Category Archives: Sports news

Sports news

Ready for baseball

OK, let me be clear about something. My baseball-loving days are behind me. I don’t follow the Grand Old Game with nearly the fervor I did as a youngster.

However, I am kinda getting ready for teams to report for spring training. I say that as we’re still enduring a winter blast in North Texas and as I read about the chilled bones among my many friends in the Texas Panhandle.

My many friends who are devotees of the Amarillo Sod Poodles no doubt are waiting, too, for the first pitch of the season. I don’t blame ’em. Not one single bit.

The Sod Poodles were unable to defend their Double A league pennant last season, having been shelved for the 2020 season by the COVID-19 virus. No worries this year. I’ll cheer for them from afar. I hope to get back to Amarillo one day next season to see a game at Hodgetown. Or … I might yell for the Soddies when they venture to nearby Frisco to play the Roughriders.

But … that will occur in due course.

The Big League season will commence, too. I have one favorite player. Albert Pujols wants to play one more season. The future first-ballot Hall of Famer finished last season with the Los Angeles Dodgers. No word if he’s returning or if he’ll shop himself around for a final fling with someone else.

Still, the football season is almost over; they’re going to play that big game soon in LA. I cannot say I am all that dialed into the pro basketball season, nor with the college hoops players.

Baseball is still out there, waiting to commence. Bring it!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Sports news

Washington Commanders?

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OK, here comes a question that might have crossed others’ minds as well as my own.

The Washington football team is now the Washington Commanders. It’s a fine name. I won’t quibble over it. What about any references to the team’s former name, such as when they played in previous Super Bowls?

For the record, I am glad the team ditched its former name, which I consider to be an epithet aimed at Native Americans. I won’t even use it here, just to be politically correct.

However, all references I have seen to Washington’s past football exploits in the Super Bowl, where it made five appearances dating back to the 1973 game against the Miami Dolphins, uses the franchise’s former name.

Will sportscasters, therefore, be allowed to use that name when talking about the team’s past? Or must they dance around it the way I am doing it now?

Just askin’.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Sports news

AFC vs. NFC? No contest!

I have this need to disclose my professional football bias. I am a diehard fan of the American Football Conference, which once was known as the American Football League.

Of all the 55 Super Bowls that have been played, I have cheered precisely one time for the National Football Conference team to win the big game. In 2010, that honor fell to the New Orleans Saints, who gave their city the lift it needed after it had endured the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina five years earlier.

The Saints beat the Indianapolis Colts 31-17 in the game played in Miami.

I tend to favor the underdog. When the AFL came into being in the early 1960s, I gravitated to the young league. I enjoyed its razzle-dazzle, high-scoring brand of football. Then the leagues — the AFL and the NFL — announced plans to merge. The pro football championship would be decided in a title game between the leagues. I cheered mightily for the Kansas City Chiefs in that first game against the Green Bay Packers and for the Oakland Raiders in the second game against the Packers; both AFL teams got clobbered.

Then the New York Jets scored the big upset in Super Bowl III against the Baltimore Colts and the Chiefs came back in Super Bowl IV to manhandle the Minnesota Vikings.

My bias remains intact this year, with the Cincinnati Bengals waiting for the winner of the 49ers-Rams game this evening.

And so … may the better team win and I do hope it’s the representative of the AFC.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Sports news

Hail the GOAT!

Most of us who follow football — even a little bit — understand that it is a game of numbers. You know, yards gained, yards lost, interceptions, tackles, penalty yards, sacks, punting yardage. Whatever …

Tom Brady reportedly is retiring after 22 seasons of professional football becoming arguably the greatest quarterback of all time.

I want to focus on a particular number as we ponder the effect this guy had on the game he played with excellence and precision.

The number is 198. What does that number signify?

It is the number players selected ahead of Brady in the NFL draft of 2000. Now think for a moment if you’re a general manager who had the chance to select this young man what you might have thought after he won all those Super Bowls and led the New England Patriots and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to all that glory.

One hundred ninety-eight players got into the NFL ahead of the GOAT. Granted, not every team drafting in that sequence needed a quarterback. Still, Tom Brady quite unexpectedly became the gold standard for winning in the National Football League.

The Patriots drafted him out of the University of Michigan even though they had a decent QB calling signals for them. Drew Bledsoe then got hurt; Brady replaced him on the field. And the rest, as they, is history.

