Tiger Woods is God

Tiger Woods

So after my post last week, I think it’s pretty apparent that I’m a huge fan of Tiger Woods. This past weekend was just another one at the office for the world’s best player, winning the Players Championship for his 7th win of the year and securing the $10 million Fed Ex Cup first prize. In the end, it turns out he didn’t even really need to show up to Atlants to capture the Fed Ex Cup because Steve Stricker and Phil Mickelson didn’t do so well at the tournament.

Regardless, Tiger handled himself with class throughout the weekend. When asked about whether he was concerned about locking up the Fed Ex Cup, he responded like the champion he is with something like “No, I’m not concerned about that. I’m concerned about winning the tournament. Winning takes care of everything else.”  Although part of that statement was most likely a flat out lie (who on this planet can’t be nervous or worried about $10 million?), he handles the media so well which is why he has so many fans around the world. His global image is so powerful these days and it’s only going to increase as he continues to dominate the sport. As golf travels to economically booming countries like China, the support he has around the globe will only continue to rocket up.

My friend, Shaunak, sent me an article a few weeks ago about how Tiger Woods could become the world’s first billionaire athlete. Take a look at the article, its a very interesting column written over at Yahoo! Sports. The PGA Tour has some of the best pension benefits out of any professional sport (the NFL might want to take note of how the PGA treats its players), and the Fed Ex Cup only enriches this plan for Tiger. The calculations done within the article seem pretty reasonable (that Tiger wins the Fed Ex Cup a few more times in his career, that the pension earns an annual return of 9%, etc.). It’s insane that this is even possible, but if it could happen to one person, I’m certainly glad its Tiger Woods and not someone like… Michael Vick.

-K

Rick Ankiel, Week 1 of the NFL (and it’s Fantasy Implications), Roger Federer, Tiger Woods, and more

Never forget 9.11.01. I clearly remember the day. It was one of my first days at Lawrenceville as a freshman and I went to the Registrar’s Office to get something changed with my schedule. I heard on the radio something about planes and the World Trade Center and the Registrar’s assistant was just bawling out in tears. I knew something was wrong – just not how bad it really was. Soon after, we were all summoned to Kirby Arts Center and Headmaster Michael Cary gave an impassioned speech about the day’s events. I’ll never forget his demeanor on stage and how I personally felt protected from the outside world just by being at Lawrenceville. First impressions are always important, and my first impresison of Headmaster Cary was strong, calm, and resolute leader. Too bad he left after our sophomore year…

So it’s taken me a long time once again to update this thing – I’m going to try and update more frequently in the future. This time I don’t have an actual legitimate excuse, other than the fact that I’ve been pretty busy tutoring, saying good bye to friends, and helping people move in at Princeton. The weather has been absolutely beautiful for essentially the past two weeks – although the past week has been a little bit on the humid side (where by a little bit I mean I’ve been sweating ridiculous amounts by just walking outside). I’ve been doing a good job of keeping active by playing tennis, golf, and squash the past few weeks and taking advantage of the good weather before October rolls around and it becomes chilly and disgusting. Additionally, I’ve somehow managed to go to the gym 6 days and counting… I’m going to put the over/under on that streak at something like 10, haha. A lot has happened in the sports world the past few weeks, and there are a few other random things that I wanted to write about.

Rick Ankiel

In case you don’t follow baseball or have been stuck in a cave, Rick Ankiel has emerged in the past few weeks to be the feel good story of the year. If you don’t remember (how could you not if you watched this live… I remembered as an 8th grader watching this live on TV and even then feeling so sorry for the guy), Ankiel threw 4 wild pitches in the first inning of his first ever playoff appearance. The promising, young pitching prospect seemed to be ruined for life from that traumatizing experience – and who wouldn’t be? He was sent back down to the minor leagues to rework his mechanics, came up briefly now and then to the majors before being immediately sent back down after bad command and mechanics.

