William M. Hartnett

Driving to Gainesville tomorrow for Saturday’s Orange and Blue game, UF’s spring football scrimmage, so blogging will be lighter than usual.
Or heavier. Depends on how proficient I turn out to be at thumbing out posts on my cell phone while speeding up the Turnpike. I also will be simultaneously eating Combos, guzzling Diet Mountain Dew, [...]

Manchester United’s 7-1 dismantling of Roma in the Champions League quarterfinals not only generated excellent headlines — Seven wonders of sublime United dazzle and destroy helpless Roma — it inspired some remarkable commentary from the Italian press. From Gazzetta dello Sport, as translated in The Guardian:

“Last night was an epochal beating that Italian football has [...]

There was this. Then there was this. Ohio State: Pwned.

addthis_url = ‘http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wmhartnett.com%2F2007%2F04%2F02%2Fin-summary%2F’;
addthis_title = ‘In+summary’;
addthis_pub = ”;

As Col. John “Hannibal” Smith would say, I love it when a plan comes together.

addthis_url = ‘http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wmhartnett.com%2F2007%2F03%2F31%2Fhartnetts-final-four-performance%2F’;
addthis_title = ‘Hartnett%26%238217%3Bs+Final+Four+performance’;
addthis_pub = ”;

My confident prediction that Florida would handle Oregon was satisfyingly accurate. It’s for the best, really, as it allows Oregonians that were perhaps momentarily distracted by the Ducks’ run to the Elite Eight to return to their traditional fixation on communal gardens and laughable gas-pumping policies.
For someone as willfully ill-informed about college basketball as me, [...]

Florida keeps rolling along, Carolina and Georgetown came through for me, and my Sweet Sixteen record is 4-4. My bracket is hardly what you would call in great shape, but three of my four Final Four picks are still alive, so there you are.
With people of The Nature Boy’s stature backing Florida, I don’t see [...]

Just as they did last week, Ohio State pulled out a tight win and saved me and my pathetic brackets from the indignity of being shut out during the first day of Sweet Sixteen match-ups. I’m feeling better about the next four games of the round, which is a bold and very likely stupid thing [...]

>’Envy over Beckham’ led to England failure (The Telegraph)
A friend of former England boss Sven-Goran Eriksson says the team’s underwhelming performance during the World Cup was due to jealously over David Beckham’s star status.
I have trouble reconciling this viewpoint with my own theory, which is that England’s quarterfinal exit was due primarily to the fact [...]

Preamble: I wrote that title as though any of you, the readers, actually care about football, or “water polo,” as we Americans call it. While I have no way of knowing for sure, I suspect that’s not the case. Nevertheless, I believe I’ve proven in my one month of blogging that, if nothing else, I [...]

Ugly second round for yours truly, with only nine correct picks against seven misses. Florida’s win provides some consolation, but my bracket is hurting otherwise. Three of my Elite Eight picks (Wisconsin, Villanova and Duke) and one of my Final Four selections (Villanova) are out already.
I’m embarrassed, frankly. Never mind that I had no idea [...]