Daily News Sports People of the Year: the suffering New York fans

 Michelle Musler is miserable, and has every right to be. She is paying $975 per game to sit behind the Knick bench and watch her favorite team stink out the joint, every night. Now that the Garden has been fully renovated, she is squeezed in the middle of a 22-seat, debris-filled row with no aisle in sight. She can’t get in, she can’t get out. She can’t cross her legs. In front of her, a zillion Knick assistants, whose jobs are unclear, stand or fidget in her way. One of them accidentally kicked his metal folding chair back onto Musler’s shin during the Indiana playoff series last May, cutting her leg.

So Musler literally bleeds for the Knicks, and can back up that assertion with $312 in medical bills. She is 78 years old and has been a season ticket-holder for 36 years. She probably won’t live to see her team win another championship. None of us will.

“This might be it. This might be it,” Musler said, expressing her ritual doubts about renewing her ticket package in the spring. “Forget the players and the coaches. The management of this team is absolutely, absurdly incompetent and getting worse and worse by the minute. If it were a real business, it would have gone bankrupt long ago. There is no hope.”

Musler says she might stop commuting from Stamford, stop paying the ridiculous prices, stop sitting next to the dilettante corporate types who only care about which Hollywood star is freeloading in the front row on any particular night.

Except that she’s only kidding herself. Musler won’t stop coming, of course. None of them ever stop coming. New York fans are as addicted and dumb as they get, which is why the Daily News this year celebrates these 2013 martyrs as our collective Sportsmen and Sportswomen of the Year. Step right up, bend over and get kicked in the pants one more time. You’ve earned it.

Clearly, New York fans love the abuse. It was a terrible, horrible year for our sports franchises. The Yankees didn’t make the postseason. The Mets will never make the postseason, no matter what Sandy Alderson promises. The Giants, Knicks and Nets were supposed to be good, but instead are dreadful. The Jets were supposed to be awful and are merely bad, which is considered a triumph of sorts.

The three hockey teams range from barely mediocre (the Rangers) to disappointing (Devils) to pathetic (the Isles). The Red Bulls recorded the best record in MLS, then got knocked out in their first playoff series. Coaches have been dismissed, or are on the brink of dismissal. Alex Rodriguez is still hanging around, depressing everyone.

 Yet the fans still come, and pay too much. They come to Section 203 at Yankee Stadium, where the Bleacher Creature known as Kinicki regularly ruins his shoes from the floods in the front row. They come to the Jet games to fill the top rows of MetLife Stadium, where it is nearly impossible without binoculars to discern whether Geno Smith just threw another interception.

They come to watch the Rangers fail to score goals. They come to observe the Nets get out-rebounded. They come to behold the Mets fall out of the NL East race by mid-May, in yet another rebuilding year.

There is no stopping, no discouraging the New York fan. Consider that the woeful Knicks stand third in the NBA, with an average attendance of 19,812 — playing to full capacity. The Nets, in a smaller arena, are doing just fine, drawing 17,173, or 94.9% capacity.

The Yanks boasted the fourth-highest attendance in Major League Baseball in 2013, with 3.28 million. The Mets drew 2.14 million, despite lacking a functional outfield. More than 5.4 million fans reportedly paid real American dollars to watch these two ballclubs combine for a 79-83 record at home.

Denver Broncos' Peyton Manning named SI's Sportsman of the Year

All the apple-cheeked babies, captured for eternity in Creamsicle onesies three sizes too big, are nearly grown. They are high school valedictorians and college athletes, Eagle Scouts and black belts, yearbook editors and engineering majors. They are in the National Honor Society. They lead Bible study. They raise money for cancer research. They lifeguard in the summer. They work part-time at Cracker Barrel. One directs short films. One blew the trumpet in a high school band at President Barack Obama's second inaugural parade. One earned a marketing award for helping develop a project to sell reusable popcorn containers at football games. One is a linebacker and a defensive end recruited by half the SEC, one is a three handicap, one runs a 5K in 18:20, and one hit an unforgettable grand slam in the ninth. One became the first girl in an all-male wrestling club, as well as the first deaf member of that club. She then captured the state championship in her weight class. Most hail from Tennessee, but you can find them as far away as lacrosse fields on Long Island. Some know each other. They were born in the same hospitals, attended the same schools, played on the same teams. Beyond that, they don't have much in common -- besides, of course, their first name.

It is an unusual name, or at least it used to be. According to the Social Security Administration, which started tracking the popularity of names in 1960, Peyton had never cracked the top 100 in Tennessee. But in 1994 the state's flagship university welcomed a freshman quarterback from New Orleans named after his uncle Peyton, a Mississippi farmer who grew cotton and soybeans, raised cattle and loved sports. When Peyton Manning enrolled at Tennessee, he took an orientation seminar with freshman football players, overseen by associate athletic director Carmen Tegano. The players were instructed to take notes. Afterward, Tegano collected their spiral notebooks and perused what they wrote. Manning had filled 30 pages. That night, Tegano told his wife, "If God is willing and I live long enough, I'll either work for that kid or I'll vote for him." A year later Manning directed Tennessee to its first win against Alabama in 10 years, and roughly 10 months after that Southern hospitals noted the first outbreak of Peytons. Call them Bama Boomers. "It was an epidemic," says Manning's older brother, Cooper, who was forced to quit football at Ole Miss because of a spinal injury. From 1996 through '98, a total of 68 Peytons were born at the University of Tennessee Medical Center alone, compared with 10 the decade before. By 1997, according to babynames.com, Peyton was the 51st-most-popular- newborn boy name in the state.

