we:Freshmen

First of all,  sincere apologies for the lack of posts so far in 2010.  There are a lot of sports updates we need to get to and I will try my best to get to as many as I can.  First of all, the biggest event of 2010 in sports occurred from June 11 to July 11 in South Africa.  The World Cup, which is for many people, the world’s most anticipated sporting event, was a fun and entertaining one to watch.  This was the first world cup on the continent of Africa.  This world cup had America’s attention unlike any other in history.  The United States was able to advance out of their group, unfortunately losing in the round of 16.  There were many quality matches and surprises, which ultimately led to Spain’s first ever world cup championship.  Hopefully the attention brought to this year’s world cup will remain high for the next world cup in 2014 in Brazil.

The NBA began the most anticipated free agency period ever on July 1.  It has led to major moves such as Amare to the Knicks.  None of the moves matched the power of Lebron James and Chris Bosh joining up with Dwyane Wade to Miami.  This will undoubtedly become one of the powers in the Eastern Conference.  There are a lot of people who have been down on these three players playing on the same team, saying it takes away from competition and could lead to having three or four power teams and a bunch of others.  In my opinion, the league was already 5 power teams and then everyone else.  These three took less money to create the best chance to win now.  It is important for us as sports fans to understand that sports evolve and change over time.  The money is bigger than it ever has been, some of these star players have been doing it almost exclusively by themselves, which has never been a formula for success and they were all in markets that were difficult for them to become as successful as they each wanted to be.  Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley said recently that they wouldn’t have called up other stars to play with them during their careers.  First of all, when it comes to Sir Charles, I wouldn’t want to take too much advice from him on becoming a champion.  It was relatively easy for MJ to stay where he was because of the fact that he was in Chicago and the bulls management made the proper moves for him to be able to win for a long time.  It will be interesting to see how these moves work out.

The British Open had its positives and negatives with Louis Oosthuizen winning.  Yes, that means Tiger hasn’t won a major at all this year and had an opportunity to play at two of his favorite courses in Pebble and St. Andrews.  Tiger now hasn’t won a major in 9 consecutive tries.  That is pretty long right? Jack Nicklaus, the man Tiger is chasing had a streak of 12 during his prime and toward the end of his career, he went 20 majors in a row without winning.  It has been interesting to watch due to Tiger’s mental approach to the game and the fact that there are a lot of up and coming talented players like Rory McIlroy and Ryo Ishikawa among others who are making Tiger play his best and even that might not be good enough anymore.

Finally, the death of an icon.  George Steinbrenner has a lot of positives and a lot of negatives.  It is difficult for anyone to say that his impact on the Yankees and on baseball wasn’t a major one.  “The Boss” made the biggest early impacts on Free Agency getting Catfish Hunter and Reggie Jackson among the first years of Free Agency.  During a time when baseball was just a past time and talked about among the few, George turned the game into something far more competitive.  He felt, if he was going to be involved by owning a team, he was going to do it his way and want to be the best at what he was doing.  Because of Mr. Steinbrenner, sports reporters now pay attention to what owners say.  He might not get into the hall of fame.  It is difficult to decide which owners or contributers deserve to be in and which do not.  It is especially difficult for him because he did have a period in the 80s when his teams were mediocre, he made a ton of bad decisions AND he paid a private investigator to spy on one of his own players.  I’m not saying he doesn’t deserve to be in or does,  all I’m saying is that it is difficult.

These were the major events in sports so far this summer.  There are others such as Jamarcus Russell and his incident with syrup, the Florida Gators investigation, Reggie Bush and Mike Garrett, John Wall and Demarcus Cousins, Marvin Harrison, the low ratings for the All Star Game in baseball, the 17 year contract in hockey, the Lakers winning the NBA Finals, Blackhawks winning the NHL Stanley Cup, Lance doing another Tour De France, Serena and Nadal winning more grand slams.  We must make sure we keep everyone up to date and hopefully start up some conversations among sports minds.  There will be more to talk about over the next couple of weeks with Alex Rodriguez approaching 600 home runs, Tiger attempting to win the PGA, NFL camps starting, USA Basketball Camps beginning, MLB trade deadline approaching and any other random stories that happen in the fun loving world of sports.  Let the games begin.

Retiring numbers league wide in professional sports has only occurred for two players in all of the major sports in America.  Wayne Gretzky’s #99 was retired league wide.  He is recognized as the greatest hockey player who has ever played by many.  Nobody in the sport had ever worn the number before Gretzky and nobody has worn it after him.  It is a special number and for hockey, they felt the number deserved to be retired.  The only other number that is retired league wide has been Jackie Robinson’s #42 in Major League Baseball.  Robinson as we know was a pioneer not only for the sport of baseball and integration in the sport but was a very important figure in the civil rights movement in this country.  Robinson might not be recognized as the greatest to play the sport but his impact on the game and on the country at the time couldn’t be matched by any other athlete in any sport.  Lebron James feels the number 23 should be retired by the National Basketball Association to honor Michael Jordan.  Many fans who have watched basketball in he 70s, 80s, 90s and 2000s can agree that Michael Jordan is the best player that we have seen.  His numbers, MVPs, Championships all point to being the greatest player of all time.  Michael Jordan was the greatest of his era and made a huge impact on the game internationally.  “Everybody wants to be like Mike.”  Lebron wore the number 23 in the first place in honor of his airness.  Many players in all levels of basketball have worn the number 23 to honor MJ.  Lebron is planning on changing his number to 6 because he feels that nobody should ever be able to wear the number 23 again.  This sounds like a great idea and a respectful thing to do to one of the games greats.  Knowing how intelligent Lebron is, he definitely knows that Bill Russell wore the number 6 during his career.  Bill Russell is known as the greatest winner in professional team sports history winning 11 championship titles.  Bill Russell was also the first African-American professional head basketball coach.  Looking at the numbers and championships, one could make the argument that Bill Russell was actually the greatest player in NBA history.  I know that Bill Russell doesn’t mind the change and understands that today’s generation of players makes decisions different than how they did back in the 50s and 60s.

