Team USA Comes Thisclose, Crosby a National Hero

A picture that truly says a thousand words

It was one of those games you'd beg to be a part of. The winter Olympics. Gold medal hockey game. Team Canada. Team U.S.A. Played on North American soil. It had all the makings of a classic. And a classic was what we got.

After mounting a furious, sweat-stained comeback to tie the game at 2-2 and force overtime in the final game of the premier hockey tournament in the world, the United States hockey team lost 3-2 when Canada's Sidney Crosby beat USA goalie and tournament MVP Ryan Miller 7:40 into the overtime period.

Canada had jumped out to an early 2-0 lead on goals by Jonathan Toews and Corey Perry before Ryan Kesler got the Americans' first goal 12:44 into the second period. The score stayed that way, with every kind of body check and blocked shot imaginable in between, until less than a minute remained in the game. With the Canadians just seconds away from admiring the brand new gold medals around their necks, the U.S. put the celebration on hold as Zach Parise tied the game with just 25 seconds to go. As the teams entered the locker room and prepared to play overtime, momentum had shifted to the Americans and all the pressure to the Canadians.

Zach Parise's goal late in the third period stopped Canada in its tracks

Unfortunately for team U.S.A., pressure brings out the best in some players, specifically Crosby. After charging into the U.S. zone alone against two Americans, Crosby somehow sent the puck into the corner and squeaked through a Yankee sandwhich to regain control. Spotting Jarome Iginla behind the net, Crosby dished it off and charged to the net to set up a give and go that Iginla executed perfectly with a beautiful falling-down pass. Crosby's shot found space along the ice between Miller's legs, and the celebration for Canada was on as the stunned Americans tried to gather what had just happened.

The game will be a hard one for the Americans to swallow for some time, but it could have been much worse just as much as it could have gone a lot better. This was a team that was expected to walk away empty-handed, a team that wouldn't be able to score goals or skate with the better-skilled clubs. But team U.S.A. fought through all of that and did not lose the gold medal, but instead earned the silver medal. There is absolutely nothing anybody on that team should be hanging their heads about. Everyone in America was proud to root for them today, and they will be proud as long as they live.

The Americans almost came from behind to swipe away the gold in what was unquestionably the greatest gold medal game in Olympic history, and that would be the story of the day were it not for Crosby stealing the show with yet another display of magnificance.

Sidney Crosby in what was likely one of the proudest moments of his life

It was Crosby, until now one of the most polarizing hockey players in the world, even in his own country, who saved the game, nay, the Olympics, for his country. It was Crosby who saved the bacon of every player on that team from their own fans, including some players who may have poked fun at his polished persona or criticized him for "yapping" too much during games. It was Crosby who let every Canadian fan forget about the demoralizing loss to the Americans just seven days ago and about the embarrassing technical problems that plagued the Vancouver-hosted games. And it was Crosby who flung the monkey off his own back as he threw his gloves and stick to the sky in celebration.

It has been said, and it will be said again, that this has been Crosby's destiny all along, that this was the path chosen for him. He was the prodigal son chosen to inherit the throne of Gretzky by everyone in Canada, including Gretzky himself. Crosby would lead wherever he went, it was said, so talented, passionate, and prepared that he would reach every peak in the game. Now, at just the age of 22, Crosby owns an NHL scoring title, an MVP title, a Stanley Cup ring and an Olympic gold medal.

It all seems so simple now. With Crosby on their side, Canada just couldn't lose. So it has been said. So it has come to pass.

A heartbroken Miller moments after allowing the goal that won the gold medal for Canada

On behalf of the Unsportsmanlikes, congratulations to Team U.S.A., especially local favorites Brooks Orpik, Ryan Malone, and Ryan Whitney, for playing with such unity and passion, and to Ryan Miller, who played with the heart and ability of a champion. And congratulations to Team Canada, especially Crosby and backup goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury, who made their own country equally as proud. We just hope they are as proud of themselves.

Do You Believe In Unlikelyhoods?

While we catch our breath from watching the U.S.A defeat Canada 5-3 last night, lets start off with the Olympic hockey schedule as it stands right now. All the seeds are set. Games kick off tomorrow afternoon.

