Back from the wilderness

I spent last weekend camping up in the wilderness at Manning Park, so the blog's been a little quiet lately. I've got plenty of content planned for the next few days to remedy that, though. First, I'll break down the World Cup quarterfinals. After that, I'm bringing back the Scribblings Of The Scribes of Sport book review series with reviews of John Doyle's The World Is A Ball and D'Arcy Jenish's The Montreal Canadiens: 100 Years Of Glory. After that, it's back to the World Cup previews with a look at tomorrow's Uruguay - Netherlands clash. Hope you enjoy these posts!

World Cup: Kicking it up a notch

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:

Conference Championship Madness

Today will feature the NFL's conference championship games, and I'll have plenty of coverage of them here. For starters, I wrote a pair of pieces for The Good Point talking to notable football bloggers about some elements of this weekend's matchups. You can check out the preview of the AFC contest between the Indianapolis Colts and the New York Jets (3:00 p.m. Eastern, CBS) here and the preview of the NFC clash between the New Orleans Saints and Minnesota Vikings (6:40 p.m. Eastern, FOX) here. To go along with those pieces, I'll be posting the complete interviews I conducted with each of the bloggers here. The AFC ones will be up shortly, with the NFC ones to follow in the morning. I'll also have my breakdown of each game with predictions up in the morning. Finally, I'll be live-blogging both games right here. Feel free to stop on by and join in the fun!

Apologies and a weekend schedule

Apologies for the lack of posts this week. I've been filling in as the sports reporter over at the Langley Times this past week, and that, combined with some computer issues, hasn't left me any time to write. That should be remedied soon, though; there are a lot of posts I'm planning to get to later today and over the weekend. I'll also be live-blogging the Guelph-McMaster University Rush game (1 p.m. Eastern/10 a.m. Pacific) and the B.C. Lions - Saskatchewan Roughriders game (5 p.m. Eastern/2 p.m. Pacific) tomorrow afternoon, so tune in for those. For now, I leave you with an excellent Warren Zevon song that could have been the theme of my Vegas trip last weekend: