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Sportsmen – By Doug Keenholts

Last week, Sports Illustrated announced its choice of Lebron James for 2012 Sportsman of the Year.  As the end of each year nears, every outlet everywhere compiles “best of” and “top ten” lists, names its “person of the year,” etc.  In the sports world, SI’s Sportsman of the Year still holds some clout.  SI’s aim is to recognize the most significant sports figure from the previous calendar year, and in that regard it is hard to quibble with the choice of Lebron James.

“The Decision” and all of the venomous aftermath was only two and a half years ago.  At that time, Lebron was on the top of everyone’s “most hated” athlete lists.  Looking back, it was all quite silly.  Did he make a huge mistake in how he announced his move to the Miami Heat from the Cleveland Cavaliers in free agency?  Of course, and he’s admitted as much since.  When the Heat failed to win a title the following year, the general sports world reveled in the perceived failure.  They did make it to the finals, but the storyline centered around Lebron’s inability to finish when he averaged an anemic three points in the fourth quarter of each game.  Heading into the 2012 playoffs, despite being universally regarded as the best basketball player on the planet, the questions about Lebron continued to swirl.  They were answered emphatically in game six of the Eastern Conference finals against the Boston Celtics, when with the Heat down three games to two, Lebron delivered an epic 45 point, 15 rebound performance IN BOSTON, where he was completely and utterly unstoppable.  It was the most dominant athletic performance of 2012, and when the Heat went on to defeat the Oklahoma City Thunder in the finals, Lebron James had placed his stamp on the 2012 sports calendar.  Any stain from “the decision” has been permanently removed.

What other performances in 2012 were worthy of consideration?  For me, perhaps the most electric and “goose-bump” inspiring moment was Gabby Douglas winning the woman’s all-around gold medal in gymnastics.  We collectively get a thrill out of rooting for members of the stars and stripes come Olympic time, but nobody on this year’s team captured the hearts of Americans like Gabby.  The stress and pressure of woman’s gymnastics, where one little bobble can cost you a place atop the medal stand, lends itself to heart-pounding drama.  But Gabby’s story and smile added greatly to the theater, and when she stuck the landing on her last tumble in the floor routine to seemingly capture gold, you could almost hear the entire country exhale and applaud simultaneously.

Another option for SI might have been the Brothers Manning.  Eli started the year off in grand form, securing his second Super Bowl victory and Super Bowl MVP trophy in February, highlighted by one of the more beautiful passes ever thrown in a huge moment:  the “dropped in a mailbox” over the shoulder throw to Mario Manningham that kick-started the Giants’ game-winning touchdown drive.  Peyton has since done his part, answering all of the doubters who thought he would never make it back from four neck surgeries, by delivering one of his greatest statistical regular seasons ever.  With a great chance at winning his fifth NFL MVP award, it will be hard to look back at 2012 without thinking of the accomplishments of Archie’s kids.

In the end, as a great calendar year of sports comes to a close, I think SI got it right with Lebron.   The scariest part is he’ll probably be in the conversation each year for the next decade as well.

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Sportsmen – By Doug Keenholts

Last week, Sports Illustrated announced its choice of Lebron James for 2012 Sportsman of the Year.  As the end of each year nears, every outlet everywhere compiles “best of” and “top ten” lists, names its “person of the year,” etc.  In the sports world, SI’s Sportsman of the Year still holds some clout.  SI’s aim is to recognize the most significant sports figure from the previous calendar year, and in that regard it is hard to quibble with the choice of Lebron James.

“The Decision” and all of the venomous aftermath was only two and a half years ago.  At that time, Lebron was on the top of everyone’s “most hated” athlete lists.  Looking back, it was all quite silly.  Did he make a huge mistake in how he announced his move to the Miami Heat from the Cleveland Cavaliers in free agency?  Of course, and he’s admitted as much since.  When the Heat failed to win a title the following year, the general sports world reveled in the perceived failure.  They did make it to the finals, but the storyline centered around Lebron’s inability to finish when he averaged an anemic three points in the fourth quarter of each game.  Heading into the 2012 playoffs, despite being universally regarded as the best basketball player on the planet, the questions about Lebron continued to swirl.  They were answered emphatically in game six of the Eastern Conference finals against the Boston Celtics, when with the Heat down three games to two, Lebron delivered an epic 45 point, 15 rebound performance IN BOSTON, where he was completely and utterly unstoppable.  It was the most dominant athletic performance of 2012, and when the Heat went on to defeat the Oklahoma City Thunder in the finals, Lebron James had placed his stamp on the 2012 sports calendar.  Any stain from “the decision” has been permanently removed.

