I am sure I am not alone when I say that was another summer that went by way too fast. School has now officially started and I am sure everyone is excited to get back to the 5-10 hours a week of studying that Cal Poly recommends. Or was it 25-35 hours?
How far away are we from Thanksgiving break, like two months, right? Fall quarter isn’t the quarter where we get all those Mondays off, is it?
But seriously, my name is John Middlekauff and I’m here to wrap up what’s going on in sports around the country. I’ll try to touch on everything as we go through 2006-07, in what looks to be great times for sports at both the collegiate and professional levels.
If you’re anything like me, you know fall is a celestial time for the die-hard sports fan. With the NFL and college football back in action, you can literally watch football from 9 a.m. Saturday until 9 p.m. Sunday when the final game takes place. That’s until Monday Night Football, at least.
The MLB playoffs races are coming down to the wire and it looks like anyone has a chance to win the World Series, that is if you’re in the American League. I’d say the Mets have a chance but I think Bill Buckner is currently retired.
College basketball and the NBA will be starting in a month, and the NHL isn’t on strike anymore. We will keep pace with everything as it unfolds throughout the year, but first let’s just do a little summer recap of what happened in the world of sports.
We started the summer out with the World Cup in Germany, something that every country except America takes seriously.
As usual, we didn’t do too well – we did tie Italy, the eventual champion. I guess that is something we can build on and give us hope for the 2010 Cup, but America still has a lot of work before we can even think about contending on the international level as witnessed this summer.
We thought we had another American champion in the Tour De France, Floyd Landis, until he tested positive for synthetic testosterone. He tried to blame it on the whiskey and beers he drank after he completed one of the greatest one-day comebacks in the history of the race.
We sent what was regarded as the greatest talent on a basketball court to China for the FIBI World Championships. The U.S. was favored as usual, but everyone forgot that this was an actual team game and not a dunk contest.
In other countries, they play defense and actually practice jump shots.
But did you see that no-look pass from LeBron James to Dwyane Wade where he threw it off the glass to Carmelo Anthony for a 360-degree dunk? It was nuts! But oh yeah, we lost.
Now Spain is the world champion and America has to re-qualify next summer because we can’t play defense and hit jumpers.
Everyone has been saying that the U.S. needs to adapt its style of play to more of a team game.
American golf just got smoked in the Ryder Cup and that is probably an understatement.
U.S. Track and Field definitely didn’t have a good summer. The fastest man in the world, Justin Gatlin, wasn’t actually that fast. He was just using steroids.
Marion Jones tested positive in sample A but was cleared with a second sample. I am sure Landis wishes he would have had Jones’ doctor on speed dial when he was riding through those mountains.