Tough Sports Weekend

Playoffs and tournaments can be difficult for players and fans. At the end, there is only one winner. Take this past weekend. The University of Pittsburgh's men's soccer team advanced to the final four for the first time in school history. They had a tremendous season, but lost 1-0 to Indiana University on Friday night despite having more quality chances and possession than the Hoosiers.

Meanwhile, Ithaca College's women's lacrosse team defeated the #2 seeded Washington & Lee in the round of 16 on Saturday evening 16-11. I believe the announcers said that Washington & Lee had won 40 straight matches at its home stadium. The win was so convincing that Washington & Lee is now considering changing its name.* Ithaca then advanced to the quarterfinals, but lost 16-5 to the Salisbury University Steaks. Fine, it's the Sea Gulls, though I think the steaks would be a better nickname. Anyway, Ithaca had a terrific season and advanced to the quarterfinals of the Division III NCAA Tournament for only the second time in the school's history.

Both Pitt's soccer team and Ithaca's lacrosse team had amazing seasons. However, there's a bit of disappointment now. You hoped that there would be national titles, but like I mentioned above, there can be only one winner. That's the beauty of sports, right? You celebrate the successes and wins and you mourn the losses, but there's always hope for the next game or year.

On a completely different topic, ESPNU aired the soccer semifinals on Friday night. Immediately after the first match between Marshall and North Carolina, ESPNU went right to a short film about the Vanderbilt women's bowling team. There were no postgame highlights or interviews with coaches. There was not a preview of the Indiana-Pitt match. Apparently, we needed to see this film at that very moment. There weren't 2 or 3 people at ESPN or college soccer experts out there who could have filled 30 minutes of coverage?

Photos from Pitt's men's soccer and Ithaca's women's lacrosse Twitter accounts.

* The school really is considering changing its name, but the reason is because of Robert E. Lee. You know, the military leader of the confederate army who fought against the United States of America. Most places would consider him to be a traitor. Actually, I like my line above about the school being so embarrassed by its loss to Ithaca that they could no longer live with its name, so let's just go with that!

Stick To Sports

I feel bad for my friends who are sports bloggers. It goes without saying that I feel bad for a lot of people right now, but this is a sports related post. Sort of. While there have been times over the years when I considered making Sean’s Ramblings exclusively a Pittsburgh sports blog, I always found this limiting. I like writing about my kids or entertainment or just what’s going on in my life. So while I still write about sports, I have never been a traditional sports blogger. So while I can write about various topics, it’s going to be tough for sports bloggers to come up with content over the next few weeks, months, etc. (Unless you have a blog about football and you can spend months writing about Tom Brady.)

Since we're in a country without sporting events taking place, I thought I would share a few things. First, the XFL announced last week that the league won't be playing its regular season games. I assume that means that there won't be a postseason either. You know what this means? I'm the XFL fantasy football league champion!

ESPN has a game called Streak for Cash. It's a monthly contest where you pick various props such as who will win NHL, NBA, NFL, MLB, soccer, and college games. There might also be individual props such as points scored or goals per game. Anyway, whoever gets the most picks correct in a row per month wins $25,000. I've played for years and never come close to winning. Anyway, with no major sports going on, the props have been quite interesting. There's a Singaporean Premier soccer league match. The Russian Super basketball league game. The other night featured whether the first Mega Millions lottery ball would be odd or even. There's even been "The Masked Singer" and "Survivor" props. I'm all for seeing what props appear next!

And now is where this blog post turns dramatically. Want to know one positive thing about the NCAA cancelling the men's and women's basketball tournaments? Liberty University's men's team, who earned an automatic birth, will not get to play. I'm sure that most of the students, faculty, and staff at Liberty University are good people. The problem is the school's president, Jerry Falwell Jr. I wrote about Falwell being a sore loser after the Virginia elections in 2017. Less than two months ago, Falwell tried to get some Virginia counties to secede and join West Virginia (and he's still working on this). This is completely absurd, but I guess it's politics by someone who is supposed to be spiritual leader and educator. He's all for free speech...except when it comes to people at his own school. Oh, Liberty University also owns Freedom Aviation who sells jet fuel to the Pentagon. I'm not sure how that fits into the school's mission.

