Sporting Madness

The World Cup is only on for a few more weeks, but there's going to be plenty of pretty exciting soccer in Toronto after that. In addition to the regular Toronto FC schedule and Manchester United - Celtic on July 16 [ Noah Love , Posted Sports ], it was announced earlier this week that The Score and Lexxec Corporation will be bringing UEFA Champions League winners Inter Milan to Toronto [ The Score.com ] to face Panathinaikos FC, who won the Greek Super League and the Greek Cup last season. The match will be at the Rogers Centre on Tuesday, August 3 at 8 p.m. Tickets can be purchased through Ticketmaster . This should be a tremendous fixture. Individual players who will participate can't be confirmed yet, but Inter can draw from a roster that includes Brazilian stars Julio Cesar and Lucio , Argentine striker Diego Milito , Cameroon's Samuel Eto'o and the Netherlands' Wesley Sneijder . Panathinaikos doesn't have quite as renowned of a lineup, but they'...

York Lions head coach Warren Craney made two interesting hires today , picking Michael Faulds as the team's new offensive coordinator and Eric Laflamme as their new defensive coordinator. Although it's his first coaching job at the CIS level, Faulds needs no introduction to CIS football fans; he finished up a stellar quarterbacking career at Western last year and holds the CIS all-time passing record with 10,811 career yards. He led the Mustangs to back-to-back Yates Cups in 2007 and 2008, took them to the 2008 Vanier Cup, where they fell to Laval, and brought them back to the Yates this past year, where they lost to Queen's. He also played for Team Canada at the Global Junior Championships. There was some talk that a CFL team might consider giving him a shot, but nothing seemed to materialize. This move would suggest that Faulds' playing career is at an end. His CIS coaching career may just be beginning, but Faulds already has some experience in the field. He has ...

The 2010 World Cup has been fascinating to follow so far, with surprising underdogs, underachieving big names and refereeing controversies among many other elements. Here's a few quick thoughts on the tournament’s group stage and Round of 16 games to date, and what those matches might tell us about the rest of the tournament. Group A: Winner: Uruguay, Runner-up: Mexico This group was one of the most disappointing in terms of the quality of play, but it did offer some surprising results. Uruguay were in fine form throughout, collecting two wins and a draw, and Diego Forlan proved to be one of the best strikers in the tournament thus far, collecting two goals in the three group-stage games (two more than the man who took his place at Manchester United, the considerably more hyped Wayne Rooney ). Group A was more notable for its failures, though, including the 2006 finalists France, who struggled to one point in three matches, and hosts South Africa, who turned in a better showi...

The World Cup's on to the single-knockout section with the Round of 16 starting today. I love the group stage, and it's probably the best way to fairly determine who advances, but I also love the single-elimination format of the later rounds and the accompanying boost in intensity that follows. I'll be increasing my coverage of the tournament as well, and plenty of that's coming today. First, I'll have a short recap of the group stage action with thoughts on each group, then a predictions post for this round, then a review of John Doyle 's great soccer book The World Is A Ball and then finally a recap of today's action. I'm planning to deliver daily recaps from this point on, so keep it here for all your soccer coverage! Until then, enjoy one of the best goals of the tournament so far, Maicon 's ridiculous strike for Brazil against North Korea:

It was a big day for the Canucks, with Henrik Sedin taking home the Hart Memorial Trophy as the NHL's most valuable player. I've got some thoughts on the matter and how the voting broke down over at Canuck Puck ; check them out !

I'm in Prince George at the moment for my cousin's wedding, so I probably won't have much time to write this weekend, but I appeared on the Davis Sports Deli Podcast this morning with Jon Santiago to discuss the World Cup, the NBA Finals, Kobe Bryant , LeBron James and Blogs With Balls 3.0 in Chicago. Check out the episode here !

