If this isn’t what the end of a workweek feels like to you, uh, can I have your job?
For more celebratory NBA goodness, see Grantland’s Shootaround from yesterday, which also includes Jeremy Lin and James Harden combining their delightfulness to excellent effect.
Another hockey post? Yes. Another hockey post. And it just so happens that Mr. Crabb is also a Washington Capital. Deal with it. I haven’t actively been scouting hotties lately, and Crabb sorta fell in my lap since it feels like I’m at a Caps game every other night. But he’s kinda pretty, so enjoy!
My Friday was technically Wednesday this week – I am somewhere on the Gulf Coast as you read this, so no long post this Friday. However, it’s also the weekend of the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference – which means a bunch of ESPN and other sports world and personalities are out of the office as well. Which panel interests you most?
The discussion about firing coaches (with Stan VanGundy and Brian Burke!) cleverly titled “It’s Not You It’s Me”? The Lance Armstrong discussion (not with the actual Lance)? The surrealism of Mark Cuban and Nate Silver in the same room? Also, how long until ESPN starts streaming this on ESPN3?
http://www.youtube.com/embed/hYcm9xpnSpM
It appears that fans aren’t the only people missing baseball season. This parody, created by MLB, stars Miguel Cabrera and Adam Jones and features a whole slew of supporting MLB figures, including Jim Palmer, Buck Martinez and Luis Gonzalez.
The only thing that would make this better is if we find out that Miguel Cabrera was the one actually singing. Amazeballs.
No matter how I feel about the NHL, I can’t stay mad at this guy. (Source: Burnaby Beacon)
I’m sure there’s some sort of valid reason for this based on, I don’t know, a desire to keep the NHL “fresh” and “relevant”? On Tuesday reports surfaced of the proposed realignment for the league: a return to four divisions, seven or eight teams per division, new playoff format, same number of teams getting in (the top three teams in each division along with four wild cards.)
My reaction is mixed (never mind that I still haven’t watched a single NHL game this shortened season. No longer bitter, just uninterested.) I’m personally fine with the altered playoff format and the idea of a few wild card slots. The idea of four divisions, however, falls flat with me. What’s wrong with keeping it at six? I’m old enough to remember when the NHL was a four division league, but it was a much smaller league than it is today. How do you foster an effective division rivalry when your division is eight teams wide? Or does that even matter in the 2013 NHL?
This is still a proposal and subject to approval by the usual suspects. But what do you think? Does this realignment make sense to you?
Danica Patrick has been around, even in NASCAR driver form, for a while now, and if you are like me you’ve gotten used to rolling your eyes at whatever dumb thing the 13 year old boys who run Go Daddy’s marketing department are making her do now and moving on. So unless you’re a diehard NASCAR fan, you might have missed that this week Danica became the first female driver to ever capture the Daytona 500 pole.
Unless you are a NFL junkie (and I mean a serious, I-am-dvring-the-scouting-combine-footage-on-NFL-Network junkie), you may have also missed that next weekend Lauren Silberman will become the first woman to attend an NFL regional scouting combine as a prospective draftee.
In the context of the wins-oriented sports world, these are not mind-blowing achievements. No one has won Daytona from the pole in over a decade, and anyone meeting the NFL’s general eligibility requirements (and ponying up the registration fee) can attend a regional level combine (it’s the Draft Combine, which is invitation only, that gets all the media coverage, usually).
But tell the little girls suddenly swarming Daytona that Danica’s pole doesn’t really matter. Tell the eleven year old in Philadelphia who still is being forbidden to play football solely because of her gender that the best football league in the world accepting a woman’s application to enter their scouting process as if she was any other player is no big deal. Just think for one minute about SportsCenter Sunday night ending with the traditional celebratory winner and what that looks like if it’s Danica amid the confetti. Think about watching Fox’s Game of the Week on Sunday, and hearing Joe Buck casually announce “Silberman out to attempt the field goal.” We may be a long way from that actually happening (particularly the latter), but the path to both of those endings just got a little bit smoother. And that’s something to celebrate.
Josh Reddick showed off his beard and belt?
One of the best parts of spring training is team photo day! Lucky for us, many teams had their official photo day yesterday giving us some great shots of our favorite guys. (I suggest thumbing through the Getty Images’ photo gallery.) As I was perusing through the pictures, I came across some real gems, including the insanely crazy picture of Josh Reddick above. I did some Googling and found out there was a story behind the photos.
