 400m relay. For freakish all-around athleticism you can't beat the decathlon. And for strength, you can't beat the hammer throw (I mean come on, the guy spins around while swinging a 15 lb. bowling ball attached to a steel chain over his head and hucks it as far as he can!). What's more, though, you have the history of the games wrapped up in these events. I for one would like to see more of them, and if that means that I don't get to see quite as many gymnasts or divers, so be it.

What if Soccer ruled?

In these, the dog days of summer, one cannot help but be sick of Brett Favre stories. As a sports fan, this is easily the worst time of year. Football's still a ways off (though there's that early training camp excitement starting to make my spine tingle), the MLB All-Star break came and went with as little fanfare as usual, the NBA's long gone, and not even the impending Olympics can fully save us. I'm fairly addicted to mainstream sports media, and even the inane chatter that they normally produce to my delight is no relief since most of the best personalities take vacations and give way to the folks who usually are relegated to the coveted "Sundays from midnight to 6:00 a.m." spot. It's terrible.



One random blip of excitement amidst the dreariness came with Euro 2008. Mostly--I think-- because ESPN's parent company now co-owns a soccer team, but this typically obscure-in-America sporting event got some buzz and some pub. I've thought about this before, and it made me wonder what our sports scene would be like if there were no Big 3 sports in America (Football, Baseball, and Basketball)? How would that affect the United States' current laughable status on the international soccer scene?



There are some who'd tell you that we're only a few years away from a real breakthrough in the United States' level of soccer play. There are some who'd tell you that we only need wait for the thousands and thousands of children and teenagers who grew up loving soccer to grow up and take their place among the world's elite. Then, maybe then, the United States will become a contender.



Well, as much as I can appreciate the sheer athleticism and skill of soccer players (especially since I'm no good at it) and can admire their fitness level, I'm just not seeing it. For one thing, Lacrosse is making some real headway into becoming the next "sport that nobody pays attention but would love it if they'd get off of football's high horse and just watch it for a while," and as such is eating a bit into that same niche of young soccer players.



But the main problem is just that there's no room. Unless they could cram a full-blown soccer season into the space between the end of the NBA and the start of the NFL, there's just no room in our attention spans, no market space, and so little incentive for the best athletes in the United States (the ones with the level of talent to go pro and make a TON of money) to play soccer over any of the Big 3 sports.



But what if they did? What if, in an alternate universe, there was no NFL, no MLB, and no NBA? What if we had the opportunity to stick it to the rest of the world who mocks our status on the stage of the world's most popular sport? What would our starting 11 look like if the best athletes of the Big 3 (probably MLB excluded because, as 2-time All Star, career .300 batting average star John Kruk said, "I'm not an athlete. I'm a professional baseball player.") played soccer their whole lives? Let's take a look at that roster (I'll list more than 11, but there's enough depth for several rosters):



Goal keeper: I'm thinking any elite NBA small forward to power forward (or even center) could do nicely. How 'bout Kevin Garnett? 6'-11", insanely long wingspan and great quickness for a dude that big. The rebounding skills and ability to guard small should translate nicely to keeper.



Fullbacks: Quick linebackers, running backs, and maybe small forwards would dominate, or maybe even NFL fullbacks. Think Urlacher, Merriman (Remember those sick contorted-body picks last year? Imagine him getting corner kicks out of the way), maybe Artest, LDT, and Ray Lewis in some combination.



Midfielders: Some mix of NBA point guards and defensive backs would be ideal. Imagine Deron Williams, CP3, Asante Samuel, and Rodney Harrison.



Forwards: NBA two guards and wide receivers for height, speed, and quickness. Think Kobe, Dwayne Wade, Terrel Owens, and Chad Johnson. Average height is about 6' 3" with that.



I look at a breakdown like that, and I think two things. One, it would be fun to think about. But mostly, I just can't wait for football season. Did I just write that much about soccer? Yikes. Thank heaven for football training camp. Came not a moment too soon.