Happy Fiday :)

"Sports psychology has a long history folks. In 1938, Coleman Griffith became the first psychologist hired by a professional sports team when he went to work for the Chicago Cubs, who hadn't won a World Series in thirty years. Through weeks of careful observation and behavioral modifications, Griffith was able to turn that number into one-hundred and two. "

-Stephen Colbert

Baseball season opening day in: 9 DAYS!

For the Love of the Game

**WARNING**

Unfavorable opinions about the NBA and the Chicago Cubs expressed below.

If you don't like it, don't read it...

To be honest, I don't follow basketball. I can't stand the NBA and think that is a complete snoozefest. In my opinion, it hasn't been worth watching since Michael Jordan played. I think that the NBA is nothing but a bunch of show-boating. I believe, and this is just my own opinion, that the NBA players care less about their sport than other professional athletes. Maybe it's how much the sport has been rocked by scandal over the last few years... guns in locker rooms, brawls between the crowd and the players (the Pistons/Pacers fight is still one of the best youTube videos ever), gambling referees... it gets a little old. And as much as I love the NFL and MLB, they too have been rocked by scandal and stupidity.

I used to watch college basketball, but fell out of it in recent years. As a matter of fact, I have fallen out of watching college sports period over the last few years, I am rarely home on Saturdays to watch the football games and basketball isn't really my thing. But that doesn't mean that I have any less respect for them. On the contrary. I think college sports (more specifically football and basketball) have a tendency to be more exciting to watch than their professional counterparts.

There are more historic programs in college. Think Notre Dame, Ohio State, Michigan, Texas, Oklahoma... These programs have been around for decades, some even more than a century. In pro sports, you can move a team anywhere you want and call them anything you want if your franchise has enough money to do it. With this history comes major rivalries. Rivalries only matched in intensity by some MLB teams (because they have been around longer than either the NBA or NFL). And rivalries make it more fun to be a fan. Let's be honest, would it be as much fun to be a Cardinals fan if you didn't have the Cubs fans and players to wail on? No. That is something that I feel, for the most part, the NFL and NBA is lacking.

In college sports there is always room for a major upset. NCAA basketball is a prime example. Every year there is always some sleeper team just waiting quietly in the wings to screw up 99% of the countries brackets (NIU vs. Kansas anyone?). The same goes for college football. Sure a handful of teams make it to the BCS year after year, but it will stay that way until they eliminate the BCS all together and implement a playoff system.... But even with the statistical nonsense that is the BCS, their is always some smaller school coming out of nowhere that makes the Bowl series more interesting. This makes it more exciting to watch because you never know what is going to happen.

I think the element of surprise that college sports has over professional sports has a lot to do with the almost constant change of talent. Players graduate or enter the draft every year, leaving room for fresh faces. If you have a great coaching and recruiting staff then you usually fare pretty well, but everyone has their slumps. For instance, Florida has had a pretty stellar few years with Urban Meyer and Tim Tebow at the helm, but with Tebow graduated and Meyer stepping down for health reasons then it should be interesting to see how they fair next year.
It's true that the pro teams get new players every year, but they usually don't get start time right out of the gate. Let me emphasize the "usually", there are guys who have great rookie seasons (Rookie of the Year awards. Duh.) But not everyone is a Mark Sanchez, some guys are Brady Quinns. So you tend to see the same players year after year, which is easier to predict the outcomes.

In my mind there is almost a sense of purity to college sports. They aren't paid, no salary caps, no contract negotiations, no free agents. They have their fair share of stupidity too (I am looking at you Tennessee). But when you watch an NFL game, and they are announcing the starting line-ups for the teams, they also announce the school they went to. Not what team they were traded from for a couple of draft picks and some cash.

Guts, Glory, and Gold

So the Winter Olympics have come and gone... and I must say that I was very surprised at how much of them I actually watched this time around. Maybe it's the fact that I am getting older (and wiser)... but gone are the days of watching the winter games solely for the figure skating. But like I said before, I am older (and still wiser), and when watching the games I noticed just how much the Winter Olympics differ from the summer games, and I don't just mean the snow.

The Winter games are one big party! The summer games have always been the big money makers. There is almost always more stress put on the athletes to perform to higher expectations. Can you imagine what would have happened if Phelps hadn't performed the way that he had? Or how about the toddlers China was parading around under the guise of "Gymnasts"? The world takes the Summer games more seriously. But I really took joy out of watching the athletes in Vancouver have FUN. Of course they were there to compete, to win the gold, to prove they were the best. But they were having a good time doing it.

With that being said, I do feel that the host city plays a crucial role in the atmosphere of the games. The 2004 games in Athens seemed like a back yard barbecue compared to the Beijing games. And I have a feeling that Vancouver is going to look like a college keg party compared to the games in Sochi, Russia in 2014.

Also, comparing the winter sports to the summer sports is like comparing driving a Ferrari to driving a golf cart. The Winter sports make the summer sports look like sissies. The danger factor is amped WAY up in the winter games. Snowboarding, slalom racing, skeleton, luge, short track speed skating. For example, racers in skeleton and luge were reaching speeds of 90 miles per hour. I am not even sure that my '94 Honda will go that fast...

American speed skater JR Celski received 60 stitches after he crashed at Nationals and cut his leg with his own skate. But that is nothing in comparison to the death of 21 year old Georgian Luger, Nodar Kumaritashvili. Who died after he slammed into a steel pole during a practice run.

The Winter games have been in a slump over the last decade, but the Vancouver games put them back on the map. And though not all sports at the Olympics (both summer and winter) are death defying ratings grabbers... table tennis (more commonly referred to as "ping pong")or curling for example... they still grab the attention of the world.

Click here for a complete list of Olympic Sports.