Category: Following Sports

2015 NFC Championship Preview Green Bay at Seattle

Hi everyone,

It’s a very exciting time in the football season for football fans and non-fans alike. There are only three games left! That’s right. This Sunday, the four teams left in the playoffs will play in two semifinal games which are confusingly called the NFC and AFC Championship games, and the winners will go on to play in the Super Bowl on February 1st. To preview this weekend’s action, I asked my friend Brendan to come back on the podcast.

The NFC Championship Game

NFL Football — Sunday, January 18, 2015 — Green Bay Packers at Seattle Seahawks, 3:05 p.m. ET on Fox.

  • The one thing television commentators are most likely to say about this game.
  • The one thing we would say if we were television commentators.
  • The player on each team most likely to be the star if their team wins the game and why. For Seattle, our choices were Marshawn Lynch and Luke Willson. For Green Bay, our choices were Aaron Rodgers and Eddy Lacy.
  • Who we want to win and who we think is going to win
  • And much, much more!

For email subscribers, click here to get the audio.

You can subscribe to all Dear Sports Fan podcasts by following this link.

Music by Jesse Fischer.

 

 

What happened on Thursday, January 15, 2015?

  1. A tie is as good as a win: Atletico Madrid went into the second leg of their two-game cup tie against Real Madrid knowing that all they needed was a tie to advance. They got it, 2-2, thanks to two goals from returning hero, Fernando Torres. Both goals came within 90 seconds of the start of a half, one in the first, one in the second.
    Line: Down goes Real Madrid!
  2. Bruins win: The Bruins came through with their birthday present for girlfriend, a 3-0 win over the New York Rangers. It’s a good thing too, because I had forgotten to get her anything myself. Nah, just kidding. Tukka Rask sparkled in the shut-out with 30 saves but the story of the night was two dirty plays, one by each team, which led to yelling, scuffling, and fighting.
    Line: Not a pretty game, but an exciting one.
  3. Rankings hold true: There were two women’s college basketball games between top 25 ranked teams. In both, the higher ranked team easily defeated the lower ranked one, which is either luck and a small sample size or very good ranking! Eighth ranked Maryland beat 24th ranked Rutgers, 71-59 and seventh ranked Notre Dame beat 12th ranked North Carolina, 89-79.
    Line: No upsets in women’s college basketball last night.
  4. London gets a stinker: The NBA and its London based fans were unlucky yesterday to witness a lackluster, 95-79 win by the Milwaukee Bucks against the New York Knicks. The Knicks did get their best player, Carmelo Anthony, back after two weeks out with an injury, but they still easily dropped their 26th game out of the last 27 they’ve played.
    Line: The Knicks are terrible! Not a great exhibition of basketball to show abroad.

Sports Forecast for Friday, January 16, 2015

Clear skies and a stiff breeze will spread the scent of sports across the country today with two good games in NHL hockey and NBA basketball.

Sports is no fun if you don’t know what’s going on. Here’s what’s going on: In today’s segment, I covered:

  • NHL Hockey – Pittsburgh Penguins at New York Islanders, 7 p.m. ET on regional cable.
  • NHL Hockey – Washington Capitals at Nashville Predators, 8 p.m. ET on NHL Network.
  • NBA Basketball – Golden State Warriors at Oklahoma City Thunder, 8 p.m. ET on ESPN.
  • NBA Basketball – Cleveland Cavaliers at Los Angeles Clippers, 10:30 p.m. ET on ESPN.
  • And more!

For email subscribers, click here to get the audio.

You can subscribe to all Dear Sports Fan podcasts by following this link. Music by Jesse Fischer.

16 days until the Super Bowl: Penalty Flags

One of the visually appealing elements of football is the way that fouls are signaled by the sports many referees. When a referee sees an infraction of the rules, they don’t necessarily blow whistles or make arm gestures like in other sports, instead, they reach to their belts, grab the small yellow flags they have tucked into their pants, and throw them onto the field. The gently arcing yellow flag is such a perfect visual expression of the emotion a foul call can create in players and fans. When you suspect the penalty is on the team you’re rooting for, the fluttering of the flag seems to happen in the slow motion of a horror movie. When you think the penalty is going to save your team’s bacon, the flight of the flag speaks of a desperately desired deliverance. What could be better?

Kirk Goldsberry of Grantland thinks it would be better if you knew right away which team the penalty was on. The problem, as he explains it, is that seeing a yellow flag “leaves a strange interval between the time a flag is thrown and the time that the charges are explained.” Players and fans know that a foul has been called but they don’t know which team the foul is on. Goldsberry things that “In the information age, this “flag lag” is one of the most annoying parts of the whole football experience. And it’s unnecessary.” His solution is an appealingly simple one:

Football needs two different colored penalty flags — one color for offensive infractions and a separate color for defensive ones…. [that way,] spectators, announcers, players, and coaches would all immediately recognize the guilty side, and consequently their emotions wouldn’t be held hostage by some unneeded informational embargo.