I know, we had that “Deflategate” matter involving the footballs that were allegedly tampered with by the Patriots, giving Brady some sort of advantage over his foes. Phooey.

Now, let’s look at some other numbers.

Seven Super Bowls; five Super Bowl MVP awards; more than 84,000 yards passing; 624 touchdown passes; three league MVP awards. I won’t go on. You get the picture.

The guy was a stellar athlete. He possesses an incomparable work and dietetic regimen that has allowed him to play the game at a high level until the very end of his playing days. He led the NFL in passing yards at the age of 44, for crying out loud.

Perhaps, in my mind, the greatest measure of this guy’s greatness can be found in this episode. He left the Patriots after the 2019 season and joined the Buccaneers. The Patriots, who had won six Super Bowls with Brady at QB, missed the playoffs that year; the Bucs went on to win the Big Game, beating the defending champs, the Kansas City Chiefs.

Oh, Brady did that at the age of 43.

Yep. This guy is the greatest of all time.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Sports news

Will Super Bowl match these games?

Whichever teams emerge next weekend from the NFL’s conference championship games will have a mighty steep hill to climb to match the excitement the football-watching public enjoyed this past weekend in the divisional playoff games.

This is my way of saying the Super Bowl, to be played two weeks later in Los Angeles, will have to go some to give us the same level of thrill.

Think of this: The Cincinnati Bengals beat the top seed in the AFC, the Tennessee Titans with a game-winning field goal; the San Francisco 49ers went to Green Bay to defeat the favored Packers after trailing the entire game — until the end; the LA Rams went to Tampa Bay and knocked the defending Super Bowl champs, the Buccaneers, with a game-ending field goal; then came the capper, with the Kansas City Chiefs defeating the Buffalo Bills in overtime with a touchdown pass in what many call the “greatest game in NFL history.” 

The conference championships will have plenty of drama. My favorite story line belongs to the Bengals. They hadn’t won a road playoff game in the franchise’s history, yet they beat the Titans in Nashville. They haven’t played in a Super Bowl since 1989, when they lost a thriller to the 49ers.

Whether it’s the Rams vs. the Bengals, or the 49ers vs. the Bengals, or the Rams vs. the Chiefs or the 49ers vs. the Chiefs in the Big Game, know this: The players will take the field knowing they are capable of delivering a Super Bowl for the ages.

Here’s hoping they don’t disappoint.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Sports news

NFLers come to play

My football-watching tastes have evolved over the years, in that I usually watch little pro football and concentrate my attention on college ball.

However, this weekend has been one for the ages for those who love to watch the National Football League.

Three visiting teams won the first three divisional playoff games. They all were underdogs. Oh, and all three games were decided by field goals.

Cincinnati beat the AFC’s No. 1 seed, Tennessee, in Nashville; the San Francisco 49ers ventured to frigid Green Bay to beat the Packers after trailing them the entire game; Los Angeles traveled to Tampa to take on the defending Super Bowl champion Buccaneers and won that game as time ran out.

What’s more, Cincy won its first road playoff game in the history of the franchise.

As I type this brief post, the Kansas City Chiefs and the Buffalo Bills are playing for the final conference championship spot. It’s still early, but my hunch is that this one could down to the wire, too.

Yep, these high-priced millionaire athletes do have a way of stepping up to provide the kind of entertainment we all love to see.

Update: The Chiefs and the Bills put a wrap on the most exciting football playoff weekend I can remember. KC won with a touchdown in overtime; the game ended 42-36. So help me, that was among the best football games I ever have seen.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Sports news

Give it up, Novak!

Maybe I’m just slow on the uptake. Perhaps I am not studying this issue as closely as I should before popping off.

Novak Djokovic, the best men’s tennis player on Earth, should just give up his quest for a 21st major championship and go home rather than defying Australia, the host country of the Australian Open that — by the way — has imposed strict protocols for entering the nation in this pandemic age with which we’re all coping.

Djokovic is not vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus. Moreover, he lied about where he was and what he did and with whom he did it. Australia has been in virtual lockdown for more than a year and has imposed strict entry requirements as the nation seeks to rid itself of the virus that is still killing people around the world.

