Posted on February 15th, 2012
By DERON SNYDER
Atlanta Falcons wide receiver Roddy White is good at his job, which is running routes and catching footballs. He led the NFL in receptions with 115 in 2010, and finished second last season with 100 receptions.
White is just the eighth player in league history to record five consecutive seasons with at least 80 catches and 1,000 yards. He also won the team’s 2011 “Good Guy” award from the Pro Football Writers of America, which means he’s good in the locker room, too.
But when it comes to understanding business in general and the business of pro sports in particular, White obviously has a lot to learn. That’s the only explanation for his Twitter rant Monday regarding NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, who is reportedly set to make around $20 million per year at the end of his recent five-year extension.
“Roger Goodell is getting over,” White tweeted from his @RoddyWhiteTV account. “Never seen anything like it 20 million for looking over the league with tremendous help I guess the NFL is banking. The NFL is not a company it’s a nonprofit organization that makes a lot of profit.”
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Posted on February 14th, 2012
By DERON SNYDER
Count me among the ranks of Jeremy Lin fanatics, the certifiably Linsane who can’t get enough of his Lincredible story. We’re enjoying every bit of the Lintense media coverage.
No doubt about it, I’m all-Lin. Not because he plays my favorite position in my beloved hometown for my childhood team. Not because he’s an Asian-American who received no scholarship offers before attending Harvard — and then went undrafted after graduating. Not because he seems so humble and genuine while enjoying his rapid rise from obscurity to obsession.
All of that is a factor. But as much as anything else, I’m Linfatuated with him because he’s not Tim Tebow. No matter how often we see such analogies, Linsanity is not equivalent to Tebowmania.
Faith is one of the few things they seem to have in common. Other than that, Lin is the anti-Tebow.
Equating the two is ludicrous and lazy, admittedly a proven strategy for drawing attention online, over the air and in print. Just because we never saw anything like the Tebow phenomenon doesn’t mean the next unbelievable story is similar. There are too many familiar elements to liken Tebow’s tale to Lin’s legend.
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Posted on February 12th, 2012
By DERON SNYDER
Broadcaster Frank Gifford called it “the most electric moment in sports.” He was referring to Whitney Houston’s stirring performance of the national anthem at Super Bowl XXXV in 1991, just 10 days after the United States went to war in the Persian Gulf.
It was arguably the greatest rendition of the Star Spangled Banner in sports history, and it couldn’t have come at a better time for a nation weary of scud bombs and firefights dominating its TV screens. Word is she had recorded the vocals weeks earlier in a Los Angeles studio, but no one seemed to notice or care — not the 73,000 fans at Tampa Stadium or the 110 million viewers watching the broadcast.
The version was so profound, with patriotic fever running so high, it was released as a single and was re-released after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks a decade later. The anthem remains the best-known sports connection for Houston, who died Saturday at the age of 48, but it’s far from the only one.
An olympiad is among the few sports events that rival a Super Bowl, and Houston enthralled the world during the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea. She gave us a long-lasting sports anthem when she performed “One Moment in Time” during the opening ceremonies.
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Posted on February 11th, 2012
By DERON SNYDER
The U.S. Naval Academy has played men’s lacrosse since 1908 and won 17 national championships — including eight in a row at one point. When the Midshipmen open their 104th season on Saturday, they’ll be led by Rick Sowell, who in June became the program’s eighth coach.
If Sowell gets double takes, it’s something that’s both understandable and not uncommon. He’s an African American in a sport that’s overwhelmingly made up of white players and coaches. But he’s exceptional at his job and has been so for a long time; he wouldn’t be Navy’s head coach otherwise.
A few days after he accepted Navy’s offer, the enormity hit Sowell as visited the program’s Hall of Fame in the Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium. “It is a big deal,” Sowell told the Washington Times. “I probably underestimated that a little bit coming into it, though I knew what I was getting myself into, no doubt.
“But I didn’t realize until I got here quite the magnitude,” he said. “Honestly, it was one of the lures of why I wanted to be here, because for the first time, I’m taking over a program that has a lot of tradition. There was something intriguing about that.”
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Posted on February 10th, 2012
By DERON SNYDER
LeBron James has much to be thankful for. He’s being paid $110 million over six years (not including endorsements) to play a game he loves. He lives in a palatial mansion in Miami’s Biscayne Bay, one of the world’s most beautiful areas. He has two healthy, beautiful children and he’s engaged to their mother, his high school sweetheart.
The last thing we want to hear from someone who is so blessed is a complaint. Not in January, December or any other month. But especially not in February, which is set aside to remember and honor predecessors who faced real hardships, not perceived injustices.
I know James made a lot of his previous fans angry in July 2010, when he departed Cleveland for Miami in an ill-advised TV special. He skyrocketed up the list of the nation’s most disliked athletes (though he dropped to No. 6 this year). Fans-turned-foes cheered when James failed to produce at crunch time in the NBA Finals, making him a punch line (“Why can’t he make change for a dollar? He doesn’t have a fourth quarter”).
