Kornheiser on Theismann

Joe Theismann has been replaced on ESPN's Monday Night Football by Ron Jaworski. I interviewed Theismann's MNF boothmate Tony Kornheiser last September, at the beginning of his first season on the program. The Q&A was killed for space by New York Magazine and never ran anywhere.

An excerpt:

Kois: Does Joe Theismann like the Penguin Dance?

Kornhesier: I don’t think he’s ever seen the Penguin Dance. I don’t think that’s ever come up on his radar. (Laughs.) The thing about that relationship -- and I have no idea where it's going to go -- but when I started at the Washington Post, I covered Joe Theismann as a player. Joe has told me that he feels that I ripped him unmercifully, whereas I look back on it and I think I treated him great. I had some laughs at his expense, but I always found him to be somewhat charming.

Kois: Theismann seems kind of like the perfect straight man. Has anyone told him that most of the things you say are, like, jokes?

Kornheiser: (Long pause.) That's a good line. (Laughs.) I can't answer that.

Hail to the Commonwealth

Upset Watch: The 5-12 Games

For the past six consecutive NCAA Tournaments, a #12 seed has upset a #5 seed. While this is, of course, a coincidence, that won't stop many pool entrants from picking one of these upsets to occur this year. Of the four 5-12 matchups, which one holds the best possibility of an upset?

One way to analyze the possibilities is to see which of the 5 seeds seems to have an overly generous seeding, and which of the 12 seeds feels underrated.

The 5 seeds:

Butler. With one of the best defenses in the country (57.2 PPG), Butler certainly can stop its opponents. But its slow-paced game leaves it open to opponents sticking close until game's end. Butler has beaten almost every tournament-caliber team it's faced this year, but did lose twice to Wright State (a 14 seed) as well as a few teams not in the tournament. Overall, Butler's seed seems a bit generous, and the team seems more like a 6 seed than a 5.

Viginia Tech. The Hokies can beat a high-quality team (for instance, they swept UNC in the ACC regular season), but they're also prone to lose to inferior teams. This year they lost to Western Michigan, Marshall, and NC State -- three times! They're 2-3 in their last five games. A 5 seed seems a little high.

USC. The Trojans can shoot -- they're leading the 5 seeds with a .403 3-point percentage. But they're 2-3 in their last five games, and have a lot of losses to mediocre opponents, including South Carolina, Kansas State, Arizona State, and Washington. Given chances to beat excellent teams like Kansas and UCLA, USC has fallen short every time. They're right on the line between a 5 seed and a 6.

Tennessee. 4-1 over their last five games, with a potent offense (79.7 PPG) and fantastic wins against three of the top teams in the tournament -- Memphis, Texas and Florida -- Tennessee seems undervalued by the selection committee. Though their defense is lousy (74.4 PPG), they still seem more like a 4 seed than a 5.

The 12 seeds:

Old Dominion. They're 4-1 in their last five but were bounced from the CAA tournament by a less-than-stellar George Mason team. They've lost to a couple of bad teams but do have the biggest marquee win of all the 12 seeds -- a 13-point victory at Georgetown. They're a solid 12.

Illinois. The Fighting Illini don't have any amazing wins but they don't have any embarrassing losses, either. They were one of the last teams in but seem appropriately seeded at 12.

Arkansas. The Razorbacks' win against Southern Illinois is a nice one, but their losses to Missouri and Mississippi State aren't too exciting. Overall Arkansas seems pretty mediocre, perhaps a 13 seed in a world with fewer spot-filling upsets in conference tournaments.

Long Beach State. They've barely played anyone -- they lost to the three good teams they played this year, Air Force, USC and UCLA, by an average of 16 points. While they score a lot (80.3 PPG), their uptempo game means they give up points by the bushel (73.8). They are 5-0 in their last five games, but it's hard to imagine this team as better than a 14 seed.

So looking at the matchups...

Butler (6) vs. ODU (12)
Virginia Tech (6) vs. Illinois (12)
USC (low 5) vs. Arkansas (13)
Tennessee (4) vs. Long Beach St. (14)

...it seems as though no one game matches up an overseeded 5 against an underseeded 12. If one 12 could surprise, it's probably ODU, but I'm predicting the 5-12 games will be devoid of upsets in 2007.

March Radness

I mean, clearly UNC is going to win, but Texas scares the crap out of me. How are they a 4 seed?

