- Everything that has happened will happen again, but it might be different: The first game between the New York Rangers and Los Angeles Kings since they met in last year’s Stanley Cup Final started out like a repeat of last year’s Californian dominance but ended very differently. After jumping out to a 3-0 lead, the Kings let in four straight goals and eventually lost 4-3. This makes the Rangers 12-1 in their last 13 games.
Line: The Rangers got the best of the Kings in this rematch, but that’s little consolation for their fans. - The West is the Best: I’m stealing perhaps the worst rhyme in all of rock and roll from Jim Morrison of the Doors, because in the NBA this year, it’s true. The Western conference is much better than the East, and Portland proved that last night by beating up on the Miami Heat 99-83. The Heat don’t even have injury to blame, they had their full compliment of players, they just couldn’t get anything going.
Line: Don’t look now, but Portland has the second best record in the NBA. No one talks about them as being a championship contender, but why couldn’t they be? - Dominance from Arizona: Talking about great teams that fly under the radar, the Arizona men’s college basketball team may be one as well. They’re ranked seventh in the country and last night beat Oregon 80-62, but they’re not nearly as frequently mentioned as a championship contender as Kentucky, Duke, Louisville, or even Wisconsin.
Line: Watch out for Arizona when March Madness comes around.
Category: Following Sports
Sports Forecast for Friday, January 9, 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:
- NHL Hockey – Columbus Blue Jackets at Toronto Maple Leafs, 7:30 p.m. ET on regional cable.
- NBA Basketball – Chicago Bulls at Washington Wizards, 8 p.m. ET on ESPN.
- NBA Basketball – Cleveland Cavaliers at Golden State Warriors, 10:30 p.m. ET on ESPN.
- NCAA Hockey – Dartmouth at New Hampshire, 7:30, p.m. ET on NBC Sports Network.
- NCAA Basketball – Butler at St. John’s 8 p.m. ET on Fox Sports 1.
- 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 Wednesday, January 7, 2015?
- Madrid defeats Madrid: When two teams from Madrid play each other in soccer, that’s bound to happen. In this case, Atletico Madrid, the less romantic and star-studded team beat Real Madrid 2-0. This was the first leg in a home and home series in the Spanish Copa del Rey tournament.
Line: The battle of Madrid is a good way to identify the character of your friends. If they root for Atletico, they’re basically good people. If they root for Real Madrid, don’t leave them alone with your chocolate chip cookies… - Boston edges Pittsburgh in OT: The hockey game between the Pittsburgh Penguins and Boston Bruins lived up to expectations. It was a very well played, super exciting game that went into overtime tied at 2-2. In overtime, Boston’s Patrice Bergeron deflected a shot nicely into the top corner of the Penguins net. After several minutes of review to see if he had deflected it with an illegally high stick (height, not sobriety) the determination was made that, because there wasn’t enough evidence to definitively say it wasn’t a goal, that the referees initial call of a goal would stand.
Line: Impressive game between two teams that have had a rough time so far this year. - Hot Pistons in Detroit: No one knows what is going on in Detroit, where the once woeful Pistons have absolutely caught on fire in the last two weeks. Last night’s 108-95 victory over the Dallas Mavericks, one of the best teams in the league, was their seventh straight win.
Line: What the hell is going on with the Pistons?
Sports Forecast for Thursday, January 8, 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:
- NHL Hockey – New York Rangers at Los Angeles Kings, 10:30 p.m. ET on regional cable.
- NBA Basketball – Miami Heat at Portland Trailblazers, 10:30 p.m. ET on TNT.
- NCAA Basketball – Arizona at Oregon, 7:30 p.m. ET on the PAC 12 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.
What happened on Tuesday, January 6, 2015?
- Late goal seals a draw for Everton: A late goal from Romelu Lukako, the Belgian striker who terrorized the United States National Team in the World Cup this past summer, helped Everton tie their game against West Ham and stay alive in the English FA Cup. Everton supporters hope that this is the pebble that stops the flow of losses their team has been suffering lately.