Families showed up to Volunteers practices, orange-clad infants in tow, and thrust them into Manning's reluctant arms for photos. "What am I supposed to say?" he asked his father, Archie, the iconic Ole Miss quarterback. "I don't know," his dad replied. "I only had dogs and cats named after me." Twins in Knoxville were named Peyton and Manning. A boy outside Nashville was named Peyton Cooper as a reminder that "there's nothing guaranteed in life." Doctors in Kentucky lobbied a woman in labor to call her son Tim, after Wildcats quarterback Tim Couch. "It will be a much more prosperous name," they told her. "He'll be so much more successful." They grudgingly delivered yet another Peyton. The unorthodox spelling caused confusion. Dr. Tara Burnette, a neonatologist at the UT Medical Center, once saw payton written on a note card attached to a baby's incubator in the NICU. "You misspelled the name," she told the nurse on duty. "No, the nurse insisted. "The mom spelled it for us." Burnette shook her head. "That baby is a Peyton," she said. Twenty-four hours later, the card had been changed.

There is no more personal display of fan devotion than naming one's progeny after an athlete, but the gesture carries inordinate risk, especially when the player is only a sophomore in college. Who knows what controversy lies ahead? Names become synonymous with scandals. Think of the Lances and McGwires running around. You can always buy a new jersey or hang a new Fathead, but rewriting a birth certificate is more difficult. "Sure, he could have been a dud," says Kim Dukes. "But I kind of knew, deep down inside, that he'd be special." Dukes was diagnosed with Hodgkins lymphoma as a sophomore in Knoxville, underwent chemotherapy, and was informed by doctors that the treatment had left her incapable of bearing children. She had Peyton Dukes anyway. "He's not a quarterback -- he's not even a football player," Kim says. "But we raised him to be a good, honest person, and that's the most important thing he shares with his namesake."

Though Uncle Peyton died a bachelor, his name will live forever. Archie remembers reading an article, in the early 2000s, in an education newspaper about a first-grade teacher with nine Peytons in her class. In 2007 the Knoxville News-Sentinel put out a query for Peytons and received more than 160 responses. "You hope your children are going to do great things no matter what you name them," says Dana Lara. "Going into it, you do think maybe this will give them a leg up by association." Peyton Lara is now a senior at West High and an aspiring nuclear engineer with a 4.46 grade point average.

Australia beat England at Perth, reclaim the Ashes

England were all out for 353 on the final day at the WACA Ground to hand the home side an unbeatable 3-0 lead in the five-match series.

It capped a remarkable turnaround for Australia, who went into the series just months after a 3-0 Ashes loss in England.

"I don't really know what to say. We've got them back, I couldn't be happier," Clarke said of the Ashes, which England had held for the past three series.

"Credit to the team for how they played: they were outstanding."

Despite a determined rearguard action -- led by rookie English batsman Ben Stokes, whose maiden Test century frayed Australian nerves -- the home team ran through the English tail after lunch to claim a famous victory.

The Australians had won the first two Tests in Brisbane and Adelaide and secured the urn when rejuvenated paceman Mitchell Johnson claimed his 23rd wicket of the series to remove Jimmy Anderson and end the England second innings.

Although the Ashes have been regained, Clarke said Australia were targeting a 5-0 win in the series as they seek to climb from fifth in the world Test cricket rankings.

"We want to get back that number one ranking," he said. England captain Alastair Cook praised the character of Stokes and admitted the English were starting to dream of the impossible, but added that the result reflected the series.

"Just when we got a partnership going, we haven't managed to turn it into big one," he said.

"We have been outskilled in all aspects, and it is hard to say that. They have been ruthless. It hurts."

Set a record 504 to win, England went to lunch on the final day at 332-6, needing 172 more runs with four wickets in hand and Stokes still at the crease.

However, Australia turned the screws when spinner Nathan Lyon (3-70) picked up the wicket of Stokes for 120 in the third over after the break.

Stokes, who scored the first English century of the series in just his second Test, attempted to sweep a ball outside off stump and got a thin bottom edge, with wicketkeeper Brad Haddin continuing his outstanding series by hanging on to a diving catch.

It was the end of a superb knock by Stokes, who showed up his more senior teammates by staying at the crease for 257 minutes and facing 195 balls, hitting 18 fours and one six. His departure also ended a 40-run partnership with Tim Bresnan.

Lyon then picked up Graeme Swann for four, caught at short leg, as Australia closed in on victory.

Bresnan (12) was the next to go, brilliantly caught by a diving Chris Rogers at mid-off from the bowling of England's chief nemesis Johnson as celebrations by local fans went into full swing.

The match was over when Johnson (4-78) claimed his final scalp of the innings, with Anderson caught at short leg by George Bailey.

England had resumed on 251-5, but Stokes defied the Australian attack for the entire morning session, losing only Matt Prior (26) along the way.

