God Smiles Upon College Football!

Pop the champagne everyone! Our nightmare is over!

I have only two words I can say right now, THANK GOD! In today's Miami Herald (scroll down to the second item in the story) they report that Joe Theismann has turned down ESPN's offer to be an analyst on college football. Apparently all of our collective prayers have been answered. WHAT A GLORIOUS DAY!

Not on that but it also reports that apparently Theismann is being banished to the land of wind and ghosts that is ESPN Radio, with perhaps a spot here and there on some ESPN NFL programming. So in the end we all get what we wanted and that's no Joe Theismann on any game broadcast this year! I don't even know how to celebrate adequately. For now I'll just settle for a celebratory WOOOOO!!!!! NO JOE THEISMANN!!!!!!!

Rasheed Calls Glass

Just amazing....

I'm pretty sure you've already seen this, but it's worth seeing again. Last night with the Pistons down three to the Nuggets with 1.5 seconds left, Tayshaun Prince got his head on the inbound pass and Rasheed Wallace picked up the loose ball and sent it 60 feet off glass and in to tie it up and send it to overtime. The Nuggets were obviously demoralized and kind of slept walk through overtime en route to a Pistons victory, but that shot was just amazing. George Karl says it was pure luck, but having been to Pistons practice a few times in my old job, I have seen Sheed and various other Pistons practicing shots like those all the time. The blog Need4Sheed has a video that shows Sheed practicing shots like the one from last night. Seeing this also makes me think of another similar shot from 2004...

That shot was from Game Five against the Nets in the Eastern Conference Semi-Finals. That also sent the game to overtime, but the Pistons would lose that game after Brian Scalabrine went out of his mind and started drilling three pointers. The Pistons did go on to win the NBA Title in 2004, so hopefully this shot is also a sign of things to come. Either way it was pretty incredible.

It's Almost Baseball Season! WOOOOO!!!

Just awesome. Gives me chills!

Well baseball season starts up next weekend, and with that I think it's time to take a look back at last season's magical run for the Detroit Tigers. For a person who had spent half of his life dealing with the Tigers as a laughing stock, it was pretty unbelievable to see them go to the World Series.

I followed them all the way there. Went to Game 2 of the ALDS (in Yankee Stadium...and didn't get stabbed!), Game 4 of the ALCS (for Magg's walk off), and Game 2 of the World Series (sadly the Tigers only win of the Series), and it was unbelievable. Magg's walk off home run was the happiest single moment I've been apart of as a sports fan. I will never forget that night in downtown Detroit and hopefully there are many more memories to come.

Thank God baseball is almost back! GO TIGERS!

Michigan Tells Amaker to Hit the Bricks

I don't even know what to say. I'm so happy!

Today is one of those days you don't expect to come and then when it finally does you just don't have the right words to express your happiness. Michigan (finally) has ended the Tommy Amaker era that was marked with the word "mediocrity."

Apparently the final nail in the coffin for Amaker was the drubbing Michigan suffered at the hands of Florida State in the NIT. It was a typical Amaker lead Michigan performance where the Wolverines looked horrible on the road against a good opponent. It almost looked like they decided to quit in the second half and were just resigned to their fate. Michigan had a lead in the first half but after the 'Noles came back and took the lead going into halftime, they just decided to stop trying. If that's not an indictment of your head coach, I don't know what is.

What Amaker will be remembered for is taking over a Michigan team that was destroyed by NCAA sanctions (thanks Chris Webber) and turned it into a clean program that was on the cusp of making the NCAA tournament but was never good enough to get over the hump. Amaker's teams were always terrible on the road and also had a habit of playing well at the start of the season and then fading down the stretch (The last two years they've started 16-4 and failed to make the NCAA tournament after a late season swoon)

I also can't name a player who has come to Michigan the past six years who has gotten much better as a player under Amaker's guidance. Most guys come in as a freshman with the normal array of pluses and minues and leave with essentially the same skills they came in with. Nobody seems to get better at all. At times, actually, some look worse then when they were underclassman (Courtney Sims) Just shows that Amaker was not the one to lead Michigan back to being a program that actually matters on the national landscape.

Where do the Wolverines go from here? That's a topic or another day. Today we should just celebrate the fact that the athletic department has finally taken their heads out of the sand and decided that the basketball program should strive for better things, instead of settling for the mediocrity that the Amaker era represented. Goodbye Tommy! Don't let the door hit on you the ass on the way out!