- 07:50 PM
- 04/19/24
| Name: | j streed |
|---|---|
| Location: | Iowa |
| Gender: | M |
| Member since: | November 19, 2002 |
| Last visit: | April 07, 2005 |
jason streed has posted 5 links and 81 comments to SportsFilter and 0 links and 3 comments to the Locker Room.
Boxing and the Cool Halls of Academe: A trainer and philosophy teacher defends the sweet science: Still, I think the best defense of boxing is Aristotelian. In his Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle offers his famous catalog of the moral virtues. Whenever I teach this section of the Ethics I always begin by asking students what they think are the ingredients of moral virtue. Respect, compassion, honesty, justice, and tolerance always fly quickly up onto the board, often followed by creativity and a sense of humor. I usually need to prod to elicit "courage." And so I hector, "How can you be consistently honest or just if you don't have the mettle to take a hit?"
posted by jason streed to boxing at 02:40 PM on September 08, 2004 - 3 comments
The Price of Seeing the Top 25 College Teams: Big-time college sports programs are increasingly requiring fans to pony up more than the ticket price to attend their games. While the practice of "premium seating" is not new — some colleges have been tying seating preferences and other benefits to donations for decades — it is on the rise, as are the dollar figures involved.
posted by jason streed to football at 12:24 PM on August 26, 2004 - 4 comments
Gimme that clicker: Ten sports Americans don't like very much. I'm sure the top three--dogfighting, pro wrestling, and bullfighting--are, to most Americans, not sports, so the list should probably start with pro boxing. After the bloodsports, though, come three entries for golf: the PGA tour, the PGA Senior Tour, and the LPGA tour. There's a freshman composition paper in there somewhere. (Full list inside.)
posted by jason streed to culture at 07:31 PM on September 29, 2003 - 17 comments
World Wife Carrying Championships: In past competitions, Finns have awarded winners the woman's weight in beer. The Estonians, at their national championships here on June 21, gave winners the woman's weight in mineral water. One more reason to love the Finns! Then again, as one competitor said, "The Finnish wife carriers are like the Boston Red Sox . . . People root for them, but they sort of know they won't win." I love the reverse of that statement: "The Boston Red Sox have long been regarded as the Finnish wife carriers of major league baseball."
posted by jason streed to other at 01:32 PM on July 03, 2003 - 4 comments
That's fine, rcade. Weedy's remark reminded me of the story, and celebrating Lombardi's mean streak wasn't really the point of the "wow." Just amazement that the system works so differently now. Even if the story isn't true, Lombardi probably would have been glad to know it was making the rounds--keep 'em scared to hazard the smallest demand.
posted by jason streed at 04:09 PM on November 11, 2004
Trade him! Now! Package his ass off to Utah or Memphis and see how well his album does. Goddamn. There's an old, possibly apocryphal story about a player that asked Vince Lombardi for a raise, whereupon Vince rose from his chair, left the room, a returned in about a minute with the news that he wasn't able to negotiate with him anymore, as he was now the property of the Philidelphia Eagles. I may have some details mixed up, but a coach who could generate cautionary anecdotes like that . . . wow.
posted by jason streed at 12:20 PM on November 11, 2004
wfrazerjr, the thinking around here is that he will stay at least through his son's career at Iowa. That takes us through next year :-( He was paid more than $1.8 million last year, but as Spre said, he has a family to feed, so who knows? Re: Purdue--they damn near came back! The Hawks pulled it out though. One of the announcers said Ferentz is something like 35 and 2 when leading at halftime, which is pretty impressive.
posted by jason streed at 07:18 PM on November 07, 2004
As a UIowa Hawkeye fan, I'm sorry to say that Kirk Ferentz's name always comes up these days for spots like this--esp. Penn State. The Hawks schooled the Gators last year in one of the most enjoyable football games I've seen in a long time, so his name is familiar there. I hope he doesn't get tempted by the Dark Side.
