guncurug

Just in case you have a little time on your hands and want to escape the crush of relatives this weekend, or live in the Midwest or Europe and need a respite from the snow storms, here are a few stories that caught my eye this week that I think you will find interesting:ARTICLEURL Toronto Maple Leaf fans turn to Eggos to express...

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Okay, the headline is a bit misleading - Boise State didn't officially rejoin the WAC, but with Hawai'i now joining the Mountain West for football only that makes four schools that have left the WAC for the Mountain West.  With Utah, BYU and TCU leaving the MWC, the reputation of the conference in the eyes of the football world now rests on Boise...

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Say what you will about the tax cut deal cut capitulation by the President, and I tend towards calling it abject surrender by the President to Senator Howdy Doody from KY (for those of you under the age of 50, Mitch McConnell closely resembles a certain marionette who was a breakout children's TV star of the early '50s), the implementation bill may be...

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As the NHL Board of Governors gathers for its winter meetings, the sale of three clubs tops the agenda.  The sale by the league of the Phoenix Coyotes is the most urgent since should a sale not close by the end of this month, the Commissioner Gary Bettman has said that the club is free to leave Arizona.  Florida businessman Matt Hulsizer has...

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The NBA is buying the New Orleans Hornets from George Shinn and Gary Chouest, as Shinn was unable to complete a deal with minority owner Chouest.  It's likely that the combination of financing difficulties and the uncertainties surrounding the Hornets lease at the New Orleans Arena made the deal untenable for Chouest.ARTICLEURL The question now is did Stern step in to buy the...

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I know it's been quite a while since I posted anything but a combination of family matters and personal health issues has kept me away from the keyboard.  Hopefully, that's behind me now and posting will resume on a more regular basis, if not quite as frequent as in the past.ARTICLEURL As most of you probably know by now, yesterday the Big East...

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The NCAA just has a knack for finding itself in court.  I think it may because it is an academic organization composed of college presidents who, for the most part, have never been outside of academia and as a result don't always think through the practical ramifications of the policies that they decide to put into place.  A good example of that is...

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You didn't think the NBA was going to let the NHL have the entire comics stand to itself did you?  Of course not.  The NBA, in conjunction with broadcast and digital partner ESPN and its corporate parent Disney, which now owns Marvel, has brought to the basketball and comics fans in all of us the Marvel inspired variant covers for each NBA team...

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The NBA has long banned performance enhancing drugs and now it has, for the first time in league history, banned a performance enhancing shoe.  The new Concept 1 shoe by Athletic Propulsion Labs, a $300 basketball shoe containing a spring-based system said to enhance a wearer's vertical leap by as much as 31/2 inches.  The NBA said in a statement: TA "Under league rules,...

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ARTICLEURL You have to hand it to Gary Bettman when he comes up with a good marketing idea and this one should be an excellent entree to young boys who may now not be tuned into hockey.  The NHL in conjunction with Stan Lee are going to be rolling out a series of 30 superheroes called the Guardians, one in each NHL city,...

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ARTICLEURL Keeneland opens its Fall Meet today in a weekend whirlwind of nine graded stakes featuring five Grade I stakes, with eight of the nine races being "Win and You're In" Breeder's Cup specials.  The strong weekend of stakes masks a continuation of the downturn in Kentucky racing and breeding that has been evident since the Churchill Downs spring meet, continuing through the...

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The calendar has not been turned back several months and today is not April 1.  The owner of the Boston Red Sox, New England Sports Ventures, has apparently won a bid to purchase Liverpool FC despite opposition from the current owners Tom Hicks and George  Gillett.  Hicks and Gillett are in default on some 200 million pounds to the Royal Bank of Scotland...

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Okay, I can read a calendar but it's a little hectic around here right now (political campaigns we're working on are heading to the wire) so you get some reading links early:ARTICLEURL Is Tampa Bay a bad sports town or are all those empty seats just due to the economy (TBO Online)US Supreme Court let stand ruling granting the interlocking letters "SC" trademark...

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International Sporting Spectacles on the scale of the World Cup or the Olympics, and to a lesser extent, the Asian Games, the Pan American Games and the Commonwealth Games have been used for decades to announce a country's entrance to the world of civilized nations.  They have been a sort of debutantes ball if you will as countries from Korea to China to...

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ARTICLEURL Upper Deck is bringing out a new line of trading cards which will, for the first time, feature more than 30 active college basketball coaches, including Bill Self, Tom Izzo, Jim Boeheim, Tubby Smith, Bobby Huggins and Jim Calhoun. The coaches cards will be part of a 400 card set covering multiple sports and featuring autographs and memorabilia inserted in the packs....

