LESAProject

The countless number of losers in our society that frequently label professional athletes and high-profile coaches as being overpaid should think about Leodis McKelvin and Jim Tressel the next time that thought crosses their mind.   Both of them are the latest examples of the expectations for athletes and coaches to be perfect that comes with their paychecks and the amount of criticism that greets them if they fail to do so.   McKelvin’s instinct to put the final stamp on the New England Patriots by returning a kickoff with under two minutes to go in the fourth quarter ended up fumbling his Buffalo ...

The nature of blogging is to be an outcast that occasionally gets attention from the mainstream media.  I write critically, sometimes through fiction and often through rhetoric, and that rhetoric can sometimes dominate the article. Bare with me on this, because it takes some indirect explaining. The mainstream media will rarely admit to reading a specific blog, but when you start to hear things in the mainsteam media that sound similar to something you wrote, you start to wonder if it is just a coincidence. I don't hate the mainstream media per se, because in fact, most of my sources are mainstream media ...

9/17/2009 From the Bleacher Report: LOUISVILLE, KY—David Jason Stinson, a 37-year-old former high school football coach was found not guilty today by a jury of his peers.  Stinson had been charged with reckless homicide and wanton endangerment in the death of Max Gilpin, a 15-year-old lineman on the Pleasure Ridge Park High School football team. It took the jury less than 90 minutes to decide coach Stinson's innocence.  When asked if he had ever seen a homicide case decided so quickly, Alex Dathorne, Stinson's attorney said, "Yes, when the defendant is innocent and there is absolutely no evidence that he did anything wrong!" Indeed, the ...

Survivor Samoa starts tonight! Woooohoooo!  I've been waiting and waiting for it! Today, I asked myself a question that I don't know if I can answer:  Is Survivor a sport? At first the question seems silly.  A reality TV show, the king of reality TV shows a sport? Come on.  But then I started to think about it.  It's hard to argue against it being a sport. What is a "sport?" Sport: An athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature, as racing, baseball, tennis, golf, bowling, wrestling, boxing, hunting, fishing, etc. Well, that certainly does not disqualify Survivor from being a ...

The Calgary Vipers are the Golden Baseball League Champions, and are setting themselves up for what looks like to be a very profitable 2010 season. Vipers President John Conrad could not be happier after his Vipers defeated the Tucson Toros three to one in the best of five series on Saturday. “We’ve built a really good base this year,” said Conrad. “We really picked up in July and August. “Next year, we want to get a 1,500-season-ticket base, I think that’s workable.” Conrad also said his team should break even this year.  Viper’s owner Jeff Gidney did make that exact same claim last year ...

“When you believe in things that you don’t understand, then you suffer, Superstition ain’t the way.” - Stevie Wonder   Sorry, Stevie, but superstition is very much the way in major league baseball. Ballplayers certainly can be described as creatures of habit.   No, not that kind of habit.   (If you’re old like me, you may recall an episode of the television series M*A*S*H , where “Hawkeye” once said to “Klinger”, “warning – dressing like a nun may be habit forming.”)   Instead, the purpose of this diatribe is to examine some of the strange behavior of the typical major league player, and attempt to get inside their head and ...

Did you say you know what happened in a particular NFL game or other sport? Are you certain? I want to raise your level of concern about NFL football. Data, data, everywhere and not a drop to think. It reminds me of a line "Water, water, everywhere, and not a drop to drink."  If you can not process the information using your familiarity with a sport, your communications skills or writing ability, enhanced by a knowledge of mathematics and statistics, then woe unto you. May I broaden your horizon, a little bit. For example, I recently viewed a database for the NFL which contains ...

As Peter Griffin would say, "What grinds my gears," today is an industry of supplements and steroids (not the same, but similar) that has run wild with ridiculous promises. This article is by no means a true essay, because I won't use standard reference notation. Instead, I will simply say that I have gathered my information from a variety of news articles, John Basedow, and Vince DelMonte. One example has been the ever annoying and incessant ads on MySpace, "I Got Ripped in 4 Weeks."  These ads, like cigarette ads, target kids, teens, and adults to believe that you can look like ...

In the latest ESPN poll on the matter, 80% of nearly 12,000 people polled thought that the NFL is better off under a capped system because it maintains competitive balance. This overwhelming trend of sentiment held up in every single state no matter the general political sentiment.  For example, in generally left leaning Massachusetts, 71% of the respondents thought the NFL cap was a good idea, whereas in generally right leaning South Carolina, 77% thought the cap should remain in place. Unbelievably, stringently conservative Wyoming saw 95% of the voters in favor of the cap, though I'm prone to ...

Being in the Big Ten Conference is no longer a job in its own. The Big Ten is no longer seen as being a difficult conference. This is especially true when basing those conclusions on, let's say, the Nittany Lions' schedule this year. Of course we start out the season with some non-conference games that don't really matter and aren't very interesting. After that, it's suppose to be the big show...games like Ohio State, Michigan State, Michigan, and Iowa are what the fans really look forward to viewing. But are these games beginning to lose their thunder? Last week, Ohio State lost to USC ...