Now, Falwell is being dangerous. Last Friday, he went on "Fox & Friends" and said, "You know, impeachment didn’t work, and the Mueller report didn’t work, and Article 25 didn’t work and so maybe now this is their next attempt to get Trump,” he said. This meaning the coronavirus.



You can even hear the anger about the school having to cancel residential classes.

University President Jerry Falwell, Jr., said, “We originally believed it was safest to return our students following their spring break instead of having them return following greater exposure opportunities from leaving them in different parts of the country for longer periods. But, the Governor’s recent decision to limit certain gatherings has left us no practical choice because we have so many classes of more than 100 students. We want to provide for the continuity of our students’ education while doing what makes sense to help slow the spread of the coronavirus to our university family and local community.” The school has one of the largest online student populations in the world, so they can of all places can handle social distancing better than most.

The whole point is that Liberty University, meaning specifically Falwell Jr., doesn't need any type of positive exposure from the basketball team. He's the worst.

I'm going to end this post with something good. Here's Will Ferrell being a soccer referee a few weeks ago.

This isn't a movie. Apparently, all of the parents in this league need to volunteer, and he's a parent. The uniform is legit, so it's possible that he really is a certified soccer ref. Just another thing that me and Will have in common!

Pirates Chance Of Making The Playoffs (I'm Confused)

I'd like to think that I'm a fairly intelligent individual. I'm not sure if I can provide any specific examples of this other than the fact that I have a Master's degree. Well, that might not help my case. Perhaps earning free burritos for a year shows my intelligence?

Anyway, ESPN has a relatively new category on the Major League Baseball Standings: POFF. POFF is not some type of bug spray or something to repel urine, but the percentage chance of making the playoffs. Here are the National League Central standings as of today (May 16th):

Team / Record / Games Back / POFF (I'm sorry that this format doesn't look very good.)

St. Louis 21-15 - 84.1%

Cincinnati 18-17 2.5 36.1%

Pittsburgh 17-19 4 7.7%

Milwaukee 16-20 5 16.0%

Houston 15-21 6 12.8%

Chicago 15-21 6 12.2%

Even though the Pirates have better records than the Brewers, Astros and Cubs, they have a lower percent chance to reach the playoffs. I don't get it. While I'm sure that Pirates' run differential of -25 (runs scored - runs allowed) probably factors into this equation somehow, why would the Brewers have double the chance the reach the playoffs with a run differential of -23? (The Astros and Cubs have run differentials of +1 and -19 respectively.)

Meanwhile, the Colorado Rockies at 14-21 and 9.5 games out of the NL West have a 9.1% chance of reaching the playoffs with a -17 run differential. Although the Pirates are 2.5 games ahead of Colorado and 5.5 games closer to the division leader compared to the Rockies, the Bucs have a lower chance to reach the playoffs.

Can someone explain this to me?

ESPN Pittsburgh.com

ESPN New York debuted recently joining other local ESPN websites in Chicago, Dallas and Boston. Dan Shanoff wrote his thoughts on this based on a piece in GQ (they are both worth a read). So my question today: Is an ESPN Pittsburgh next?

Assuming ESPN New York succeeds, it seems inevitable to me that there will be an ESPN Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh is as sports obsessed as anywhere else in the United States if not more. Dan Shanoff points out that in New York, ESPN "will compete against 3 newspapers, a fairly aggressive sports-news cable network and at least one radio juggernaut." Well, Pittsburgh currently has three separate sports radio talk stations not including the Mark Madden Show and the amount of time other morning shows such as the 96.1 KISS Morning Freak Show devote to the Pittsburgh sports scene. There are also two newspapers as well as KDKA's Sports Showdown WTAE's Action Sports Sunday and several call-in sports shows. (There are still call-in TV sports shows in Pittsburgh, right?) Plus, this doesn't count the several dozen blogs that cover Pittsburgh sports.