Line: Sometimes a draw is really more of a win for one team and a loss for the other. It’s all about expectations and momentum. - Spurs finally looking mortal: After more than fifteen years of sustained excellence, the San Antonio Spurs are finally losing some basketball games. They’ve lost six of their last ten games and December was their first month with more losses than wins since the mid 1990s! Last night, they lost 105-104 to the Detroit Pistons. The Pistons were considered one of the worst teams in the league until a couple weeks ago when they made the rare move of simply cutting a big-name player, Josh Smith. NBA contracts are fully guaranteed, so teams rarely cut players, but I guess the Pistons felt they’d rather pay him not to be on their team than to be on their team. Looks like they were right, because since then they’ve won six games in a row, including last night’s game against the Spurs.
Line: What is going on in the NBA? The Spurs are bad? The Pistons are good? I don’t believe it. No, really, I don’t believe it yet and I won’t unless it keeps happening for another month or so. - Vlasic comes through again: The Minnesota Wild had two high-profile games this week on back-to-back days. They won both of them thanks to game winning goals from defenseman Marc-Edouard Vlasic. Vlasic scored with less than ten seconds left to win the Sharks game against the Jets on Monday and in overtime against the Wild last night to win that game 4-3. Vlasic is not even known as a goal scorer, but he’s certainly having a good week!
Line: I guess when things go right for you, sometimes they go really right! - Kentucky shows weakness?: The University of Kentucky has the best college basketball team in the country this year and it doesn’t seem to be very close. They haven’t lost a game yet this year and have barely even been challenged. Last night their opponent, Ole Miss, played the game of their lives and forced overtime before eventually losing. Was it a sign of real weakness or just apathy from Kentucky? Or is apathy a form of real weakness?
Line: I still think Kentucky will go undefeated this year and win the championship but I’m a little less sure today than I was yesterday.
Sports Forecast for Wednesday, January 7, 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 – Real Madrid at Atletico Madrid, 3 p.m. ET on beIN Sports.
- NHL Hockey – Boston Bruins at Pittsburgh Penguins, 8 p.m. ET on NBC Sports Network.
- NBA Basketball – Houston Rockets at Cleveland Cavaliers, 7 p.m. ET on ESPN.
- NCAA Basketball – Colorado at Utah, 9 p.m. ET on ESPN 2.
- 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.
Why don't Giants fans like the Cowboys?
Dear Sports Fan,
I am still learning about American football. There are too many rules. 🙂 Anyway, last night watching the game of Cowboy and Lions with friends in NYC, I realized Giants fans don’t like the Cowboys. Why is that?
Happy New Year,
Eunee
Dear Eunee,
No fan of an National Football League (NFL) team particularly likes any of the other 31 teams in the league but you’re right that fans of the New York Giants like the Dallas Cowboys less than most. I know there’s a little bit of ambiguity in that statement. Let me clarify. Fans of the New York Giants like the Cowboys less than they like most other teams AND fans of the New York Giants like the Cowboys less than fans of other teams like the Cowboys. I meant both meanings because they are both true! There are a few reasons for this, one obvious to football fans but which requires some explanation to everyone else and a couple more subtle ones. The football reason which needs to be explained to be understood is that the Cowboys and Giants play in the same division.
The NFL is made up of 32 teams. These teams are split into two 16 team conferences. The conferences are based on history, not geography. The National Football Conference (NFC) is made up mostly of original NFL teams while the American Football Conference (AFC) is made up of mostly teams that were originally part of the American Football League (AFL), a professional league that competed with the NFL before the two leagues merged between 1966 and 1970. Within each conference, the teams are divided into four groups of four teams each called divisions. Conferences and divisions are importantly largely because they help define a team’s opponents each season and affect a team’s playoff chances. As we discussed at length a couple of weeks ago, playoff spots are reserved for the best team in each of the four divisions, regardless of how that team compares to other teams in the conference or league. Each year team’s play every other team in their division twice, six games against other teams in their conference, and only four against teams from the other conference. Not only do games against the other teams in their division mean more for determining whether a team makes the playoffs but because the teams play against each other twice a year, every year (that’s somewhere around five times more frequently than teams in the same conference but not the same division and eight times more frequently than teams in the other conference) divisional opponents tend to develop fierce rivalries. Fans pick up these rivalries and often carry them even more ferociously than the players or coaches involved.
