Weekly Sporties

-Early in the week an already volatile college basketball season took another turn towards chaos when Kentucky super-freshman Nerlens Noel tore his ACL in a game against Florida. I know Kentucky hadn't been having the season many people expected, but the Wildcats had started to come together in the last couple of weeks and had all the makings of a team you didn't want to face in the NCAA Tournament. They are still dangerous, but not nearly as much of a threat to repeat with Noel on the sidelines. Now the focus has turned toward's Noel's future. Before this injury he was projected as the top pick in the NBA draft and his injury has some questioning if the NCAA and NBA should take a second look at the rule which requires players to go to college for at least one year. I was in favor of that rule before Noel got hurt and, not surprisingly, I'm still in favor of it. Look, there is no denying that what happened to the kid sucked. However, playing the NBA is a privilege, not a birthright. Hopefully this will teach some other kids that maybe they shouldn't put all their focus into becoming a NBA player because injuries can happen at any time. Also, the stance that kids who are ready should be able to go right to the NBA because getting hurt could cost him millions of dollars takes a bit of a hit when you learn that tearing an ACL dropped Noel from being the projected top pick all the way to being projected as the third pick in the draft. Costly, but not that bad. Also, Kyrie Irving played all of 7 games at Duke before declaring for the draft and he also went #1, so it is not like NBA teams are scared away by injuries. The only people getting screwed in this deal are the fans of Kentucky because they didn't even get the one season they expected out of this kid. However, the Wildcats are in line to have another top recruiting class next year and I'm sure they won't be hurting for exciting players, so I hope those fans don't expect me to feel too bad for them.

-If Nerlens Noel has any question about just how careful NBA teams are willing to be regarding knee injuries of important players someone needs to give him Derrick Rose's cell phone number (I assume Coach Calipari has it). Rose, the Chicago-born talent who tore his ACL in the first game of last year's playoffs and sent the city into a state of depression, is just now beginning certain basketball-related activities and analysts have begun to wonder if he could be back in time for the playoffs. That would be one year removed from the injury, which is pretty much the standard recovery time for an ACL tear. What is interesting about this story is that a lot of people don't want Rose to come back at all this season even if he gets cleared by doctors and the loudest call for this course of action is coming from Bulls fans. You would think they would want Rose back to make a run at a championship but they are far more concerned about him making the knee worse and would rather he take the entire offseason to continue rehabbing the knee and make sure he is 110% healthy when he returns. I totally agree with that plan because while Bulls are overachieving this year I still don't think they could beat the Heat with Rose, who would be rusty, and his return could actually disrupt the team as they try and force-feed him the ball to get back to game shape. Frankly, it is not worth the risk he could re-injure the knee and miss even more time. As an outsider, it makes tremendous sense to think long-term with Rose's career. Having him sit for the entire year and come back fresh for next season is the smart and rational plan, but since when are sports fans rational? Ultimately the decision will be Rose's and players always want to play, so I expect him to give it a try. Still, the organization must be comforted by the fact that if they decide to hold Rose out the fans will be on their side.

-If I thought I couldn't have been more in favor of college football's plan to finally implement a playoff system, I forgot one of the key elements to picking which teams make the field is going to be strength of schedule. Most people thought this was going to be the way the BCS conferences got together to make sure schools like Boise State had no chance of crashing the playoff party and while that may be true, I had hoped it would also result in the breaking up a few of the conference's tradition of playing only the teams they were required to play and then filling out the rest of their dates with schedule fodder they were guaranteed to beat. While I can't be totally sure certain SEC teams won't continue to schedule West Culinary Academy between tilts with Alabama and LSU, at least the Big Ten is taking the idea to heart. This week Wisconsin AD Barry Alvarez said the the Big 10 is going to make a commitment to stop scheduling sub-Div. I teams. This means no more inviting East Central Montana State to Michigan so the Wolverines can win by 70 and ECMS makes a few hundred thousand dollars to keep their program afloat. As you would anticipate, I love this news. Yes, it will definitely force a few smaller programs to either change over to being D-I schools or close the program down, but I think that may actually be for the best. If you can't afford to fund football without taking a paid beating than you probably shouldn't have a football program in the first place. But mostly I like this news because it means the mantra of every college football fan - every game counts - actually rings true. I can't stand it when a team goes 9-2, but 4 of those wins were against terrible teams. If you want to be included in the playoffs you are going to have to earn your way in and that will include beating other tough teams. And if the fans of a team start complaining about this development, I think you can tell it is because they know their schedule isn't hard enough.

-You know, for all the success the NFL has enjoyed in the past decade they continue to exhibit signs of being terribly insecure about their place as America's new pastime. Sometimes it feels that whenever the league thinks people may not talk about one of their teams for a full day (unlikely), some executive is ordered to say something crazy which will get the people talking. Usually this takes the form of some crazy rule change, as was the case this week when former Colts' President Bill Polian floated the idea that one way to improve safety would be to have the league widen the field by 10 yards. Polian contends that the extra space would give players more room to operate, lessening the chances a player gets taken out in the middle of the field. Also, he thinks by spreading the teams out a little more it would cut down on vicious gang tackling. (It would probably increase scoring as well, which I don't think the NFL would ever be against.) I guess the idea has some merit, but this idea would require changing literally every stadium in the league and I just don't see it happening. The NFL may say they want safety, but not at the expense of a couple rows of seats where they can charge a few hundred bucks for each chair. Also, while increased space would make the game more wide-open, I do wonder what would happen when safeties (who are already the guys responsible for most of the more staggering hits in the game), have an extra five yards to gain even more momentum before colliding with a defenseless receiver. Honestly, a few of these hits would have been even worse if the defenders had a chance to get a running start. So, much like the idea to totally eliminate kickoffs or give teams the option to convert a 4th and 15 rather than punt, I don't see it getting very far in meetings. But, at least it got us talking, which I'm sure is all the NFL really wanted.