In 2005, Ankiel made a very Ruth-esque switch from pitcher to hitter. He decided to give baseball another shot not as a pitcher, but rather a power-hitting outfielder. And he was damn successful! The St. Louis Cardinals finally called him up to the majors on August 9 and he promptly hit a 3-run home run in his debut. It was such a feel good story (especially after that douchebag Barry Bonds broke the all-time HR record) in a summer marred with refereeing scandals, dog fighting allegations, and steroid questions. So feel good that Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa, one of the least demonstrative managers in the MLB, was in full out tears when Ankiel hit his first home run and emphatically marked his return.

Then came this bombshell late last week. If you’re too lazy to follow the link, the New York Daily News reported that Ankiel received a year’s supply of HGH in 2004 (along with the fact that Troy Glaus did ‘roids, but who the fuck cares about player ‘roiding up these days anyways?). It appears that Ankiel, in the process of recovering from his 182943671 arm surgeries, was legally prescribed HGH to try and help the recovery process.

So many people around baseball – past players, ESPN commentators, bloggers – have lamented about how devestating this story is. Some have even gone as far as to compare this story with the steroid-tainted home run chase by Bonds… calling this one even worse!! The argument there goes “We’ve known all along that Bonds has been tainted, whereas Rick Ankiel was our antitode to that story and we all thought he was clean so him not being “clean” makes this story so much worse”.

I think that’s probably the stupidest thing I’ve heard in a long time and some of the worst logic ever. The guy had been plagued by arm injuries, got reconstructive elbow surgery, and his doctors prescribed him HGH as one of the drugs to help him make a full and expedient recovery. That’s basically his explanation. Especially since at this point in time the MLB had not yet added HGH to its banned substance list – they didn’t add it until 2005 – I don’t quite understand what the whole commotion is all about (unless I’m just completely oversimplifying the issue which I don’t think I am). I still think that Rick Ankiel is the feel good story of the year. So what if he used a LEGAL SUBSTANCE to help aide him in recovery? So what if HGH is banned now by the MLB? … it certainly wasn’t back when Ankiel took the stuff! People need to chill out and stop overreacting to an overzealous newspaper reporting on a confidential doctor-patient relationship.

Week 1 of the NFL

There is nothing more anticipated and hyped than the opening weekend of professional football. Football is, of course, uniquely American and the most popular sport in America. Unless you’re a die hard fan of an MLB team, you’re probably counting the days between the last snap of the Super Bowl and the first pick of the Draft. Well this past weekend, the wish of millions of sports fans across the nation was granted as the Colts and Saints opened things off on Thursday night (leading to a Colts rout). The weekend was full of exciting games, close games, and blowouts. I wasn’t able to watch a lot of the action since I was tutoring almost all day on Sunday (it sucked), but here are a few observations I have.

1. Randy Moss is back after his 9 reception 183 yard 1 TD performance on Sunday. If Moss can even come close to replicating some of the years he had in Minnesota, we should probably just give them the SB rings now. “If you want to crown ‘em, crown ‘em!”

2. The Bears D is sick at stopping some of the most explosive offenses and players in the league (see last year’s NFC championship game and this past weekend’s game against the Chargers). But it looks like their ultimate success will come from sexy Rex Grossman, and based on Sunday, Bears fans should be concerned. Real concerned (yes that’s you DJ).
2a. Can teams start covering LT’s roll out pass play already? How many times does the collective league need to be burned by that play before they start realizing that it’s actually in the Chargers’ playbook.

3. What a dud week for supposedly fantasy RB “studs”. LaDainian Tomlinson had 17 points, but a lot of that was due to the TD pass he threw to Gates. Steven Jackson had an amazing output of 1 point (doesn’t he look like a dumbass for going on SportsCenter a few weeks back and trying to make the case to be picked ahead of LT). Larry Johnson had 8 points in a very rusty looking opener. Frank Gore managed to rack up only 13 points as well. The leading fantasy RB of the week? How about Adrian Peterson… immediate front runner for ROY.

