Tuesday Grab Bag: So, will the Buffs go bowling?

With game week finally on the horizon, it's straight to the action this afternoon.

Today in the bag, I'm musing on Colorado's hopes for a celebration-inducing bowl bid, gold in men's basketball at the Olympics, and a pair of big wins to start the season for the women's soccer team.

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Tuesday Grab Bag: I've been watching weightlifting... yep, weightlifting.

This is not a drill, people of Boulder.  The students are back in town as of tomorrow, as student move-in begins in earnest.  Prepare for traffic, loud parties, and extended wait times for delivery pizza.  Of course, while the start of the fall academic calendar comes with its share of downsides, it also comes some decided positives... like the accompanying start of the fall sports calendar.  In fact, it will all get started this weekend, with women's soccer's kickoff in the Springs against Air Force (Friday @ 6pm).  Before you know it, we'll all be treated to the start of football season, the even more exciting start of basketball season, and the throes of a winter of competition across all fronts.  With the Buffs back in town, its finally time to bid summer an adieu, and welcome in the 2016-17 season.  Let's get it on!

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Quickly, a big shout-out to ForeverBuff Emma Coburn for her bronze medal performance in the 3000m steeple chase.  Her American-record run did all of BuffNation proud.  Way to go, Emma!

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Only two topics this afternoon as we inch closer to fall.  Today in the bag, I'm talking Saturday's football scrimmage and the pratfalls of closed door practices, before closing with the Olympics.

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Tuesday Grab Bag: a SoCal split

I hope everyone enjoyed a happy and safe President's Day weekend!

It's a huge week, not only for the men's basketball team, but the program and athletic department at large. Fighting for their postseason lives, CU welcomes both a pair of rivals from Arizona and a national television extravaganza to Boulder.  Oh, and did I mention it was senior week?  If that wasn't enough, the lacrosse team is also hosting their first-ever home game at Folsom on Saturday.  I've already thrown out any hope of getting work done this week, and it's only Tuesday.

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Today in the bag, I'm talking CU's win over USC, something new from the Athletic Department, and a little Olympic hockey.

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Quick Post: The finals go on without Jenny Barringer

Buff Nation's best hope for an Olympic medal crashed out before even reaching the final.  Jenny Barringer Simpson, one of the best runners in CU's storied history, struggled in her semi-final run of the 1,500m yesterday, and ended up finishing last in the heat.  She was the defending world champion in the event, and her early exit was almost as big of a shock as her winning run last year was.

For her sake, she doesn't take any opportunity to place blame, saying "I have no excuse. [...] I have nothing. I'm in great shape and I feel good. You just have to earn every single step, and I think I thought about the final before I had earned it."  

Warning bells were already going off in my head Monday during her qualifying heat.  She was behind the lead pack for almost the whole race, and had to essentially sprint the final lap to even sneak into the semi's. A friend of mine who follows these things blamed tactics, but it's always worrying to see that kind of performance in the opening round.

It's a shame for Jenny, but she'll be back.  Her win at the 2011 World Championships makes her a national figure, and her career has plenty of races left in it.  I'm sure sometime over the next four years she'll run a race or two that will make everyone forget about London.

Monday Grab Bag: Fall camp is open for business

Football is back.  Officially.  I'm serious, just look:

Today is the first full day of fall camp, and the CU Video team was kind enough to put together that nice short to pump everyone up.  The video states "Believe and love what we are doing.  Success will come."  The coaching staff has stated that that success is a bowl trip.  All that's left is for the team to live up to that guarantee, because that success train is long past-due.

Today in the bag, I'll be looking at the five storylines I'll be following as camp unfolds, talking the un-official start of basketball season, and running through some Olympics notes.

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Monday Grab Bag: Unlike some other Olympics, I can host with an English accent

Thank God July is almost over.  These past few weeks have crawled by, leaving me wishing for autumn in the worst way.  August promises to bring with it football, a basketball trip to Europe, the beginning of the home stretch in baseball, and the better part of the Olympics.  While it's not technically fall, August at least lets you see a little of the light at the end of the hot summer tunnel.

Today in the bag, I'll be talking Olympics, Buffs in the NBA's Summer League, and the lead-up to fall football camp.

Additionally, I encourage you to check out the final entry in Ryan Thorburn's freshmen interview series.  Last up is Josh Scott, on the verge of making the most anticipated freshman debut in over a decade.  The team will start their European swing early in August, so expect a ramp-up of hoops discussion a little earlier than normal.

