Sporting Madness

The English Premier League kicked off this weekend, but if you're a Canadian without an extensive sports television package, you can be forgiven for not noticing. Of the 10 Premier League fixtures this weekend, exactly one was available on one of the three basic Canadian sports channels (TSN, Rogers Sportsnet and The Score). That was today's 4-0 win by Blackpool over Wigan, which was certainly thrilling, but hardly the most anticipated matchup of the weekend. What about those other nine games? Well, two of them (Tottenham - Manchester City today and Manchester United - Newcastle on Monday) are available on TSN 2 . You can make an argument that that's reasonable, as TSN 2 has a fair bit of quality content these days, but it is still an extra cost ($5 per month with one other channel on Shaw). Six of the games are on Setanta Sports, with two being carried live (Aston Villa - West Ham today and Liverpool - Arsenal tomorrow) and the other four as same-day replays today. That...

To me, one of the most interesting things about sports today is the shift in how they're covered. That's not just about the expansion of blogs, as newspapers, radio and television have changed dramatically too, but blogs have played a substantial role in changing the landscape. They've given exposure to people, issues and concepts that were largely ignored before that and might never have made it big otherwise . That isn't necessarily entirely good and not all of these changes have been positive (for example, I'm not sure we're better off for seeing naked pictures of athletes or hearing about their drinking habits), but I'd argue that some of them have been; I love a lot of the statistical analysis that's largely expanded thanks to blogs, and I love that there are different perspectives on sports being presented. Blogs really have revolutionized sports coverage, and other mediums are picking up on that; most TV and radio stations and newspapers have thei...

Hello, readers! As you might have noticed, there have been a few changes around here. I'm now part of the excellent TheScore.com Sports Federation , which will be a lot of fun, and have a real domain name to boot (sportingmadness.ca)! Check out some of the other sites in the network if you get the chance; they're all listed by category in the black bar at the top of the page, but I figured I'd spotlight a few of my personal favourites. For you baseball fans, there's a lot of great sites in the network,including Drunk Jays Fans and Ghostrunner on First . For hockey nuts, check out the likes of Down Goes Brown and the Canucks Hockey Blog . In basketball, RaptorBlog and DinoNation are both excellent, and for soccer, there's some terrific stuff over at TFC Connected and Arsenalist . In general sports, Sports and the City is the best comprehensive Toronto sports blog out there and there's some excellent insight into the world of sports at The Tony Ambrogio Expe...

Just a quick post to let all CIS hoops fans know that Neate will be live-blogging tonight's Capital Hoops Classic [ universitysport.ca ] over at The CIS Blog , featuring the No. 1 Carleton Ravens and the No. 2 Ottawa Gee-Gees on the men's side and both schools' 10-5 women's teams in the opener. I saw both schools' men's and women's teams play Queen's last weekend, and I was rather impressed with all of them (plus, that Queen's - Carleton women's game had the craziest ending I've ever seen ). Thus, we should be in for two very good games tonight. For supplementary coverage to go with the live blog, you can watch webcasts of both games at Streaming Sports Network Canada 's site or watch them on TV on The Score .

A big shout-out to Dan Pawliw for throwing to this blog in his terrific weekly Queen's Football Club Newsletter. Just to let everyone interested know: I will be doing my best to live-blog tomorrow's Queen's - Western game (kick-off: 1 p.m. ET), but a lot depends on the weather. Due to the media crush covering the match, there's a good chance I'll be in the regular bleachers instead of the press box itself, which may lead to difficulties in case of rain. There's also a possibility I'll be in the press box serving as a spotter for announcer Tim Cunningham , which would help with the weather but probably keep me from trying to do every play the way I did last week : if this happens, I'll check in periodically here with big plays, updates and analytical thoughts on the game. Either way, there will almost certainly be some form of live-blogging going on here, but it's unclear at this point exactly what form that will take. I'll also be checking in wi...