4. The Packers-Eagles game was supposed to be about Favre vs. McNabb. It turned out to be which team sucks vs. which team sucks more. Well Eagles fans… your team sucked more. In a close 16-13 game won by the Packers (I, myself, am a proud Packers fan), 10 of the 16 points scored by the Packers were direct results of bad punt returns by the Eagles. The first blunder by Greg Lewis may have been excusable for a returner with little to no experience. The second miscue by JR Reed, however, was simply mind boggling. In the 4th quarter with less than 2 minutes to go in a tie game, the guy decides to call for a fair catch that he needs to run 15 yards and dive to get to. Thank you JR Reed for giving us the game.

5. Vince Young simply knows how to win.

6. Is Carolina turning a new page and ready to not be the most disappointing team of the NFL? They have loads of talent… let’s see if they can translate that into remaining in a competitive race with the Saints in the NFC South.

7. Is Pittsburgh that good, or Cleveland just that bad? I’ll go with the latter on that one…

8. That was an ugly win for San Francisco, but a must win for a young playoff-contending team. All you can say after one of those victories is “1-0… undefeated”.

9. Why does it seem Peyton Manning is getting better and better each year?

10. Most importantly, thoughts and prayers go out to Kevin Everett, the 3rd year back up tight end from the Buffalo Bills. Everett suffered a severe injury while tackling a Denver player on a punt return. Unfortunately, it looks like his chances for a full recovery are very slim, but you can only hope for the best. Sometimes it takes things like this to happen to realize how unimportant sports really are in the grand scheme of things.

Fantasy Implications

So this week turned out to be a pretty solid fantasy week for me despite a few duds by my RB’s. I played Peter in the Lawrenceville Fantasy League and ended up winning by a margin of 101-61. Here’s my team and their output and Peter’s team and his output.

My Team

Carson Palmer 15
Larry Johnson 8
Carnell Williams 5
Jamal Lewis 2
Reggie Wayne 21
Terrell Owens 20
Kellen Winslow 8
Packers D/ST 17
Neil Rackers 5

Bench
Ben Roethlisberger 22

Peter’s Team

Matt Leinart 7
Frank Gore 13
Cedric Benson 3
Ladell Betts 6
Chad Johnson 15
Anquan Boldin 9
Vernon Davis 0
Broncos D/ST 5
Olindo Mare 3

My running backs sucked big time. Larry Johnson should usually give me 100 yards and 2 TD’s (which would have been 22 points). Williams got injured early on in the game so thats excusable… and Jamal Lewis is such a shit show these days who knows what to expect. My wide receivers were pretty clutch with Wayne and Owens putting up huge numbers (3rd and 4th most out of all WR in fantasy this week). The only mistake I made in setting up my lineup this week was forgetting to start Roethlisberger over Palmer. I obviously think Palmer is the better quarterback (otherwise I wouldn’t have spent my 2nd round pick on him), but Roethlisberger was facing the Browns and Palmer the Ravens. In one you have probably one of the worst D’s in the league, and in the other, arguably the best. Palmer still didn’t make me pay for it too much by only putting up 7 less points that Big Ben, but I need to be more careful with that sort of stuff in the future.

Roger Federer

Does anything more need to be said about this guy? He’s the greatest tennis player to ever play the game and is quickly approaching on Pistol Pete’s record of 14 Grand Slams. On Sunday, with a 7-6 7-6 6-4 victory over 3-seed Novak Djokovic. Djokovic certainly had his chances in each of the first two sets, holding a combined 7 set points, but failed to convert in any. Federer showed his championship mettle by picking up his game at the right time whenever he needed to.

