NTSF 098: FIFA sanctions, tectonic shifts in cycling, new F1 leader and more…

TOOLING AROUND THE NET…

I’ve been engrossed in some non-sports reading lately, plowing through several histories of the subcontinent in the past week. Last Friday I found myself with a little time before work and decided to go wandering around Knight Library on the University of Oregon campus. Being a UO employee has its perks, as I have access to one of the best libraries in the state. Sometimes I love just wandering the aisles and picking a few books that catch my eye. And thus I found myself reading Blood Against the Snows, a history of the Nepalese royal dynasty and the tragic end of its lineage when the Crown Prince went mental in 2001 and killed his entire family before turning the gun on himself. I also just finished a book about the Great Partition that ended imperial rule in India and led to the formation of the separate states of India and Pakistan. Why do I mention this? Because sometimes being a Non-Traditional Sports Fan in America means taking time to diversify your knowledge base. After all, I might never have known as much about the story of legendary Pakistani cricketer Fazal Mahmood had I not picked up the latter book… and that homicidal Crown Prince, it turns out, was in charge of Nepalese sport. You never know what you might learn when you go tooling around, whether in the library or in cyberspace:

• Can F1 work the team orders game? (Will Gray/Eurosport/29 July 2010) – It’s always interesting watching the dynamic of racing, whether it is on a bicycle or in Formula 1. The machinery doesn’t matter; that dynamic, whereby drivers are racing as part of a team yet are effectively individual entities at the same time, is similar regardless of the vessel. In cycling, though, an alpha dog is established and the team sets out to protect that leader. In F1, the rules have been skewed to prevent two cars under the same team auspices from working together. After Fernando Alonso passed Ferrari teammate Felipe Massa in Germany, the outcry resounded. Should F1 allow for teamwork between multimillion-dollar teams? Should paramount importance be placed on the drivers’ title or the constructor championship? Do preordained passes really cheapen the sport? Gray offers up a hybrid concept that just might work… if Ecclestone is willing to expand his mind and allow new ways of thinking to permeate through.
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  While we hand millions to football and basketball and baseball stars, athletes elsewhere (such as Indian cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni) also have the opportunity to bank major dough...

  Some obscure sports (borderline hobbies) that pay millions (Brian Guerra/Sports Nickel/30 July 2010) – When we think of high-paid athletes here in the United States, it is names of baseball players (A-Rod) and football players (Julius Peppers) and basketball stars (LeBron) who usually top that list. Throw in guys who can generate crossover appeal (or could, in Tiger Woods’ case) and eat up endorsements and you’re looking at some of the richest men in sports. But as SN editor Guerra points out, the ability to generate millions of dollars a year from sports is hardly a phenomenon exclusive to America. Whether it is cricket or darts (or any other myriad number of sports/pastimes), the ability to generate income from one’s passion is apparently possible somewhere on the globe if you’re willing to search for your target audience.

• No way to sugarcoat this: Mayweather fears Pacquiao (Mike Freeman/CBS Sports/30 July 2010) – Over the past six months or so we’ve watched the saga unfold as the boxing match of the year was on, then off, then on again and now on the back burner once more. At first it looked like Pacquiao was the one stonewalling, using the discussion of how stringent pre-fight drug testing should be to delay the fight. But after Manny capitulated after negotiations to the terms for testing desired by Floyd’s camp, we’re still waiting. As Freeman shows in this article, the impetus to get this fight off the ground is now squarely in Mayweather’s hands… and he doesn’t look like he actually desires to do anything with it.
• Record a flash of brothers’ determination (Greg Garber/ESPN.com/02 August 2010) – When we think of tennis, more often than not it is the individual greats who capture our imagination. Guys like Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer and ladies like the Williams sisters are always going to generate the lion’s share of the press. But ESPN this week saved a little virtual ink for one of the most formidable doubles teams in the history of men’s tennis. Garber got the chance to speak with Mike and Bob Bryan shortly after the Farmers Classic on the UCLA campus, where the American twins set the ATP record for tournament victories in doubles. With the U.S. Open looming on the horizon, they have a big opportunity to inch closer to the next record on the horizon — 11 men’s doubles Grand Slam titles, held by the Australian pairing of Mark Woodforde and Todd Woodbridge (who formerly held the record of tournament victories as well).
• A tale of two city teams (Tim Vickery/BBC Sport/02 August 2010) – Rivalries are one of the greatest parts of following sports, whether it is a college football showdown in late November or the annual clashes between the Yankees and Red Sox or the bad blood between Colorado and Detroit in the NHL back in the 1990s. Nowhere does this hold more sway, though, than in soccer, where clubs from the same city regularly engage in “derby” matches that are as much a litmus test for the various classes of a particular society as they are athletic exhibitions. Vickery, writing from South America, talks in this BBC article about how local clashes have shaped soccer throughout the continent throughout history and to this day…