Stokes, 22, was temporarily denied a century when he drove Johnson straight and the ball deflected off the bowler's hand into umpire Marais Erasmus, costing him the two runs he needed to reach the milestone.

But he got a top edge to fine leg for a boundary from the next ball to notch his first Test century.

Not for the first time in the series, it was Johnson who delivered a dagger to English hearts by removing Prior in his third over with the second new ball, ending a 76-run partnership with Stokes.

Phoenix Coyotes look East to move up standings

The Coyotes continually monitor the Western Conference standings, but they won’t be able to pry away points from the teams they’re contending with for the next two weeks.

Thursday’s meeting with the visiting New York Islanders was the first of six consecutive games against the Eastern Conference. Four of those games are on the road.

“I don’t mind getting on the road a week before Christmas, take the distractions away,” coach Dave Tippett said.

The Coyotes went 3-2 on their last East road swing, which started with a stop in San Jose. There is at least some benefit in playing out-of-conference games. It removes the fear of giving up the loser point in overtime or shootout results.

“When you play teams out of your conference, that’s an opportunity to get points that other teams can’t get,” Tippett said.
Bye, bye bug

Goalie Mike Smith was back between the pipes against the Islanders after missing Tuesday’s game in Colorado with the flu.

“He’s back to 100 percent health he said,” Tippett said.

Smith wasn’t even on the bench against the Avalanche but was the backup for the night. If he wasn’t able to do that, the Coyotes had a preliminary plan to use assistant coach Newell Brown’s son, Adam, as an emergency backup.

Adam Brown plays goalie for the Colorado Eagles in the East Coast Hockey League.

“That happened a few years ago in New York when we grabbed an assistant coach of a college team (Tom Fenton) and put him on the bench,” Tippett said. “Sometimes you have to take drastic measures in drastic times. We had that kind of in the back of our mind, but it didn’t work out.”
On the mend

Captain Shane Doan (illness) stopped by the Ice Den in Scottsdale briefly Thursday morning but still isn’t expected back on the ice any time soon.

“Hopefully he’s making some progress,” Tippett said. “We’ll see where he gets by the end of the week whether he goes on that trip next week.”

Meanwhile, defenseman Derek Morris could rejoin the team today after leaving a week ago to attend to a family matter.

“Hopefully he’ll be at practice,” Tippett said.

With the Coyotes roster currently at 23, a corresponding roster move would have to be made to add Morris, who didn’t count against the limit while he was away. Doan is still on the active roster.

“When you’re missing key guys like that, the other guys in the room step up and your leadership in the room doesn’t dip at all and you can continue to play well,” Tippett said.
Fourth-line production

Most fourth lines are responsible for delivering energy, and the Coyotes’ unit certainly is tasked with doing that. But that isn’t the only priority on the line’s to-do list.

Center Jeff Halpern is the faceoff specialist of the group, winger Jordan Szwarz is earning penalty-kill time and winger Paul Bissonnette adds a physical presence.

It’s a bonus, though, when they chip in a goal — like they did Tuesday against the Avalanche with Szwarz tapping in a rebound from a Halpern shot off a Bissonnette pass.

“We have been getting some scoring chances of late and just haven’t been burying them,” Szwarz said. “The other night in Colorado it was nice to finally get one.”

It's Not Just Football

When the Ivy League announced in the summer of 2011 that it would limit contact

in football practices to minimize head trauma in athletes, the move was

unprecedented. Since then, concerns about the long-term effects of concussions

have bubbled to the surface of public discourse.

One other Division I conference has copied the Ivies so far, while other

conferences have made other rules changes, and started long-term research

projects on head trauma in athletes. Bolstered by the new rules, advocacy

groups like All Players United, increased media attention for head trauma in

the National Football League, and the deaths of football players who suffered

from head trauma, calls for action in the sport whose revenue helps keep

college athletic departments afloat have become impossible to ignore.

But as researchers and policy makers know, concussions aren't only a danger in

football—in fact, football isn't even the sport in which they present the

greatest risk, at least in terms of frequency.

Football may have the highest number of concussions by sport because of the

roster size, but many other sports see higher occurrence rates per athletic

exposure. According to a National Academy of Sciences report released last

month, field hockey, lacrosse, soccer, wrestling, ice hockey, and basketball

have all proved about as dangerous or more so than football in recent years.


“It’s hard to turn on ESPN and the news and listen for very long without

hearing something about concussions,” said James T. Eckner, an assistant

professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at the University of

Michigan. “Almost every state now has a concussion law in place that mandates

athlete and coach education.”

Eckner is a co-investigator on the NCAA-funded National Sport Concussion

Outcomes Study, which will include more than 1,000 students in 11 sports at

three universities. While he and other experts agreed that there is a

disproportionate (but not exactly “bad”) emphasis on head trauma in football,

they also say intensified education efforts throughout all sports have helped

address that.

“We’ve seen concussions in golfers and we wouldn’t want to manage it any

differently,” Cohen said.

Last month, University of New Haven officials announced they would be the

latest (following at least two other institutions) to use impact sensors to

monitor head trauma in football players, and women's and men's soccer players.

Women's lacrosse is next on the list.