Watching Federer play is a beautiful thing for an amateur tennis player like myself. He makes every shot, every point, every match look so damn effortless. He anticipates his opponents’ shots like no one else in the game, and has the mental toughness to go along with the physical skills. I have always been a Federer fan just because his game is so perfect. One thing that’s surfaced in the recent few months (or maybe it’s that I’ve just noticed it) that is starting to detract from Federer is his arrogance and cockiness. I’m going to compare him with his parallel in golf in just a moment, but here’s a quote from his victory speech at Flushing Meadows:

“New guys challenging me — this is my biggest motivation out there. Seeing them them challenging me and then beating them in the finals”

Could a guy get any more cocky? I think in order to be a truly great champion, you have to have a certain degree of confidence and cockiness. The “I trust my strokes and game and know that I can beat anyone out there” type of attitude. Federer may just be crossing that line slightly at this point in time. I certainly hope he tones down his attitude and comes back down to Earth like the rest of us.

Tiger Woods

Does anything more need to be said about this guy? He’s arguably the greatest golfer ever, and the only records left to break are Nicklaus’ 20 majors and Sam Snead’s 82 tour victories (this intro sounds awfully similar doesn’t it?). At the age of 31, he already has 13 majors and 60 tour victories. His latest tour victory came at the BMW Championship where he shot a final round 63 for a two shot victory over Aaron Baddeley.

Tiger Woods winning is no longer really newsworthy or exciting unless its in a major championship. What I would like to do, however, is to compare him to Roger Federer and some of the remarks Woods made after winning on Sunday.

“I never, ever would have dreamt that this could have happened this soon,” Woods said. “I’ve been out here, what, 11 years? This is my 12th season. And to have this many wins … I just never could have foreseen that.

“I’ve exceeded my expectations, and it’s been a lot of fun to enjoy that whole road, that whole process, to get to 60. It’s been a lot of work. There have been some changes along the way, you know? But I think that’s all been great.”

Please compare the two quotes. Tiger Woods is a true champion… Roger Federer should probably take a few tips from his good friend. Now the real question (which I don’t necessarily have an answer for): Who is more dominant in his respective sport, Tiger or Roger?

-K

Poker Results 7/24

So I might play some more later tonight (right now it’s ~5 PM), but had a nice run earlier this morning. **Update** So I played a bunch more and ended about even for the evening session. Had some really really gay beats like KK vs AJ and AQ vs 62, but managed to have a sick run at the end and pick up 4 1st’s.

25+2 SnG’s Today: 41 played, + 265.50

25+2 SnG’s Year: 55 played, +315

I started to tighten up as I made the cash and it paid dividends. Unless I’m severely short stacked, I think a good strategy once I’m in the cash is to let the other two stacks battle it out and eliminate each other. Even with a chip disadvantage of something like 8500/5000 or 9500/4000 I think that I can play good enough HU to give myself a chance to win every time. This might not be the best strategy, but I’m going to see how it works.

Also, played a round at Lawrenceville with Coyle today… shot something like a 43 or 44. Glad with the way I’ve been playing the past few weeks.

- K

Weekend Recap

Didn’t get much poker in at all this weekend. Went down to Coyle’s beach house, which signifcantly delayed my completion of Deathly Hallows, but it was a fun, relaxing time. That being said, I did finally complete the final installment of Harry Potter last night and I thought Rowling did a good job of wrapping up the series. There were some confusing parts that I’ve already discussed with friends who have completed the book, but I won’t write about what was confusing becuase I fucking hate spoilers.

Logging in to Pokerstars yesterday, I unregistered from a tournament becuase I was going to be playing tennis in the afternoon. I opened up the Cashier and was surprised to see that I had an extra 50-something dollars in the account. A little confused, I went into my history and there was one line that said “Credit Purchase $54.09″. Now, this is sad to admit, but I actually have a Pokerstars filter on my Gmail account since I get so many tournament result e-mails from them. I checked the filter and found the following e-mail:

Hello,

PokerStars has become aware of two players who were working together in our Sit & Go tournaments to the detriment of other players.  You were involved in at least one tournament with these players and as a result you may have been adversely affected.