What other performances in 2012 were worthy of consideration?  For me, perhaps the most electric and “goose-bump” inspiring moment was Gabby Douglas winning the woman’s all-around gold medal in gymnastics.  We collectively get a thrill out of rooting for members of the stars and stripes come Olympic time, but nobody on this year’s team captured the hearts of Americans like Gabby.  The stress and pressure of woman’s gymnastics, where one little bobble can cost you a place atop the medal stand, lends itself to heart-pounding drama.  But Gabby’s story and smile added greatly to the theater, and when she stuck the landing on her last tumble in the floor routine to seemingly capture gold, you could almost hear the entire country exhale and applaud simultaneously.

Another option for SI might have been the Brothers Manning.  Eli started the year off in grand form, securing his second Super Bowl victory and Super Bowl MVP trophy in February, highlighted by one of the more beautiful passes ever thrown in a huge moment:  the “dropped in a mailbox” over the shoulder throw to Mario Manningham that kick-started the Giants’ game-winning touchdown drive.  Peyton has since done his part, answering all of the doubters who thought he would never make it back from four neck surgeries, by delivering one of his greatest statistical regular seasons ever.  With a great chance at winning his fifth NFL MVP award, it will be hard to look back at 2012 without thinking of the accomplishments of Archie’s kids.

In the end, as a great calendar year of sports comes to a close, I think SI got it right with Lebron.   The scariest part is he’ll probably be in the conversation each year for the next decade as well.

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Nathan Hatalsky – Named Athlete of The Year By Sandy McBride


Nathan Hatalsky is pretty sure he was tossing a football around before he could walk, and it’s a safe bet that he learned how to tackle taking down his older brother, Chris.  Flag football was too tame for him, but he really got into the sport when he was old enough to play for the local Junior Red Raider program.  Nate loves the game of football.

   The Albany Times Union named him as their small schools Defensive Athlete of the Year and The Saratogian has also named him Athlete of the Year for his outstanding accomplishments in his senior football season. To receive these two prestigious honors is the crowning achievement in Nate’s four-year varsity football career at Mechanicville High School.  Nate was honored for his prowess on the gridiron where in his senior year he logged 72 solo tackles and 64 assisted tackles as well as several quarterback sacks in leading his Red Raider team to a 6 – 3 overall record.

 

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Time to Go Home By Doug Keeholts

 Last week, the Big East announced that Tulane University and East Carolina University had accepted invitations to join the conference in 2014 -- Tulane in all sports and East Carolina as an associate member for football only.  Feel free to read that sentence again to grasp its absurdity.  The best analogy I’ve seen regarding the Big East’s illogical expansion over the past few years is that they are the conference that stayed at the bar far too long.  While the Pac-12, SEC, ACC, and Big 10 went home hours ago with the likes of Colorado, Missouri, Syracuse, and Maryland – the Big East ordered another round of shots, looked around, and realized it was desperation time so they stumbled over to talk to SMU and Houston.  Judgment clouded by the lure of football dollars when they should have just realized it was time to go home.

Home for the Big East is men’s basketball.   Football was never supposed to be the focus of the Big East conference, but they began dancing with the devil in 1991 when the presidents voted to invite the University of Miami - a school with absolutely no basketball pedigree but a great football team - to join as a full member.  Here we are 21 years later and the time has come for the Big East to find its roots.  The non-football playing members need to break off and create their own conference - a basketball super-conference.

The core is already intact:  St. Johns, Georgetown, Seton Hall, Villanova, Providence, DePaul, and Marquette are all members that either don’t play football or whose football programs play in the lower Championship Subdivision.  The presidents of these schools need to reach out to other like-minded Universities, and there are two obvious ones that would be perfect fits:  Butler and Xavier.   Both have very strong programs featuring recent deep NCAA tournament runs; both reside in good-sized cities (Indianapolis and Cincinnati respectively); and neither has a football program playing at the BCS level.  They should also look at a school like St. Joseph’s in Philadelphia, a natural rival for Villanova and a school with a rich basketball tradition and no football team.  That would create a core of ten basketball programs, primarily in big eastern cities, with either great tradition or tremendous recent success.  Ideally, you would like a conference with twelve programs, so from there they should try to cherry pick two more schools with similar resumes (George Washington?  UMass?  Virginia Commonwealth?).  One would think a conference with such a makeup would attract a lot of exclusive television rights, be extremely competitive nationally in both competition and recruiting, and would be able to generate enough revenue to fund the schools’ other athletic programs.

And they should fight like hell to retain the name Big East.  The name means something in basketball, and the bastardized current football playing version includes San Diego State, which is east of what exactly?  Hawaii?  It’s time for someone to call the Big East a taxi, explain to them how drunk they are, and tell them that it’s time to go home.

 

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