The Life And Death Of The English Football Song:: Popmatters explores, with examples, the history of the terrace chant, its sporadic forays into the recorded music world and the popular music charts, and its occasional (sometimes even successful) crossing into American culture, providing (among other high and low lights) the darkest moment in Walter Payton's storied career.

posted by chicobangs to culture at 11:20 AM - 9 comments

An Open Letter From Roger Ebert To Jay Mariotti: Mariotti is an easy target at the best of times, but his abrupt departure from the Chicago Sun-Times, right after they paid his way to China for the Olympics, left his most distinguished now-former colleague more than a little out of joint. And no one writes a screw-you letter like Roger Ebert.

posted by chicobangs to culture at 05:11 PM - 14 comments

What do you get the hockey fan who has everything?: Well, Graeme Patterson in Halifax has hooked up a synthesizer/organ to a table hockey game.

"The sk1 somehow had each key hooked up to each player (eg: A=goalie, C#=right winger etc...) and when the keyboard was played they would move around and such."

(More pictures here.)

posted by chicobangs to hockey at 02:29 PM - 9 comments

Dave Zirin interviews Ralph Nader: about the idea of a fan's bill of rights, the NBA referees' scandal, and the still-growing dangers of taxpayer-funded stadiums.

Before Ralph Nader was the guy no one wanted to be stuck talking to at the Presidential Election party, he was one of the most important consumer watchdogs the United States ever had. Here, the always-excellent Dave Zirin brings out the childhood Lou Gehrig fan in him, and lets the erstwhile politician get a few things off his chest.

posted by chicobangs to culture at 01:27 PM - 6 comments

An incredible collection of photos: from yesterday's Turkey vs. Switzerland rain-soaked Euro 2008 match, courtesy of Alan Taylor's phenomenal photoblog at the Boston Globe.

posted by chicobangs to soccer at 01:26 PM - 26 comments

"...one of the most ungentlemanly, sneaky, just plain rotten things I've ever seen...":
On April 11, 1975, the New England Whalers and Minnesota Fighting Saints set a WHA record with a bench clearing brawl that resulted in 217 minutes in penalties. (In a playoff game.) To commemorate the occasion, the Whalers released a 7" single featuring Bob Neumeier & Bill Rasmussen's gleeful blow-by-blow commentary of the fight. The audio is actually kind of amazing.

posted by chicobangs to hockey at 10:31 AM - 8 comments

Ooooops:: The Spokane Chiefs win the Memorial Cup, and then promptly snap the trophy in half.

posted by chicobangs to hockey at 11:45 AM - 13 comments

The Danny Gallivan of Finland:: Or so the New York Times says. Frankly, and this piece admits as much by the end, Antero Mertaranta's announcing style transcends language and communicates a crazed enthusiasm for the game the same way the great Rick Jeannaret does.

posted by chicobangs to hockey at 07:41 AM - 1 comment

'I'm A Diehard Atlanta Braves Fan. Does That Make Me A Jerk?': Or more to the point, where is the line between cheering for a perennial overdog and being inconsiderate toward one's fellow fans, both of your team and of others?

posted by chicobangs to baseball at 11:29 AM - 12 comments

Back In The Swing:: In February 1962, Sports Illustrated sent the illustrator Robert Weaver to cover spring training in Florida. He then created a series of paintings that appeared in the March 5, 1962, issue of the magazine.

The drawings that follow are from his sketchbook.

posted by chicobangs to baseball at 12:51 PM - 6 comments

Russia Is Luring Back NHL Stars:: "the Soviet Union [was] a hockey superpower for decades that was bleeding talent profusely. The sport had all but disintegrated there by the early 1990s as the empire that spawned one of the most successful sporting industries in the world melted into decrepitude. Most hockey players of international merit left Russian clubs, which began to fester in an atmosphere of poverty, gangsterism and occasional violence."

But thanks to a national economy that's starting to regain its footing, as well as the exodus of former NHLers like Oleg Tverdovsky and Alexei Yashin, the Russian Super League is beginning to bring hockey back to the forefront of the Russian sporting landscape.

posted by chicobangs to hockey at 10:20 AM - 20 comments

The Ricky Roma of Golf:: In which Joel Waldfogel provides statistical (and literary) proof that when Tiger Woods is in the field, he makes everyone else play worse, whether he's on his game or not.