What I am trying to say is this.  I understand that we in today’s generation believe that we have seen the greatest player to play in NBA history.  We have to understand how important retiring one players jersey league wide is.  In my opinion, it isn’t to honor how great a player is for the period he played the game.  Retiring a players number for an entire league says that this player not only was a hard worker, great player on and off the field, makes an impact today even though he or she is no longer playing, but also made a major impact on society and continues to do that as well.  Trust me, I understand how great Michael is and that he had an impact on the game internationally, but there are great players in every generation.  Who are we today to say that the number should be retired league wide instead of Bird or Magic, Russell or Chamberlain, Shaq or Kobe.  The list will continue to go on with tremendously talented players.  I believe it is unfair to say that one player during his era is so much greater than every other player from every other era that his number should be retired.  I hope that David Stern doesn’t decide to retire MJ’s number, and I even hope that MJ himself comes out and says that he doesn’t feel it would be right to have his number retired.

As you can see, wefreshmen have taken a break over the last couple of months from the blog world.  There has been a lot of things going on in the world of sports, entertainment and politics.  One of, if not the most important event over this time happened today.  Tiger Woods made an apology and statement this morning for his actions.  As we all have read and heard, Tiger had some difficulties with extra marital affairs.  Tiger is the most popular athlete in the world and has more of an impact on his sport than any other athlete.  Many people felt they deserved an apology.  I don’t necessarily understand why.  Tiger violated the trust of his wife and his family.  I don’t feel it should be his responsibility to apologize to any of us.  As a golf and Tiger fan, I hope this gets him back onto the golf course again soon.

Mayweather vs Marquez September 19, 2009

Saturday, September 19, 2009 in Las Vegas, the undefeated Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Juan Manuel Marquez are going to go at it.  Horse Racing, Baseball and Boxing were at one point in the 20th century the most popular sports in the United States.  Each sport over the last several decades has fallen further and further away from the top.  

Similar to the newspaper, boxing has become an “old school” way of fighting.  I am not what you’d call a die hard boxing fan but I do enjoy the history of the sport and different technique of the form of fighting.  Boxing has made many wrong decisions over the years.  Lets look at how they developed boxers back in the 1950s and 60s.  Cassius Clay grew up in the sport became the gold medalist in the 1960 Olympics in Rome and went on from there.  He was able to have a long and brilliant career and recognized by the world for a long period of time.  Now a days, fighters don’t even get recognized as serious until they have been around and dominated for 20 or so fights.  The amount of money involved in these fights ($10 mill for Mayweather $3.2 mill for Marquez) guaranteed “forces” boxing administrators to select the right fighters.  They are probably too afraid to take a chance on a young up and coming fighter and risk being wrong.  There are entire groups of sports fans, especially older sports fans who are sick and tired of seeing rookies or young athletes make such large amounts of money stating, “They don’t deserve that kind of money before they have played a single play in the professional ranks.”  I think that is a fair way to look at it but sports unlike some other businesses are about taking risks to get ahead of the competition.  Boxing refuses to take chances on young fighters and this has hurt them over the years.

HBO and Showtime has taken boxing down as well.  These two pay per view channels dominate every aspect of the fight and even prevent highlights from being shown.  HBO and Showtime really needs to rethink this.  We can all watch Sportscenter and watch the highlights from UFC fights, which has helped promote the sport as well.  The money in these major fights is interesting also.  When one looks at how the money is distributed it is really ridiculous.  Boxers make about 10 to 15 times as much money as the top of the line MMA fighters and the pay per view costs are about the same.  Looking at both sports’ money situations from a distance it seems like boxing is extremely greedy in many aspects and MMA is just excited to be a growing and developing sport.

This is a time of a young generation.  Sports fans are interested in a young up and coming star in sports.  We enjoy following the stories of a great young athlete who comes up and becomes great as he develops.  We enjoy stories like Kobe, Jeter, and Tiger, all athletes who we have watched grow and develop as stars.  Slowly but surely, we are seeing MMA take over the fighting genre.  MMA has been marketing to young people, has been all over the internet and is shown in college bars all over the country.  The rules aren’t nearly as confusing, it is not difficult to understand … Person A beats down Person B and basically the last man standing wins.  

UFC 103 goes against the Mayweather vs Marquez fight tomorrow and I am really anxious to see what the final pay per view numbers are.  Most of our readers are young or young at heart, but I’d like to know what you guys think.  Is boxing done?  Is MMA the new boxing here ready to take over or just another fad sport like Arena Football and others?  If you are picking this weekend which one will you watch and why?  It seems like it takes a major fight with two major personalities to make boxing relevant, while MMA can have two anybodies and make it an interesting story and fight.  I hope both fights are as advertised and great match ups.  Enjoy both fights my freshmen.