Qualification Round:
Belarus vs. Switzerland, Tue, 2/23/2010, 3:00 p.m., EST
Germany vs. Canada, Tue, 2/23/2010, 7:30 p.m., EST
Latvia vs. Czech Republic, Tue, 2/23/2010, 10:00 p.m., EST
Norway vs. Slovakia, Wed, 12:00 a.m., EST

Quarterfinal Round:
Unites States vs. Belarus/Switzerland winner, Wed, 2/24/2010, 3:00 p.m., EST
Russia vs. Germany/Canada winner, Wed, 2/24/2010, 7:30 p.m., EST
Finland vs. Norway/Slovakia winner, Wed, 2/24/2010, 10:00 p.m., EST
Sweden vs. Latvia/Czech Republic winner, Thu, 2/25/2010, 12:00 a.m., EST

Make no mistake about it, U.S.A.'s upset win over Canada last night was sweet. However, this victory is not even in the same league as the 1980 triumph that occurred over the Soviet Union. It was a different time back then. The stakes were much higher in that game too. But let's not take anything away from what the United States hockey team accomplished in Vancouver last night. This game does rank up there among the other Olympic upsets, at least as far as hockey is concerned. Couple it with the fact that it went down on Canadian soil, and we have what most likely is the second greatest victory in U.S. hockey history.

From the United States perspective, it isn't out of the realm of possibility that a gold medal can now be won in these games. Last night's win puts a nice feather in the cap as they hung a devastating loss to the team that was arguably the favorite to win the whole damn thing. The whole damn thing. And again, the whole damn thing. Man, that's sweet.

What I noticed most about the game was the jump that the U.S.A. had right at the drop of the puck. They really seemed to embrace the game and the opportunity that came with playing the host county at "their" sport. "You look up, and everything was red and white, with very few American flags," U.S. coach Ron Wilson said. "That's fine. We expected a hostile welcome, and I think that helped us." Even throughout the game, the Canadian players didn't give off the vibe like they were having much fun, where as the American's really just had that spark in their game. Is the pressure really getting to Team Canada? It has to be.

The best was listening to Eddie Olczyk's comments before the game when he spoke about how Canada has never respected United States hockey. I sensed the players felt that way too and really translated that to the way they played. If this U.S.A. team can maintain the gritty nature to their game that they showed against Canada throughout the tournament, you got to like the chances of them leaving Vancouver with medals around their necks. Canada might be leaving with empty promises.

Canada on the other hand is now scrambling for answers. Rumor has it that Roberto Luongo will now start in net for their game tomorrow night against Germany. Why Marc-Andre Fleury is not getting the nod is anybody's guess. Fleury has the track record of playing up in big games the last couple years. Not only that, but he's won seven playoff series' over the last two years. The kid knows how to play a game under pressure. Team Canada needs a shift in momentum, and I think Fleury can provide that. I'm not sure if Luongo can.

How odd was it watching Sidney Crosby and not rooting for the team he was playing for? It was a really foreign feeling, but also kind of neat, kinda like LSD. Hey, this trip only lasts for two weeks. Let's buy the ticket and take the ride.

Tiger Woods Disgraces Self on Live TV

How'd the TV gig go, Tiger?

Besides all the curling action going on at the Olympics this weekend, the big story coming into it was the public statement that Tiger Woods delivered live on the air Friday morning.

In the statement that was carried on live television and radio across the world, Tiger was so full of cliches in his phony staged apology speech that I thought he was going to burst and cover the room in a mess of bullshit. My first reaction was, of course, that it sounded exactly like a speech I would have written for him if asked. We have to remember that this guy can afford much better people than myself to write this thing for him too. He can get the best of the best working in shifts for him, and that's likely what he did. I have to give his speechwriters credit for doing the best they could with a guy who just reeks of conceit so badly I can't believe he held that speech in such a small room with so many other noses in it besides his own.

I am shocked that many in the media are buying this garbage, this farce, this "apology" staged on Tiger's terms and no one else;s. There was an extremely exclusive invitation list put together for this event, and one of the three media guys invited was the man who writes on Tiger's own web site. There were no questions allowed, no chance to make Tiger squirm. He likely will never speak of this again. There will be no sit-down with Barbara Walters or someone from 60 Minutes. The whole thing was insultingly disingenuous. Maybe he really is sincere, but we'll never know because this joke of a media statement allowed for no candor, no straying from the script. No one could probe him, no one could ask him a question out of left field that might catch him off-guard, revealing his true feelings. That's the whole point of these things, and Tiger took that out of the equation before he made any other move at all.