The players’ accounts were closed and their funds frozen pending a thorough investigation, which is now complete.  Fortunately the problem was identified quickly and they had only played in a few tournaments before the accounts were closed.

In a case such as this it is our policy to confiscate the colluders’ winnings or balances and to distribute them to the players affected by their actions in as fair a way as possible.  To confirm your credit, log onto your PokerStars account, go to the ‘Cashier’ screen and click the ‘History’ button.  Your share will be shown as a “Credit Purchase”, followed by the amount of the credit.

I regret that we will be unable to answer questions as to how your specific credit amount was calculated.  Likewise, we are not at liberty to identify the specific games or players in question.  Suffice to say that they have been barred from the site and you will not encounter them again.

The integrity of the games at PokerStars is of paramount importance to us and we will not abide cheating or collusion in our games.  We work hard to police our games and prevent such instances.  In the rare cases where collusion has actually occurred, we make sure that any players affected are compensated appropriately.

Thank you for your continued play here on PokerStars.  Please do not hesitate to let us know any time we can be of help.

Best Regards,

SteveW
PokerStars Support Team

So it looks like two fuckers tried to collude with each other and got caught. I was talking with Eric about this and we both found it quite impressive that Pokerstars does have the security in place to somehow track people down when they do cheat. My roommate and I once entered a SnG together – not with the direct intent to collude, but with the idea that we’d stay out of each other’s path when put in that situation. I think we both finished out of the money anyways and that’s when I got thinking about collusion in Sit N Go’s. In the long run, it doesn’t seem terribly profitable for two players to collude in SnG’s… especially if they’re not already winning players to begin with. If two losing players (where losing players basically means people with a -ROI) think that they’ll become superhuman and untouchable in SnG’s by colluding with one another, I think they’re in for a harsh surprise. Looking at the 25+2 SnG structure (just using this as an example, you could use any buy-in really), two people would have to put up a combined buy-in of 54 dollars. At least one person would have to get 2nd ($67.50 payoff) for this to be profitable. It just doesn’t seem to me that between two losing players, this operation would be profitable in the long run. The only way I see this working is if one of them goes all-in early on in the tournament (when blinds are 10/20 or 15/30) and the other guy calls, with whoever winning having close to 3000 chips and a distinct big stack advantage over the other players. This obviously has risks associated with it. The first one being that unless you are side by side in the SB/BB, there’s no guarantee that someone else in the tourney will wake up with AA-JJ or be a donk and call you with Ax or Kx and win. The second one being that Pokerstars will probably start to catch on to something fish if one person is going in with 72os and another is calling with 94os when blinds are so small, lol. I think the most profitable ( and safe) arrangement a winning SnG player could make would be finding another winning player, entering the same tournaments, and sort of having a non-compete pact where you basically don’t go heads up into a big pot with each other. Then again, having played close to 1000 SnG’s at the 25+2 level so far, I already have notes on most of the good players and make it a priority of mine to stay out of their way when they come in with big PF raises. It’s like the Big Game in Vegas… all the pros will play pots with each other, but when a fish does sit down, it’s a race to see who can take the fish’s money, not each other’s.

Other shit I’ve been thinking about:

• My first ever bold prediction on this blog was… quite the huge failure. I guess that’s what you get when you bet on Asians. On Saturday morning, I predicted that KJ Choi would win the British Open. As I was typing those words, KJ was at -5 and Sergio was at -7… by the time I finished my post, I think Sergio was at -8 and KJ at -3. Basically KJ misplayed a drive on the second easiset hole on the course and instead of having a good birdie opportunity, he had to scramble for bogey. I was, however, correct in my prediction that Sergio would be too inconsistent and ultimately unravel. Padraig Harrington ultimately beat Sergio in a 4-hole playoff, shooting E to Sergio’s +1. There was lots of fun to be had on the 18th, which was to be expected after Jean Van De Velde’s collapse at Carnoustie in ’99. I was only able to catch the last two playoff holes after driving back from the beach, but Harrington had a chance to win it in regulation and hit it into Barry Burn TWICE while Sergio’s championship-winning par putt just lipped out on the left edge and his bogey led him to the playoff. I’m happy for Harrington – not only cause he’s the cousin of famous poker player Dan Harrington (kidding…), but also becuase he was able to come back from what seemed like a devastating, Open-crushing double bogey and win the playoff playing composed, smart golf. He was starting to enter the Best Player to Never Win A Major chat, but he’s shown he’s got the stuff to win the big one.