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Monday Grab Bag:

The Olympics are over. Now for baseball and the Tourney.

Men's Hockey Final: Everyone in the media has been playing up the "good for Canada, they needed this more than us" angle on the game (That's essentially like saying "It's good the Yankees won the World Series, they needed it more than the 29 other fan bases"). Why? It's OK to be bitter, it's OK to want your team to win. Screw the other guys! (It's the 'Muriken way) The media's attempts to pass off the loss are a subtle way of getting back to not caring about hockey. Losing sucks, that's why I love sports where there is a winner and a loser. Being happy with a strong 2nd place finish pisses me off. Show you care, damn it!

(Zach Parise: an (almost) Golden God. link)

Men's Bobsled Gold: I'd be a lot happier about this victory if NBC didn't keep showing bobsledder Curt Tomasevicz's father in the stands. Curt went to, and played football for, Nebraska (the N is for nowledge!). He even was on the all-Big XII academic team (read: rode the bench). Curt's father decided that the appropriate colors to fly for the event were Nebraska colors, wearing a Nebraska coat and bright red Nebraska hat. It's the Olympics, and Nebraska is not a country! At least make an attempt. Couldn't someone have gotten him some red white and blue lederhosen?

Closing Ceremonies: Didn't watch. Heard Rush was going to perform (Yay!), then they didn't (WTF!). 'Cause there will be another time to show them off to the world?

We Talkin' Bout Practice: The White Sox are holding a "practice" game tomorrow vs the Dodgers. This is before the regularly scheduled Spring Training schedule kicks off. To sum up: we're getting practice games before our regularly scheduled practice games now.

CU beats ISU: It's all going according to plan... MWAAAHAAHAA. Cory Higgins was outstanding (33 pts!), Casey Crawford (!) put up big numbers in only 12 minutes of second half action, and CU was (barely) able to contain Marquis Gilstrap. (Man do I wish the Buffs had a player like him.) The big test will be the game on Wednesday. The team hasn't won on the road in over 30 Big XII games, but Nebraska is a very weak opponent. That monkey on CU's back is pretty heavy, however, so they shouldn't be approaching this game with anything but their highest level of focus. Currently, CU is tied for 8th place, which is where they need to be. It's almost time to embarrass Jeff Capel again...

(Cory literally bending over backwards to get CU the win. From: The BDC)

Happy Monday!

I want Canada! You hear that , Old Man? You tell Canada to come here!

Monday Grab Bag (Olympic edition): Ryan Miller slayed the fearsome Canadian Dragon

USA v Canada grab bag now, other grab bag later...

USA vs Canada (in hockey): I was absolutely enthralled by the hockey Sunday night. I'd been waiting for the USA v Canada game since the Olympics began. I'm not one for judged individual sports, so the Olympics can be a little boring for me. But the wait was paid off in a big way last night. Forget the fact that it wasn't an elimination game, or that this was basically an NHL All-Star game with different colored uniforms, that was an excellent exhibition of hockey last night. The scrappy Americans (if you can really call a team of millionaires "scrappy") defeated the hometown favorite super-powered Canadians in an extremely exciting and engaging game. In the aftermath, everyone has been focusing on the underdog story, and comparisons to the '80 team. While I find that angle painfully lazy, if that's what it takes to get the average sports fan in 'Murika to care about hockey, then so be it. I find hockey to be such a fantastic sport. Much like soccer (futbol), I feel like it gets placed on the back-burner of our collective sporting conciousness because of the alien nature of the game. Not only did we not invent the sport, but we are no where close to being the best in the world at it (although, unlike soccer (futbol), the best teams in the world compete in meaningful contests on American soil). While I am not naive enough to convince myself that one rather meaningless win will increase the profile of hockey in this country, it is good to see hockey dominating the headlines. Even the Stanley Cup winner isn't guaranteed to be the lead ESPN story anymore.

(A few of the "happy humans" from last night. From: ESPN)

Ryan Miller is awesome: How good was he last night? I believe the phrase is: "He was standing on his head." Sure he got a lot of help from his team-mates, and their aggressive defense, but he was absolutely huge. But huge was what he needed to be if the US was going to win. Everyone, in their comparisons of the game to the "Miracle on Ice," points to the fact that good goal-tending was the key to the victory. Of course it was. Have you ever heard of a hockey upset that didn't include good goal-tending? Ryan miller certainly lived up to the gargantuan task before him, only allowing 3 goals while the US was out shot 45-23 (!).

