In 2012, Major League Baseball introduced the polarizing Wild Card Game. This one-game playoff decides the fate of the the two best teams following the division winners in each league, much to the dismay of all who recognize the absurdity of a 163rd game deciding the outcome of a 162-game season.
Tag: Commentary
World Cup Qualifying Failure Must Bring Sweeping Changes for US Men’s Soccer
Failure. Complete and utter failure. No better words can describe the US Men’s National Team’s performance on Tuesday night and throughout the entire World Cup qualifying process. After 11 months of incompetent lineups and inconsistent performances, the team has found itself out of a World Cup spot with nobody to blame but themselves. Time
Kendrick’s Korner: “It’s Gotta Be the Shoes”
Corruption in college basketball practically has its own film genre. Movies like “He Got Game” and “Blue Chips” have long captured the essence of the dark side of college athletics. For example, in “He Got Game,” Ray Allen’s notable Jesus Shuttlesworth character is recruited to colleges by boosters, coaches and agents,
Trump’s NFL Rant is His Latest Example of Unnecessary Divisiveness
When Donald Trump took the stage in Huntsville, Alabama last Friday in a rally for special election candidate Luther Strange, few anticipated that the 45th President of the United States would use the opportunity to attack the activism of professional athletes. Yet that’s exactly the topic Trump chose to rant about
Rams, Chargers Must Win If They Want Full Stadiums
In the last two years, both the Rams and Chargers have moved to Los Angeles – from St. Louis and San Diego, respectively. The two teams will move into the newly constructed LA Stadium upon its completion in 2020. For now, the Rams are playing in the LA Coliseum and
Kendrick’s Korner: Baseball’s Millennial Problem
Major League Baseball has finally overcome its millennial problem. Historically, baseball has provided a form of entertainment that is incompatible with millennialism. While young fans now understand sporting events through condensed highlights on social media, baseball offers a slow-moving, strategy-based game that is best consumed through a Sunday afternoon radio broadcast. When thinking about current
Turf Wars: The Grass Awakens
Synthetic grass appears to be the future of sports. Slowly but surely, professional teams are replacing natural grass with artificial grass in their playing fields, like in the $1.3 billion Mercedes-Benz stadium in Atlanta. At first, the change seems reasonable. Synthetic grass demands less water in its irrigation than natural fields do.
The NFL’s Inconsistent Response To Players’ Activism
The NFL season started last weekend, and while the games provided plenty of action, much attention remains on issues off the field. Last season, then San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick began kneeling during the national anthem to protest racial inequality and police brutality. Since Kaepernick’s initial protest, many
Locker Room Talk: Combatting Homophobia in 5C Athletics
On April 26, I invited to campus Helen Carroll, director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights’ Sports Project, which combats homophobia and transphobia in sports through litigation and policy work. To accompany research I had conducted on the student-athlete experience for my senior anthropology thesis, I wanted to give
When Mentality Goes Wrong: How Abuse is Prevalent in Gymnastics
Since the early 1990s, the United States women’s gymnastics team has dominated international competition. Under the reign of dynamic coaching duo Béla and Márta Károlyi, the National Team has secured seven all-around medals at the Olympics, three of them gold, and eleven World Championship medals. Recently, both the Fierce