The New York Giants and Dallas Cowboys are in the NFC East division along with the Philadelphia Eagles and Washington Redskins. Giants fans, of course, (sports) hate the Eagles and Redskins as well as the Cowboys (and if either of those teams had been in the playoffs, you would have heard complaints about them too), but maybe, Giants fans hate those teams just a smidge less. There are two reasons for this: the first is simply a question of geography. Philadelphia and Washington D.C. are at least mid-Atlantic cities. They’re not the same as New York, and from my understanding of New Yorkers, they don’t pose a threat to New York from a city-comparison perspective, but they are at least understandable. The Cowboys, on the other hand, are from way out in Texas somewhere and the identity of their team and fans, while not as outwardly offensive as the Washington Redskins, is totally foreign to New Yorkers. Dallas epitomizes everything that’s foreign and slightly embarrassing for football fans who grew up in New York. This is particularly true because somewhere in the 1970s, the Cowboys became one of the most overall popular teams in the NFL. This led to their being nicknamed “America’s Team” in 1978 by NFL films itself. This legacy has lived on and, despite only having won a single playoff game before this past weekend since 1996, the Cowboys have remained central to the NFL. They are the premiere team, the most talked about team, the most widely loved team, even when someone else wins the Super Bowl. That plays into them engendering more hatred than any other team as well.
Whether you decide to be a Cowboys fan or hater, I hope you enjoy the playoffs,
Ezra Fischer
What happened on Monday, January 5, 2015?
- Canada Juniors win gold: The Canadian Juniors National team captured the gold medal (did they lay a trap?) on home ice last night with a 5-4 victory over Russia. It was the first time since 2009 that Canada had won this competition, which is a long drought in a country that takes it so seriously. Apparently the World Junior Championships is treated as seriously in Canada as the College Football National Championships or March Madness is treated in the United States.
Line: Sometimes it’s more exciting to watch slightly unpolished young players than it is to watch the very best. - An unstable night for the Thunder: The Oklahoma City Thunder lost 91-117 to the Golden State Warriors just hours after rumors of a trade involving them spread throughout the Twitterverse. There are more people and draft picks involved, but basically the Thunder get former Cavalier Dion Waiters, the Cavaliers get former Knicks J. R. Smith and Iman Shumpert, and the Knicks… well, the Knicks are expected to waive all the players they picked up in the trade, so the only thing you can say is that the Knicks get to save a bunch of money.
Line: Did you know that all three teams involved in the trade lost last night? It’s hard to concentrate when there’s so many rumors buzzing around. - Close game and more ahead: Neither side of the Notre Dame vs. North Carolina game get to relax after the 71-70 Notre Dame victory. Notre Dame’s next game is against number three ranked Virginia and North Carolina’s next game is against number five ranked Louisville. Expect more of the same high quality, nerve-wracking play in those games.
Line: No rest for the very good at basketball!
Sports Forecast for Tuesday, January 6, 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 – West Ham at Everton, 2:45 p.m. ET on Fox Sports 1.
- NBA Basketball – Phoenix Suns at Milwaukee Bucks, 8 p.m. ET on NBA TV.
- NHL Hockey – San Jose Sharks at Minnesota Wild, 8 p.m. ET on NBC Sports Network.
- NCAA Basketball – Villanova at Saint John’s, 9 p.m. ET on Fox Sports 1.
- 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.
