random thoughts on sports in 2013
The big news here in Hawaii ------ the UH football team going down.
For much of the season, the team didn't win a game. Fans were worried about a 1998 repeat (0-12 record).
Then it came to the last game of the season. Earlier that day though, something much worse happened. A team member Willis Wilson was on the beach with friends when he drowned.
Obviously, much worse than losing a game.
But the team did win the last game of the season. :)
Well, if the team was only going to win 1 game for the season, it was better for that game to be the last game instead of the first.
So the team was spared the pain of going 0-12, but felt the pain of losing a team-mate and a friend.
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UH head football coach Norm Chow is going to be around for at least another season. However, 2 assistant coaches didn't get their annual contracts renewed.
I want all the UH teams to do well, because I want to see Hawaii to be seen in a glorious light.
However, I do have my doubts about whether Norm Chow is the right person to continue being head coach. While he had earlier success in other schools, he was an offensive coordinator, not head coach. Also, his rules against players having long hair (after a decade of UH football being known for long-haired players) rubbed many the wrong way. I do have superstitions running in my head, and I do think Norm Chow's policy is seriously bad luck.
This is what I said in an earlier blog post about Norm Chow's rule against long hair.
http://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2012/10/32-years-of-living.html (look under part 4)
(unfortunately, new coach Norm Chow wanted his players to have short hair! This is also the worst football season since the von Appen days. Coincidence? As one caller to a talk radio show said "the rules against long hair is ruining the team spirit!" Take that Norm Chow!)I also mentioned the issue on this blog post
http://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2012/08/vili-warrior-retired.html
For one thing, the new UH football coach started imposing regulations on the player's grooming style.
Under the new rules, the UH football players will no longer be allowed to have long hair, WHICH IS THE MOST STUPIDEST RULE ON EARTH!
http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2012-08-02/sports/sns-mct-free-time-is-over.-chow-time-begins-for-real-today-20120802_1_camp-chow-time-norm-chowcheck that blog post for more on that issue.
The long hair was a major part of the UH-Warrior mystique in the previous decade. It made the UH haka/ha'a more real when the Warriors had the wild hair while making their chants!
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In other UH sports news, the Wahine Volleyball is still a strong program, though it didn't go as far in the NCAA tournament as the fans expected.
UH Wahine volleyball beat powerhouses like Texas and UCLA early in the season. Coach Dave Shoji gained the record for most victories within NCAA D-1 volleyball by beating Santa Clara. Sounds like they were on the way to being a championship team.
But once Big West conference play started, they fell to conference opponents like UC Davis, UC Santa Barbara and Cal State- Northridge, all on the road. However, the team won the majority of the games and made the NCAA tournament.
They won the first round against Idaho State, but lost in the second round to BYU!
People were talking Coach Dave Shoji retiring after 39 seasons. But at the end of the year, he said he'll be back next season. After all, if you got a chance to have 4 decades coaching at the same university, why not?
But no coach wants to retire after coming up short in the playoffs. Not when you have the chance to do better next year.
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National sports scene
For college football in general, they'll finally have a playoff system next year. Unfortunately, it will just be a 4 team playoff. But I think it will expand to 16 teams in the future. That will make college football more exciting. Also, those from the less prestigious conferences will have a higher chance to be in the playoffs and have a chance to play for the championship.
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This year's NBA Finals was one of the most exiciting in modern times.
The Miami Heat (with its megastars LeBron James, Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh) faced the aging but still going San Antonio Spurs (with Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobli and Tony Parker). The series came down to the final seconds of Game 7.
That was seen as the Spurs last chance to get the championship before their stars fade into old age. But I really hope for a repeat of that series in 2014.
Robert Pollin had a great article on that topic in his tribute to the San Antonio Spurs at
http://www.thenation.com/article/174956/praise-san-antonio-spurs
There is no denying that the Heat are the world’s greatest basketball team. More to the point, LeBron James is, by a wide margin, the world’s greatest player. James is moving closer into that rarefied space among basketball’s all-time pantheon with transcendent legends like Michael Jordan, Bill Russell, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson.
Still, the Spurs were mere seconds away from knocking off the Heat on their home floor. This despite the fact that the Spurs are located in a small-market city and their owner is not a mega-billionaire. The Spurs’ player payroll this past season amounted to $59 million, $19 million below the Heat’s. In addition, two of the Spurs stars, Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobili, are serious old-timers in basketball years, at 37 and 35 respectively.
How did the Spurs get so far? Their approach to building a championship-caliber team has been the opposite of Miami’s. Three years ago, the Heat famously lured LeBron James out of Cleveland as a free agent. They also re-signed Dwayne Wade, the one star already on the team and brought in Chris Bosh from the Toronto Raptors as the third member of a newly formed Big Three. James, Wade, and Bosh each were paid more than $17 million this past season.
By contrast, the Spurs coach Gregg Popovich and General Manager R.C. Buford are masters at picking out and nurturing inexpensive players, both young, unproven players as well as assorted castoffs. They have relied on intelligence, savvy and a culture of solidarity they have been cultivating for the seventeen years Popovich has been coaching the Spurs.
and more
Because of Duncan’s no-nonsense proficiency and good-guy demeanor, the Spurs are sometimes considered boring. But I can’t see how anyone could think this. Parker is an acrobat driving to the basket. He won the first game of the Finals by dribbling around multiple Heat players, including James, then falling down twice while keeping his dribble, and finally hitting a fifteen-foot bank shot by ducking under James’ outstretched arms just as the twenty-four-second shot clock expired. Parker appeared to be playing Harlem Globetrotters basketball, except that it was the for-real NBA finals.
and finally this
Given the harsh realities of aging for professional athletes, this may well have been the last hurrah of the Spurs’ Duncan/Parker/Ginobili/Popovich era. It would have been sweet to see them walk off with an amazing championship upset over the mighty Heat. It didn’t happen. But this Spurs team still proved its greatness for the basketball ages. Who knows: they may well have enough in the tank to surprise us again next year.
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For the last few weeks, I really wanted to write a blog post about the controversy over the NFL Miami Dolphins and their locker room chaos because it touches on some very important issues of bullying, masculinity and stereotypes. However, I have been too busy to start working on the blog post. Hopefully, within the next few weeks I will get it done. It might be old news by then, but I still think it raises important issues that shouldn't be ignored.