• So this is just ridiculous. In Maryland, Mahamu Kanneh was charged with sexually assaulting a 7-year old. That trial has now been dismissed, due to the violation of the right to a speedy trial. What was the hold up? How about this:

“Charges against a man accused of raping and repeatedly molesting a 7-year-old girl have been dropped because the court took too long to find an interpreter fluent in his native West African language.

Montgomery County Circuit Judge Katherine D. Savage dismissed the nearly three-year-old case against Mahamu Kanneh last week, saying the delays had violated the Liberian immigrant’s right to a speedy trial.

A court-appointed psychiatrist recommended that an interpreter be appointed and judges who handled subsequent hearings heeded that advice. But officials could not find a competent interpreter of Vai who would stay.

The first interpreter stormed out of the courtroom in tears because she found the facts of the case disturbing. A second interpreter was rejected for faulty work. A third Vai interpreter was located, but at the last minute, that person had to tend to a family emergency.”

The worst part about it, if you keep reading the article, is that the prosecutors DID find another translator, but the judge ruled it was already too late. I guess the key to getting a free pass from the American judicial system is to speak a really obscure language that no one will be able to translate – or one that will take a long time to find a translator for. I should start to learn Elvish and claim to not know English, then maybe I can get away with felony offenses. Fucking stupid judges.

-K

Harry Potter 7, Restaurant Week, and More

So yes, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows came out about 10 hours ago on the East Coast when thousands (millions?) of little kids, teenagers, college students, and probably grown adults lined up at bookstores across the nation awaiting the last installment of the series. I, myself, am unabashed to say that I pre-ordered the book from Amazon.com all the way back in February. I’m a huge fan of the whole Harry Potter series so I’m highly anticipating getting the package very soon later today and reading the whole thing in a day. As it stands, Snape has killed Dumbledore and Harry vows to not go back to Hogwarts and seek out Voldemort to finally kill him. Did I say I was excited? I have a few of my own predictions on what is going to happen, but I just want to read the god damn book and get a definite conclusion. I’ve been trying to stay away from the Internet in fear of coming across ANY spoilers, but I did read a synopsis of the NYT review and everyone is saying that the conclusion is very un-Sopranos like – aka satisfying and conclusive. My dick of a friend Jim has probably already finished the book seeing how he was one of the thousands to line up at bookstores last night, and as promised, he sent me a text with probably a huge spoiler. I hate the feeling of having an unopened text, but Harry Potter is much more important than with the way I feel. But fuck Jim regardless.

Last night, I headed into the city with my parents to meet up with my sister for dinner at The Sea Grill, a seafood restaurant in the bottom of Rockefeller Plaza. This past week and next week are the semi-annual event regarded as “Restaurant Week”. Some of the best (but not the really really extraordinary ones, because those fuckers don’t necessarily need the publicity) restaurants offer price-fixe menus for lunch ($24.50) and dinner ($35). The lunch is much more worth the money, because you get essentially the same food and portions at a discounted price. But with my whole family working, dinner was the only option. The food was pretty good, I had some crab prawns for an appetizer, grilled sea bass for an entree, and some sort of pudding + strawberry sorbet for dessert.