ON THE DOCKET…

With all the channels available to a sports fan in the United States these days, it’s simply astounding when you actually find an event these days that can’t be found easily in one’s local cable or satellite listings. But with the internet, all those gaps in the coverage are easy enough to fill. My personal favorite site for such live streaming video does such an amazing job consolidating this coverage that it’s almost harder to name an obscure event that a person has absolutely no way of watching than to find the events to watch. Chances are, if it is a competition, you’ll be able to find the feed somewhere. So what will you be watching throughout the next week, as baseball continues to wind its way slowly toward its postseason and with football still a month away?

• Tour de Pologne (through Sunday/08 August 2010) – Today’s Stage 5, a 149km route from Astrzebie Zdrój to Ustron along the Czech-Polish border in the southwestern part of the country, officially kicks off the second half of the UCI ProTour event. So far we’ve seen a battle of sprinters, with the top ten places in the general classification separated by just nine seconds. Currently Allan Davis holds a slim three-second advantageover Andre Greipel… and thus the final weekend of competition should see some intense battling among the peloton as everyone dreams of their chance at victory.
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  We'll get to see this scene once again tomorrow in Stockholm, when Asafa Powell, Tyson Gay and world-record holder Usain Bolt battle in the Diamond League 100m event...

  IAAF Diamond League/Stockholm (Friday/06 August 2010) – Finally, the showdown we’ve all been waiting to see for years! No longer are we left this season to wonder if Asafa Powell’s lead in the IAAF Diamond League 100m standings is legitimate. No longer must we wonder whether or not Tyson Gay is back to his top form after fighting injuries the past few years. And no longer do we have to wonder where Usain Bolt stands against his closest rivals. While the sprint world has been abuzz lately following the European championship of 20-year-old Christophe Lemaitre, the triumvirate at the top of the sport is undoubtedly the two Jamaicans and the American. They will be amongst the contestants when Universal Sports broadcasts the eleventh of fourteen stops in the inaugural season of the Diamond calendar.

• Copa Libertadores final (first leg on Wednesday/11 August 2010) — We will find out today which Brazilian team gets to face off against Chivas Guadalajara for the chance to emerge as the champion of South and Central American club soccer. In a rematch of the 2006 Copa Libertadores final, Internacional has the lead over São Paulo following their 1-0 victory at home in the first leg. After watching Guadalajara emerge victorious following their second-leg encounter on the road in Santiago on Tuesday, we are sure to see one hell of a battle regardless of which Brazilian side earns the spot opposite them. Unfortunately no US feed will be available, but you’ll certainly be able to find it online via the aforementioned link.
• ATP Toronto/WTA Cincinnati (starting Monday/09 August 2010) – After wandering around the globe since Wimbledon, we are down to the final few preparatory tournaments before the start of the year’s final Grand Slam at the U.S. Open. Last year in Cincinnati we saw the return of Kim Clijsters, who reached the quarterfinals on a wild card entry en route to taking the major title at Flushing Meadows a month later. The men will play up in Canada, with the two tours switching venues a week later before the final pre-Open test in New Haven. You can catch action from the men’s tour on the Tennis Channel; to find the ladies, follow the link above.

Full yet? Don’t get all gluttonous and gorge yourself too quickly, because there’s still a lot on tap in the month (and months) to come. You wouldn’t want to be too stuffed when the big wave comes crashing in again.

Hopefully this week yields more than more rehashing by ESPN about A-Rod hitting his 600th home run, the neverending Brett Favre retirement carousel — it seems like yesterday that I was penning this farewell which now looks horribly dated and completely out of whack with my current feelings about the man — spinning round and round, and the weary wait for the summer heat to yield to meaningful football games for you out there in fan land.

Remember that there is always somewhere else to turn. Just let your fingers go wandering on the remote or throughout cyberspace, and the potential to really be dazzled rather than merely placated will surely present itself. Reacquaint yourself with an old favorite or be daring and find a new pastime to captivate your fanaticism… whatever you need to do, just don’t let yourself get sucked into whatever three-ring circus the flapping heads of the mainstream sports media present just because they’ve lost the ingenuity to fit a little bit more on their trays…