I love this idea! The NFL should absolutely do this. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time penalty flags have been tweaked. They were colored white in the NFL until 1965 and red in college football until the 1970s. Following a semi-tragic eye injury suffered by offensive lineman Orlando Brown (nicknamed Zeus, he died in 2011 at the age of 40,) NFL refs stopped weighting the flags down with BBs or ball bearings. Moving to a two color flag system would be a small but positive change that serves fans and players alike.

If you want to learn the basics of football in time for this year’s Super Bowl, sign up for our Football 101 course. It’s the easiest way to learn football, and I promise that by the time you’re through, you’ll be able to impress the football fan in your life with your newfound knowledge.

In this free course, you’ll learn all about why people like football, what down and distance are, how football scoring works, the inside scoop on fantasy football and football betting, how to decipher TV scoreboard graphics, and finally my favorite way to start having fun while watching football. At the end of the course you will get a fully unaccredited diploma of graduation, which you can hang on your wall with pride. If you enjoy the course, (and I hope you do!), I’d be thrilled to have you as a regular subscriber to our daily or weekly digests and for Football 201, coming soon!

Get started now

What happened on Wednesday, January 14, 2015?

  1. The Hotspurs come from behind: It’s rare that you see one team go up 2-0 in a soccer game and end up losing but that’s just what happened to Burnley in their English FA Cup Soccer game at Tottenham. The final score was Tottenham 4, Burnley 2. Tottenham advances to the next round of the tournament to play Leicester.
    Line: Usually when a soccer game is 2-0, the best the team with zero can hope for is a tie. Not so, in this game.
  2. Flyers shut-out in Washington D.C.: The hockey game last night between the Philadelphia Flyers and Washington Capitals was a close and surprisingly exciting one for a game that ended 1-0 in favor of the Capitals. The Caps have been on a real run lately, this win fits them snugly behind the Penguins for third place in the Metropolitan division.
    Line: The Capitals have improved a lot since the start of the season. Looks like their new coach, Barry Trotz, is doing something right.
  3. Big brother wins but little brother looks tough: The North Carolina vs. North Carolina State rivalry definitely matches a stereotypical sibling rivalry wherein the big brother (North Carolina) does just enough to win no matter how much the little brother tries. Last year North Carolina needed overtime to win, this year they held on by the skin of their teeth despite not scoring a basket in the last four minutes of the game. The final score was North Carolina 81, NC State 79.
    Line: North Carolina State came so close but couldn’t break through the mystique.
  4. Nobody beats the Wiz…ards: The Washington Wizards cemented their growing reputation as a team to be reckoned with by beating the Chicago Bulls 105-99. The Bulls fans have something to be happy about though, often injured guard Derrick Rose had his best game of the year, scoring 32 points, 17 in the first quarter alone!
    Line: Dumb name, but good basketball team.

Sports Forecast for Thursday, January 15, 2015

Sports is no fun if you don’t know what’s going on. Here’s what’s going on: In today’s segment, I covered:

  • Spanish Copa del Rey – Atletico Madrid at Real Madrid, 2:00 p.m. ET en beIN Sports.
  • NHL Hockey – New York Rangers at Boston Bruins, 7 p.m. ET on regional cable.
  • NBA Basketball – New York Knicks vs. Milwaukee Bucks in London, 3 p.m. ET on NBA TV.
  • NCAA Basketball – Notre Dame at North Carolina,  7 p.m. ET on Full Court.
  • NCAA Basketball – Maryland at Rutgers,  9 p.m. ET on the Big Ten Network.
  • And more!

For email subscribers, click here to get the audio.

You can subscribe to all Dear Sports Fan podcasts by following this link. Music by Jesse Fischer.

Sports Forecast for Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Sports is no fun if you don’t know what’s going on. Here’s what’s going on: In today’s segment, I covered:

  • English FA Cup Soccer – Burnley at Tottenham, 3:00 p.m. ET not on U.S. TV as far as I can tell.
  • NHL Hockey – Philadelphia Flyers at Washington Capitals, 8:00 p.m. ET on NBC Sports Network.
  • NBA Basketball – Washington Wizards at Chicago Bulls, 8 p.m. ET on ESPN.
  • NBA Basketball – Los Angeles Clippers at Portland Trailblazers, 10:30 p.m. ET on ESPN.
  • NCAA Basketball – North Carolina at NC State,  7 p.m. ET on ESPN2.
  • And more!

