By
Connor Doyle
A word to all of the people bemoaning the Wildcat basketball players leaving early for the NBA draft - you reap what you sow. I suspect many of you who slam Richard Jefferson for leaving early have a Magic Johnson jersey in your closet, drafted Kevin Garnett on your fantasy basketball team, or discuss how the Clippers have "dynasty" written all over them.
Basketball fans have embraced early entrants, yet want to gripe about the practice when it guts their favorite college basketball team. You can't have it both ways. Instead of slamming Michael Wright, you should be thanking these guys for bringing UA to the championship game and acting with class during their time here and wish them well in the future.
Lance Armstrong was finally cleared of doping allegations this week. This guy's story is unbelievable - he goes from almost dying of cancer to winning the Tour de France, arguably the most demanding athletic competition in sports - in a span of two years. When he should have become the official role model of every aspiring athlete in the United States, as well as every person fighting the same terrible disease, he instead found himself caught in a whirlwind of unsubstantiated allegations and political correctness.
The 2000 Sports Illustrated "Athlete of the Year" award was given to the U.S. women's soccer team, one of the biggest travesties in the history of sports, and a month after the race, the red-asses whom Armstrong beat during Tour accused him of being on drugs. The rumors only got worse after he won it again the next year.
For the life of me, I cannot understand why people can't accept this guy as a hero in our midst who should be celebrated as the model of both athletic achievement and the power of the human spirit. Here's to hoping women's soccer never wins another game and Armstrong gets the "Sportsman of the Decade" award after winning the next five Tours.
Darryl Strawberry turned himself into a hospital last week after admitting he had been on a four-day drug binge. There was also something about armed men, a kidnapping with a $50,000 ransom, and a pistol-whipping. Of course, the only person who knows what really went on for those four days is Strawberry, and he was probably too coked up to remember any of it.
Look - I feel bad for this guy. He was clearly talented. Though you never want to see anyone destroy his life, something has got to give. He's broken probation four times and proven he can't exist as a part of society.
It's time for him to go to one of those white-collar resort prisons, where they'll let him play on the intramural baseball team and live out the rest of his life with no worries about men with guns and crack cocaine. And someone might want to staple his nostrils shut, too.
Willie Stargell, "Pops" to many in Pittsburgh who were alive during his playing days, died Monday. I mean the man's memory no disrespect, but I'm getting a little sick of everyone getting all poetic about his life.
He was not a saint, just a good man. He was not one of the greatest hitters of all time - he was one of the best hitters of his generation. The trend of people exaggerating the exploits of recently passed players gets tiresome (Derrick Thomas was in the running for canonization shortly after his death) and does a disservice to the younger sports fans like myself who never got to see the person play.
Instead of trying to convince everyone Stargell would have hit 600 home runs if he hadn't played in Forbes Field, let's celebrate what a great team leader he was to one of the best baseball teams of his time.
Don't get me started on the "Jordan comeback" thing - I'm tired of this guy and his ego. I hope he comes back and tears his ACL in his first game back. He's a terrible general manager, and he's even worse at pretending like he doesn't love the fact that he still the center of attention in the sports world.
Believe it or not, there is someone who's worthy of the attention being lavished on him - Tiger Woods. Love him or hate him, he's going to be the greatest golfer of all time when he's finished. Heck, he's the greatest golfer of all time now.
I have never seen someone so immune to pressure. Let's celebrate the fact that we get to see one of the greatest athletes of all time perform instead of complaining about his occasional impatience with people who make noise in his backswing or get in his way on a bridge.
At least 45 people were killed in a stampede before a Tuesday soccer game in Johannesburg, South Africa. Can someone please explain to me why nary a soccer game goes by where there isn't a riot, knifing of a referee or a player who scored an own-goal, or mass-scale fatalities? After a while, I think you can only explain the entire sport as an argument for the theory of natural selection.
O.J. - still free. This is not good news. Just keep him out of Johannesburg.
