IMPO

Football season is right around the corner and I couldn't be more excited. Media outlets are starting to hype the season, the teams, the players. The NFL, with its consistency (i.e.Tom Brady on the same team for 15+ years), seems to be somewhat predictable when it comes to the season's winners and losers. Yes, there are surprises from year to year, but point is that the team you saw last year will have 80% the same people this year. There isn't as much change as a college team that loses half of its starters to the draft and another 7-8 players to graduation. The fact that college football has had some dominating teams says a lot about coaching but with such a change in talent from year to year, any team at any time could fail. This leads to my BIGGEST BEEF WITH COLLEGE FOOTBALL. Preseason Rankings. I hate em. Alabama is ranked as the No. 1 team in the nation for week 1 of the 2017 season. Shocker. But they haven't even played a game. How do we know they are...

As a lover of all things competitive and athletic, I have a very high opinion of sports and their role in society and, well, my life. As I laid down and opened my new issue of "Sports Illustrated", I happened upon a chart. As anyone in modern journalism knows, charts and graphs and interactive images draw in readers so of course i took the bait and began examining the chart. The chart illustrates the trend of sports viewers when it comes to televised sports focused on age. The charts lists about 20 different sports and then finds the median age of viewers of the sports in 2000, 2006, and 2016. The trend is visible. In all but one of the sports listed, the median age increased. For some sports it increased by quite a bit. In 2000, the NHL had viewers around 33 years old. Now that median age has risen to 49. A change in 16 years. Interesting because the two stats were taken 16 years apart from each other. Other increases were rather small. The NBA median age of viewers ...

The MLB front office has been trying to figure out how to make the game more fun for the fans. A lot of their focus has been trying to change the pace of the game. Ya know, make it go faster for the ADD generation. I think a possible solution has been found...and it has nothing to do with the MLB organization nor the pace of the game. To judge what a good solution could be we have to figure out what made the MLB popular when it was actually popular....specifically the late 1990s and the early 2000s. When people watched baseball what did they watch for? Players. They watched Derek "The Captain" Jeter and David "Big Papi" Ortiz in their prime. They were waiting on every pitch thrown to Mark Maguire, Sammy Sosa, and Barry Bonds who (steroids or no steroids) would bomb a ball at a ridiculous rate.The infamous Bronx Bombers and the Miracle BoSox. The pitching trio of Greg Maddox, Tom Glavine, and John Smoltz. Even the stunners of Luis Gonzalez in Arizona and Dont...

I am a little late to the party on this post as I have been thinking about it for a while. My writing fire faded some over the past few weeks but one particular topic has annoyed me to occasional bouts of rage recently. I feel that in America, there is becoming more of a "violence culture". It is becoming more okay to act violently. Sports, as of late, have only added to this culture. There are quite a few off the field issues that have occurred over the past few years that I could point to (Ray Rice and Joe Mixon among others), and I don't want to downplay the serious nature of such incidences, but I take an extreme issue when violence enters the field of play. In a playoff game between the Washington Wizards and the Boston Celtics not even two weeks ago, emotions boiled over. Kelly Oubre Jr., angry about a questionable screen from Celtic Kelly Olynyk, ran over to the Celtic and with force threw him to the ground. One night later, a similar yet less extreme alterca...

I don't want to say that April was boring in the sports world. That is not my intention. The college basketball national championship, which is always exciting, started the month. The beginning of baseball also spurred sporting interests through a relatively mundane regular season in basketball. Then the NBA started its playoffs. This far, the playoffs have been good...compared to last year. Yes, last year was all about the blowouts and this year seems more competitive. Then there was the NFL draft complete with its fair share of surprises. But really, what is the stories? Where are the angles? I've thought about discussing my extreme distaste for physical violence perpetrating the NBA. But my annoyances will be saved for another day. I've thought about bringing up the Stanley Cup playoffs. But my knowledge is limited there (though I am more excited about it) and that topic doesn't bring in readers (not like I have a huge readership to begin with.....we should cha...