For email subscribers, click here to get the audio.

You can subscribe to all Dear Sports Fan podcasts by following this link. Music by Jesse Fischer.

What happened on Tuesday, January 14, 2015?

  1. Goalie on goalie crime: The match between Everton and West Ham in the English FA Cup was tied after 90 minutes and tied after 120 minutes, so it went to penalty kicks. It was still tied after the normal allotment of five shots each, so it went on to sudden death penalty kicks! And on and on until basically everyone on each team had shot and the teams were reduced to having their goalies shoot at each other. Finally, one team scored while the other did not, and West Ham won.
    Line: LOL at goalies shooting penalty kicks at each other.
  2. Giant scores in hockey: In yesterday’s sports forecast, we featured the Minnesota Wild at Pittsburgh Penguins as the game to watch in the NHL. It didn’t fail to entertain as Pittsburgh managed the rare feat of winning 7-2 without either of their best players, Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, scoring a single goal. That game wasn’t even the highest scoring of the night or the most lopsided. The Winnipeg Jets beat the Florida Panthers 8-2 thanks to four goals from Mathieu Perreault!
    Line: What a wacky night in the NHL!
  3. The drama (and losing) continues for the Cleveland Cavaliers: After missing the last ten games, LeBron James returned to the Cleveland Cavaliers lineup and scored 33 points but it wasn’t enough to beat the Phoenix Suns. The talk today will be about Kevin Love, the all-star power forward, who was traded to the Cavaliers before this season and who most people thought was going to be the perfect partner-in-crime for James. Love did not play at all in the fourth quarter of this game. Why? What does that mean for the future of Love in Cleveland? What about the coach, David Blatt?
    Line: Love is definitely leaving at the end of the year, maybe they should trade him NOW?! Who would even want him?

Sports Forecast for Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Sports is no fun if you don’t know what’s going on. Here’s what’s going on: In today’s segment, I covered:

  • English FA Cup Soccer – Everton at West Ham, 2:445 p.m. ET on Fox Sports 1
  • NHL Hockey – Minnesota Wild at Pittsburgh Penguins, 7:00 p.m. ET on NBC Sports Network.
  • NBA Basketball – Cleveland Cavaliers at Phoenix Suns, 9 p.m. ET on regional cable.
  • NCAA Basketball – Oklahoma State at Kansas,  7 p.m. ET on ESPN2.
  • And more!

For email subscribers, click here to get the audio.

You can subscribe to all Dear Sports Fan podcasts by following this link. Music by Jesse Fischer.

What happened on Monday, January 12, 2015?

  1. Ohio State is the national champion: Yesterday in Dear Sports Fan’s preview of the national championship game, I wrote “My guess is that it takes a little while for the offenses to settle down. That might be enough to give Ohio State a chance to keep up with Oregon and squeak by them for victory in a relatively low scoring game.” If you had, for some incomprehensible reason, used my wild guess as betting advice, you would have won handily. Ohio State beat Oregon 42-20 and the combined score was comfortably below the over-under of 74. I’m a genius! Or at least, I make lots of predictions and only ever point out the ones that come true. The question for sports conversation today will be whether the first ever playoff system really helped us figure out the best team in the country. Ohio State was the third ranked team coming into the four team playoff, so proponents of the system will say that, because the eventual champion wouldn’t have even had a chance to play for the national championship without a playoff, the system succeeded. It’s equally easy to say that this year’s results only show that single-elimination playoffs are susceptible to chance and that it’s completely possible for a slightly weaker team to get lucky twice and win the national championship.
    Line: This system is waaaaaay [better/worse]!
  2. Flyers feel-good win: One of the nicest stories of the NHL season so far has been the NHL debut of 33 year-old Flyers goalie Rob Zepp. He was first drafted by an NHL team in 1999, 16 years ago, but played his first game in the NHL this year after years of playing in minor and European leagues. He won his second game last night in a 7-3 rout of the Tampa Bay Lightning.
    Line: Can you imagine sticking with a dream for 16 years and finally having it pay off? That’s great!
  3. Pistons are amazing: The Pistons have been taking us through quite a set of changes this year. First they were terrible. Then they cut a player from their team and their season took off. They went on a winning streak. For the first few games of it, it was easy to say, “yes, this streak is freaky, but they’ll fall back down to earth soon.” Now, they’ve moved into, “maybe it’s time to take them seriously” territory after winning their ninth game in their last ten last night in a close contest against the Toronto Raptors, 114-111. The Raptors have the best record in the Eastern Conference, so beating them is a strong statement.
    Line: Maybe it’s time to take the Pistons seriously.