All things sporting [3]

"Look Norway, the Winter Olympics are cool, but come talk to us when you increase your rates for childhood obesity, income inequality and mass incarceration. That’s when the big countries of the world really take you seriously. A thriving economy, universal health care and high life expectancy isn’t impressing anyone out here. You haven’t unilaterally invaded anyone in a long time."

And then you have to check out the "Photogenic Russian Curlers" slideshow. The Yahoo sports staff seems to be happily cutting loose at this Olympics.

That reminds me, should get out skiing soon

Well the women's 3000m relay in short track ended with characteristic insanity. First, during the B final (where four teams race to determine who will be ranked #5-#8 ) the top two teams both surpassed the previous world record for that distance, with the Netherlands taking the new record. Then during the A final (where four teams race for the actual medals) two of the teams were disqualified due to penalties. So the South Koreans came first and got the gold as one would expect but the Italians, who crossed the finish line fourth, got the silver medal and the Dutch, who now hold the world record but didn't even participate in the final race, got the bronze.

Back to football.

Manchester City is still top.

That is all.

ps. Don't mention Wigan

holy shit guys holy shit holy shit

My alma mater, the University of Maryland, Baltimore County is not exactly known as an athletic powerhouse. I mean, we're a Division I (non-football) school, but about the only "sport" we're well-known in is chess (which isn't regulated by the NCAA anyway). But the UMBC Retrievers qualified for March Madness, which is the championship tournament for Division I men's college basketball. To explain for non-Americans, college basketball is one of the most popular sports in the country and the tournament is a really big deal. It's what all the March Madness parodies like TORn's character match-offs stem from and lots of people fill out brackets in advance predicting who they think will win each game. The format is a 64 team tournament that begins with four sets of 16 teams, each seeded according to strength. No #16 seed has ever beaten a #1 seed in the 135 such games that have previously been played.

Well, guess which school just did? And not just against the #1 seed in their part of the bracket but the #1 ranked school in the entire country, the University of Virginia. And not only did they win, but they won by 74-54. Honestly I don't follow college basketball very closely but fortunately I saw a thread about this as the game was winding down so I caught the end streaming. This goes a way towards explaining why the school decided the new basketball arena they were touting in the most recent issue of the alumni magazine was a good investment.

tl;dr my old school just pulled off the biggest upset in north american sports history

https://twitter.com/ESPNPR/status/974857602277560322

I don't know what the tweet means, but that's cool about your sports team!

I remember a friend from Chicago was similarly excited about a certain baseball game a couple years ago.

Thanks Forest!

The bracket is the tournament schedule. A popular past-time with March Madness is for people to try to predict the winners of every game in the tournament before it starts. No one has ever correctly predicted every game (a "perfect bracket") but you usually don't see literally everyone crash out quite so early. Virginia vs UMBC looked like a very safe pick though so that alone ended the hopes of the vast majority of people, even if they were right about the 31 other games in the first round (which would itself be rare).

The Cubs winning the World Series was another one of those "it's never going to happen" kinda things in sports. Even as someone not invested in either team in that World Series it was cool to watch history being made, but I can only imagine the excitement for their fans after a century of futility.

I sort of suspected that win would light you up.

Just seeing 'UMBC' on a national headline is sort of surreal. They've been steadily working on upping the research and academics game without getting noticed (been kidnapping scientists from the national labs for decades), I had no idea they were doing the same with sports.

All of a sudden Kirk Cousins is coming to Vikings, getting paid 84mil for a 3 year contract, and will be the most paid QB in the NFL (?).

Yeah, the Vikings are still gonna suck.

Maybe they'll start winning if they pronounce it like "Veekings".

halfwise wrote:I sort of suspected that win would light you up.

Just seeing 'UMBC' on a national headline is sort of surreal.  They've been steadily working on upping the research and academics game without getting noticed (been kidnapping scientists from the national labs for decades), I had no idea they were doing the same with sports.

Yeah, I'm proud of UMBC's achievements on the academic front, but it's really cool to see it being talked about on a national scale. Even if some people are calling us the UMBC Golden Retrievers.

For posterity:

Big game tonight... very nervous!

I was at Anfield last week. Shame we won't hear this again tonight.

That's a really cool video, Lance. I'd love to get to attend a Premier League or CL game if/when I ever make it to England. Imma refrain from expressing any opinion on the outcome of this particular match in case chris pops by, though.

Well done Liverpool. Much the better side over the 2 legs. Think they could go on and win it.

Some bad luck for City there though!

Pep needs to get his players to sort their heads out now... 3 loses in a row!

So, that Real Madrid-Juventus ending...

{{Yeah that was something- 8 minutes of injury time and a last second penalty!! I can see this one causing some fights! }}}

There are a couple football threads on another forum I visit that have descended into chaos already, not helped by the fact that Barca lost yesterday, so the Messi and Ronaldo tribes are at each other's throats even more than usual.

{{{I figure you might be referring to fights in the real world but I'm happy to have plenty of distance from that sort of thing for the most part, Philly fans notwithstanding. }}}

What would have happened if Juve didn't have any substitutions left when Buffon got sent off? Would they have been able to re-designate one of the players already on the field as the goalkeeper, or would they have had to stand someone in front of the goal to try to block the penalty without using his hands?

{{Anyone can fill the goal keeper position- if youre out of subs to bring on you have to put an out field player in as the goalkeeper. Some teams actually train for this with one or two outfield players also doing some keeper training just in case- but lots of teams never bother as its a fairly rare occurrence (though it also happens due to keeper injury sometimes rather than a sending off)and it just whoever wants or thinks they can do it goes in goal. }}

That makes sense. Thanks for the explanation, Petty!

Gone off football this week.

Where's the mud wrestling thread

Congratulations to @ManCity on winning the Premier League title. Thoroughly deserved and won with a style of football that is truly joyous to watch. Well played.

Chris - as a Liverpool fan enjoying the same kind of football I can take my proverbial hat off to City this year.

Hopefully Liverpool can take some spoils with a similar philosophy in a couple of weeks.