Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Basketball, Blake Griffin, College Basketball, College Sports, NCAA, NCAA Basketball, Oklahoma Sooners, Sports
Blake Griffin is probably the best player in college basketball right now (Carolina and UConn fans, sit down — I know that you think Tyler Hansbrough and Hasheem Thabeet are more due, but don’t bother trying to convince me). The guy can get to the inside whenever he wants; he just muscles through other players to get there. His edgy offensive play allows him to be elusive and forces defenses to improvise a plan — that usually doesn’t work — to stop him.
Just wanted to say, I’m damn glad that college basketball is back and booming.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Alabama Crimson Tide, College Football, Florida Gators, Football, NCAA, NCAA Football, Oklahoma Sooners, Sports, Texas Longhorns, Texas Tech Red Raiders
The Oklahoma Sooners trumped the Texas Tech Red Raiders 65-21 last night. In a marquee matchup that would test the Red Raiders’ football dexterity, Mike Leach’s gameplan was noted to thrive. Graham Harrell and the Red Raiders beat the Sooners in last year’s matchup in Jones AT&T Stadium. However, this year, in Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium, where Bob Stoops was 51-2 (now 52-2) at during his tenure coaching the Sooners, Texas Tech stood no chance.
Should have been expected, though, right?
Actually, no. The Texas Longhorns — behind the play of quarterback Colt McCoy — knocked off the Sooners, but then the Red Raiders knocked off the Longhorns. Who is the best team of these three? Looking at it in retrospect, it looks like the ‘Horns and the Sooners are the teams to beat, but how is that so when the Red Raiders beat the ‘Horns, the same ‘Horns who beat the Sooners?
It’s a convoluted league, it seems. It’s tough to judge these teams. But that’s why there is gambling and predictions set up so people can throw their money around just to lose it because a team didn’t play as well as expected, a team that was subdued by an inferior opponent because the superior opponent — whom the consensus bet on — didn’t gameplan as well as they usually did.
We’ll see how great the Alabama Crimson Tide are when they play the Florida Gators in the SEC championship game. For all we know, the Gators could shellack the Crimson Tide and we’d have Florida in the national title game against Oklahoma. Then again, Oklahoma could choke everything away in the Big 12 championship game.
What a load of crap.
Filed under: General | Tags: Big 12, College Football, College Sports, Comebacks, Dominance, LSU Tigers, NCAA, NCAA Football, SEC, Troy Trojans
With the Troy Trojans leading the LSU Tigers 31-10 at the beginning of the fourth quarter, everything was more than swell for the Trojans.
Until they realized they were beating a prominent SEC-maligned Tigers team who had just won the national title last year, despite the fact that Jarrett Lee — their Achilles heel — has been their ‘leader’ up to this point.
LSU scored 30 points — READ: THIRTY — in the fourth quarter to win the game 40-31.
One of my college football-watching friends texted me, “LSU is getting killed by Troy.” I looked on the ESPN.com scoreboard, and low and behold, Troy [was] leading 31-3.
I wake up this morning to check out any news on ESPN.com, and I see the headline “LSU rallies.” I click into it, figuring LSU won, and just that they did, hammering the Trojans for 30 points in the final quarter.
Those SEC teams are fast. They can score fast, too. No lead is ever safe when you’re matched up with them.
Just thinking: if ‘Bama and Texas Tech do indeed play each other in the national title game (same situation for Texas and Florida, if they play each other; I’ll refer to one as the Big 12 and the other as the SEC), and the Big 12 team has a lead and the SEC team is down late, if the SEC team comes back and wins, the game could prove to be apocalyptic considering everybody’s taunting prior to the completion of games.
Oh, forget it.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Blogging, books, Journal, MLB, NBA, NCAA, NFL, Prose, reading, Sports, Sports Journalism, Sports Writing, Sportswriting, Writing
Writing about sports is enthralling at times. Other times it is used as a mechanic to release your anger about something that is creeping on your nerves (perhaps the BCS system in college football).
It’s a great tool if you’re a writer wanting to get your thoughts out onto the web for people to read because speculation is open and debates are welcome (usually). Debating about sports can either be fun or futile. Fun being if you’re debating two teams strengths and weaknesses, futile being if you’re debating whether a player from a different position is better than the other.
But most people don’t understand how to write about sports.
Sportswriting — you write about sports and you leave yourself out. I know I don’t follow that a lot on here, but I can do it with ease if I want to. This being a blog, it’s not a professional website so to speak, as thoughts are recorded with several “I’s.” If you’re looking into being a sportswriter, you will have to avoid that.
Sportswriters are prolific. There’s a lot of sports news websites, and if you write for them, a lot of times it’s not going to be one blog a day — oh, no, it’s going to be more like five blogs a day, more-so because news around the sports world is like billions of atoms flying around. You learn to write fast and efficient. I think that’s why I have already written so many blogs for 17 Hours — I’m used to writing several posts at a torrid pace. This is a good thing and a bad thing (good because the site is receiving more content; bad because it could be more intermittent — but the good still outweighs the bad here).
You can’t be a writer without reading a lot and writing a lot, so you can’t expect to do anything less when you want to become a sportswriter, so don’t just think that all you have to do is have your eyes glued to the television screen all day to post some incoherent thoughts on the web about sports.
You have to be powered by crafty, sharp prose and have a knack for grabbing reader’s attention either in the lead or in the first paragraph. If you can’t do that, you’re done with an article, as most people won’t bother to read on if you don’t hook them like a fish in one of the starting sentences of your article.
Read anything and everything. I did. I kept reading everything no matter what it was from books to billboards. “Huh? Billboards?” Yes, billboards; I wanted to compact so many words into my mind because at the end of the day it would pay off and I would end up having a carousel of words to choose from when writing. I’ve read a lot and I’ve written a lot, and I’m still not done — I’ll never be done.
Avoid jargon and cliches. Back up your arguments with facts. Don’t talk down to the reader unless it’s a style of yours, but it only works if you’re comical.
If you write now, with no experience under your belt, your writing will be tenuous. However, if you make the strenuous efforts to become better, you will appreciate it in the long run.
