Sporting Madness

Continuing in our proud 1-year tradition , and in step with everyone else who uses the meme, here's the Sporting Madness Christmas gifts for the world of sports: Soccer: - To the Vancouver Whitecaps and Bob Lenarduzzi : a nice, gift-wrapped MLS franchise . That could make the entire city happy. I'll have more on their chances soon. - To the Montreal Impact: good luck for their forthcoming CONCACAF Champions League quarterfinal matchup against Mexico's Club Santos Laguna. Montreal's unexpected run has been tremendous to watch, and it would be great to see a Canadian team keep going. - To Toronto FC: Well, they did already get one very nice Christmas present , but we'll send them a quality designated player as well and a playoff berth. This franchise has been great for Canadian soccer and the city of Toronto. They have so much support and so many tickets sold in advance that they really could just go through the motions, so it's refreshing to see them continue th...

Merry Christmas to all those of you who celebrate it, and a happy holiday of your choice to everyone else! First, I want to say thanks to all of those who take the time to read my musings and pontifications; it's greatly appreciated. Apologies for the lack of writing around here lately; I figured the holidays would give me more time, but they actually haven't to a large extent. In any case, my Christmas present to those of you who still bother to check this site comes in the form of a return to writing. I've been working on a couple of long posts for the last week and a bit and should have them ready to go within the next couple of days. Anyways, thanks again for reading and have a great holiday season! - Andrew

The great Tom Benjamin found this site a little while ago, and I was intrigued. Basically, you type in a blog URL and it gives you a readout of the personality of the blog's author. I figured I'd try it with my site and some of the sites I read regularly. Results are below. For myself, Sporting Madness : "The analysis indicates that the author of http://sportingmadness.blogspot.com is of the type: INTP - The Thinkers." "The logical and analytical type. They are espescially attuned to difficult creative and intellectual challenges and always look for something more complex to dig into. They are great at finding subtle connections between things and imagine far-reaching implications. They enjoy working with complex things using a lot of concepts and imaginative models of reality. Since they are not very good at seeing and understanding the needs of other people, they might come across as arrogant, impatient and insensitive to people that need some time to unders...

Apologies for the shortage of posts here; I've been busy writing for Out of Left Field for the last couple of days. There hasn't been a shortage of interesting stuff, though. Here's my post on the Arena Football League's potentially impending demise and what that could mean for the CFL; I've also written a follow-up post on the Prime Time Sports segment discussing it and one today on the newest member of Toronto FC, Dwayne De Rosario . Should be back to regular posting here shortly.

Note to headline writers : there are two English Premier League teams that play in Manchester. Darius Vassell plays for Manchester City, not Manchester United, so a story about him being robbed should not be entitled "Manchester United striker robbed." It's particularly bad when the article itself mentions that he plays for City. Please don't confuse the two teams, or myself and Duane might have to form an unholy alliance and gang up on you. That is all.

So, your team got hosed by the arcane process of the BCS? Fear not. Here are some links to make you feel better about it. First, we have Patrick Hruby and Mike Philbrick 's tournament to figure out what sci-fi computers would be better qualified to determine a national champion than the current system. My money's on Skynet. Next, Matthew J. Darnell of Shutdown Corner has a great piece on why the BCS is the ultimate solution and we should replace the NFL's silly "playoff system" with it. Enjoy.

Photo: Former Sunderland manager Roy Keane [Getty Images via The Independent ] It was rather surprising to see Manchester United legend Roy Keane step down [ ESPN Soccernet ] from managing Sunderland last week. Keane achieved some outstanding success with the Black Cats, even though many don't seem to acknowledge that at the moment. When he took the team over in August 2006, they were sitting in the relegation zone of the Championship (for non-English football fans, that's the level below the Premier League). In that season, he took them from the bottom to the top, and earned not only promotion to the Premiership, but also the Championship title. He was named Manager of the Year at the Championship level, and deservingly so. Keane also had success with Sunderland in the Premier League last season and managed to keep them out of the relegation zone for much of the year. They pulled off a 15th-place finish, which is rather good for a just-promoted side (see County, Derby fo...

Thanks to the brilliance of commenters Ricardo Bortolon and Rob Pettapiece on my last post on the subject of travel and its effects on major-league teams, I was able to find some very interesting academic research on the subject. W. Christopher Winter and a group from the Martha Jefferson Sleep Medicine Center in Charlottesville, Virginia have conducted a couple of studies recently into how travel affects Major League Baseball teams. Their research was published in Sleep , and you might be able to access the original document if your library subscribes to the journal (Queen's apparently doesn't). Still, their abstract and the summary of their results can be found on page 85 of this PDF , and a Scientific American article on the research by Nikhil Swaminathan can be found here . There are some very interesting points to consider in these studies. The pilot study in 2005 looked at the performance of MLB teams during the 2004 season alone, and found that teams did better whe...

Now would be a great time to extend good wishes to soccer writer extraordinaire Ben Knight , who has just launched his own site after the Globe decided to move in a different direction [ Duane Rollins , Out of Left Field ] with their On Soccer blog. Ben is a terrific writer and a great guy, and I'm sure he'll find a lot of success with this. What I value most about his work is his ability to see the shades of grey I referenced earlier . Even on the topics he's most passionate about, such as the bungling of the CSA and some of the mistakes made by Toronto FC, he has avoided the pitfalls of absolutism and put forth balanced, reasoned and rational arguments to improve matters, rather than just the constant vitriol and criticism without solutions found in other quarters. He can balance being a journalist and being a fan, which is a difficult line to walk, but he does it very well in my mind and appeals to a broad range of people as a result. All soccer fans should definitely...

This is pretty awesome. (Thanks to the incredible FailBlog )

Henry Abbott of the excellent TrueHoop posted a link to a very interesting Los Angeles Times piece by Mike Bresnahan yesterday, in which Los Angeles Lakers coach Phil Jackson said he didn't think his team could top his record-setting 72-10 campaign with the 1996 Bulls. The reason Jackson cited wasn't the absence of Michael Jordan , or in fact anything on the court. Instead, he suggested that the Lakers' West Coast location and the increased travel required because of this would prevent them from breaking the record. This isn't the first time a West Coast coach or GM has discussed the impact of travel on their team, but it's the first time I've heard it in the NBA. In Vancouver sports, this is a common theme, and others are picking up on it: Gregg Easterbrook of the always-excellent Tuesday Morning Quarterback has been tracking the miserable failures of West Coast NFL teams on the East Coast this season (they're currently 1-16 in games played in Eas...

"Only a Sith deals in absolutes." - Obi-Wan Kenobi , Star Wars: Episode III My biggest problem with the state of sports analysis today is that we seem to be moving away from the middle of the spectrum. Nothing exemplifies this more in my mind than Around the Horn , the ESPN talk show which basically features prominent journalists arguing with each other about sports. Moderator Tony Reali hands out points for different arguments, but the scoring seems to be based more on how vigorously you make your case rather than anything you actually say. The amount of people involved and the short time given to each segment also encourages participants to move away from subtlety in favour of absolutes. That doesn't mean it's necessarily bad; there's obviously a market for this kind of thing, and there are often interesting points raised. The problem is that the format encourages sensationalism and bold stands over critical analysis; why else would Jay Mariotti be a recurri...

Apologies for the ridiculously long absence: I've had to crank out 45 pages of essays in the last couple of weeks in addition to my normal work at the paper , so I haven't felt like writing much in the little downtime I've had. School's almost done for the term, though, and I don't have much Journal work to do until January, so I should be able to get more done here. Expect several posts today with more to come on the weekend. Thanks for sticking around here, and apologies again for the lack of content lately. - Andrew