Better late than never?

This is a good start to me blogging again. I'm three days late on this blog. My bad.

For starters, I want to say my thoughts and prayers are with those affected by the terrible shooting in Aurora, Colo. It reminds us that there are things far more important in this world than sports. Luckily, we still have sports to escape from terrible events like that.

After watching the video where media members try to ask questions to the shooter's dad, I remember one of the big reasons why I chose to be a sports journalists rather than another kind of journalist. Sports journalists (almost) never have to ask the tough questions in the terrible situations

Anyway, this week I'm taking it a little lighter due to my tardiness and Internet problems, so here are my thoughts on the Penn State sanctions.

Penn State Sanctions Levied 

So it appears the Freeh Report was not the last bit of news to come out of Penn State. The NCAA levied its penalties against Penn State today, and the university finally made a decision about Joe Paterno's statue ... before changing its mind a couple days later.

"About damn time"

It's been about 2 years since I posted here. In that time, all my sportswriting went to the Baylor Lariat, both as a reporter and the sports editor. Now I'm graduated and I feel like I need to get back to it. (And yes, I quoted LeBron James in the title. Don't judge me, I think it makes sense).

So here's what I hope to do from now on: I want to pick out five topics (insert catchy, clever name including "five" that I haven't though of yet) in the sports world each week and then make a post each Saturday, just putting down my thoughts on this page.

As I've said before on this page, I love getting feedback, either about which topics I should discuss, the presentation/layout of this blog, or my writing style.

Anyway, to get things rolling, this week I'm talking about everything Penn State, Queen Howard, the unnecessary and overblown Dream Team debate, Drew Breeeeeeess, and a former Baylor player jumping into the NFL.

Penn State Investigation

The Freeh Report was released Thursday, and while I don't have the complete details of the dozens and dozens of pages within the report, I think we all caught the gist of it. Penn State did far more than just ignore the crimes of former defensive coordinator turned convicted pedophile Jerry Sandusky; it appears they actually went to great lengths to cover it up. The late Joe Paterno, legendary head coach of Penn State, as well as the former president, vice president and athletic director were all involved in the coverup since 1998. They knew what Sandusky had done, and instead of doing the obvious and humane thing of turning the man in, they let him have access to the Penn State locker rooms and the youth charity where he found several of his victims.

Quick Semifinals Post

Well, this stinks. The U.S. team is out, as well as Argentina, my pick to win it all. Looks like I've got to start all over on my picks. The good news is I went 3-1 on my quarterfinals picks. Time for a quick pick 'em and go.

Semifinals
Uruguay v. Netherlands: It's amazing how we went from four South American teams to one, versus three remaining European teams. It's tough to pick against the Netherlands as they have played great throughout the whole tournament. They edged out Brazil by scoring two straight goals after Brazil had scored first. On the other hand, Uruguay impressed me early on and I felt they could be a real darkhorse in this tournament. Some may argue that they should not have won their game against Ghana due to the late handball, but really, Ghana should have scored that PK. I've gone back and forth on this game multiple times, but now I've finally made up my mind. Uruguay pulls off the upset and moves on.

Germany v. Spain: This game is a little easier to pick. No offense to Spain. After all, they were the favorites coming into the World Cup and have recovered from their opening loss to Switzerland. But, Germany has dominated from the beginning, and then recently dismantled Argentina 4-0. This is a team on a mission. Germany moves on to the finals.

One quick note. Since Argentina is out, looks like I need a new pick to win it all. Who better but the team that eliminated Lionel Messi and the Argentinians? Germany is my current favorite.

Free Agency Frenzy and World Cup Quarterfinals

July 1st is here and the mayhem has begun. The most anticipated free agent period of recent history (maybe even all-time) is open. Joe Johnson, Chris Bosh, Dwyane Wade, Dirk Nowitzki, and other extremely talented players are all out on the market, and the teams have begun to jockey for position to land these big stars first. But of course, it all revolves around one man: LeBron James. Here's a quick summary of the teams most in the running to sign him.