Even lawmakers are asking questions. Just last week, Reps. Charlie Dent and

Joyce Beatty held a panel on Capitol Hill on the effects of head trauma in

athletes. This summer, the politicians introduced the National Collegiate

Athletics Accountability Act, which would include a requirement for baseline

concussion testing of all athletes.

Proud to beat the No.1 ODI team: AB de Villiers

South Africa took an unassailable 2-0 lead against India after recording yet another convincing win here on Sunday.

"Winning seven out of our last 10 ODIs means we are definitely on the right track. There have been problems for us when it comes to consistency. We have been going through some tough times over the last two years in ODI cricket and sort of building a team,” he said.

"We have been sticking with the same players for a while now and we are enjoying our cricket. The results are starting to come through but we are nowhere where we want to be. But obviously, winning the series against the no.1 side in the world is very satisfying. It is something we can really be proud of," he said.

South Africa put up 281 runs on the board after openers Quinton de Kock and Hashim Amla put on 194 runs, bringing up their individual hundreds.

The middle order didn't fire though, unlike at Wanderers, with the captain coming up at number three himself and falling cheaply. It left the task to Ryan McLaren and Vernon Philander to give them a push in the latter overs.

"Hashim and Quinton have been giving us really good starts, and today it was sort of finished off nicely by the middle and lower order. I was chuffed at how the lower order scored some runs today. Those were very important runs. They just got us over that par score, which I thought was 230-240. 280 all of a sudden looked like really good score," he said.

"I am hopefully still a wicketkeeper in the Tests," said the Proteas' ODI captain, when asked about the form of young Quinton de Kock in particular.

"Quinny is obviously showing he has got the skill and the talent to keep in all three formats of the game. Maybe he still has got to get a bit of experience to gain when it comes to Tests. It is up to the selectors to decide, and the coach and the captain to make that call."

Cano Said to Leave for Mariners; Beltran Reportedly Heads to Yanks

On Thursday afternoon, shortly before they were scheduled to meet with the Seattle Mariners, representatives for Robinson Cano placed a call to the Yankees, saying they believed their client could get a 10-year deal for more than $230 million. They wanted to know how the Yankees would respond.

As a final offer, Brian Cashman, the Yankees’ general manager, said the team could go to seven years and $175 million but no higher, knowing full well it would not be enough to sway Cano. It was the last time the sides had communicated as of early Friday night.

While the Yankees held firm in their position, the Mariners swooped in and agreed with Cano on a 10-year, $240 million contract, pending a physical, according to two people in baseball who had been informed of the deal.

To offset the loss of Cano, the Yankees wasted little time in adding another bat, agreeing to a three-year, $45 million deal with Carlos Beltran, according to a person with direct knowledge of the deal, giving him some of the money they had budgeted for Cano, who leaves with almost everything he wanted. The only things Seattle could not provide Cano were the tradition and mystique of the Yankees and the buzz and excitement of New York that he long thrived upon.

But they could provide riches. The Mariners, in desperate need of a power hitter, gave Cano the third-largest contract in baseball history. It matches Albert Pujols’s deal with the Los Angeles Angels and trails only Alex Rodriguez’s two most recent contracts: the 10-year, $252 million deal he signed in 2000 with the Texas Rangers, which he opted out of, and his 10-year, $275 million deal from 2007, when he re-signed with the Yankees.

The Mariners would not confirm the deal, which was negotiated by Cano’s new agent, Jay Z, and Brodie Van Wagenen of Creative Artists Agency, but a statement on Seattle’s Twitter page hinted an announcement would be forthcoming.

“We aren’t able to confirm any news regarding Robinson Cano at this time,” the statement said. “If & when an agreement is completed & finalized, we will announce.”

For several years Cano has been regarded as the Yankees’ best all-around player, perhaps one of the top five position players in the game. Cano, who hit third in the lineup last season, has displayed superb defensive skills and was as dependable as he was good, playing in almost every inning of every game for the past seven years.

The Yankees were willing to make a significant offer to Cano, one of their few remaining homegrown players. What they would not do for Cano, who came up with the Yankees in 2005, was meet his ultimate demand of extending a deal past seven years. The Yankees feared that such a contract for Cano, 31, would one day become the same kind of burden to the team that Rodriguez’s deal had turned into.

Throughout the negotiations, which began last spring, with Cano’s agents — he was originally represented by Scott Boras — the Yankees made lucrative but restrained offers. They shied away from what they saw as the same trap they had fallen into with Rodriguez, and there was a strong sentiment within the organization that the $25 million a year that they had allotted for Cano could be invested in several players instead of just one.

Even before Cano had left, the Yankees had been working on alternatives, calculating from the tenor of the negotiations that Cano would leave. The seven-year, $153 million deal they reached with Jacoby Ellsbury on Tuesday, with an average annual salary of $21.9 million, is just a tick below Cano’s $24 million average annual figure. The Yankees made the deal with Ellsbury under the strong belief that Cano would not return.