There’s no reason for James to hang his head about changing teams or coming up short. But he also shouldn’t resort to plays for sympathy, which he seemed to do on Wednesday when Oklahoma City Thunder center Kendrick Perkins complained about a James tweet.
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Posted on February 9th, 2012
By DERON SNYDER
The NBA’s best player visits Verizon Center on Friday night, but don’t take my word for it. That’s the opinion of none other than Larry Bird.
“You know, Kobe [Bryant] was always my favorite since I got out,” Bird told ESPN’s Bill Simmons recently. “But LeBron James is by far our best player in this league. I don’t really think there’s anyone next to him. I think he’s there, and then you go down the list.”
It’s hard to argue with Bird, one of the league’s all-time greats. But James is a debate magnet. Arguments follow with speed and fury whenever his name is broached — especially since he left Cleveland for Miami and became a bad guy to many previous fans.
There was no ambiguity in Bird’s claim that James is the best player “by far,” but Cleveland.com found a way to create some. The headline on a blog post put it this way: “Larry Bird says LeBron James might be best player in NBA, but Kobe Bryant would be the teammate to win with.”
That’s not exactly what Bird said. He didn’t express uncertainty on who’s the best or declare James a loser. The headline plays well to the Cleveland Cavaliers fans who remain depressed over James‘ departure, but it’s a bit misleading.
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Posted on February 8th, 2012
By DERON SNYDER
Jeremy Lin isn’t your average NBA point guard. He played his college basketball at Harvard.
But what makes Lin even rarer is his descent (he self-identifies as Chinese/Taiwanese) and his height (6-foot-3). The California native is the first Asian-American to reach the NBA since 1947 and the first Asian player to make a splash at less than 7-feet tall.
Sent to the minor leagues two weeks ago, Lin was recalled five days later and burst on the scene during the New York Knicks last two games, with 53 points and 15 assists in back-to-back wins, causing an outbreak of “LinSanity.”
“I’m going to ride him like Secretariat,” embattled Knicks coach Mike D’Antoni told reporters after Lin scored 28 points as the Knicks defeated Utah on Monday night. “He has an attacking mentality,” D’Antoni said. “He can get in the paint and he is a point guard. You can’t explain the game all of the time and he doesn’t need you explaining it. He knows the game.”
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Posted on February 7th, 2012
By DERON SNYDER
Once again, it’s to check off some items on my “TIDU List” — Things I Don’t Understand:
• Why Peyton Manning would choose to play for the Redskins.
Assuming he’s healthy, the Colts’ QB will have numerous suitors clamoring for his services. That includes teams that are much closer to winning and play in much nicer conditions than Washington. Besides, Manning needs to drive the offense, and Redskins coach Mike Shanahan isn’t the type to relinquish the wheel.
This winter has been unusually warm, but we’ll see hail in August if Manning lands in Ashburn.
• How Gisele Bundchen was wrong in responding to Tom Brady’s heckler.
She’s a Brazilian supermodel, not the typical, anonymous NFL wife. So she felt free to defend the Patriots QB when someone yelled to her, “Eli [Manning] rules!” and “Eli owns your husband!” She said Brady “cannot [bleeping] throw the ball and catch the ball at the same time.”
Remember, in the world of international divas, Brady is Gisele’s trophy husband — not the other way around.
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Posted on February 4th, 2012
By DERON SNYDER
n Jerry Reese’s first season as the New York Giants general manager, the team advanced to Super Bowl XLII and defeated the New England Patriots. Now, four seasons later, the Giants have made it to Super Bowl XLVI, and they’ll face the same opponent Sunday.
But much has changed for Reese.
He suffered through the 2009 and 2010 seasons as the Giants missed the playoffs. He was deluged with hate mail and nasty voice mails in August when fans believed he was doing a terrible job in rebuilding the team. The heat increased in December when the Giants’ record dropped to 7-7 after losing against the lowly Washington Redskins, putting New York at serious risk of missing the playoffs for the third consecutive season.
However, Reese’s plan of eschewing glitzy, big-name free agents was the right move — unlike the Philadelphia Eagles‘ “dream team” (which, by the way, missed the playoffs). Reese was steadfast in never doubting his strategy, even as fans called for his firing.
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Posted on February 3rd, 2012
By DERON SNYDER
Violent flare-ups attached to sports occur every now and then in the United States. There was the brutal beating of a San Francisco Giants fan in April. Less than five months later, there were at least two shootings following an NFL exhibition game. A brawl that started in the stands ended a recent high school basketball game in Baltimore.
We decry such incidents, rightfully so, lamenting the loss of perspective, reason and civility when it comes our games. Cheering for your team and wearing its jersey shouldn’t put you at risk of bodily harm –- or worse. We fret over what it says about us and what it teaches our children.
But that’s nothing compared to what we’ve seen in soccer over the years. The “beautiful game,” as it’s known around the world, has a disturbing habit of producing extremely ugly behavior among spectators. The most recent example occurred this week in Egypt, where nearly 80 people were killed in a riot after a soccer game.
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