-Spring Training is underway across baseball, which means all the photos of slightly out-of-shape athletes doing stretches you could ever want are at your fingertips. Now, since I only care about 50% of regular season games and those actually count, you can probably tell that I don't pay much attention to a bunch of games where the teams play against themselves for practice. However, there is one part of Spring Training I do enjoy and that is annual tradition of traded players airing grievances against their former team. You know, they publicly complain about the team they are no longer on and then try to act like it doesn't matter by saying, "But that's all in the past. I'm a [fill in the blank] now." at the very end. First it was Carl Crawford and Adrian Gonzalez talking about how bad the Red Sox clubhouse was last year. (Yeah, we already knew that.) But my favorite was new Blue Jays' shortstop Jose Reyes talking about just how horrible Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria was, saying that even two days before the trade went down he was advising Reyes to buy a big house in Miami and make himself comfortable. Now, you could argue that maybe Loria was unaware the trade was eminent, but that deal had a lot of moving parts and probably didn't come together in a day. My guess is he was just being disingenuous because he didn't want the news leaked and public outcry to kill the deal. In some ways it shows Loria is a smart businessman, but I'm pretty sure the players don't see it this way. He's already got a reputation as a terrible owner and this is not going to help him bring in any free agents. They already had an image problem and with every story like this which comes out that image gets even worse. Soon they will only be able to sign over-the-hill free agents and young players who may be talented but will bolt as soon as possible. The only good news about this? It looks like the Yankees may finally have a trade partner to offload Alex Rodriguez.

-I admit that when they come around I only watch the Olympics with half my attention and have no desire to see most of these sports outside of those two weeks every four years. However, even with my attitude towards the games I was stunned when I found out the International Olympic Committed voted to drop wrestling from the 2020 Olympics so they can add a new sport. This was shocking because wrestling has been around since 1896 or, as it is know in some circles, "as long as the modern Olympics have existed." It was also removed as one of the 25 core sports, being voted out instead of sports like the modern pentathlon, taekwondo and field hockey (everyone thought it would be the pentathlon voted out because who needs to be good at horseback riding, fencing, swimming, running and shooting?). Now, wrestling still has a chance to be be included in the 2020 games, but to do so it must be picked from a pool which includes baseball and softball, wakeboarding, karate, squash, sport climbing, wushu (I don't know what that is) and roller sports. Like I said, I don't really pay attention to wrestling for most of the time so I can understand when the IOC said part of this decision was based on ratings and ticket sales. But if the IOC was going to eliminate sports based on ratings I'm pretty sure the Olympics would essentially be down to gymnastics, basketball and track. I guess the real reason this bothers me is because I am pretty confident that the true motives behind wrestling being voted out is because they didn't bribe the right people. Everything about the Olympic Committees feel corrupt and that is exactly the opposite of what the Olympics are supposed to be about. It's a shame this is real wrestling and not the WWE stuff, because then all the problems could be solved with a well-timed chair-shot to someone's head. Also, I'm pretty sure that would fix the ratings problem.

-One of the sports being added for the 2016 games as well as being framed as the main culprit for why wrestling is being eliminated is golf. And while I love golf, I actually agree with the people who don't think it should be in the Olympics (definitely not at the expense of wrestling, anyway). However, I do take exception to all the wrestling fans who spent the week bashing golfers as not being as tough as wrestlers. If you want to know how tough golfers can be look no further than Sweden's Daniela Holmqvist. Early this week Holmqvist was trying to qualify for the Australian Open when she felt a sharp pain on her ankle. She looked down and saw a black spider with a red dot on its back starting to scamper away and immediately crumpled in pain. Quickly figuring out she was in a bad spot, Daniela decided against waiting for medical personnel to show up, took out a tee, widened the holes of the spider bite with it and proceeded to squeeze out the venom. As if that wasn't bad-ass enough, she then finished the round under the eyes of paramedics and shot 74. While this story does fill me with admiration for Holmqvist, it made me think about what I would do in that situation and I have decided I do not love golf enough to play through a spider bite. (I also decided I now have even less of a desire to go to Australia. The entire place just seems dangerous. The first day of the tournament also featured a delay as a flock (swarm? school?) of kangaroos crossed the course. Clearly the animal revolution is coming, it is starting in Australia and they have a grudge against golf.) I think the worst part of this story is the fact that despite her valiant effort Holmqvist didn't qualify for the tournament. You would think the Australian Open officials would have deemed this a special circumstance. Seriously, getting bitten by a poisonous spider isn't worth getting a couple of strokes per side?