The Yankees’ negotiations with other free agents continued Friday and were described as intensifying by two people with knowledge of the talks. The Yankees have been in close contact with Boras, who represents outfielder Shin-Soo Choo and infielder Stephen Drew, but the addition of Beltran would rule out Choo, the person said. The Yankees have also spoken with the agent for second baseman Omar Infante, who hit .318 for the Detroit Tigers last year, and they recently agreed to a one-year, $3 million deal with the utility player Kelly Johnson, who may be the starting second baseman.

A last attempt to be positive about sports

In an attempt to find a subject for my last column, I went through a checklist in my head of everything that I’ve covered this semester.

The business of sports, sexism and homophobia in sports and the recent Miami Dolphins fiasco have all been subjected to my criticism.

It took me a few minutes, but I realized one very important thing: for something that I love so dearly, I haven’t written one positive thing about sports.

Maybe it’s because there seems to be more bad things going on in sports than there are good things. Perhaps it’s because I just notice the short-fallings and never the successes happening in sports.

Whatever the reason — and I still don’t know what that is — it goes against my usual ‘look on the bright side’ nature.

So, as an attempt to even things out in the grand scheme of things, I will focus on what I love about sports.

I love that a team (or franchise) is something that can bring so many people together and be celebrated.

Young or old, thin or fat, loud-mouthed or shy. For the span of the game, all differences are put aside. For the most part.

Sports, particularly Raiders football and San Jose Sharks hockey, are bonding moments for my dad and I. We like to discuss the latest Raiders game (or, in the offseason, whether we like their moves) and whether or not we saw that Sharks goal.

My grandma, though a Niners fan, is a Sharks fan through and through. She always texts me after a Sharks win to celebrate — or if it’s the playoffs and we lose, to commiserate.

Discussing my favorite teams is an automatic go-to for conversations. I know automatically that I’ll have something in common with someone wearing gear of my favorite team.

I love being able to strike up a conversation with someone and see why he or she is so passionate about a team.

Some people arrive to their fandom by birth — I’m one of them. Some stumble across the team and like the players or their style of play.

At the risk of going on a tangent, I will say that the idea of a bandwagon is ridiculous. People jump on the bandwagon when they become fans of teams that are doing well. When a team’s doing well, they get a lot more national coverage. More people are familiar with the team. It’s pretty obvious that everyone loves to be a fan of a winning team, but a lot more people see a winning team than a terrible team.

Please, people, calm down and quit talking down on new fans. You aren’t any better just because you’ve been a fan longer.

Anyways, I digress.

After a semester of writing about everything wrong with the world of sports — and let’s admit, there’s a lot of that — I’ve now found that it’s surprisingly difficult to write something good about it.

And, yes, even in my quest to be positive I had to bring up how ridiculous the whole “bandwagon” idea is. I couldn’t help myself.

I look forward to the days when the positive outweighs the negative. When there is less hatred and inequality in sports than there is now. When people can support their team and worry less about the allegiance of the fan next to them.

I guess the biggest positive of this article is that I think this is all possible. I think one day all fans will be able to enjoy watching a world that isn’t wracked by these issues, at least not to such an extent.

Big push begins to create US market for All Black magic

Are the New Zealand now bigger than the sport of rugby itself?

Just days after breaking Irish hearts, several All-Blacks popped up in New York, in

part to take in the sights and a few days leisure after the miraculous conclusion to

their perfect season and in part because New York is the spiritual home of the team

sponsor, AIG. So they visited a 9/11 fire station, they posed for photos at New York

Stock exchange and they spent an evening watching the Brooklyn Nets disgrace their

favourite colour – the Nets seem intent on illustrating you can also wear black and

lose almost all of the time.

The intention is the visit will mark the beginning of a new relationship between the

All-Blacks and untapped rugby market in the US. As a spokesperson for AIG put it,

the company wants to “play its part in introducing the USA to the greatest sports

team in the world”.

Over the past few weeks, as the New Zealanders gradually ticked off challenges from

France, England and Ireland to complete their perfect season, there seemed to be

something different about them. At first glance, they were as familiar as ever: yes,

Ma’a Nonu remains the most physically imposing sports man since Mike Tyson was at

his peak and yes, Richie McCaw’s face seems to belong to a Dorothea Lange catalogue

and no, you are never going to see Steve Hansen “betraying emotion” as he watches

his team demonstrate their invincibility. It was only afterwards the penny dropped

and you realised those three letters, AIG, was what was different. For once, the

silver fern was not the most prominent motif on the jersey. Not since the heady days

of Hank Paulson and the $85 billion dollar bail out has the financial giant been so

prominent in our lives.

Glamorous recognition
When the All-Blacks arrived in Dublin for their last game of the season, they were

quickly shepherded along to meet with the stars of the Dublin GAA firmament. The

event was a glamorous recognition of Dublin GAA’s new four-million sponsorship with

AIG. It was a neat turn – members of the international AIG sporting family mingling

and exchanging cultural nuggets etc. So McCaw and the boys did their bit with a hurl

and made the right noises and the camera bulbs flashed and it was success. Still, it

was strange to see the New Zealand stars on the hamster wheel of corporate

sponsorship.

Any All-Blacks press event I ever attended was noticeably professional and organised

and ran to schedule. But there was always the sense those days were designed by the

management and for the team: that the All-Blacks controlled where they went and what

they did and how long for. The same was true of their famous trip to Donegal to

visit the birthplace of John Gallaher, captain of the Originals. Tana Umaga and

others who made that journey were brilliant with the locals but there was little

doubt they were there because they wanted to be rather than to partake in a public

relations exercise.