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ARTICLEURL In the most jarring example yet of the pressures being felt by athletic departments across the country caused by the Great Recession and the college sports arms race, University of California Berkeley announced it was dropping baseball, a sport which it had fielded a team since 1892. In addition, it is also dropping men's and women's gymnastics and women's lacrosse and is...

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One of thoroughbred racing's most illustrious fillies has been retired from racing.  Reigning Horse of the Year Rachel Alexandra has been sent to the breeding shed by her owner Jess Jackson before the end of her four year old year, with no explanation other than a reference to her less than stellar 2010 racing performance.  Her retirement ensures that there will be no...

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Is there any team in the NBA, other than possibly the Knicks, that faced a tougher marketing issue heading into this season than the Washington Wizards.  Last season was a disaster with their star player lost to a 50 game suspension and then the balance of the season in a halfway house for pulling a gun in the locker room.  The team had...

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Here are a few links for your weekend reading pleasure:ARTICLEURL NCAA discussing the possibility of losing teams going to bowl games (San Diego Union Tribune)Just how low does the WAC have to reach to replace the schools departing for the Mountain West (Idaho Statesman)Turner gets 14 year deal for digital rights to NCAA championships and management of NCAA.com (AP)Madison Square Garden and JP...

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The New York Daily News is reporting that Carmelo Anthony has signed off on a deal that will send him to the New Jersey/Brooklyn Nets in the latest of the string of off-season deals reshaping the NBA landscape.  The deal is said to involve four teams and will send Derrick Favors to the Nuggets with Andrei Kirilenko from Utah along with draft picks....

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ARTICLEURL Here are a few of the things I have been reading:Corked baseball bats don't help power hitters (Scientific American via Abnormal Returns)NFL now caught between its twin monsters: TV ratings and ticket sales (WaPo)Penn State receives $88 million to fund arena and men's and women's hockey teams (PSU); will Big Ten hockey soon follow (Star-Tribune)Muni Bond Watch turns eye on minor league stadium...

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ARTICLEURL The Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games, the olympics for the horse set, open this week in Lexington. It will be the first time the Games have ever been held in North America and Lexington, a rather sleepy town of 250,000 nestled in the Bluegrass of Kentucky is preparing for a worldwide invasion of 800,000 people over the next two weeks. Competition will...

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ARTICLEURL I thought I would put up a few links to articles I had been reading lately since it's been a bit hectic around here these last couple of days. Hope you enjoy:Origin of NFL nicknames (CNN), Remember last year's AFL throwback uniforms, you know, the Bronco's vertical stripe brown socks, well here's the story on where they came from (Mental Floss),Reggie Bush returns...

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The NFL Players Association is circulating cards among players permitting the union to decertify in the face of a lockout by the owners at the end of the current collective bargaining agreement in 2011.  The NFLPA is not leveling decertification as a threat but wants to maintain the option in order to strengthen its hand in negotiations for a new CBA.Should the union...

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The surest indication of the continuing effects of the Great Recession is that it has even affected the golden league, the NFL.  Up until the Recession first hit in 2008, it was unheard of for the NFL to suffer league-wide drop in ticket sales.  Then came the Recession and ticket sales have dropped in each of the last three years.The drop-off this year...

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Madison Square Garden is about to undergo a massive $800 million phased renovation that will not be completed until 2013, but when finished will create an essentially new MSG.  If a recent story by Sports Business Journal is correct, then a significant portion of the financing for the project has been secured in the largest ever sponsor/arena rights deal, as JP Morgan Chase...

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American Ryder Cup team captain Corey Pavin announced his captain's selections for the Ryder Cup team which will take on Europe at Celtic Manor in Wales.  To no one's surprise, Tiger Woods was selected despite his less than stellar play of late.  Joining him as a captain's pick are Zach Johnson, Stewart Cink and Rickie Fowler.  Johnson won the Colonial, Cink last year's...

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ARTICLEURL The oft troubled Derrick Caracter, formerly of the University of Louisville and most recently a post player from the University of Texas El Paso, showed enough promise in the NBA Summer League the champion Lakers gave their second round pick a two year contract, with  at least the first year, or a portion of it, guaranteed. While not typical for second round...

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You know you want it.  You know you missed; your Friday nights just haven't been the same.  Well, your wait is finally over.  Friday night lights have gotten brighter as the Lingerie Football League returns to a television near you this Friday, September 10 at 11PM ET on MTV2.  It's full tackle, 7-on-7 football, unlike any other - the LFL, the real fantasy...

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ARTICLEURL It's often said about departmental politics in colleges and universities that the politics is so brutal because the stakes are so small.  Maybe that's why the conference realignment game being played out among the Mountain West, WAC and West  Conference Conference seems to be on a whole other plain of duplicity and hard feelings than even the infamous ACC midnight raid on...

