Tweet: Buckeye QB Cardale Jones Doesn’t Like Class
October 5, 2012NFL News: James-Michael Johnson “Looks Like He’s Ready to Go”
October 6, 2012While We’re Waiting serves as the early morning gathering of WFNY-esque information for your viewing pleasure. Have something you think we should see? Send it to our tips email at tips@waitingfornextyear.com.
I’m unreasonably excited for the Cavs open scrimmage tonight. And it seems I’m not the only one, as the Cavs have distributed all of their free tickets. “The 6-foot-4, 221-pound Waiters said he’s looking forward to the intrasquad scrimmage in which he’ll likely be pitted against reigning NBA Rookie of the Year Kyrie Irving.
“The 6-foot-4, 221-pound Waiters said he’s looking forward to the intrasquad scrimmage in which he’ll likely be pitted against reigning NBA Rookie of the Year Kyrie Irving.
“I just can’t wait to see how the team’s going to play and work on all the things we’ve learned out here so far,” he said. “(We want) to get out there and go up and down (the court).”
He said he’s been like a sponge since the start of training camp.
“I’ve learned a lot in just three days,” he said. “It’s hard trying to remember everything. Each day I just try to ask the coaches as much as I can, what position I’m supposed to be at, and things like that. (I’m) just trying to learn and work hard.
“(I want to) get out there and play my game. There’s a lot to gather in just a couple days. So I’m trying to take it step by step and learn as much as I can in a short period of time.”” [Bob Finnan/The News Herald]
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I found this article about Bleacher Report fascinating. But then, I’m a person who writes about sports on the internet. “It could be argued that Bleacher Report’s success is a 21st-century iteration of the American Dream. Four twentysomething sports nuts, friends since they attended the elite Menlo School in Atherton, quit their jobs in 2007 to found a sports website written by the fans, for the fans. In doing so, they harnessed the energy of the legions of sports enthusiasts who would have otherwise been yammering on call-in radio or laboring on obscure blogs and message boards, and bundled the labor into a platform that could be backed by advertising dollars.
The site’s deft use of search engine optimization (SEO) — the tweaking of content and coding to increase online visibility — propelled its unpaid, amateur writers’ fare to the top of Google’s search engine results, placing it on equal footing with original work created by established journalistic outlets. It’s a rare sports-related Google search that doesn’t feature a Bleacher Report article among the top results. And once readers click onto Bleacher Report, they stick there — visitors are besieged with applications to subscribe to team-specific newsletters or mobile applications, or drawn into click-happy slideshows, polls, or other user-engaging devices that rack up massive pageviews per visit (to date, a slideshow titled “The 20 Most Boobtastic Athletes of All Time” has amassed 1.4 million views).” [Joe Eskenazi/SF Weekly]
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I love Ohio State night games. But they scare the crap out of me. “The 2011 edition of Nebraska-Ohio State was both that group of Buckeyes best and worst games of the season. The first half represented the pinnacle of Walrus ball; that rare one off occurrence when the planets aligned perfectly, Dave was cooking with gas, and a streaky offensive line was at the height of their prospective powers. Even the then rather green Braxton Miller looked mature beyond his years. A tight end had a touchdown catch. Carlos Hyde looked unstoppable. Ohio State under Luke Fickell had finally arrived…and then everything went to hell in a hand basket.
Taylor Martinez found his stride and put on one of his best passing stretches of his 2011 season. Both Martinez and running back Rex Burkhead were suddenly unstoppable with a puzzled, oft out of place Buckeye defense on their heals. A 21 point road lead suddenly didn’t feel a 21 point lead and then it very literally wasn’t. In a stretch of 10 minutes, Nebraska was down by 7. And in just over two minutes some two thirds of the way through the fourth quarter, Nebraska had the lead for good.” [Luke Zimmerman/Land Grant Holy Land]
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I didn’t know that Michael Wilbon was feuding with anyone in the DC sports scene, but this is a Grown Up apology. “I am quick to tell people in the sports industry when it is necessary to see the errors of their ways, and it’s necessary this time to see the errors of mine and apologize for them. This started a few days ago with some comments made to ESPN The Magazine about the Washington, DC sports scene, in which I uttered the words “last” and “terrible” and no matter the context at the time the words were stupid and they offended a great many people in the community in which I’ve lived for more than 30 years. It was just a dumb thing to say, that I regret.
I’ve said publicly more than a few times lately that the nature of public discourse these days, especially in the areas of sports and politics, is meaner and dumber than ever…and then I engaged in the very kind of mean-spirited debate I’ve criticized and come to loathe. For that I owe an even deeper apology. A dear friend and colleague reminded me this morning that when your job is to speak publicly essentially every day of the year, as is the case for both of us, we’re going to make assessments of the games and people who play/oversee them that will be flat-out wrong. An apology isn’t a sign of weakness; it’s the order of the day. And he’s absolutely right about that. Instead, as is my way sometime, I dug in and freely engaged in something that should never have existed.” [Michael Wilbon/Facebook]
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I can’t really blame Barry Sanders (or anyone, really) for walking away from football, even in the abrupt way that he did. Sure, he could’ve played a few more years and gotten some records. But, man, if you can get out of the NFL relatively healthy, with your body intact… “This was a little more than 13 years ago, the summer of 1999, when Sanders, then 31 years old, still healthy, closing in on the all-time rushing record, decided to walk away from the NFL. The news was a shock to his league, his team, to the city of Detroit, and it took a long time for the story to sort itself out—how an adored superstar could suddenly leave a franchise he defined, with so much football talent presumably left.
[snip]
Another football icon, Jim Brown, had been in London (filming “The Dirty Dozen”) when he retired early from the Cleveland Browns. What’s strange about hearing Sanders tell his story is how impossible it seems in today’s climate. Could this kind of escape happen in a social media era? Sanders would almost surely be busted on a London street by a smart phone. Twitter would pin him down.
Sanders stayed in London two weeks, and then went back home, to a new life out of football. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 2004. He remains beloved, and in recent years, his public profile has increased, this traveling Gridiron Glory exhibit the latest example. His son, Barry J. Sanders, a top high-school football player, is now at Stanford. Meanwhile, Sanders has kept traveling. He’s been to Brazil. Japan. Kenya. He said he was hoping to join an NFL trip to China. He wants to go to Rio again. He hopes to ski the Alps.” [Jason Gay/The Wall Street Journal]