The signs on this tour suggest that in future, the All-Blacks schedule will be

designed with the brand in mind. The inclusion of Japan as an opponent on this

year’s autumn schedule was the noticeable departure from the quality of opponent

they played in their 14-game winning streak and the 54-6 score line reflected that.

They were, of course, merely following the brand leaders of NBA basketball and

English Premier League football to the East, where a lucrative market lies and where

interest in rugby will grow as the years tick on towards the 2019 world cup.

Of the great rivalries in sport, Alabama-Auburn tops them all

Mike Krzyzewski has thought about a Duke-North Carolina national championship game, and what the Duke coach decided is this: He wants no part of it. He's not scared of the Tar Heels, but he knows human nature -- and he knows somebody has to lose.

"I can live with losing to any school," Krzyzewski once said, "but what would happen in this area, people-wise, if one of us beat the other in the championship game ... I wouldn't wish [that] on anybody, it would be so horrible."

Yet it happens every year. Every November a game with the intensity, the local importance, the bragging rights of a Duke-Carolina national championship matchup happens. It happens in college football, and an entire state convulses. Somebody wins, but somebody loses. And for them it's so horrible, I wouldn't wish it on anybody.

This is the biggest rivalry in college sports, and it's not particularly close, and not because the stakes this year are so incredibly high. It's the biggest rivalry in college sports because that's what it is year in, year out. The only thing that compares is in basketball -- and no, not Duke-Carolina, because Duke and Carolina have never met in the Final Four.

Kentucky and Louisville have. They met in the Final Four just 18 months ago, their coaches throw gas on the fire by taking shots at each other, and given that there's no professional sports in the state -- and no other Division I program of national relevance -- Kentucky-Louisville is a game that plays out 365 days a year.

And even that isn't as intense as Alabama-Auburn.

It's the late-season timing of the game, the us-or-them makeup of the state and the force of football, which for whatever reason is the most viscerally followed sport in America. Other countries convulse over their version of football. Here, we go nuts over ours in a way that trumps how we treat all other sports.

And nobody goes nuts for football like people in Alabama.

For one thing, they don't have anything else to distract them. No major professional franchises in the state, or even within 200 miles of Tuscaloosa, and no college basketball tradition to speak of. It's football year 'round there, whether it's spring practice or recruiting or the real thing, those four months in the fall when Alabama and Auburn do what they do with one eye on the task at hand and the other eye on that school 160 miles up the road.

Michigan and Ohio State have a big rivalry, don't get me wrong, but it's not the same thing. The fans get fired up, the teams are usually great and the coaches can act like children -- Brady Hoke won't call Ohio State by its real name, referring to it as "Ohio"; Urban Meyer asks NFL scouts visiting practice to cover up their franchise's blue because that's a Michigan color -- but it's not Alabama-Auburn.

Lose to Michigan and it sucks for Ohio State fans for a little while -- but unless they live in the border town of Toledo, they're not in much danger of running into a gloating Michigan fan.


Lose to Alabama, and its sucks for an Auburn fan for 365 days. The next-door neighbors have a Crimson Tide flag on their porch. The family down the street has a dog named Bear. And forget about the grocery store. Alabama fans are everywhere, and they're gloating because their school won the biggest game of the year, a game so big that folks in that state would pause if given this either/or choice: winning a national championship -- or winning the Iron Bowl.

Oregon-Oregon State is big -- but the state has an NBA franchise and no national football titles. Meanwhile, the last four national titles have been won by Alabama or Auburn (three by the Tide).

Texas-Oklahoma? Huge game -- even with both programs in a relative downturn -- but they're not in the same state, Oklahoma has its hands full with Oklahoma State, and Texas' affection for football is divided among a handful of college programs and two NFL franchises.

Look, we could do this all day. Florida-Florida State? Big game, but not the same. USC-UCLA? Ditto. Fans of those rivalries and the others in this story -- and probably some that were never mentioned -- are going to get bent out of shape that their special rivalry isn't the one billed here as the biggest.

Cry me a river. Honestly. Look at it like this: Every year the Miss America Pageant has one winner, but 50 beautiful women. The 2013 Mr. Olympia competition had one champion -- but 20 ridiculously ripped men.

Florida-Georgia? You're beautiful. Clemson-South Carolina? You're ripped.

But there can be only one rivalry that is prettier, more muscular than all others, and that's Alabama-Auburn -- a series so wonderful, it's sort of horrible.

Stuart Broad: England can turn Ashes campaign around after first Test defeat

Broad, who has spoken of "heartbreak" after Trott left the tour early because of his stress-related illness, will be part of the England team that take on a Chairman's XI in Alice Springs on Friday ahead of next week's second Test.

Broad said: "I think this team is very good at focusing on the cricket when that time arises - and although the changing room's thoughts are with Trotty at the moment, we need to get back to training at Alice Springs this week.

"We've got a huge task on our hands. We had a blip last week, but I can't see this group of players allowing that to happen throughout the tour."

