I love Hockey.
It is my second favorite sport to watch. I know, it makes no sense, and maybe I would like watching the intensity of playoff baseball, but when the Pirates get there.....well that's just never happening.
But growing up with Lemieux and Jagar, then Kovalev, my dad just raised me on his beloved Pittsburgh Penguins. My first language class was Spanish, and when it came time to choose your new 'Spanish' name, I took Mario, after Mario Lemieux.
OK, Mario in that case is French, but I was in second grade, and It was the first sports biography I ever read. It was awesome, Hockey had the hitting of football, but without the sitting around parts, constant back and forth movement, and easy to understand scoring (for an elementary schooler). Just as the Penguins collapsed as a relevant team, the worst thing hit hockey (for its current act): the lockout.
To this day I still have friends from cities with better other sports teams that haven't seriously watched a hockey game since the lost 2004-05 season. Its a shame, albeit hockey has reignited a fan base now larger than pre-lockout proportions with amazing stars like Ovechkin, Stamkos, and of course, America's least favorite Canadian of all time, Pittsburgh's own Sidney Crosby.
The changes from the lockout made the sport even better than before. Its faster paced, more teams are relevant, parity is better in a league with so many playoff spots, and the fights are less frequent, but better timed. No longer do goons just try to start something at the end of the games, but, now a well timed fight in a playoff hockey game can start a comeback (two words for Flyers fans: Maxime Talbot, player who started a fight with the Pens down 3-0 which triggered a comeback to win the series).
Overall, with the new rule changes, why not hockey? Soccer gained a lot of well deserved publicity and growth in the American market, I respect the game a lot more than I did, for one. Hockey is a fun sport to watch, players can settle things on the ice, and there is more scoring than your typical soccer game. Plus, there is none of that rolling on the ground after getting hit crap like some soccer players embellish (Ronaldo).
I encourage anyone who can enjoy a good well played game in any sport, to check out the NHL this season, and appreciate something I have loved since childhood.
And if you are from Pittsburgh, you have no excuse come January. What are you going to do? Watch the non-existent basketball team? Hope the Pirates manage a winning season? Not happening. Get into Hockey, its worth it.
-W.T. Sherman
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Monday, November 29, 2010
First Post
At the urging of more than one person, I finally decided to put out my own blog. Mostly on sports, because that seems to take up too much of what I talk about in my free time, but occasionally on other things. Just a forewarning, some things that you could expect being referenced in about every report will be: any and all Pittsburgh teams, ultimate frisbee, and probably some obscure Greece/Archaeology reference. Pittsburgh holds my three favorite sports teams so expect to hear about them most directly, but I am starting off here with something way more national: college football.
As everyone who checks espn.com daily like me now knows, Texas Christian University (TCU) has decided to move to the Big East. It makes logical football sense, its a BCS bowl eligible conference year in and year out, if my favorite broncos at Boise State had won out they would have potentially kept TCU out of any BCS bowl, which would stink, and it eliminates the whole they-don't-play-in-a-real-conference-argument-they-don't-deserve-to-be-that-high-in-the-rankings argument (but only if you count the Big East as a legitimate football conference, which they really aren't, but that's another rant for me to start later). This all makes sense. One thing glaringly wrong with the decision is the distance. TCU is in, well Texas, and the Big East is not so close to Texas in terms of its sphere of influence. What's wrong with that? Well, let's say your a division I athlete, even in a sport other than football. This means all of your conference games/matches happen about a thousand miles away, leaving you far away from the classroom, missing days of class and time you could spend studying, even if you are someone who can study on a plane. I play ultimate frisbee, and I am away only on weekends, and even then, some people find it necessary to miss a tournament from time to time. While the people you find on a frisbee team are not the same people you would find on a Division I sports team, you mean to tell me that the some athlete on, say, the TCU women's basketball team, who could play somewhere around three to four games in the course of the week is now supposed to just miss class. That's eliminating the student out of student-athlete pretty quickly and its the wrong message to send an 18-22 year old boy or girl. The overemphasis on sports that bring money into a school in this case may have disastrous implications on how we handle college sports.
I expect several articles from such places as ESPN.com and other sources to start coming out in the next few days saying the same thing, and America in general should take a good look at itself before it thinks of how to deal with this kind of thing. (Best case scenario: BCS system gets eliminated for idiocy, but that is just too much to ask for). Hello sports world: this is wrong.
IM THE WHITE MAMBAAAAAA!
I will have a lighter topic next time, I promise
-Luke
As everyone who checks espn.com daily like me now knows, Texas Christian University (TCU) has decided to move to the Big East. It makes logical football sense, its a BCS bowl eligible conference year in and year out, if my favorite broncos at Boise State had won out they would have potentially kept TCU out of any BCS bowl, which would stink, and it eliminates the whole they-don't-play-in-a-real-conference-argument-they-don't-deserve-to-be-that-high-in-the-rankings argument (but only if you count the Big East as a legitimate football conference, which they really aren't, but that's another rant for me to start later). This all makes sense. One thing glaringly wrong with the decision is the distance. TCU is in, well Texas, and the Big East is not so close to Texas in terms of its sphere of influence. What's wrong with that? Well, let's say your a division I athlete, even in a sport other than football. This means all of your conference games/matches happen about a thousand miles away, leaving you far away from the classroom, missing days of class and time you could spend studying, even if you are someone who can study on a plane. I play ultimate frisbee, and I am away only on weekends, and even then, some people find it necessary to miss a tournament from time to time. While the people you find on a frisbee team are not the same people you would find on a Division I sports team, you mean to tell me that the some athlete on, say, the TCU women's basketball team, who could play somewhere around three to four games in the course of the week is now supposed to just miss class. That's eliminating the student out of student-athlete pretty quickly and its the wrong message to send an 18-22 year old boy or girl. The overemphasis on sports that bring money into a school in this case may have disastrous implications on how we handle college sports.
I expect several articles from such places as ESPN.com and other sources to start coming out in the next few days saying the same thing, and America in general should take a good look at itself before it thinks of how to deal with this kind of thing. (Best case scenario: BCS system gets eliminated for idiocy, but that is just too much to ask for). Hello sports world: this is wrong.
IM THE WHITE MAMBAAAAAA!
I will have a lighter topic next time, I promise
-Luke
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