The Frozen Tundra

I was invited by a friend to golf yesterday at Dyker Beach Golf Course in Brooklyn. The invitation came a few weeks ago, when it seemed like winter would never arrive and late-November temperatures were hovering in the low 50s. But as Saturday approached, the foursome exchanged emails and phone calls wondering if there was a certain temperature threshold below which it would be stupid to golf. The forecast predicted it would be around 40 degrees, with an Accuweather Real Feel Temperature (TM) in the low 20s. The course is in the shadow of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, just off the ocean, so we could expect a brisk sea gale blowing in our face. We dithered around about postponing it, and I was finally told by the organizer to stop being a big girl's blouse and just golf already. So I went. I hoped it would be horrible enough that I could get some funny stories out of it.

It was really, really cold. It wasn't as bone-chillingly cold as I was afraid it would be, but it was cold. A friend who, like me, was born in Wisconsin gets angry when I whine about the cold, her logic being that I should be inured to low temperatures. And being from Wisconsin, she says, I have a reputation to uphold. But I think that because I endured 18 frigid years in Wisconsin, I’ve earned the right to complain about the cold for the rest of my life.

So when you're golfing in very cold weather, it naturally affects your game. For instance, in order to stay warm enough not to die, you have to wear enough clothes to seriously hamper your swing. Which turns out to be a blessing, because after every errant shot someone could strip off some article of winter wear and exclaim, “God, these earmuffs totally screw up my peripheral vision” or whatever.

The course actually looked pretty majestic, with leafless trees stretching over bright green fairways, grown through that unseasonably warm autumn. The ground was rock-hard, such that tees snapped in half when you tried to get them into the earth. Also, divots were not an issue. The frozen tundra really benefited my game, because as a golf player, I make a great singles hitter. I have an awkward swing, and I send sharp grounders up the middle, like Ichiro. Yesterday I would hit one of my topspin screamers off the tee and the ball would just roll and roll, finally coming to a stop often as far down the fairway as the worst of my playing partners' drives.

One guy brought a thermos full of hot tea. We belittled the fourth guy, who failed to show up. We all golfed terribly, though I golfed a little more terribly than everyone else. It was nice not having a foursome immediately behind us breathing down our neck; inspired by that leisure, we took multiple cracks at some of the trickier shots with which we were faced. Inevitably, my mulligans were worse than the awful shots that had inspired them, so that made me feel like my golf skills have already peaked.

As we approached the ninth tee we asked each other if there was interest in playing eighteen. Nine was fine, we decided. We all really felt like we’d proved ourselves just by showing up.

The Top 25 Sports Lists of the Past 25 Years

What makes a great sports list? Is it inclusiveness? Glibness? Groundless authority? Ability to inspire email-forwarding? All of the above!!! Readers looking for an argument love 'em. Hacks desperate for a column depend on 'em. In honor of a quarter-century of awesome sports lists, I've put together the ULTIMATE list of sports lists! Here it is... The Top 25 Sports Lists Of The Past 25 Years!

25. The Infinite ERA Club
Sean Holtz, Baseball Almanac, 2003
Who doesn't remember where they were when this list was first released? Baseball is a game of numbers, so why not celebrate the pitchers whose season or career Earned Run Averages stand at the number to end all numbers: Sideways 8.

24. Dives Not Recognized by the Olympic Diving Committee
Peter Schoof, mcsweeneys.net, 2001
A forward 3 1/2 somersault with the hand clap from the 'Friends' theme song in a pike position.

23. Most Eligible Palm Beach Polo Ponies, 1986-1987
Muffy Turlingstone, Palm Beach, FL, 1986
A snapshot of a era gone forever. #1: Dipsy-Doodle. This chestnut dynamo has a firm carriage and wonderful deep-brown eyes. A really, really neat horse.

22. Top Ten Hockey Fighters of All Time
As voted by the readers of hockeyfights.com, 2004
The authorities on hockey fights speak: the most fearsome brawler in hockey history is the Blackhawks' and Red Wings' Bob Probert.

21. 1984 Draft Winners and Losers
Jock Stewart, Sandy, OR, 1984
You can't go to a bar in Portland without hearing people still laugh about this list. Delightfully misguided: The Trailblazers can be pretty thrilled about their pick of Sam Bowie. Size wins in the NBA. Rumor has it Stewart eventually moved to Chicago to avoid the constant catcalls.

20. Ted Williams' 20 Greatest Hitters
Ted Williams, 1994
The Splendid Splinter created his Hitters' Hall of Fame in Hernando, FL, and named as its inaugural class the players he believed to be the 20 greatest hitters of all time... not counting himself, of course.

19. Best Baseball Players of All Time
Charlie Brown, 1982
A list from all our childhoods. Still gives me a warm feeling in my heart. #1: Joe Shlabotnik.

18. Chester vs. Shrewsbury Town Top Ten Matches
Chas Sumner, Chester, UK, 2003
Surely the most accurate document of British football infatuation is this list of the best ever matches between two teams no one cares about. 30 September 1911. The first competitive fixture and Chester win comfortably thanks to a hat trick from Lol Cook. Chester go on to beat Northern Nomads and Wrexham but are eventually eliminated by Stockport County.