In a few short months, the Waterloo doping scandal has gone from an investigation of one player to a team-wide investigation to league-wide concerns over drug testing. Today saw the first tangible impact on a league-wide scale, though; as Sean Fitz-Gerald of The Canadian Press reports , Waterloo has suspended its football program for the coming year. The coaching staff has been placed on paid administrative leave. I'll get into analysis on this later, and I believe Rob Pettapiece has a post coming at The CIS Blog as well, but for now, let's focus on the facts. As Mark Masters reports , Canadian Centre for Ethics In Sport (the organization that oversees CIS drug testing) president Paul Melia announced that nine anti-doping violations were found after tests of Waterloo's 62 football players. As Masters writes, CIS CEO Marg McGregor called it "the biggest doping situation in CIS history. "The results announced today illustrate that the CIS core value ...

Tonight in Vancouver, an immovable object and an unstoppable force decided to forget the whole thought experiment and go for a drink together. The Vancouver Whitecaps came into this clash with a 4-0-2 record at home in USSF Division II play, while the Carolina RailHawks were 2-0-3 on the road, so you would have expected something to give. Neither side did, though, and the game ended 1-1 after a solid battle. Vancouver looked set to pick up another low-scoring home win when Ansu Toure put them ahead in the 31st minute. It was a beautiful goal with a terrific buildup. Former USL-1 MVP Jonny Steele found space for a run down the left flank, where Toure normally plays. Toure shifted inside and Steele sent a cross in for him near the top of the six-yard box, but it was slightly behind him. Toure reached back, though, and with a move straight out of a freestyle competition, hit a behind-the-back sideheel into the net. Their lead was short-lived, though. In first-half stoppage time, con...

I'll be live-blogging the Vancouver Whitecaps - Carolina RailHawks USSF Division II clash tonight from Swangard Stadium. Game time is 7:30 p.m. Pacific, and the match can be watched via webcast at whitecapsfc.com . Come join me then! Vancouver Whitecaps - Carolina RailHawks

Head coach Chris Oliver of the University of Windsor Lancers' men's basketball team had some interesting news in an e-mail release yesterday. Only a few weeks after deciding to stay at Windsor despite rumours of a move to McMaster, and earning a new contract in the process, Oliver has landed what should be one of the most intriguing exhibition matchups of this coming year; John Calipari 's University of Kentucky Wildcats. According to the release, the Wildcats will be coming north to Windsor from August 15-17, Sunday through Tuesday. They'll face the Lancers Sunday evening at 7 p.m., then face the University of Western Ontario Mustangs Monday night at 6 p.m. and then play the Lancers again Tuesday morning at 11 a.m. All games will be played at the university's St. Denis Centre; ticket prices are $10 for adults and youth, $5 for children. Advance ticket information is expected to be released soon through the university's website . The Wildcats should be a ...

The Blogs With Balls III conference took place last weekend at Wrigley Field. I was there, and I quite enjoyed it; there was a lot of good discussion around several key topics in sports media. Over the next few days, I'm going to be presenting recaps and analysis of all the different panels. Here's the first one: Panel: Going Local: Charting The Evolution of Local Sports Media In The Digital Age Panelists: Jim Bankoff of SB Nation , Enrico Campitelli of The 700 Level , TK Gore of Comcast Sportsnet Chicago , Jon Greenberg of ESPN Chicago and Dave Nemetz of Bleacher Report . Moderator: ESPN's Amy K. Nelson . Picture: Theme Song (unofficial): Tom Petty - Learning To Fly I chose this because it reflected both the small-scale beginnings of many of the panelists and their current lofty status (Bankoff and Nemetz both run massive sports networks, while Campitelli's site was recently acquired by Comcast and Gore and Greenberg are both prominent in the ...

"It's 106 miles to Chicago. We've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses." "Hit it." - The Blues Brothers I'm in Chicago for the third Blogs With Balls convention, which starts in just a couple of hours with a kick-off party. If it's anything like the last one I covered in Vegas last fall , it should be a great time. The real action is tomorrow, and there's a great lineup of panelists . You can catch all the action via Justin.tv ; I'll also be tweeting during the proceedings and writing some recap posts here. It should be a great weekend; make sure to check back here for my coverage of it!