posted by jason streed at 11:58 AM on November 05, 2004
25. It helps to click on the upper half of the ball.
posted by jason streed at 04:55 PM on October 08, 2004
Pretty good. It looks like a lot of the tow-ins in movies like Step Into Liquid, esp. the stuff shot at the Cortes banks about 100 miles off San Diego. Except he stays near the peak longer. The comments below the video are fun, btw.
posted by jason streed at 01:12 PM on September 20, 2004
It’s just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up. ~Muhammad Ali When you can whip any man in the world, you never know peace. ~Muhammad Ali Philosopher kings, at that, ay?
posted by jason streed at 07:54 PM on September 10, 2004
From Jon Wertheim's tennis column: The other thing no one is talking about is there was another player on the court who knew what the score was. No one has even considered the fact that Capriati might have conceded the point or helped with the confusion. I asked Serena about it last night, and she was very charitable. She said it was not Capriati's job to get the score right.
posted by jason streed at 09:02 AM on September 09, 2004
Though I don't buy that the audience would have reacted a whole lot differently had it been Capriati that got slighted instead. That's fine--I wasn't trying to sell it. I meant that Capriati might have brought the drama, not the crowd. She's more of a hothead than Serena, that's all.
posted by jason streed at 02:31 PM on September 08, 2004
How about the on-court interview with Capriati right after the match? On the one hand, I admire the interviewer for asking the question on everyone's mind. On the other, it came out just stupid, with both of them playing to the crowd. Having that conversation while 20k New Yorkers listened in was probably a bad idea. I can't help thinking that if the situation were reversed, with Capriati getting the run of bad calls, there would have been a little more drama on the court.
posted by jason streed at 08:42 AM on September 08, 2004
I'm all for passion, personality, etc.--tennis, more than some other sports, seems to thrive on that, and miss it when it's in short supply. (SI's Joh Wertheim wrote a fine piece on this point here.) But the linked report makes Massu sound like an oaf. At least he fought through the end of the match, though. Some of my favorite players are guys whose sideshow personalities sometimes distracted everyone, including themselves, from the work to be done on the court. Marcelo Rios, Marat Safin, and Goran Ivanisevic come to mind--Safin in particular, with Rios (an unworldly talent) a close second mitigated by injuries. Did anyone see the Federer-Baghdatis match the other night? Two things were remarkable. 1) Baghdatis's big smiles--it was fun to watch a player who looked like he was having fun. 2) Baghdatis plays out of his head for a set--unbelievable tennis, really--and beats Federer in a tiebreaker, but can't stay on that level and gets crushed the rest of the way. That shows what kind of game someone has to bring to top Federer. No less than John McEnroe said Federer's the most talented player he's ever seen.
posted by jason streed at 03:32 PM on September 03, 2004
Rugby. Neuron bruising of the first order. Also the sport in which the parties bear the greatest likeness to the action on the field.
posted by jason streed at 12:57 PM on August 27, 2004
3/3.
posted by jason streed at 08:35 AM on August 27, 2004
I wonder what my dad will be willing to pay to keep his cherished (UIowa) Kinnick Stadium seats--three of 'em, about 20 rows up, 48 yard line, hometeam side. He's had them since about 1975, I think.
posted by jason streed at 12:29 PM on August 26, 2004
Knockout prose
I've cited these here before, I think . . . I agree with their offering of The Fight, by Norman Mailer. Ali-Foreman. Read it even if you hate, or think you hate, Mailer. Great quotations everywhere, eg at a press conference, Kinchasa: Sportswriter: "Do you think you'll knock out Ali?" Foreman: "I'd like to." Levels of the Game, by John McPhee. Point-by-point story of late sixties tennis match between Arthur Ashe and a white guy. A Sense of Where You Are, also by McPhee. Bill Bradley's amazing senior season at Princeton. A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, by David Foster Wallace. The tennis essays are terrific and humbling. I know I'm forgetting good ones. Does stuff like Into Thin Air count?