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You tell 'em Gabby! See the Head Slap of the Week
Greetings from the Hoodwood, where the dog days of summer came early and will stay late. But the locals are oh so ready for football season.
Olympics: Usain lives up to his name, and the US Basketball hits everything
9.63 seconds… that’s how long it took Usain Bolt to cover the 100 meters in the Olympic final. That is just incredible. Bolt is fast everyone who watches sports on the regular knows that. But that’s just an absolute sick time, it wasn’t the world record of 9.58 but it was an Olympic Record. Heck he covered that distance faster than it took me to type this sentence. I guess the question now begs itself, whats does Bolt do for an encore? He has already run poor Justin Gatling into pure irrelevance, the Gatling is plenty fast in his own right. It seems like Bolt is making a mockery of the sprinting world and doing so with impunity. Bolt didn’t even showboat at the end, which seemed to have had offended the sensibilities and decorums of some sportscasters who thought he slowed up at the end in Beijing and could have posted an even faster time.
The US mens basketball team was way overdue for a beatdown in the boogie down type game and they dished one against Nigeria on Thursday. I mean this was one of those “Damn!” type beatings. Whether it was Carmelo Anthony dropping a US record 37 point performance, in just 14 minutes of play. Though the Olympics play only 10 minutes quarters it seems that Anthony was scoring for a 48 minute performance. The Americans hit 3s like they were going out of style hitting 29 3 pointers
Read that last line again. 29 3 point field goals.
The Lady Bandit is the mathematician in the house, but even my poor Hoodwood math tells me that is 87 points. That tally alone put the US better than Nigeria in scoring. They only had 28 field goals made total…Yikes
The 156 point total, bettered the total of the 1992 Dream Team, the Olympic record of 136 set by Brazil, the 156-73 win set a mark for the biggest win. When you shoot 71 percent from the field you wont lose too many games if any at all. Of course the hater media came flying out of the woodwork. The US ran up the score, they were portraying the ugly Americans. They took too many threes. I mean it was almost embarrassing to watch the Yanks drill trey after trey almost to the point of ad nauseum. But I am in agreement with US coach Krzyzewski, it wasn’t like the US was trying to showboat. They ran a strict zone in the 3rd and 4th quarters and eschewed the fast breaks. The US to put it plain and simple was all kinds of hot and poor Nigeria flat ran into a buzz saw. Now, the US might have came out into its next game a little overconfident in its next match against Lithuania and found itself in a battle. Bred on an American style game, the Lithuanians ran the high pick and roll with frightening efficiency and the American squad was just powerless to stop it. The Yanks needed a hardcore 4th quarter effort from LeBron James, a player quickly establishing himself as the leader and Alpha Dog of this group of alpha dogs, to take a 99-94 win. Did this put a massive scare in the American team? Possibly, but you can be sure it got their attention and their opponents as well. The Lithuanians have put out a blueprint on how to keep the Americans at least partially interested in a game. Can a team put a full game together, catch the Yanks snoozing and hand out a massive upset? It seemed that the Argentinean team looked ready to stand tall and hung tough taking the Americans to the half down only a single point. Nonplussed, the Yanks threw a 42-17 3rd quarter blitz and behind Kevin Durant's 28 rolled to a 127-96 rout. The Americans finish pool play 5-0 and though pushed on occasion have only been really tested once. First up in Olympic quarters will be Australia and its anyones guess what the spread for this expected beatdown will be, the winner gets the winner of an interesting Brazil-Argentina matchup. The pesky Lithuanians and Spainards are on the other side of the draw and would only face the US in the Gold Medal match. Im no Duke apologist but I have a strong belief that Coach K wont let their focus slip. Meanwhile, the US women are delivering beatdowns of their own, hammering China 114-66 and have also finished pool play at 5-0. The womens teams may be even more scary than the men. With the mafia don Geno Aureiemma running the show, the US women have yet to be even seriously challenged. They started the knockout round with a ho-hum 91-48 rout of Canada. They made sure there wouldnt be any chance of the Canadians crying foul that result like they did with the soccer match on Sunday (Ok I'll stop with the jingoistic prose...lets move on)
NFL/MLS Sadness in Philly and C’Bus.
You know Im getting tired of commenting on tragic circumstances. Hoodwood sends out its condolences to the Eagles family in their time of sorrow with the death of Garrett Reid, son of Eagles head coach Andy who passed away on Sunday. Reid had some publicized run ins with the law but seemed to be getting his life together. Reid was staying at Lehigh University where the Eagles are having their training camp. Hoodwood is see tragedy a little too close to home, In Columbus, the MLS’ Crew are in shock after midfielder Kirk Urso collapsed and died just this past Saturday. Urso had been sidelined since May with a groin injury and was not with the team who was in Washington playing DC United. Again condolences to the families with the Eagles and Crew in their time of loss.
NFL: Is Sheriff Goodell backing down?
