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Please review the fantasy soccer league lineup of a complete moron

The moron being me, of course, as I have no idea what I’m doing. Feedback welcome, soccer fans. (Or korfball, as it’s known in England, whose league we’re borrowing.) Selected following no research at all, not even to confirm that they are, in fact, living soccer players, here’s the starting 11 for the Jupiter Wankers of the Cox Premier League:

Goalkeeper: Edwin van der Sar

Defenders: Kolo Touré, Glen Johnson, Mikaël Silvestre, Joseph Yobo

Midfielders: Ashley Young, Simon Davies, David Bentley, Steven Gerrard

Forwards: Roque Santa Cruz, Yakubu

What am I thankful for this year?

tebowpegasus

Well, not so much this year as this Saturday. Florida vs. Florida State in Gainesville at 5 p.m. Battlestar Galactica: Razor at 9 p.m. Bonus metaphysical conundrum: Who/what would prevail in a confrontation, Tim Tebow or Battlestar Pegasus?

Mike Leach: Craziest crazy eye in the land of crazy

mikeleach

Texas Tech football coach Mike Leach is clearly insane. I’m a great fan. Texas Tech’s upset of Oklahoma last night is as good an occasion as any to call to your attention, in case you missed it the first time around, to this excellent story about Leach that was in The New York Times Magazine two years ago. Reason No. 1: It’s by Michael Lewis, who is always good value for money. Reason No. 2: The pirate anecdotes.

I am concerned about Gary Danielson’s brain

danielsonAs a Florida alum and fan of Gators athletics I watch a lot of SEC football on CBS, which means I get a pretty big dose of Verne Lundquist and Gary Danielson each fall. I’ve long thought Danielson’s broadcasting style is idiosyncratic, a bit like Dan Rather’s election-night “Ratherisms.” (“This race is hotter than the Devil’s anvil.”) But his performance during Saturday’s Florida-Georgia game really has me worried. Consider this analysis of Florida quarterback Tim Tebow’s shoulder injury:

“When you cut yourself shaving, it’s gonna bleed for a week. When you hurt your shoulder like Tim Tebow did, it’s gonna hurt for a week.”

WTF, Gary Danielson?

He also insisted on several occasions that “This is still a football game,” lest the viewer mistakenly conclude that, after two and a half hours of football, the teams were now engaged in a cricket match. And he once referred to Georgia quarterback Matthew Stafford as Mike Bobo, who last played for the Bulldogs a decade ago. Perhaps most perplexing was his mangling of the fable of the scorpion and the frog, which, apart from being creatively reinterpreted to involve a scorpion and a tortoise, was inexplicably employed to illustrate an indecipherable point about Tebow’s tendency to run the ball.

Gary, seriously, have your brain checked out first thing Monday morning.

University of South What? Where?

I’ve been worried for years the University of South Florida would someday gain national notoriety, whether for athletic achievement, academic success or a “Don’t Tase me bro” type incident. It appears that day has finally arrived, now that USF’s football team has won a few games.

I don’t have anything against the school, mind you, I’m just dreading the inevitable geographic confusion on the part of sportswriters and broadcasters. The University of South Florida, you see, is not in South Florida. It is nowhere near the southern portion of the peninsula we call Florida, in fact. It would be more accurately referred to as the University of West Central Florida. Why did we commit such an obvious and, frankly, embarrassing blunder? Because we are confused. We are old and confused.

Those of you not from around these parts might not have been aware of any of this. Please consider yourself educated. A map follows for further reference.

fl_map

USA beats Brazil 2-1 at Under-20 World Cup … Wait, WTF?

> U.S. Under-20 Men Win Group D With 2-1 Victory Against Brazil at FIFA Under-20 World Cup (ussoccer.com)
> Altidore scores twice as U.S. shocks Brazil 2-1 to top Group D (AP via IHT)
Whoa. Can we just fast-forward to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, or, better yet, the 2014 competition right now to see kids like Jozy Altidore, Freddy Adu and Danny Szetela tearing it up in the prime of their hopefully stellar careers?

(For our American readers who might be feeling a bit lost, this post was about soccer, or “two-man luge” as it’s known throughout the rest of the world.)

A bit more recognition for ‘Heavy Pressure’

My one and so far only foray into sports writing, Heavy Pressure: NFL players struggle with weight game, last week placed second for enterprise reporting in the 2006 Florida Sports Writers Association contest. It previously received an honorable mention for project reporting in the 2006 Associated Press Sports Editors contest.

Not only is it nice to receive a bit of recognition in an unfamiliar field, it’s particularly nice to place in a contest in which I didn’t even know I had been entered. No, Heavy Pressure hasn’t actually won any contests, but I do have something that I know for a fact no one else in the world has: A 118,551-record SPSS file with the height, weight and name of every player in professional football history backed up on my iPod. Suck on that, sports hacks.

While Heavy Pressure’s contest results are due primarily to the excellent reporting and writing of my colleague Carlos Frias, the story wouldn’t have happened if I, a metro-based data geek, hadn’t wandered across the newsroom and pitched the idea to the sports department. Also, one of The Post’s cops reporters placed third in the FSWA contest for feature writing with her story about an amateur boxer. See what happens when everyone in the newsroom plays nice?

Mash your mouse right here to read more about Heavy Pressure: NFL players struggle with weight game.

Donovan to NBA; No joy in Hogtown

Gaaaaa! Then again, I wasn’t feeling so good when Steve Spurrier left, either, and that turned out OK. (And, no, I don’t remember the Ron Zook era. I erased those years from my brain.)

And in a journalism-related digression from this sports-related digression … While browsing Florida’s many papers for news about Billy Donovan’s departure from UF for the Orlando Magic, one thing became depressingly clear: Newspaper web sites are bad.

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Altitude discrimination

>Protests in Andes as Fifa bans international games over 2,500m (The Guardian)
>Anger Echoes in South America After FIFA Bans Games at Altitude (AP via NYT)
FIFA bans international soccer matches in venues more than 8,200 feet above sea level, citing “concern for players’ health and home-field advantage of high-altitude teams over their visiting lowland rivals.” The policy mainly affects Colombia, Bolivia and Ecuador. Outrageous! Why not ban matches at Wembley because the 90,000-strong crowd is too loud?