Former England captain Alec Stewart has called Jonathan Trott 'brave' for seeking help with his stress problem.

Broad admits England were below par in Brisbane where they lost by 381 runs and must improve in Adelaide.

"There will be some guys who know they didn't perform to the level expected of them in international cricket and will have to do better in Adelaide," added

Broad.

"We need to get our plans and skills right going to Adelaide. I think it will be very different to Brisbane in terms of the pitch, and we need to focus on getting right for it.

"This squad has a real steely determination, and the Gabba result hurt us. We're a proud bunch, and I'm sure that the performance levels will be back up

to where they need to be come Adelaide."

Australian spinner Nathan Lyon also expects England to bounce back from their first Test mauling and warned that aggressive tactics will again be needed.

'Sledging' on the pitch was another of the Gabba controversies - Australia

captain Michael Clarke was fined 20 per cent of his match fee for threats he

made to James Anderson, picked up on the stump mic.

"It's England and it's a Test match, they're going to bounce back, we know that," Lyon said.

"Test match cricket is the hardest format going around. We're not expecting anyone to roll over. We know the quality of the England cricket side.

"We're going to have to stand up... and start that fight again. That's the way Australia play their best cricket. We know where the line is and we don't step over it. We're going to continue to play aggressive, hard cricket."

Tim Abraham reports from the Australian outback where the England team are preparing for the second Ashes Test.

However, Broad does not expect the hosts to reference Trott's misfortune in future.

"As international cricketers and professional sportsmen, they will understand the pressures that everyone is under and (that) it can happen to

anyone," he said.

"I think the Australian players will respect the decision of Trotty's to go home. There is no doubt there is a lot of respect between the two sides.

Five thoughts on the Capitals’ 2-1 shootout loss in Toronto

An improved effort but still an unsuccessful result as Washington lost its third straight, 2-1 in a shootout against the Maple Leafs on Saturday night. Fortunately for Washington, in addition to gaining one point they saw Mikhail Grabovski avoid serious harm when he was hit in the face by a skate.

Five thoughts on the Caps’ shootout loss in Toronto.

1. Defending Ovechkin For 55 minutes the Maple Leafs did a thorough job of limiting Alex Ovechkin. Multiple times as Ovechkin tried to carry the puck around the offensive zone, there was a well-placed Toronto stick swatting it off his. He didn’t attempt a single shot in the first period, with his first shot on goal coming 25:22 into the contest. It wasn’t until the final frame of regulation that Ovechkin started to find space as he pushed to help tie the game — Ovechkin recorded nine of his 10 total attempts and six shots on goal in the third period and overtime.

While Coach Adam Oates said he didn’t think Toronto “did anything extra well” to limit Ovechkin, but where the star winger himself noticed the special attention on the power play most. The Leafs are the latest team to shadow the hulking winger on the man-advantage and force Washington to adjust their approach.

“Everywhere I go on the power play the guys just stayed close,” Ovechkin said, using the distance between himself and reporters postgame as an example.

“We made an adjustment on the penalty-killing to give them the one-time shot from the middle to take him away,” Leafs Coach Randy Carlyle explained. “It didn’t look very good, but consciously we felt it would be more of advantage for us to let our goalie see the one-time shot from the other players other than Ovechkin. You see what he can do with it. He gets one chance out of a puck that kinds of falls into his lap and he whips it inside the post [for a third-period goal] where I don’t think any goalie would’ve stopped.”

2. No. 20 For as well as Toronto kept Ovechkin in check for the first 55 minutes Saturday night, he showed precisely why he is such a dangerous offensive threat when he capitalized on a fluky play.

Mike Green fired a pass up ice and the puck took a slightly odd bounce, landing and sputtering over toward the left side boards – exactly in Ovechkin’s wheelhouse. He blasted a slap shot past James Reimer blocker side to tie the score at 1 with 15:50 gone in the third.

“Lucky bounce, puck kind of stop and I have opportunity to shoot it and it goes in,” Ovechkin said. “I feel my shot well.”

The goal marked Ovechkin’s 20th of the season and gives him three more goals than any other player in the league. Only two other active players have scored 20 or more goals in their first nine seasons – veterans Jaromir Jagr and Teemu Selanne.

Men and sports are inseparable

Men and sports are inseparable. That is what most of the men think. Be it cricket, football, baseball, basket ball, tennis or any game, you want to watch it. And every time you watch, you find yourself praying for the team you support to win. But enjoying sports just doesn't mean spending Sundays watching your favourite team play on a sports channel. It also means to actively participate in sports.

To be in a good state of health, it is very important to eat the right kind of food. But it is not just the diet which plays a role. Being physically active is also very crucial. Playing sports will help you boost up your metabolism rate and burn the extra calories. Hence, it is a step towards physical fitness.

At the time you play an amusement you are included in it both at the physical and mental level. This aides a single person in numerous ways. One can improve numerous great propensities by taking part in games. It enhances your certainty through studying aptitudes and triumph. It causes in figuring out how to control your driving forces. One researches principle and reasonable play, and likewise, how to adapt up to scoring and losing. Playing as a group will support the co-operation around the players. At the time you lead a crew, you get to know the authority qualities. Being an animated member in games will enhance your physical fitness and give you mental fulfillment.

