Bill vs. Will

Medium-length story made short: Bill Walton and Will Ferrell squeezed themselves into short shorts, poofed out their hair, put on awesome headbands, and played HORSE.

Here's the clip.

Weird thing is, Ferrell's shot is pretty nice. Walton's, not really. Bill was a big-time college and NBA player for years before he got hurt and had to retire. Will runs around and acts nuts on camera for a living.

I guess if you're 6'11", you don't have to develop much of a jump shot.

Not that I'd know or anything.

Yao aot

Life has gotta be tough for Rockets fans. After winning back-to-back championships in 1994 and 1995, Houston has not even returned to the Finals, let alone managed to win another championship.

In 2002, they drafted Yao Ming. In 2004, they acquired Tracy McGrady from Orlando. It appeared the Rockets were set to make another run.

But injury after injury after injury has really hobbled the franchise. T-Mac fought back trouble through most of the 2005 season. Yao had surgery to repair an ingrown toenail the same year. The 2006-2007 season not much different, as Tracy missed 11 games and Yao was unable to play in 34.

This season, though, started out differently. Both stars have been healthy, and the team is currently on a 12-game winning streak. Though the West is ridiculously deep, it looked like Houston would be able to compete and make a lot of noise in the playoffs.

Then the news broke that Yao would miss the rest of the season due to a stress fracture in his left foot.

Ouch.

Now Houston goes from West contender to "we hope we make the playoffs." Of course, they did shellack the Arenas-less Wizards tonight, 94-69, so maybe they'll be fine. Maybe McGrady can become a combination of Michael Jordan and LeBron and lead his team the Finals, but I doubt it.

Story time

Mandi's been trying to rid herself of a nasty cough for the past few days, and it reminds me of a good time from my BYU days.

I was living in Park Plaza in Provo with my sports soul mate, James. I was working forty hours a week and pretty much watching sports the rest of my free time.

Behind the apartment complex was a city park. Students would play football or basketball or whatever back there sometimes, and one afternoon a neighbor stopped by to tell us soccer was going on there in 10 minutes.

I played soccer when I was a kid (along with every other kid from Utah), but stopped competing in organized leagues when I was 12. At that point, I started getting in basketball and only ever played soccer in gym class or whatever.

Anyway, I like soccer, so I decided to go play. I've picked up some bad habits from basketball; I box players away from the ball and probably get a little too physical at times.

At one point I was cruising for a loose ball (is that what it's called in soccer?) and collided, hard, with another player. I took the worst of the collision, and ended up flat on my back, gasping for air, the wind completely knocked out of me.

The next morning I felt like I had some broken ribs on the left side. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to sigh. It really hurt to cough, and sneezing was so bad I'd do the thing where you hold it in and it feels like you'll explode-- but that was preferable to the abuse the explosion took to my ribcage.

I called my mom, and she said even if I did have some broken ribs, there's not much doctors can do. These are the kind of broken bones I experience, I'm not one for casts, apparently... I've busted a couple toes, and there's nothing they can do. Just gotta wait it out.

So I figured I'd be tough and try to not whine as much.

Then the coughing started. Not just the occasional cough after inhaling some water. No, these coughs came every minute on the minute.

I coughed and coughed and coughed. And these weren't little dry coughs that happen up in your throat, either, these were the big hacking coughs that feel like they originate in your liver.

I remind you that coughing was already an unpleasant experience, but this was awful.

After three days of this, I was fed up. I went to the doctor, and was diagnosed with bronchitis and a couple cracked ribs. The bronchitis they could do something about, and I started taking antibiotics three times a day.

The ribs eventually healed on their own.

As my dad would say, the experience was extremely character-building. I recommend it.

Internship!

I work for GWAVA Technologies, Inc., and it's a great job. It pays well and I have fantastic insurance through them. My boss is a great guy who has worked with my school schedule for years. I just don't want to do technical support for the rest of my life.

That's why I'm so excited about this internship with the Post-Register. Each summer, the newspaper hires an intern for each department, and I was selected for the Sports version. It's paid, and will run for twelve weeks starting in late May/early June.