On my way in to the city, however, I noticed something that I just need to rant about for a bit. We had just entered the city through the Holland Tunnel and I saw a billboard for “World’s Best Rum”. This bold statement caught my attention, but the ad was pretty stupidly retarded. From about 500 feet away, I could not discern the actual name of the rum from the billboard. I thought the whole point of having a 40 x 60 foot advertisement on a road was so that you could catch the attention of motorists as they were driving by at pretty high speeds. Even worse, however, was the fact that when I was DRIVING BY the billboard, the name of the rum was still too small to actually tell what it was. Someone needs to fire the person who designed that shit… cause it was definitely a huge waste of money. What am I supposed to do? Google “World’s Best Rum”? Well that doesn’t work out so well…

I’m currently watching the British Open on ABC, with the possibility of playing some poker and firing up a few SnG’s (Sit n Go’s). Tiger, unfortunately, has yet to make his signature “I’m going to play superhuman and fuck up the rest of the field” move on Saturday so far, but he still has a few more holes to have this round put him back into contention. I say “unfortunately” not because I’m a huge Tiger fan, but watching Tiger play at his best always leaves me awestruck. Sergio Garcia is the current leader right now at -7, with KJ Choi two shots back at -5, and a few others at -4. Assuming that Tiger doesn’t make a miraculous run through the last few tough holes and finishes the day at like -4 (which is probably a bad assumption, but whatever), I’m going to pick KJ Choi to win the Open this year. He’s playing extremely well (winner of two big tournaments in the Memorial and AT&T National in the past two months) and the course is fit perfectly for his game. It’s not too long, and KJ is an extremely accurate tee to green player. Sergio is also one of the better tee to green players on the Tour (some say when he’s on, one of the best), but once we’re on that green, only God knows where that shit is going. Sergio showed so much potential in his battle with Tiger at the 1999 PGA, but has since choked away tournament after tournament. Additionally, through the first 4 holes of today, Choi is driving straight and hitting his irons well, whereas Sergio has been a bit wild off the tee. The penalty of a bad drive isn’t necessarily as bad as it was at the US Open, but getting into the deep feskew is never a good idea. I’ll take KJ and his steady game over Sergio, his lead, and his extremely volatile game (check out the Driving Accuracy and GIR stats).

**update** So it’s like noon right now and Sergio is at -9 (with a good putt for -10), Steve Stricker is at -6, and KJ Choi is at -4. Oh yeah, Tiger finished at -1. Maybe I was wrong about Sergio and it could be his week, but then again, you never know when the Sergio Collapse will come.

Some more sports… The NFL is mired in the Michael Vick scandal (which I will not write about until we start to get more facts – lesson learned from the Duke scandal), the MLB has Bonds’ chase of Aaron’s HR record (which brings to light racial divides and the whole steroids issue), while the NHL… well the NHL just absolutely sucks right now. Right when we thought that the NBA was the league that could do no wrong with rising stars (Lebron, D-Wade, Greg Oden, Kevin Durant) to complement it’s established stars (Kobe, Shaq, Nash, Duncan to name a few), it got a huge fucking bombshell yesterday. A veteran NBA official of 13 years, Tim Donaghy, has been accused of betting on NBA games, including ones he has officiated. That last part, “including ones that he has officiated”, is probably the most disturbing one as a pretty avid NBA fan. It’s one thing to gamble on horses, other sports, or even other NBA games you’re not officiating (I am, of course, not one who is against the concept of gambling), but a completely different thing to be betting on games you are officiating. Could Donaghy have actually affected a game in a point shaving scheme? I doubt he could have had that much influence on a game since each NBA game is officiated by 3 referees and it would become pretty obvious if one guy was just calling tons of stupid fouls on one particular team. And basketball isn’t like baseball, where the home plate ump clearly has much more authority than the other umpires calling balls and strikes. At the same time, however, one has to wonder if Donaghy actually did use his officiating power to affect the outcome of games. Someone, throughout the course of this investigation, will probably have to go through the game film of any games Donaghy both officiated and gambled on. It’s sad that something like this will severely damage the trust fans have with officials and the integrity of the game. Let’s hope we can learn something from this and prevent it from happening in the future.

-K