17. The 50 Greatest Players in NBA History
National Basketball Association, 1997
In honor of the 50th anniversary of the NBA, the league named its all-time greats. Still hard to believe Scottie Pippen made this list.

16. Top Ten Other Unconfirmed Rumors About Mike Piazza
The writers of "The Late Show With David Letterman," 2002
#9. His number, 31, is also the number of bat boys he's strangled."

15. Top Ten Feats We'd Like to See
Jeff Merron, ESPN.com, 2003
J.J. Redick shooting 100% from the line? Ichiro hitting in 57 straight games? Future sports records, unveiled, by the listmasters at ESPN.com. Merron in particular is a list machine; he spouts off two or three a week, never anything less than professional.

14. Courtney Walsh's Six Best Performances
BBC Sports Online, 2001
In honor of Jamaican bowler Walsh's 500th Test wicket, the BBC runs down his six greatest Test matches. Full of charming and incomprehensible cricket lingo. Having recorded 6-62 in the first innings, he was given the new ball second time round and responded by dismissing Navjot Sidhu, the first-innings centurion, for a duck.

13. Left-Handed Catchers
Sean Holtz, Baseball Almanac, 2002
A classic sports list: it illuminates something we never knew about a sport we thought we knew everything about. Have you ever seen a left-handed catcher?

12. Longest Field Goals By Female Kickers
P.S. Luchter, 2004
Creepily comprehensive. 30 yards: Kara Snitger (Cedar Cliff HS, Camp Hill, Pa.), halftime of Big 33 (Penn. v Ohio) HS All-Star Game, 7/24/2004 to win college scholarship. Going to Pittsburgh.

11. Fans in Section 8-J Whose Heads I Would Like to Bash In
Ralph Stevens, Cleveland, OH, 1979
#2. That guy in the rainbow wig who's blocking my view of the visiting end zone.

10. Most Influential Bowlers of All Time
Larry Paladino, Bowling Digest, 2001
What finally landed it on the list was this quote from #1 Larry Weber: "Come to think of it, I haven't bowled on a submarine."

9. Inside-the-Park Grand Slams in Baseball History
Sean Holtz, Baseball Almanac, 2002
Holtz scores again with this compendium of a surprisingly common baseball event, an inside-the-park home run with the bases loaded. In September 1901, Brooklyn's Jimmy Sheckard accomplished it twice in two days. Who doesn't love baseball lists like this? So useless, yet so delightful?

8. Kelly Slater's Pro Surfer 2 Top Ten Wishlist
The Editors of SportPlanet.com, 2001
How much do you care about you surfing videogame? The authors of this list care a lot. As it stands now the surfer simply lies there on his board and waits for a wave to magically appear. He can't sit up and look around, his paddling abilities seem limited, and if he duck dives the wave the next one comes just as quick in the same fashion as the first. Degree of passion outweighs the lack of initial capitals.

7. Obvious Fouls I Cannot Believe These Referees Did not Call
Jonathan Farmer, Chapel Hill, NC, 1996
#4. They're just mauling Antawn Jamison down there! C'mon, call that!"

6. Top Ten Athletes of All Time
Jeff Merron, ESPN.com, 2004
An ambitious attempt to combine all sports lists into one. But Dave Winfield ahead of Bo Jackson?

5. Responses to Reporters
Don Carman, Philadelphia Phillies, 1990
Phils pitcher Don Carman posted his boilerplate answers to reporters' questions on his locker midway through the 1990 season. #12: "This team seems ready to gel." Rasheed-esque.

4. Manchester United's Top Ten Offseason Targets
The editors of Manchester Online, 2003
They could buy and sell you. Shevchenko also apparently has the most complicated contract in world football.

3. Top Five Passers in the NBA
Allhiphop.com message board user IrishPride, 2004
Two words: Vlade Divac. Authoritative and inarguable. One of the best no-commentary lists ever made. Those who argue with IrishPride are fools.

2. Best High School Football Teams in the North Shore Conference
The Whitefish Bay High School Pep Squad, Whitefish Bay, WI, 1988
#1. The Whitefish Bay Blue Dukes!!!!!!!!!! #2. Everyone else.

1. Top 10 Sports Lists of the Past Year
ESPN.com staff, ca. 2002
The clear winner. Groundbreaking. Initiated a revolution in listmaking. True list-lovers -- those who know that sporting events find their grandeur not in their competition but in the arbitrary ranking that occurs afterwards -- still get goosebumps when they see this list.