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When you're on a roll, the rule is to ride the hot dice and MLS is certainly doing that.  Coming on the heels of a very successful men's World Cup with never before seen fan interest in the US, a successful expansion franchise launch in Philadelphia this year and the opening of new stadia in New York and Philadelphia, MLS could rightly consider...

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ARTICLEURL How bad is the economy? Bad enough for even NFL teams to go down in value (Forbes)Financial Statements of five major league teams were leaked last week:  Pittsburgh Pirates,Tampa Bay Rays, Florida Marlins, Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Seattle Mariners,Texas Rangers (Deadspin)It takes cojones; Sosa fumes because Cubs haven't retired his number (Hardball Times)Here's a first, NBC adjust ad breaks to Notre...

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Eight of the schools that will be remaining in the Big XII next year recently held a meeting with Learfield Sports, a multimedia rights management company which holds contracts with about 50 university athletic departments.  They met to discuss the viability of a Big XII network.  The results of the meeting are unknown although all involved have characterized it as just preliminary.EARTICLEURL There...

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ARTICLEURL Loyalty is often a strange thing in professional sports. It's often dictated by what have you done for me in the last five minutes especially when you're talking about the relationship between an athlete and a company whose product that athlete endorses.Usain Bolt just re-upped with Puma, a company he has been with since he first started running. The contract, whose terms...

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Utah State found itself in a terrible position last week after it made what it considered to be a principled stand in turning down a bid from the Mountain West Conference to honor an agreement among all of the then current WAC members to stay in the WAC.  It was promptly stabbed in the back when Fresno State and Nevada leaped over each...

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It's a slow Sunday here in the Bluegrass as not even yesterday's storms have been any help in relieving the oppressive 90+ temps and corresponding 85+ humidity, which has been with us seemingly every day this summer, as my latest electric bill shows.ARTICLEURL Good recap of the twists and turns (and necessity of insiders) to bring Sprint Cup to Kentucky (C-J)Arsenal plans to...

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Brigham Young has not been a very happy member of the Mountain West Conference for a number of years now.  It has complained bitterly since the conference left ESPN and formed its own money losing network with its small reach and the resulting movement of the conference's football games to Versus and the CBS College Network, not exactly America's first, second or third...

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The rumors of the death of the career of Stephon Marbury and with it the demise of his Starbury shoes have proven to be just a bit premature.  Last season found Marbury a free agent searching in vain for a NBA team willing to sign him to even a one year contract at anything approaching what he thought he was worth, or as...

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There are many reasons that the New York Knicks have been as bad as they were before Mike D'Antoni showed up last season, but surely Isiah Thomas was one of the main reasons, so that makes the recent announcement that Thomas is being hired by the Knicks as a consultant all the more curious.  Adding to the intrigue, it appears that D'Antoni was...

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We all know how tough it's become to finance a college education and getting an athletic scholarship is harder than ever, what with the economy and, at the major college level, the out of control football and basketball arms race, forcing athletic directors to cut programs left and right.  Well, here is one scholarship I bet you never thought of: a bass fishing...

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The tortuous path to full ownership of the St. Louis Rams by Stan Kroenke should come to a conclusion by August 25.  A special meeting of the NFL owners has been called for that date to vote on his proposed purchase of the team pursuant to the exercise of his option to purchase the sixty percent of the club he didn't own once...

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Ending a decade long quest, it appears that Kentucky Speedway will finally get a Sprint Cup race beginning in 2011.  Formal announcement of the award of the race to the track is likely to be made at a press conference scheduled for Tuesday by the track's owner, Speedway Motorsports, Inc.'s (TRK) Chairman O. Bruton Smith.The race is likely to be moved from one...

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A few inks to get Tuesday off to a good start:ARTICLEURL One aspect of the LeBron economic effect: Heat fire entire 30 person season ticket sales staff as all season tickets have been sold (Sun-Sentinel)PGA Tour is relatively healthy, it's a good time to make a deal on golf course membership but it's a lousy time to be in the golf course business...

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A Chinese businessman, Kenneth Huang Chairman of Hong Kong based QSL Sports Group and backed by an investment fund said to be one of the largest in the Far East, has reportedly made a bid for Liverpool in the range of  237 million pounds.  He has been talking to the club's bankers and would purchase the club's debt from them as his vehicle...

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Earlier this week, HR 2267, the bill which will repeal UIEGA, the Unlawful Interstate Enforcement Gambling Act and permit, regulate and tax online gaming.  The gaming allowed is primarily poker - sports betting is specifically excluded thanks to the lobbying efforts of the NCAA, NFL  and the major professional leagues. One should not get too excited about this milestone, however, as there is still...

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