Sports this 'n' that

Yahoo! is reporting that there is some talk of the NFL moving Super Bowl 48 from Sunday to Saturday next year in the event of a major winter storm hitting the New York-New Jersey area. I've got a better idea. Stop catering to television and move the game back to the end of January where it belongs. The only reason the game is now played on the first Sunday in February is for ratings, as February is a sweeps month in the television industry, where networks and their affiliates can set advertising rates for the next quarter. It's an unfortunate fact of life that has taken hold over the last decade.

Even more galling is the news that the International Olympic Committee decided that wrestling would not be a part of the 2020 Summer Games.

SAY WHAT?

Wrestling has been part of the Olympics from day one, all the way back in ancient Greece. The IOC took into account television ratings (there's that again), as well as concerns about doping, among other factors in deciding to drop the sport. That decision is an injustice to those who've competed at the Games, such as Rulon Gardner, Dan Gable, Kurt Angle, and the late Jeff Blatnick. Speaking of Angle, it doesn't surprise anyone that his current employers, TNA Wrestling, have started a petition drive to convince the IOC to reverse their decision, and the petition likely started with Angle, who's traded on his gold medals ever since he first was called up to WWE in 1999.

That the IOC took not only ratings but the spectre of doping into account discounts any notion that they are out of touch. Just getting that out there. However, you know the Olympics are trying to hard to be hip when they keep adding extreme sports to the mix, as if the X Games weren't enough......

Last Friday's storm wreaked havoc with high school sports across New York & New England. In my home district, several schools ended up rescheduling Friday's games on Monday, resulting in teams playing on back-to-back nights, which is very, very rare at the high school level in a non-tournament environment. For example, Troy High's boys team closed the regular season on the road with games at Amsterdam on Monday and in Albany last night, finishing a 3-game road trip that started a week ago at bitter rival Christian Brothers Academy, which clinched the Big 10 on Sunday by beating Bishop Maginn, unwilling to let history repeat itself from a year ago.

What bothers me more is that the Albany Times-Union and The Record took the lazy way out. The T-U sent their primary reporter to cover a game between Albany Academy & Green Tech, but couldn't spare anyone else? The Record was even worse. Both papers ran a half-page of summaries, culled likely from scores being called into the sports editor's offices. It's not like anything more important was going on Monday night (and it wasn't). I just don't get it.

Today's back page in The Record highlighted the women's regular season finale between Albany & Troy, as the Lady Falcons spoiled Senior Night for THS, wrapping up the Big 10 title and a perfect regular season. It probably evens out, assuming Troy's boys did the same at Albany, in their case securing 2nd place behind CBA. While everyone seems to think Troy & CBA will meet again at Times-Union Center next month for the Class AA Boys title, I wouldn't put too much stock in it just yet. CBA has the biggest bullseye on its collective backs, having won 4 straight Section II titles, and engendering a great deal of antipathy among certain pockets of fans, based on what I discovered last year, when a fan at the TUC said that supposedly "everyone" hates CBA.

Well, if they took the politics out of sports, we wouldn't have such issues at the high school level.

Spring training for major league baseball started this week, but if you follow the New York tabloids, it seems they're more interested in who isn't in Florida, and that would be Yankee 3B-turned-pariah Alex Rodriguez, remaining in cold, snowy NYC to rehab his surgically repaired hip. La-de-freakin'-dah. Meanwhile, retired slugger Mike Piazza is back in the news, not for being denied entry into the Hall of Fame last month, but for the fact he's written a book, and has to defend himself against the predictable insinuation that maybe, just maybe he took PED's. He says he didn't. The HOF voters seemed to throw him under the bus with their decision not to vote him in just yet. Who do you believe?