Category: Sports

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Philly Dawg – It’s GOOD!

After being the goat in missing a 52 yard field goal at the end of regulation against Pittsburgh, the Browns’ Phil Dawson makes a 51 yarder that hit the upright and then hit the neck of the post supporting the uprights.

Game officials at first said it was no good and the Baltimore Ravens celebrated a come from behind victory, but the Browns protested After a long conference the Refs made the right call and reversed their previous call and ruled the attempt good. That sent the game into overtime.

The Browns got the ball in OT and marched down the field and Philly Dawg kicked a 33-yard field goal to win the game.

It also helped that kick returner Joshua Cribs had 306 yards in kick and punt returns in the game including a 41-yard kickoff return that led to the game winning field goal by Dawson nine plays later. It moved the Browns to 6-4 on the season

Here we go Brownies here we go!

Here we go Brownies here we go!

See the tying kick that bounced off the goal post support bar

Cleveland Browns

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Big Ten Conference profiting from tax payers

Jim Delany, commissioner of the Big Ten Conference and the member schools decided to create a cable TV network to showcase the conference’s cash cows – football and basketball games.

Exclusive television deals aren’t unusual. Notre Dame has had an exclusive deal with NBC for many years to broadcast its football games each fall. What is different is that the Big Ten Network (BTN) will be on cable and no local broadcast stations will be able to show games slated for the BTN.

The network is slated to start on August 30th but as of now BTN only has coverage on 20% of the cable audience available in the conference’s region. One of major cable providers in Ohio – Time Warner – has refused to carry the channel.

The problem is that not only does BTN want to charge $1.10 per subscriber but also is insisting that cable providers put the channel on Basic cable. The cable providers say that BTN is a niche channel – that only a limited number of people would be interested and so it should be on a sports tier where fans would pay extra.

Delany and BTN President Mark Silverman countered:

…it’s ridiculous to banish BTN to a sports tier when channels such as Versus, the Golf Channel and Sports Time Ohio—not to mention Food Network, Animal Planet and HGTV—have homes on expanded basic.

“There’s already niche networks all over expanded basic,” Delany said. “I get 70 channels at home, and I watch about 12 of them.”

Playing Defense: Jim Delany knows if you can’t watch the Buckeyes, he’ll get the blame

I don’t have a problem with the conference having a TV deal because such deals pass on funding to all member schools. I do think that such schools, a majority state supported, should not be allowed to put their games on cable TV. Such games should be available, for free, on TV.

I help pay for the programs through my tax dollars and I am being asked to pay for cable to see the games.

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Tooting my own horn

I wanted to post about updates to two of my blogs.

iHumanism – narrowly focused on Humanism. Available since 1999, it was previously a standard HTML based site but has now been converted to a blog using WordPress. Content includes articles, essays, and commentary on Humanism, which is my life stance.

Most recent post talks about something called “vague theism” that is causing issues within the Humanist movement.

The Review Geek – basically a review style blog. It offers commentary on media offerings from TV to music to film and culture. I use the new Movable Type version 4.

Most recent post talks about the show “Feasting on Asphalt 2: The River Run” showing on the Food Network.

I really have no social life and am quite pale, so check them out if you have time.

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Ohio State Final Four Then and Now

The Ohio State Buckeyes men’s basketball team has made it to the 2007 Final Four to take place in Atlanta this coming weekend.

I hope they make it to the final and they win it all. The best match up would be Florida vs Ohio State but they have to take care of Georgetown first.

Some sports reports have said this is the first final four for OSU since 1999 – which is technically correct. However, recruiting violations by the former coach caused the NCAA to force Ohio State to vacate that records related to that appearance so in essence that appearance doesn’t exist. (see: Ohio State University and Former Men’s Basketball Coaches Penalized for Infractions)

The last official final four for Ohio State was 1968. The starting 5 on that team were Bill Hosket, Steve Howell, Dave Sorenson, Jody Finney, and Denny Meadors.

Hosket has been involved in broadcasting Buckeye games and is still well known to OSU fans from that era and today.

Dave Sorenson is a name I know well. He attended Findlay High School before going to Ohio State. He was twice named first team All-Buckeye Conference, was Ohio Player of the Year 1965-66, and was named Buckeye Conference MVP. He remains among FHS’ all-time leaders in career, season and game scoring.

At Ohio State he ended his collegiate career (1966-1970) 2nd in scoring (8th all-time) and rebounds (7th all-time) behind the great Jerry Lucas. Sorenson also scored the winning basket that beat Kentucky in the 1968 Southeast Regional Final and was named that region’s Most Outstanding Performer.

Sorenson was drafted by the Cleveland Cavaliers and played for them until 1972 before joining the Philadelphia 76ers for a season. He also played in Europe before returning to Ohio.

Sorenson died from cancer in 2002 at the age of 54.

So as a tribute to Dave and Ohio State and their visits to the NCAA Final Four, I added Dave to my Famous Findlayians page.

Thanks to Kathy for reminding me about Dave

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I want my NFL please

I am a long, long, long time fan of the Cleveland Browns football team. Since the days of Brian Sipe and the Kardiac Kids I have ridden that roller coaster and have come close to tasting the ultimate prize of getting to the Super Bowl. The lowest points have been “Red Right 88”, “The Drive”, “The Fumble”, and the move of the team to Baltimore at the end of the 1995 season.

When I was a kid I had no problem watching the Browns games on TV. The AFC was on NBC then and living close to Toledo, Cleveland games were the AFC default. The closest NFL team to our market was Detroit and they played in the NFC.

When I moved to Columbus the issue because troublesome. I am now in the middle of 2 team’s market area (Cleveland and Cincinnati) and also could be included in a 3rd (Pittsburgh) and all of them are in the AFC. Our local CBS station has the thankless job of deciding which team to show each week of the season especially if they are playing at the same time – which seems to be most of the time. The NFL and CBS doesn’t allow WBNS to move the other games to another channel like WWHO which is a broadcast channel or to a dedicated digital cable channel.

Each week one of us group of fans is going to lose out and be forced to listen to the game on radio. With the poor play Cleveland has had the past few years and the improvement of the Bungles, Cleveland fans in Central Ohio lose out most of the time.

Sure there are options if I want to pay a large amount of money to see games I don’t want to see just to see the games I want to see. I do enjoy football but I am less inclined to watch games I have no interest in.

This issue came up again for me with the start of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament this week. WBNS is showing not only the regional games for our city since Ohio State is playing, but they are also showing games from the other regions on 3 digital channels on the local cable systems. They do this by splitting the feed from CBS. If the technology is there to do for basketball then CBS should be able to do for football.

I’m NOT talking about a Seattle fan living in Boston being able to watch the Seahawks, I am talking about allowing an affiliate that straddles more than one team market being allowed to show all the nearby teams each Sunday.

I don’t fault the NFL for being particular on the right to watch games as their TV rights money is basically what keeps them in business but they are missing the opportunity of giving some of us what we want and blowing the opportunity of getting us to buy more merchandise, going to a game in person, and breeding another generation of fans.

The NFL

Cleveland Browns

WBNS 10 TV

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