Tiger's credibility also suffers from the timing of the apology. It has been almost three months since all this hit the news cycle. Think about that for a second. Think about all the time he has had to prepare the perfect apology, to put together the perfect public relations team to put together the perfect public relations move. Yes he said what he had to say, but how are any of us supposed to believe what we saw yesterday was how he really feels? That's why this is something he needed to do a long time ago and not have it feel so preposterous. I'm sure he feels regret, but my belief is that the immediacy of an apology is what helps to make an apology genuine. The fact that Tiger went into hibernation for the winter like a big, dumb, lumbering bear killed any and all attempts at transparency.


The whole sex addiction thing is a joke too. I'm not nearly familiar enough with sex addiction to comment on it like an expert, but I'm going to anyways. This reeks of a situation where his P.R. guy sat him down and said "O.K., Tiger, the only way to move past this thing with any shred of dignity is to fool a gullible, over-forgiving American public. You've got to get out of the public eye, and you've got to shift the blame. You're going to do both by checking into a 24-hour clinic to get therapy and treatment for sex addiction. I don't care if you think you have a problem or not, you're going. It is only way you have any shot of repairing the relationship between you and your family and your sponsors."

But if you've ever known someone who had an addiction to drugs or alcohol, you know that they destroy their owns lives even when no one's looking. Was Tiger destroying his life, his health, or his career before he got caught? It doesn't seem so. I think he was probably rather enjoying himself. He even said so.

"I knew my actions were wrong, but I convinced myself that normal rules didn't apply," Tiger said in his statement. "I never thought about who I was hurting. Instead, I thought only about myself. I ran straight through the boundaries that a married couple should live by. I thought I could get away with whatever I wanted to. I felt that I had worked hard my entire life and deserved to enjoy all the temptations around me. I felt I was entitled. Thanks to money and fame, I didn't have to go far to find them."

I'm sorry, but that sounds like your average everyday cheating athlete to me, not an addict. Tiger never mentions missing a golf tournament or an important pre-scheduled family or sponsorship event to go get his rocks off. Addicts do those kinds of things. Guys just running around on their wives don't. Addicts also see their performances in their careers suffer, be it from physical maladies brought on by addiction or the mental distractions or whatever else may be the case. Tiger's work certainly didn't seem to suffer. In fact, coming off a knee surgery and allegedly in the midst or a chaotic sex addiction, he won six tournaments last year and was named the 2009 PGA Tour Player of the Year. Yea, he was really going through a tough time alright.



Tiger should have just come out and told the truth and not hid behind all this phony public relations garbage. If he really feels he screwed up, then he has all along, and he could have been candid and genuine right from the start. All he needed to say was that he gave into temptation like many other men in his position would have done without really knowing the consequences that would come later. Whatever would have happened to his marriage after that would have been his business. Heck, he's a relatively young guy. We could have given him that. We would have given him that.

Better yet, he could have just waited to get married until after he got his rocks off for a few years and nobody would really care how many Perkins waitresses he took home. He could've just played the "Hey, I'm a ridiculously famous good-looking single guy with all the money in the world. I'm the ultimate Alpha male, and I've earned the right to enjoy all the fruits of my labors so long as I do it legally." We would have given him that as well.

Instead, we get this insulting shell of an apology that was too late and too closed-ended. I really think that he has damaged himself beyond repair. He will surpass O.J. Simpson and Bill Clinton in the number of late-night talk show jokes of which he is the punchline. The scandalous nature of his acts will subject him to endless mockery, parody, and satire for the rest of his life. He may garner some breathing room by returning to the top of the golfing world if and when he wins a few more majors, but he really will carry this forever.

Tiger Woods was the Associated Press's athlete of the decade, may be the greatest athlete of a generation, and certainly he is the greatest golfer of all-time. But because of his selfishness, his ego, his arrogance, his elitism, and his abhorrently botched handling of his transgressions, Tiger Woods going forward will be, much simpler terms, a clown, a dope, and the laughingstock of the sports world.

Pitt Beats WVU

-After an exhausting triple-overtime Backyard Brawl that made for as exhausting a night of watching television on the couch (mine was not set on fire) as is possible, this much is clear: your Pitt Panthers, with a 98-95 win good for their second against top-5 teams this year, are the most schizophrenic team in the Big East, and the West Virginia Mountaineers, losers of now two in a row, are either choking dogs or were just overrated in the first place.

