What’s up everybody? Glad you could join me for another Life, Love… Sport (Silver Jubilee Edition). It has been a week of surprises, upsets, sweeps, fines, wines and bans. Can y’all believe the Patriots? Or the Rockies? How about those Bills (oh wait, they blew a game in the final seconds? Again?) It has been a crazy two weeks since we last talked, so hunker down and let’s get rolling.
Let us commence this issue with a congratulations to the Colorado Rockies. A team that hasn’t lost since the Yankees were last relevant, the team has taken America by storm.
By sweeping the Phillies and the Diamondbacks, the Rockies advanced to their first World Series in their history. In fact, prior to this year, the team has a grand total of one playoff victory on their resume.
These are uncharted waters for a team that was picked to finish last in their division this year. In fact, they were on their way to fulfill that prediction until they went on their 12 game winning streak to sneak into the playoffs. Human nature tells us to stick with the hot team when picking the world champion, however one must remember that this team has never experienced this type of success. So let’s hold off on crowning them champions just yet, especially if the Red Sox can come up with three wins sometime between now and next week.
Now back to the wonderful world of college football. As you may have heard, the last two weekends have been the craziest in some time.
In consecutive weeks, USC lost to Stanford, and LSU fell to the mighty University of Kentucky. Naturally, these two events have shaken up the rankings in a bizarre way, giving teams that aren’t usually associated with being football powers a chance to grab the spotlight.
In fact, the LLS bandwagon team of the year, USF is now second in the BCS standings! If the season ended today (and fortunately it does not), Ohio State and USF would be battling it out for the national championship. How absurd is that? A program that was in its infancy just 11 years ago is now a charter member of the Top 10.
Now, it should be noted that the South Florida’s mascot is the bull. However, due to their scrappy rise in the polls, they will now be known in the LLS as the Fightin’ Bulls, just to spice things up a bit. Looking ahead, one cannot help but think that the Fightin’ Bulls have a good chance of going undefeated as long as they take care of business and beat a resurgent Rutgers team tonight. The LLS will be watching, will you?
The Patriots served notice that they are the team to beat when they clobbered the Cowboys in Texas. It wasn’t even close. Lesser men will tell you that the Cowboys had a chance when they grabbed the lead in the third quarter. But who actually thought they could hold that lead? Me neither. Tom Brady was spectacular again. Honestly, I will be shocked when the Patriots lose – considering how well they are playing now, the Colts don’t seem to have much of a chance. Peyton Manning can do what he wants, but unless he can learn to cover Randy Moss, I predict the Pats-Colts game to be over in the third quarter.
In honor of the 25th column of the LLS, let’s reflect on all the memorable predictions, opinions and statements that I have made and put them in a list!
1) Everyone in baseball cheats. (Oct. 26, 2006). O.K., so maybe I was wrong about the sport, but the Patriots did get caught taping signals from the Jets. Not that they needed it; the Jets suck.
2) The college football community was treated to another Mother-of-All-Upsets game, as the Beavers of Oregon State got the biggest win in the history of their program (Nov. 2, 2006). Since this was written, the Mother-of-All-Upsets game has been played several times this year.
3) We start with Bob Knight. This guy is going senile. Seriously (Nov. 16, 2006). Truer words have never been spoken.
4) Winthrop: This team almost beat Tennessee last year as a 15-seed. Expect them to get a 12-seed, beat up on some poor unsuspecting team and watch the mid-major Cinderella stories pile up (March 1, 2007). In fact, Winthrop got the 11 seed, beat Notre Dame and lost in the second round.
5) This year we choose a team out of the Big East: say hello to the University of South Florida Bulls (Sept. 13, 2007). What a quality pick this turned out to be.
Final Fact:
Olympic badminton rules say that the bird has to have exactly fourteen feathers.
Maystrovsky’s article appears weekly.Maystrovsky is a member of the class of 2009.
