Sports Columns
The big picture has been dwarfed to a few weeks and is much clearer today.
Imagine how dull golf would be without Tiger Woods. The game would be an afterthought now, ranking somewhere below figure skating in terms of interest from sports fans and the media.
NASCAR, which invades Las Vegas Motor Speedway this weekend, used to be a Southern Thing when the Allisons and the Pettys and Yarborough (Cale) and Yarbrough (LeeRoy) were rubbin’ and racin’.
Oscar Bellfield is a college sophomore who when asked if he could invite anyone to dinner, included the following:
Stones haven’t been cast. It has been more like boulders flung ashore by tsunami waves, the ones standing nearly 30 feet high and weighing 1,600 tons.
A basketball player can be likened to a movie in that the trailer does not always accurately depict the quality of the film. John Wall, Kentucky’s freshman point guard, was billed as a star before he played a college game.
Every game and opponent is different. Lon Kruger is correct on that part. He was also accurate in saying a major reason his UNLV basketball team dropped games at home against New Mexico and at San Diego State last week had as much to do with opposing talent as anything else.
I always had this Olympics wish when it came to professionals being part of the competition: When the Dream Team rolled into and through Barcelona in 1992, when it won eight basketball games by an average score of 117-74, when those poor saps from Angola were through posing for pictures and asking for autographs from the players who had just pasted them 116-48, it would have been the opportune time for America to expand its chest and return the moment to its amateurs.