2015 NFL Wildcard One Liners
On Mondays during in the fall, the conversation is so dominated by NFL football that the expression “Monday morning quarterback” has entered the vernacular. The phrase is defined by Google as “a person who passes judgment on and criticizes something after the event.” With the popularity of fantasy football, we now have Monday morning quarterbacks talking about football from two different perspectives. We want you to be able to participate in this great tradition, so all fall we’ll be running NFL One Liners on Monday. Use these tiny synopses throughout the day:
Wildcard Weekend
Saturday, January 3, at 4:35 p.m. ET, on ESPN
Arizona Cardinals 16, at Carolina Panthers 27
The Cardinals could not overcome the loss of their best two quarterbacks during the season. The Panthers took advantage of Cardinals third string quarterback, Ryan Lindley, by interception two of his passes on their way to setting an NFL record for fewest yards allowed in a playoff game. It often seems like records like that are arbitrary but in this case, that’s basically all you need to know about the game: the Cardinals offense was completely impotent and no matter how valiantly they tried on defense, they could not overcome it.
Line: Hard to win when you can’t play offense.
Saturday, January 3, at 8:15 p.m. ET on NBC
Baltimore Ravens 30, at Pittsburgh Steelers 17
The story of the game according to most writers and commentators was how badly the Steelers missed their running back, Le’Veon Bell who missed the game with a knee injury. In my mind though, the most interesting part of the game was Pittsburgh’s last drive of the game. Down by two scores, the Steelers were desperately trying to score when quarterback Ben Roethlisberger and then a play or two later, Tight End Heath Miller were forced to leave the game with apparent head injuries. This seemed like the ultimate triumph of concussion awareness — to pull star players off the field in a pivotal drive of a playoff game would have been unthinkable in past years. But then, but then, after backup quarterback Bruce Gradkowski drove them down the field, Roethlisberger came back out and immediately threw an interception to lose the game. From what I know, you can’t actually test for a concussion in the amount of time he missed. So, how did he get back on the field? Did his team not take the concussion test seriously? If not, then why was he even missing for as long as he was? Also, when will teams learn that a healthy backup is better than a woozy, brain injured starter?
Line: The Steelers missed Bell all game but they might have had a chance at the end if they hadn’t stuck a potentially concussed quarterback back on the field.
Sunday, January 4, at 1:05 p.m. ET on CBS
Cincinnati Bengals 10, at Indianapolis Colts 26
Coming into this game, the narrative was all about a quarterback who can’t win big games (Andy Dalton of the Bengals) vs. a quarterback who loves playing in big games (Andrew Luck of the Colts.) Looks a lot like that narrative was confirmed by the outcome of this game although, of course, we know that football games are the product of somewhere around thirty people’s performances and not just one. The result was not unexpected but you would think it would force Cincinnati’s executives into making some difficult choices about their two most important employees, the coach and quarterback.
Line: It just seems like Cincinnati cannot win a playoff game. Did you know the last time they won a playoff game was 1990?
Sunday, January 4, at 4:40 p.m. ET on Fox
Detroit Lions 20, at Dallas Cowboys 24
The best game (and if we’re being honest about it, the only really good one) of the weekend was this one between the Detroit Lions and Dallas Cowboys. The Lions jumped out to a lead and spent most of the game playing from ahead. The game was billed as a battle between the Cowboys great offense and the Lions excellent defense, especially between their offensive and defensive lines. For most of the game, the Lions defensive line was winning that battle and frequently putting Cowboy’s quarterback Tony Romo under pressure or on his back. Finally, in the second half, Romo found a way to distribute the ball before being killed and the Cowboys pulled ahead. In the end, it was the Lions offense pushing the ball down the field in a last-ditch attempt against the Dallas defense. They came up short and the Cowboys advanced.
Line: Both teams have a reputation for coming up short in mind-bogglingly frustrating ways. Yesterday it was the Lions’ turn.