Crosby and Brodeur Fail: What a letdown from two of the best in the world at their respective positions. Crosby was -3 for the evening (remember my plus/minus rant from last week?), but, when you consider he scored a goal, was on the ice for 4 US goals. Especially considering the outstanding play Alex Ovechkin had just hours earlier on the same ice, Sid was a major letdown for Team Canada. Plus/minus is certainly not an absolute indicator of performance, but Sid the Kid look kerfuffled by the USA's active defense all game. At even strength, he seemed to be off his game. Marty Brodeur, the winningest NHL goalie ever, let in 4 goals in 22 shots. Excuse me? That's just pathetic. All across Canada this morning, people are questioning Marty's ability to compete at this level anymore. The absence of the Trapezoid certainly didn't help Marty, as he got caught out of net on a number of occasions. With home-town favorite Roberto Luongo waiting in the wings, I bet a switch may be in the near future.

MSNBC; the place where NBC dumps events it would rather you not watch: NBC somehow decided that its best ratings would come with bobsled and tape-delayed skiing on network television. Huh? The entire nation gets the Russia v Czech Republic game in HD on the main channel, but USA v Canada is relegated to the mostly non-HD MSNBC? USA v Canada on regular-NBC would've (should've) been huge. The IOC placed that game in prime-time on Sunday night for a reason, SHOW THE DAMN GAME! Instead the west coast only got the final minutes of the game, tape-delayed of course, on regular NBC. Are they trying to make people mad at them?

(Updated) Monday Grab Bag (on a Tuesday): Olympic Edition or Oh, Canada: Olympic Facepalm

Update: The NY times has a good writeup of the difficulties that the Vancouver games have been having. Link.

Yesterday was a holiday, so the grab bag has been pushed back a day. Today's grab bag will have a more singular focus: the general suckitude of the Vancouver Winter Olympics up to this point. Granted, it's only been a weekend, but the level of facepalm and bad luck that transpired over the past 4 days needs to be noted.

Luge Accident: The games got off to a horrific and tragic start on Friday when Georgian Nodar Kumaritashvili slid off the Olympic sliding track and collided with a series of support beams. Even before the games had opened, the entire Olympic Games had a shadow cast upon it. To compound the horror of the incident, the IOC went about blaming the athlete in an attempt to distance themselves from culpability. Whether the accident could be blamed on Kumaritashvili or not, to publicly denounce the man as a poor and inexperienced luger mere hours after his death, especially in an attempt to blame-shift, comes off as callous and downright mean spirited. To then go about changing the course to lower speeds and wall off previously exposed supports comes off as hypocritical. It may be that Nodar's inexperience was to blame for his untimely death, but that doesn't mean the IOC should go running to tell that to the world. They could've just as easily held an investigation after the games and announced their findings quietly.

Opening Ceremonies: Under the shadow of the luge tragedy, the show, as they say, went on. After hours of slam poetry (of all things), flags, and K.D. Lang (We couldn't have gotten Rush? Seriously the portion with the trees and interpretive dance could've been replaced by Rush rockin' "The Trees." Hey Canada, if you've got the club in your bag, you should be prepared to use it.) we got the the ubiquitous torch lighting ceremony. Problem is, it went off rather half-cocked. Only 3 of the planed 4 bases could be raised, and the malfunction proceeded to hold up the show for minutes while the 4 torchbearers held their positions. Forget for a second the fact that they were holding the ceremony indoors (WTF?!), the image of Wayne Gretzky standing there with a look that can best be described as "Facepalm without the ability to palm ones face" was absolutely priceless.

(Via Deadspin)
NBC then proceeded to yammer on over the next few hours about how the following truck ride to the "real" torch outside made up for the indoor torch failure. It didn't. There should've only been one torch to begin with, and a pick-up truck ride to a second torch, through the pouring rain, shouldn't have been necessary. Which brings me to my next point...

Poor weather: After a week of Fox News telling America that snowstorms in the Mid-Atlantic region prove that Global Warming is a lie (suck it Al Gore?), it's been interesting to note the relatively terrible weather in the general Whistler/Vancouver area. Obviously weather has little to do with climate change, but throughout the weekend Vancouver was socked with rain, relatively warm temperatures, and sunlight. It was colder in Dallas for Pete's sake! The snow on the downhill runs was so inconsistent that the organizers had to repeatedly push back the start of the down hill competition. Puddles were forming on the infamous luge track due to sunlight, but organizers couldn't turn down the temperature on the course for fear of frost forming (which apparently causes inconsistent sliding, as if slushy ice would be better). The mogul run was a slushy mess; Gold Medalist Hannah Kearney repeatedly referred to it as "wet" in her press conference. My guess is that inconsistent temperatures and snowfall was not what the organizers had hoped for. The IOC dodged a bullet in 1998 when snow finally started falling in Nagano in the weeks leading up the the games; not so lucky this time. Temperatures finally started falling over the past few days, however, and the hope is that consistent conditions may finally show themselves.