What in the world gives Djokovic any additional latitude to enter the country and then compete against fellow tennis pros? Don’t tell me it has anything to do with his standing as the No. 1 men’s player in the world or that his next major championship would break the record held by Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal.

I think Martina Navratilova, the former No. 1 women’s player in the world, has it right: It’s not worth it to the game, or the host country for Djokovic to keep fighting this issue. “Just suck it up and go home,” Navratilova said.

Yep. Go home, Novak. You’ve broken the rules and lied to the world.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Sports news

Aaron Rodgers’s white lie still stings

We won’t call Aaron Rodgers’s deception about being “immunized” instead of vaccinated against the COVID 19 virus a “little white lie.”

It goes beyond little white lie status. Let’s just call it a lie.

The Green Bay Packers quarterback is continuing to pay the price in deserved recrimination for his refusal to tell the truth — to the public — about whether he had taken the vaccine. He had taken instead some sort of cocktail of drugs that included Ivermectin, the medicine prescribed for livestock as a de-worming agent. Yeah, yeah … I get that he was prescribed by a doctor who reportedly gave him some sort of “human form” of the agent that supposedly works against the virus.

He didn’t say that. All he said was that he is “immunized.”

My beef with Rodgers — who until now I had grown to admire as a Hall of Fame-quality QB — is that his moronic reaction to the blowback suggests he doesn’t get it. He won’t take ownership of the mistake he made in lying about his vaccination status.

Rodgers now becomes what politicians like to refer to as a “distraction.” His teammates are distracted by the furor over this matter. So are the fans and the media.

This damn story won’t go away. I am not sure it should go away until Rodgers’s comes clean and owns the controversy he has created.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Sports news

PETA wants to do what?

Are you … kidding me?

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has weighed in with what I believe qualifies as the most preposterous request ever made … by anyone, ever, in the history of the world.

PETA wants Major League Baseball to rename the “bullpen “– the place where relief pitchers warm up before entering a game — to “arm barn.” PETA wants to be “sensitive” to, um, bulls.

USA Today reported: “Words matter, and baseball ‘bullpens’ devalue talented players and mock the misery of sensitive animals,” PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman said in the release. “PETA encourages Major League Baseball coaches, announcers, players, and fans to changeup their language and embrace the ‘arm barn’ instead.”

PETA calls for the MLB to change term ‘bullpen’ to the ‘arm barn’ to be sensitive to cows (msn.com)

What in the name of social activist idiocy is going on here?

It’s not like MLB pens up actual livestock in these places, for ever-lovin’ sake. Yet here we have PETA seeking to replace a commonly used place with something that is more animal friendly!

I saw the story and thought momentarily that it must be a satire published by The Onion. It isn’t. It’s for real.

It’s also just plain idiotic.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news, Sports news

Three cheers for public TV

Some readers of this blog might know that I am a big fan of public television. I worked for a time as a freelance blogger for a public TV station in Amarillo — Panhandle PBS, based at Amarillo College — not long after my print journalism career ended.

Whenever I hear the name Ken Burns attached to a public TV special, I perk up instantly and commit to watching whatever Burns assembles for the public air waves.

I just finished binge-watching a four-part special on The Greatest, aka “Muhammad Ali.”

Wow! What a special! What a man Ali became.

Ali died in 2016 at age 74 of complications from the Parkinson’s disease with which he had been diagnosed since 1984.

Burns and his staff of colleagues, producers, editors and writers assembled a fantastic broadcast journey that took viewers through Ali’s childhood in Louisville, Ky., to the 1960 Olympics in Rome, to his professional boxing career, his wins and losses, his exile for following his religious objection to the Vietnam War, his becoming a Muslim, his troubled marriages to four women (and his relentless womanizing along the way), his status as a cultural icon and how he became the Most Famous Man in the World and finally to his death.

You are reading the words of a longtime fan of Muhammad Ali. I cannot watch without crying his 1996 appearance at the Atlanta Olympics when he lit the torch. It was a seminal moment in Ali’s journey from world-class athlete to world-class human being.

Public TV brought all this to viewers. It was a stunning bit of television. Then again, none of us should be surprised that Ken Burns — arguably the world’s foremost documentary filmmaker — could deliver such epic TV programming to our living rooms.

If you get a chance, check out this latest contribution from Ken Burns. You will learn something about The Greatest.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com