I anticipate covering a lot of baseball and... golf? What other summer sports are there?

Anyway, I'm stoked. Updates to follow.

Utah basketball is awesome

I generally don't like to talk about University of Utah sports, even to rag on them, but I can't help myself today.

BYU beat Utah Wednesday, 67-59. That makes it two years in a row that the Cougars have swept the regular-season series with Utah. With football, BYU hasn't lost to the Utes in any major sport since February of 2006.

Anyway, first-year Utah coach Jim Boylen was displeased with a few of the refs' calls, and as pictured above, expressed this displeasure with a variety of faces that remind me of my little brothers when they were three.

Kinda freaky, actually.

Also, Utah lost to New Mexico tonight on a very entertaining sequence of events. Ute guard Tyler Kepkay drove for a layup with Utah down three points and eight seconds left on the clock. A fine strategy; after all, if he makes it, the Utes can foul quickly and hope the Lobos miss a free throw or two.

But Kepkay missed the shot. Uh oh.

The ball fortuitously came off the rim and back ino Tyler's hands. Options? He can dribble back to the 3-point line and huck up a last-second shot to tie. Or he can pass the ball back out for the 3. Or he can call time out and let coach Boylen draw up a last-ditch play to tie.

Instead, he took the ball back to the rim and made a layup as the buzzer sounded.

Final score? UNM 72, Utah 71.

Bad times to be a Ute fan.

It's good to be a Cougar.

Sound the feasting horn!

I like this commercial.

Why we watch

This article originally ran in the Feb. 20th edition of the Scroll.

Why do we watch sports? It's a question posed by millions of disgruntled girlfriends and wives to their armchair-planted significant others. What makes us sit and watch sweaty guys run around a field or court or track for hours on end?

I'll tell you what it is.

It's the Red Sox coming from down 0-3 in the 2004 ALCS and winning seven straight games to earn their first World Series trophy in 86 years. It's Tracy McGrady scoring 13 points in 39 seconds to beat the Spurs in a regular-season game. It's BYU completing miracle play after miracle play to beat Utah in 2006 and 2007.

And it's the Giants, huge underdogs in the Super Bowl, defeating the previously unbeaten Patriots two weeks ago.

The Patriots had an average winning margin of 19 points per game during the regular season. The Giants started the season 0-2. New England relied on the play of star quarterback Tom Brady and new acquisition Randy Moss, who caught a record-breaking 50 touchdown passes in 2007. New York lost their star running back, Tiki Barber, at the end of the 2006 season.

Yet we tuned in to watch the Super Bowl in near-record numbers. There were enough reasons to think the Giants might be able to pull off the upset that we wanted to see if they could. The Patriots and Giants had played in the last week of the regular season, and New York had given New England all they could handle. The Giants' defensive front four were able to put pressure on Brady, and New York's offense moved the ball well enough to score 35 points.

Plus, the Patriots had been discovered cheating in an early regular-season game. This drew the ire of the American people to the point that some described New England's coaches as “demonic.”

These elements created the perfect “Good vs. Evil, Underdog vs. Superpower” mix that we love. The U.S. hockey team beating the U.S.S.R team in the 1980 Winter Olympics is quite possibly the best sporting moment of our country's history. Why? Because we had a team of college kids, while the Soviet Union's team was stocked with professionals. The little guy beat the clear favorite.

So when New York's David Tyree was able to pin the ball against his helmet for a game-clinching first-down catch on a throw from Eli Manning, it meant something. It meant that the unthinkable had happened. David had gotten the better of Goliath.

Again.

And that is what draws us to sports. We watch to be there for the moments when the unthinkable happens. We watch so we can tell our kids about the time we saw the Pistons beat the juggernaut Lakers in the 2004 NBA Finals. So we can laugh with our friends when we remember watching the eighth-seeded Warriors route the Dallas Mavericks, four games to two, in the 2007 playoffs. So we can smile when thinking about our little brother's game-winning field goal with no time left on the clock.

And that is why we watch.