Control-X: Samboy Lim

Written by a passionate fan of retired Filipino basketball player Avelino "Samboy" Lim -- or possibly by Samboy Lim himself -- today's random Wikipedia entry makes me desperate to find video of Samboy Lim in action.





The entry is so outlandishly rich in praise that I like to imagine the president of the Samboy Lim fan club (again, possibly Samboy Lim himself) sitting in his apartment in Manila, typing feverishly away:

Samboy is an impact player who can dominate the game by penetrating to any stone wall defense. He uses his speed and hangtime to create a impossible shots. With his dare-devil high flying drives to the basket, sharp outside shooting and all out hustle, Samboy electrified the crowd for decades. He earned the monicker "The Skywalker" and "The Dragon."

The author sits back, wipes his face, takes a drink of water. He rereads the graph he just typed, and shakes his head, unsatisfied. There must be more, he mutters. There must be more he can say to help readers of Wikipedia understand the majesty of Samboy Lim.

Samboy was unstoppable in his time. He had heart. And for some time, he was the most popular player in the PBA after Robert Jaworski. Samboy is best remembered as the only player getting a standing ovation and applause from the crowd (even of the opposing team) every time he walks up to the officials table to enter the game.

His eyes fill with tears. Oh God! he cries. Why can't they just understand everything that Samboy Lim means to him? He pounds his desk, paces the room, smokes a cigarette. When he sits back down, though, his pathetic words mock him. They don't do justice to the awesome force that was Samboy Lim, soaring above his opponents in his blue San Miguel Beer jersey. The author pulls up his socks, praying that this imitation of Samboy's signature style might inspire him to dazzling heights of prose, graceful and beautiful as Samboy Lim himself:

Samboy was so unstoppable that isolating him, during the time that isolation plays are allowed in the PBA, would mean an automatic two points or an and 1 situation. He could break down defenses like bowling pins even if he is matched-up with an import.

The author sits back. He smiles. Yes, he thinks. Yes, that was it. Yes, thank God.

The Philippine Basketball Association features, currently, nine teams, each of which is named after the team's primary sponsor. (One team, for example, is called the Santa Lucia Realtors.)





This means that team names and identities have always been malleable and volatile, based on the whim of the marketplace and the marketing department. From 1975-1977, for example, a team in the PBA was called the 7-Up Uncolas, perhaps the only time a professional sports team has been named explicitly for what it is not. Say what you want about the players on that team, but they were not cola.

It's hard to get a gauge on the quality of play in the PBA. My best guess is that it's akin maybe to a mid-major conference in NCAA Division I, or maybe Division II. The best dunker in the PBA seems to be a player for the Air 21 Express named Niño Canaleta. He can be seen in the PBA's 2005 Slam Dunk Competition in this YouTube clip:





Canaleta is 6'8", which seems reasonable if a little on the small side for a forward, and his dunk -- a fairly good one, but nothing amazing by NBA standards -- blows away the crowd, the announcers, and the guy who posted this YouTube clip. "He's in a class by himself," a commentator says, awestruck, when Canaleta finishes.





American players can play in the PBA, though each team, per a recent New York Times piece, is restricted to one "import," who must be 6'6" or smaller. Teams apparently replace imports with surprising frequency; when the league playoffs began, according to the Times piece, the Red Bull Barakos replaced their import, Quemont Greer, with another player, despite the fact that Greer was the team's leading scorer, averaging 27 points per game. At DePaul University, Greer averaged 18 points per game during his 2004-2005 senior season. So competition in the PBA is, say, 50% less challenging than in Conference USA.





According to the Times, Darvin Ham was also not quite good enough to make it in the PBA. "'I averaged a double-double over here with like 16 and 12,'' Ham told the Times, griping about PBA press releases claiming he was a disappointment. ''These articles the PBA is putting online are like propaganda.'' Ham, who has averaged 2.7 points per game in his eight year NBA career, lasted three games with his team, the Talk 'N Text Phone Pals.

Samboy Lim still plays in the occasional PBA Legends game. And like any sports league, the PBA has its rabid fans. This blogger loves Samboy Lim, and it's fun to read his post just to see the over-the-top hoops jargon used by every American sports blog you've ever read employed to describe players you've never heard of:

Of course, Jolas is the fourth-quarter man, so he promptly hit a big three for his team's go-ahead basket. I guess these things never change. There was Benjie kicking the ball out to Ronnie (Magsanoooc, threeee poiiiints!!!), Ato Agustin hogging the ball, Allan Caidic posting up smaller guards, and of course, Alvin and Jerry sharing the same front court, perhaps for the last time ever. Allan Caidic won the MVP for Baby Dalupan's team, after which his counterpart Robert Jaworski joked in the post-game interview, "Ah, pinagbigyan lang namin sila."

Pinagbigyan lang namin sila, indeed.