Faux-Zamboni failure: Last night the Men's 500m speed skating competition was held up for hours as 3 Olympia ice making machines failed to properly repair the surface. Ruts left all over the ice made skating near impossible. Organizers had gone with the all-electric Olympia machines over the traditional (and awesome) propane powered Zamboni machines in an attempt to "green-up" the Olympics. US skater Shani Davis even withdrew from the competition saying "bad ice is bad ice." Here's my point: where the fuck are the Zamboni's? Now's not the time to be experimenting with a new type of ice-making machine. It's the Olympics. Billions of Canadian Dollars have been sunk into this event, and you decide to go without the industry standard in ice-making machinery? No offense to Olympia, which I'm sure is a fine and capable company, but now's not the time to be calling somebody up from the minors. People have written songs about Zamboni's, I haven't heard any odes to the beloved Olympia. In addition, they're having to ship in Zamboni's from Calgary. Vancouver, in hockey-mad Canada, has no God's Honest Zamboni's? I'm calling BS.

Yet another Olympic judging controversy: It's widely known that coming into these Olympics, Canada had yet to win an Olympic Gold Medal on home turf. Which brings me to the goings on of the Men's Moguls Finals. Alex Bilodeau broke through for good ole Canada, even besting Australian Spam-mogul (no pun intended) Dale Begg-Smith (native born Canadian, who turned his back on his country to spend more of his time creating pop-ups to annoy people. When watching the event live, I thought for sure Begg-Smith (who was the defending gold-medalist) had won, even going as far as to say "That's a gold-medal run right there" when he hit the finish line, yet the gold went to Bilodeau. An Australian official suspected malfeasance, saying “My own opinion is that probably Alex is not capable of a 4.8 or a 4.9 [on his turns], because five is a perfect score." It's not unheard of for judges to get influenced by a crowd; to let emotions sway their scores. I wouldn't be surprised if that happened in this case. Bilodeau's run was good, I just felt Begg-Smith performed better. I generally dislike judged events, precisely for this reason. Canada gets their gold medal, but was he really the best on the day?

NBC's tape-delay idiocy: While not necessarily a part of the string of Olympic bad luck, many are frustrated with NBC's persistence that American's don't want to watch live coverage of Olympic events. Deadspin gives a pretty comprehensive run-down of the displeasure here. The money quote:

"In the age of DVRs, Hulu, and mobile phone scoreboards, the pointlessness of NBC's broadcast strategy—Olympics and otherwise—has never been more obvious. People don't eat dinner during Nightly News then settle in for three hours of prime-time network programming anymore. They want things when they want them, not when NBC wants them. Even the network knows this. Another reader wrote to me saying that we should post the results of events as they happen to shame NBC and ruin their "secret" prime-time specials. And we totally would—if NBC didn't already do it for us. They aren't ignorant, just stubborn."

It's just plain idiotic the way NBC has handled their coverage the past few years. When ESPN uses their "pact with the devil" money to wrest coverage rights away from them in the upcoming years, maybe I'll finally get to see events live (OMG!). Every time Costas gives some leading innuendo about what we're about to watch, a little part of my sports-fan soul dies. It's no wonder their ratings are suffering, everyone already knows the outcomes. Sports are only fun because of the unpredictability; the illusion that anything can happen. Costas, with his knowing smirk and lead-in, kills that illusion, and it's painful to watch.

The Chicago Curse: I can't help but wonder, while watching these Olympics stumble out of the gate, could the epic snubbing of the Chicago bid for the 2016 Summer games be paying the IOC a karmic bitch-slap? Maybe the Rio bid, and its emotional pull of the first games to be held is South America, makes for a better story, but Chicago would've held a first rate Olympic party. Chi-town certainly didn't deserve to be the first bid voted out. I bring this up because there has to be some reason that the Vancouver games have had this massive of a stretch of bad luck. The good people of Canada are too hard-working, earnest, and friendly to have earned this on their own. So I'm going to choose to lay the blame at the feet of the evil IOC.