The setup to last night's game, the second of the annual (at least) two between Pitt and West Virginia, was West Virginia's 70-51 blowout win in Morgantown just 10 days ago. Since then, WVU had shot up to #4 in the ESPN/USA Today rankings before promptly losing to Villanova, and Pitt had fallen to #24. My guess, and this is a total shot in the dark, is those will be at least slightly altered very soon.

The game saw WVU give away countless leads in a match they dominated for much of the night, none worse than the one of seven points they held with just 45 seconds left. When Pitt's only hope at that point was for West Virginia to miss every foul shot and inexplicably turn the ball over, the Mountaineers did exactly that. But the follies didn't end there, as Pitt point guard Ashton Gibbs, a 91% free throw shooter, stood on the line with a three point lead and a chance to effectively seal the game if he made his second of two foul shots. He didn't, and WVU's Darryl Bryant hit a desperate three to force a second overtime. Toward the end of that, Pitt's Gary McGhee, despite making no contact, was called for a foul as WVU star Da'Sean Butler attempted a three point shot to tie the game. Butler would of course make all three free throws, and a spectacular fadeaway jumper shot by Pitt's Travon Woodall was waved off as time had expired an eye blink before the ball left his hand. The game mercifully ended in the third overtime as Bryant's three point shot to tie the game and force a fourth overtime fell short, but not before the calendar had rolled over from one day to the next. As the shot fell short, no objects were thrown on the court at assistant coaches, a mystery and total shock to the West Virginia fans in attendance.

Pitt played with a lot of heart, no doubt about it, but the story of this game is the collapse that WVU experienced at the end of regulation. This one had all the makings of a repeat of the first game between these two clubs, but WVU could not choke the life out of the Panthers, and it was definitely for lack of trying. True, the Panthers squandered their chances too, but not nearly on the same level as West Virginia and not nearly as often.

Should these teams meet again for a Trojan rubber match , it would likely come in the Big East Tournament next month. Here's hoping couches on both sides take far less abuse than they did last night.

Wanna go to the League? Think Pitt.

As we try to get ourselves back online from the massive storm that hit our part of western Pennsylvania last week, here's a pretty eye-opening column by Ron Cook of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on how Pitt measures up against the rest of the schools in division I college football when it comes to sending players to the NFL. In it, we learn that Pitt has sent six former players to the Hall of Fame, good for seventh on a list that includes some pretty illustrious football schools, and also that Pitt has no fewer than 21 players currently on NFL rosters. Check out the column for some pretty cool quotes from Dave Wannstedt too.

Don't forget that on the basketball side of Pitt's athletic affairs, part two of the 2010 hoops edition of the "Backyard Brawl" concludes tonight as #25 Pitt and #5 WVU tip off at 9 p.m. on ESPN. Fathers should lock up their daughters for this one, and if those fathers live in West Virginia they'd be apropos to not lock their daughters in the same room as their sons if you know what I'm saying. Wait, you don't. I'm saying their own sons will fuck their own daughters. God damn it people, learn to love your stereotypes!

Thoughts About A Star

Dan and I had the opportunity to attend Piratefest this past weekend at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center downtown and as we were walking around the floor checking out different booths, I couldn't help but imagine what an event like this would have been like back in the old days. When the Pirates had players that were true legends. How would the likes of Honus Wagner, Ralph Kiner, Pie Traynor, Manny Sanguillen, Roberto Clemente and Willie Stargell conduct themselves at an event like this? How would the event itself be different?

This is in no way a knock on any of the current players, but the whole atmosphere on Saturday had a slight "non-event" feel to it. Of course Maz drew the focus of most fans, but as for the rest of the activities going on, one could just drift their way past them and not really extend a second glance. Maybe it's because we're both older now and the youthful excitement of meeting the guys you see on television has faded away. But I do think that if the Pirates had a legitimate Hall of Famer in the lineup, the event would somehow feel different.

Speaking of Roberto Clemente, Dan and I couldn't help but chuckle as we looked at some old baseball cards from the sixties that said Bob Clemente on them. Something about Americanizing his legacy seems grossly inappropriate. It's strange, but even thirty seven years after his death, if you walk around the city on a gloomy afternoon, you can almost feel the city still mourning over the loss of it's once beloved hero. His legacy certainly echo's all over downtown, including on the mural underneath the Blvd of the Allies on Ross Street. But most notably, he's still the first thing you notice when you crossover the bridge named after him on your way to PNC Park.

When this franchise finally turns the corner and regains its once proud reputation that was earned by the stars of generations past, maybe then an event such as Piratefest will live up to the hype that such a fanbase so justly deserves.