"It's generally agreed that people work harder when they are paid for performance. Anyone who has ever languished in a Paris cafe—where service compris translates roughly as "the Republic of France mandates a minimum 15 percent tip regardless of service quality"—can appreciate the power of incentives. But the effects of incentives appear to be muted when the incentives are based on relative performance and the competition is tough."

posted by chicobangs to golf at 10:12 AM - 17 comments

The Unsung Career of Larry Kwong: : In the wake of the celebrations for Willie O'Ree and Herb Carnegie, the Globe & Mail profiles another groundbreaking player who's received rather less fanfare: "Unlike a scoring record, his legacy as the first NHL player of Asian ancestry can never be broken, bettered or taken away. It can only be ignored."

posted by chicobangs to hockey at 01:08 PM - 14 comments

The Playoffs, As We Know Them, Are Bunk: My (quixotic, admittedly) proposal for overhauling the playoff and regular season system for all of American sports.

posted by chicobangs to commentary at 04:07 AM - 0 comments

Here's a BC Lions promotional campaign: featuring excellent shots of fans of the other CFL teams in various stages of anguish.

posted by chicobangs to football at 06:56 PM - 30 comments

Photos of the new Gordie Howe statue outside the JLA in Detroit.: I didn't realize they didn't have one of him there yet, so this stylized entry (designed by Omri Amrany, (who also did one of Michael Jordan, as well as a few of the Tigers) is overdue.

It looks good, but it's not quite the dynamic work of art that Robert Graham's Joe Louis fist is.

posted by chicobangs to hockey at 01:31 PM - 14 comments

Good News: The Sparks are staying in Los Angeles.: Bad News: Their best player is taking the year off.

posted by chicobangs to basketball at 11:52 AM - 21 comments

Nascar’s Drive for Diversity Is Producing Mixed Signals:: The program, which looks to expand the talent pool of drivers at the top levels of stock car racing by encouraging minorities and women, is being beset with funding shortages, equipment problems and ignorance from fans, crew and executives.

Although it's far from a total failure, it may need some tweaking. According to the father of one of the younger drivers in the program, “The program is not designed to be successful because, No. 1, it’s not properly funded... They claim that it’s a pipeline. Well, nobody came out the pipe.”

posted by chicobangs to auto racing at 12:30 PM - 22 comments

Orioles Fans Walk Out In Protest:: At exactly 5:08 p.m. yesterday (in honor of #5 and #8), about 1,000 Baltimore Orioles fans, many wearing black t-shirts saying "For Pete's Sake/Free The Birds," walked out of the stadium en masse in the fourth inning of a makeup game against the Detroit Tigers to protest Peter Angelos' apparent disinterest in fielding a competitive team.

The O's are about to complete their ninth consecutive losing season, all under the management of Angelos.

posted by chicobangs to baseball at 09:11 AM - 29 comments

NHL Sticks: Now With 50% More Curve!: Not only has the Rules Committee decided to up the allowable stick-curve from 1/2 inch to 3/4 inch, they've updated the shootout rules and are upping the penalties for diving to include fines and suspensions.

Given how the new rules went over last year, this could be interesting.

posted by chicobangs to hockey at 12:52 PM - 13 comments

David Foster Wallace on Roger Federer as religious experience: (NY Times link): in which Wallace, a former tennis prodigy himself, makes an elegant case for why everyone should see Federer play in person at least once in their lives.

In the light of the recent ascension of Tiger Woods up another step towards Valhalla, this is an interesting (and, of course, given the author, exhaustive, eloquent, poetic and heavily footnoted) counterpoint.

posted by chicobangs to tennis at 02:54 AM - 12 comments

End of an era as Harry Sinden steps down:: the guiding force behind the bench and in the front office of the Boston Bruins for 40 years, he decided to step down this week as President and General Manager.

Like him or hate him, he was certainly one of a kind.

posted by chicobangs to hockey at 03:09 PM - 15 comments

Andre Agassi finally calls it a career:: The only active player to have won all four Grand Slam tournaments (and one of only 5 all time) is going to hang it up after this year's US Open. After twenty years on the tour, he grew up in public in a way that few do, and his legacy to the game is considerable.

posted by chicobangs to tennis at 11:28 PM - 18 comments

Johnson Waxes Off:: 75-year-old Hootie Johnson announced he's stepping down as head of the Augusta National Golf Club. Under his tutelage, the Club became longer in yards, began the long, slow process of racial integration, and ran the Masters Golf Tournament commercial-free and without interruption on CBS for a few years as an experiment.

But of course, he'll be best known, some say unfairly, for his battles with Martha Burke and the National Council of Women's Organizations over changing Augusta's men-only policy, which is still in place.

posted by chicobangs to golf at 04:35 PM - 80 comments

Steve Howe killed in truck accident:: The 1980 NL Rookie Of The Year, who was suspended seven times in his career for drug offenses, and became a poster child for the laxness of Major League Baseball's drug policy in the 1980's and 90's, died in a truck accident this morning. He was 48.

posted by chicobangs to baseball at 06:16 PM - 28 comments