One of the items that I was totally stunned to hear on the drive in to work Monday Morning was the possibility that Saints LB Jonathan Vilma may be cutting a deal to have his suspension reduced. Vilma right now is appealing his year suspension for his alleged part in the Saints Bountygate scandal. Vilma has been nothing less that vehemently vocal in his vociferous denial of any part in this. Vilma has also raised the possibility of taking the NFL to court for defamation of character. Well it seems now that the NFL Sheriff....ummmm Commish Roger Goodell may be taking this lawsuit a little more seriously. Reports have been abounding that the NFL may offer to reduce Vilma's suspension to 8 games if Vilma drops his lawsuit. This suspension could then reduce the suspensions of Saints defensive end Will Smith (currently facing a four game suspension), Packers defensive tackle Anthony Hargrove (eight games), and Browns linebacker Scott Fujita (three games). If a deal is done, many think that this could finally put a chink in the once inpenatrable armor of Goodell who has come off as the strict taskmaster of the NFL the so-called Dean of Discipline. I for one would like to see Goodell take an L, he has gotten way too haughty and think that his my way or the highway mentality is harmful to the NFL. He is not in the mold of Tagliabue and Rozelle, two of the best commissioners the NFL ever had.
College Football: Will Penn State ever go away?
Penn State trustees are trying to go the legal route to get their way and for what its worth I think its a travesty. Three of Penn States trustees are filing an appeal with the NCAA to overturn the sanctions against the football team. The appeal is a precursor to an appeal to be filed in the federal courts to invalidate the sanctions. The Trustees are claiming that the Penn State president Rodney Erickson did not have the "legal authority" to accept the penalties and did not consult with the trustee board prior to accepting the punishment. This is also in addition to the family of the late coach Paterno who are seeking to have the vacation of his wins from 1998-2011 overturned and an open hearing about the sanctions levied against him and Penn State. Where were the trustees when all this shit was going on? They claim that this will do irreparable harm to a generation of fans, I think that they are more worried about their bottom line and the number of prospective students that may go elsewhere and the football team that once was a bully now appearing to be getting ready to get its collective heads kicked in for a number of years. What these trustees dont seem to get is that the NCAA is a private institution and governs it members as it sees fit. They also dont seem to get that the NCAA could have listened to the howls of some of the bloodthirsty and shut the program down for a year or longer. These trustees need to shut their collective mouths, take their punishment and go back to their academic ivory tower where they were at before this scandal happened.
MLB: Hoodwood's favorite baseball writer
Meggie Zahenis...you need to remember that name. This is a young lady who has a special gift for the baseball prose and has a job that I envy. She is a 15 year old writer for MLB.com who won the 2011 MLB Breaking Barriers contest and is now a youth correspondent for MLB.com. Zahenis is from Cincinnati and has a rare disease called Hereditary Sensory Autonomic Neuropathy Type II (HSAN II) HSAN II is a neurological disease that affects the sensory preceptors in the body. In short, the body feels little or no sense to pain... I was blown away by the information on the disease, but cheered by the spirit, drive and determination of this writer who can really write. I encourage you to check her out at MLB.com, you'll be glad you did. Check out her story in this video
PHAT DAP/HEAD SLAP
Phat Dap
I had given Dap to Reds broadcaster Marty Brennaman for honoring his bet that if the Reds won ten games in a row he would have his head shaved. The Reds won ten in a row beating the Rockies to complete a sweep last weekend. There was an added caveat, if $20,000 was raised for the Reds Community Fund he would get the cut done at home plate AT Great American Ball Park. Not only did the fans come through to the tune of $30,000 which was matched by local businesses. The $50,000 was matched by Charlie Sheen. The notorious bad boy is an avid Reds fan and had brought his father actor Martin Sheen to the game for his 70th birthday, which is the same as Brennaman’s. Sheen pledged a matching donation for the community fund to have it earmarked for the Reds Urban Youth Project. Say what you want about Sheen’s often weird antics but give him dap for a great contribution. But the bigger dap also goes to Brenneman who after getting his hair shorn spoke to the crowd and introduced three young friends who are part of the dragonfly foundation. These are kids that are battling or have recovered from cancer and are bald. The group had sent Brennaman a t-shirt in the hopes that he would wear it after he was shaved. He not only wore the shirt, but spoke briefly to crowd about his support of the group. A class act all the way around. Take a look at the video. Its lengthy but it would take a hard hard heart not to feel for these kids and cheer for them
Head Slap
Not to the idiots that were whining about people posting Olympic results on Twitter, my feeling is if you don’t want to know who won what, stay off the social media sites. No my head slap goes to the women that were throwing crackback blasts at Gabby Douglas the gold medal gymnast, about her hair during the competition. I mean, really talking about this girls hair with needless rants about “Don’t they have stylists in London?” and “Get that girl a comb.” In a time when there are few black women in sports not named Williams to rave about Douglas’ feat in becoming the first woman of color to win the All-Around event in gymnastics and as well as helping the US women’s team take the team gold. There were way too many people ranting about this subject. To her credit, Douglas played the cool role. Me personally, had it been my daughter I would have been raving mad. Serena Williams and actress Gabrielle Union were among the first in her defense, as if she really needed to be defended. It’s the stupid people who are on the couch and have nothing better to do than throw useless blasts at someone who is doing the country proud that need to explain themselves.
Until Next Post Fellow Sports Fans!
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