It is never too late to start playing any sports. But remember it is essential to have a coach as right guidance will save you from injuries that can be caused if attention is not paid. It is important to learn warm up exercises and stretch exercises, which are to be done before and after playing, respectively, as this will prevent any muscle or ligament injury.

There is a general rise in several diseases, and especially obesity, among the populations. Participating in sports will save you from developing such health hazards. The sooner you realize the significance of sports in your life and in maintaining your health, the better it will be. Therefore, it is important to guide your children to gain enjoyment from sports as this may help them avoid the development of health problems in the later stages of their lives.

It is not necessary at what level you play or which sport you choose to play. The fact that you are playing is important. And when maintaining health can be so much fun, then why not do it or rather play it! So readers, get sportive!

Improve Your Football Game With High Performance Maple grove chiropractic Care

Regardless of what position on the field you play, football is as physically requesting as a game can get. Each player on the field must have the ability to run, hit, obstruct, and get up off the turf play after play. Football players are around the strongest and generally physically extreme individuals on the planet because of their particular requests of their game. While football players need to see specialists often due to harm, more players are getting chiropractic conformities before always getting mischief. They do this both to counteract future wounds and to enhance their exhibition by getting their figures in immaculate arrangement.

Adaptability is a shockingly imperative perspective in the exhibition of a football player. Due to the clumsy crashes that frequently happen on the field, being adaptable considers a player to retain the hits and keep on getting up. A less-adaptable player may be harmed by a specific hit and need to leave the diversion. With a specific end goal to perform in football you must have the ability to stay on the field. Getting conformities from a chiropractor on a normal support will keep you adaptable and primed to take whatever discipline the amusement can dole out.

"I've been seeing a chiropractor and he's truly been bailing me out a considerable measure. Chiropractic has been an enormous part of my amusement. Chiropractic nurture me."

-Joe Montana, Nfl Legend

Joe Montana is only one of numerous samples of Nfl players who understand the significant part that chiropractic forethought can play in their professions (his old colleague, Jerry Rice, was a different one). It is fascinating to note that Montana didn't discuss how chiropractic encouraged him to recuperate from a harm or get go into the amusement. He discussed how it 'has been a huge part of my game', demonstrating that he experienced consistent conformities. For a quarterback who played with the assumption that Montana did, and took incalculable hits, it is clear that he felt chiropractic was an imposing part of that victory.

The sum of the keep tabs on chiropractic conformity for football players is not simply dependent upon staying sound. The truth is that reliable changes can enhance exhibition on the field, free of damages. Regardless of the possibility that you are torment free, you might have a subluxation of a vertebrae repressing your adaptability and reach of movement at this moment. By seeing a chiropractor customarily you can guarantee that the sum of your vertebrae are working legitimately and that you are getting the best conceivable exhibition out of your physique.

If you are a running back making plans to blast through the gap a tad bit speedier, or a quarterback needing to add a little additional speed to your tosses, chiropractic changes can give you that edge over the rivalry. Recognizing that the sum of the different players are presumably working exactly as hard as you on the practice field, would prefer you not further bolstering have any good fortune you can at what time amusement time moves around? Include chiropractic visits to whatever is left of your readiness and you will have the scoring equation you have been searching for.

Guidelines to Expert Professional skateboarding Tricks

There are numerous skateboarding traps out there and when attempting to study your own particular deceives, you might feel overpowered with all the tips ready. There are tips for particular traps as a rule, incorporating movies, tips from the pros and then some. For a few skaters, be that as it may, you simply need some general tips on the best way to do traps the right path, not on any particular deceives itself.

Possibly you've been skating for quite a while and you as of recently know traps and how to expand them yet you only need to have the ability to ace your traps. Possibly you have the basics down and you need to have the ability to add to those by doing more progressed traps however you don't exactly have the trust yet to draw it off. Wherever you're at in your skateboarding aptitudes, here are a few tips to help you ace skateboarding traps when all is said in done (as a substitute for particular traps).

Stance and Body Positioning

Your stance and form positioning will be extremely critical. In certain traps, this is key to finishing the trap successfully. You can try different things with form position by testing distinctive sorts of traps and seeing how your physique and board are positioned in the wake of arriving. You can attempt bouncing in diverse bearings to see what impact it has on the board positioning. Careful discipline brings about promising results in terms of getting the stance and figure positioning right.

Line Up Your Shoulders

A different tip to recollect when doing traps is to have your shoulders lined up fittingly. Every living soul does traps diversely so it’s difficult to say precisely where your shoulders ought to be for a given trap yet the thought is to get in touch with your own particular form and your skating style and take note of where your shoulders are when you do a trap successfully. At that point attempt to copy this shoulder arrangement every time you do that same trap. When you get accustomed to it, the developments and situation of your shoulders will easily fall into place. So afterward you are doing a trap, take note of where your shoulders are -parallel to the ground or board, turning as you pop, and so on. You can likewise watch films of others doing traps in moderate movement and see where their shoulders are lined up.

There are a mess of diverse form movements that go into doing generally skateboarding traps. These tips are only illustrations of the diverse components that go into mastering your traps. Utilize the guidelines here to help you with different zones of studying and mastering your traps.