mostly palaver

Phelps news

Well, sort of:

Fourteen-time Olympic gold medalist and SeaWorld main attraction Michael Phelps returned to his seven-million-gallon water tank Wednesday to resume his normal schedule of performing in six shows a day for marine park crowds every day of the week.

Phelps, the 6'4", 200-pound aquatic mammal, and the first ever SeaWorld swimmer to be raised in captivity by foster swimmers (Mark Spitz and Dara Torres), was recaptured by trainer Bob Bowman in a hoop net baited with an entire Dutch apple pie following Phelps' final Olympic event last Sunday. Phelps was then tethered to the rudder of a container ship bound for St. Petersburg, guided down local waterways, and introduced back into his home habitat, the tank in SeaWorld's 5,500 seat stadium, known to park officials and visitors alike as "Phelps' Happy Harbor."

...

Beginning with the 1985's "Baby Michael Celebration," Phelps has entertained SeaWorld audiences for over 20 years. Spectators are not only enthralled with Phelps' exploits in the water, but his abnormally large torso, unusually small lower body, double-jointed ankles, gargantuan eating habits, the slurring, almost human methods of vocalization he uses to communicate, and his odd-looking goggle-covered face, all of which combine to make him the most unusual sight in all of Florida.

Olympic Observation

Was watching the track and field coverage last night and something seemed odd to me, the pictures seemed... off somehow.  It took me a while but I figured out what it was - I believe they are filming the Olympics in digital and, as a result, everything is in focus - runners in the foreground, audience in the background, everything.  It made it feel green-screened to me, artificial, constructed. 

Not sure what it means, but it did feel less "real".

Phelps

What he's done is amazing and it was fun to watch.  I have 2 questions:

1. Will he return in 2012? I'd bet not - what else is there to do when anything less than 8 golds and 7 WR's would be a letdown?
2. Will he make millions in sponsorships? Again, I'd bet not. He's going to make money, that's for sure, but I don't see him as the global superstar I've heard some predicting. I'm thinking Mary Lou Retton, not Michael Jordan.

Which, I guess, leads to question #3, why don't Olympic champions make better livings off of sponsorships (those, unlike Kobe, without a professional sport to fall back on)?  Not enough time in the public eye?  Wrong sport? 

Thoughts on Phelps and the Olympics in general?

Screw cycling

This is the sport of the future:

Berlin is home to the world's biggest chess boxing club with some 40 members and it is in an old freight station here that the two men settled the matter early yesterday.

The match began over a chess board set up on a low table in the middle of a boxing ring.

Stripped to the waist, wearing towels around their shoulders and headphones playing the lulling sound of a moving train to drown out the baying crowd, the men played for four minutes. Then off came their reading glasses and on went the gloves and the mouthguards.

For three minutes they beat each other and then, when the bell went, the chess board was back in the ring and they picked up the gentlemanly game where they had left off.

Kansas!

Last night was the best final I've seen in years.  I thought Kansas was not going to play very well due to the huge emotional win they had over the Roy Williams coached UNC team on Saturday.  Wrong (and, really, what else is new?).

With 2 minutes to go I thought the game was over, but then something wonderful happened, the hack-and-shoot plan that teams always put into place at the end of games started working.  It was amazing to watch the Memphis players freeze up on the line as the pressure rose, and with each miss at the line, the pressure increased considerably.  I love games like this one - hit the shots at the line and you win, miss them and you lose.

The only blemish on the game was the fact that Billy Packer called it.  I used to think that Dick Vitale was the most annoying basketball announcer on tv, but I may have to reconsider.  Packer is horrible, contradicting himself, coming up with all sorts of odd and distracting observations, injecting himself into the action rather than enhancing it for the viewers.  He can retire any time now. 

What did everyone else think? 

Basketball pools

Everybody's in one, everybody's talking about them.  I read a new method for pool scoring today, but can't find the link to where I read it.  I like it though:

Scoring each game is based on the ranking of the winner (if you pick the #13 seed to win, you get 13 points for the game), rounds are weighted as follows: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, so if you picked the #13 seed to go to the elite 8 and they do, you get (13*4) 52 points for that pick.  It rewards those poolees who accurately pick upsets. 

I re-scored the pool I'm in according to this new formula and instead of being narrowly in second, I'm getting killed.

Congress and Sports

Not going to talk about Clemens HGH debacle or Specter's investigation into the Pats beyond wondering what shape the country would be in if the government was this energized and informed about things that really matter - like torture and lying to Congress.

Stepping down from the soapbox now.