Did the NBA season just begin? Sure seems like the excitement is only now at its peak. The playoffs begin tomorrow so it is normal for it to peak about now, but this peak is not a mountain but more of a molehill. I always talk about when I predicted things right..which means I have to also admit when I am wrong. I was very wrong in my preseason predictions. I actually thought this season would be different...more exciting. Although the Cavs are not the top team in the East, everyone still expects them to win the West with little competition. And the Warriors....yeah, they are still the favorites. The Spurs are there. The Rockets are there. But only barely. I thought that this was going to be the year of youth. Yet, when i look at the top names for Rookie of the Year, the only one worth mentioning is Joel Embiid...who was injured for much of the season. Dario Saric did nothing. Thon Maker either. Malcom Brogdon?...I think I heard his name twice. As for the Sophomore class, a few...

Okay, so technically, MLB Opening Day isn't until Sunday, but I can't give my predictions after the season has already started. I will say, if nothing else, the excitement is definitely back. Just for the record, I need you to know that last year, I predicted the World Series Champions correctly. No, it doesn't matter what my other predictions were like, all that matters is that I got the last question, the main question, correct.  How will this year look? The short answer is.....Similar. There shouldn't be too many changes from last year to this year in the performance of the teams. With that I will make this short and sweet as I go division by division. AL East Three teams from this division made the playoffs last year. That won't happen again although this is one of the nest divisions in baseball. Four teams could take the division but I see the Red Sox pulling it off and the Orioles grabbing one of the two Wild Card slots. Be aware of the Ya...

We've all heard the phrase "offense wins games, defense wins championships." If you haven't, then you haven't been following my posts very closely because this is a mantra that I use frequently...and it's usually correct. Statistics, however, seem not to apply to the March Madness tournament when teams defy odds and come out of nowhere to win games and bust brackets. But here is where I have a theory... To look at an offense as a whole or a defense as a whole is worthless when picking winners in the NCAA tournament but there are two statistics that can help you as you pick winners over the next few weeks of madness. 1. Rebounds A defensive rebound gives one team possession of the ball without the other team scoring. An offensive rebound gives a team a second chance at scoring or a second possession. The law of percentages states that if you have more possessions you should have more points. Rebounding is all about increasing the amount of possessions. I...

It has been a hot minute since I have posted on this blog and for that, I apologize. As some of you know, I have been contributing for another website where I write strictly about BYU athletics. As a Cougar fan, I enjoy it, although it poses its challenges....like finding topics. That is one reason I love this here blog space. I get to choose whatever topic I want...and you as the reader, since you clicked the link or found the url, are now obligated to read it. That being said, the topic of this post is.....well...let me think....I have so much freedom now... Got it!!! The complete reversal of fortunes of the teams of the late 1990s and early 2000s to now in the NBA. One of the dominating headlines in sports right now is the altercation between Charles Oakley, who is a former player for the New York Knicks, and the current owner of the Knicks, James Dolan. Oh how far the Knicks have fallen...and the Lakers...and the Suns...and the Nets...and the Heat....and almost every team...

There is only one game left to be played. Only two teams. Only one ultimate victor. But there are still two weeks until that happens so let the over-analyzing begin! In two weeks the Atlanta Falcons and the New England Patriots will face off in Super Bowl LI in Houston, TX. Let's be honest, there is no surprise that the Patriots are there. With the minor question mark surrounding the first four games of the season and how Tom Brady's temporary absence would impact the team's season, it was rather expected to see them still standing. There really wasn't any legitimate threat in the AFC to dethrone them. The Falcons, however, are a bit of a surprise. First of all, after the dominance of the Carolina Panthers last season, it would have been foolish to predict that they would not win the division. It seems that the loss of Josh Norman and the loss in the Super Bowl had more of an impact than anticipated. The Falcons soared in the weakness of its own division and beyond....

For those that watched the College Football National Championship, you will know that the game was an instant classic. For those that didn't watch....well, now ya know. Previous to this game between second ranked Clemson and the top ranked Crimson Tide of Alabama there was chatter, as seems normal now, concerning whether history would be made and whether this coach or that player or this team are the best to play that game at this level. Now, the fact that the Clemson Tigers knocked off the dynastic Tide halted all of these questions momentarily but there is a deeper foundational concern that I have in the asking of these questions or in the creation of these conversations. Why is it that we are so concerned with seeing the "GOAT" or being a part of history? To explain, let's take a look at a couple of questions regarding this game and a few other games of the past year. Two post-game questions dominated the pre-game narrative for National Championship game. A...