Miami Heat
Reasons to sign: The allure of Miami beach is a great outside point for the Heat's presentation. There is a good chance that Dwyane Wade will return to Miami, and the team could also lure in top power forward Bosh. With those two and LeBron, there's almost a guarantee that Pat Riley would take over as head coach.
Reasons not to sign: Signing Wade, Bosh, and James would be impossible for the money all 3 are seeking, so LeBron would have to take less money to sign with the Heat (it would still be a ridiculous amount of money for us mere mortals, but a comparison is a comparison). While Miami has a great climate and nightlife, the fan support is, like most Florida sports teams, slim. The crowd number every night at American Airlines Arena is never near capacity. Finally, all the critics would question whether this was Wade's team or LeBron's team, and also if LeBron could win a championship as the star, as opposed to winning one as Wade's sidekick or equal.

Los Angeles Clippers
Reasons to sign: ...Umm...well, they do have some young talent with Blake Griffin coming back from injury. Aside from that, this is pretty much a joke.
Reasons not to sign: I could probably fill multiple blogs with this section, but I think I'll just slim it down. The Clippers have a history of being cursed, not only with bad seasons, but with star players that end up spending more time with the trainer than on the court. Also, there's no way LeBron wants to be in the same town as Kobe, where he and his team would play second fiddle.

New Jersey Nets
Reasons to sign: Mikhail Prokhorov, the Russian billionaire and new majority owner of the Nets, has promised to spend the money necessary to turn the Nets into a championship team, and has already hired Avery Johnson as the new head coach. Rap mogul Jay-Z also is an icon to lure LeBron to the Nets, who will relocate to Brooklyn in a couple years. He would also be surrounded by young talent, including Brooke Lopez, Devin Harris, and newest draft pick Derrick Favors.
Reasons not to sign: The team is coming off a 12-win season (for those of you who aren't great at math, that's 70 losses). And while this is a talented young roster, there's no guarantee they can land another big free agent star to help LeBron out. Plus, like the Clippers, this team plays second fiddle to nearby rival New York Knicks.

Now we get to the 3 main candidates to land LeBron James on their squad.

Round of 16 begins

The Group Stage is now complete and we have seen some marvelous games as well as some boring games; we have heard some great stories, some bad stories, and even some weird stories. Here's what I will remember from the games so far.

The 2006 World Cup final game matched France against Italy. This year's Round of 16 features...neither. If you had told a soccer fan 4 years ago that either of those would be eliminated this early, they would have laughed at you. But honestly, it's not that surprising now. When you build a national team, you need to find a great mix of intelligent, experienced veterans and athletic, energetic young players. Italy's team was filled with only veterans and in the end they just got outplayed.

On paper, France looked pretty good. If you had run a simulation with FIFA 10, France would have beat all their opponents nine times out of ten. But that's one of the great things about sports: intangibles. Fan support can become a confidence boost for teams sometimes and spark a great upset; on the other end of the spectrum, controversy and scandal off the field can negate any skill advantage a team may have had. This team's self-destruction has to be one of the worst any sports team has ever displayed (definitely the worst I've ever seen).

One annoying story about the games was the number of 0-0 or 1-1 ties we saw. I was glad to see this run broken by Germany beating Australia 4-0. Not to be outdone, Portugal beat North Korea 7-0. Now those are not good games, but it is nice to see some action. There were so many games that teased the casual fans into thinking, "Ok, something has to happen soon, right?" and then nothing would.
Finally there was U.S. soccer. The team has some high expectations from fans and analysts. The U.S. was served a bit of luck when the English keeper muffed an easy save to give us the draw. Then, after giving up 2 goals against a country most people cannot even find on a map, the team came back to earn the draw. Unfortunately, we should have completed the comeback with a win, but a bad call sparked the huge controversy and left fans thinking "how much of a difference will that disallowed goal make?" And then final game, where we ALMOST got screwed again, and this time would have kept us out of the knockout round. But then there was the image that will forever live on in U.S. soccer history: Landon Donovan netting the goal in stoppage time and sending the Americans to the next round.
Here are the teams moving on along with the picks I made in a previous blog.