I guess this leads to another question. How can ESPN Pittsburgh succeed and what impact will it have on the Pittsburgh sports scene? (Yes, that is two questions.) Stan Savarn and Guy Junker would give the site instant credibility. However, each of the other local ESPN site have blogs. In my opinion, I think an ESPN Pittsburgh website could do well by getting some big name bloggers. Don at Mondesi's House already has a partnership with 93.7 The Fan. Attracting the guys at The PensBlog would be genius, though those guys seem very happy doing their own thing through Bloguin as do WHYGAVS and PSAMP. I can't see the folks at Behind The Steel Curtain, Bucs Dugout and PensBurgh leaving SB Nation.

Seeing that Steve already works for ESPN, having him and Cotter from One for the Other Thumb would be who I would hire if I wanted to get a unique perspective on the Steelers. Steelers Depot should also receive some consideration. Tim of BUCCO Fans.com would make sense for Pirates coverage as would Chas of Pitt Blather for everything Pitt. Maybe the folks from Pens Universe for Penguins coverage?

While I have no idea how an ESPN Pittsburgh website would impact the newspapers and radio station in the 'Burgh, I think there could be some great opportunities to highlight local bloggers.

Why Is The NHL Not On ESPN?

It’s Saturday night, and we just got back from dinner with friends. Wanting to see scores of baseball games, I turned to ESPN2, which generally shows sports scores and news at the bottom of the screen. Now I’ve watched enough ESPN and ESPN2 over the years to know that they show a lot of programs that are not truly sports. I’m at the point where I’m used to seeing poker or even the spelling bee on ESPN. However, I was not prepared for tonight. ESPN2 aired the USA Rock Paper Scissors League Championship. I know it’s summer and Saturday night, but why is Rock Paper Scissors on my TV? Why is this on any TV? I don’t even think that Versus would show this.

The USARPS League Championship even has announcers: Trey Wingo and a guy named Master Roshambollah (I’m not making this up). I really hope that Trey Wingo was getting paid a lot of money since he can never be referred to as a journalist again. In the five minutes that I watched, Wingo called a “match” the greatest duel in sports and yelled “what a clutch throw” in response to the one guy going with scissors while his opponent went with paper. I’m sure his professors at Baylor are extremely proud of his performance.

Maybe next week, ESPN will show the politically incorrect version of rock, paper, scissors; cat, tin foil, microwave.

Celebrity Sighting

With the exception of the time last year when I saw the Indianapolis Colts and Dan Reeves, I never see famous people at airports. That changed today. As I was walking to my gate, I noticed someone who looked very familiar. Some people may even say that he looks like former president Andrew Jackson (see below). As I got closer, I heard him talking on the phone about Roger Clemens. Yes, I saw Peter Gammons at the San Francisco International Airport. Gammons is widely regarded as one of the best baseball writers and reporters for his work at The Boston Globe and ESPN.

Over the next half-hour, I debated whether or not I should go over to speak to Gammons. I’m sure people come up to him all the time and I wanted to respect his privacy. Several of my colleagues offered to take a run-by picture of me standing behind Gammons. I figured that could be rude. I actually called a friend and talked somewhat loudly about fantasy baseball players hoping Gammons would notice. Of course, Gammons was on the phone nearly the entire time. At one point, I think I heard him say that Melvin Mora of the Baltimore Orioles is awful. Finally, as I was boarding, Gammons got up and walked around. As he passed me, I said, “Hi Mr. Gammons. I just wanted to let you know that I love your work.” He smiled and replied, “Thank you very much.” That was the entire conversation. I really wanted to ask him if the Pirates will ever be good again. I guess I’ll have to wait until the next time I see him.