Hole Punch Sports

I don’t hate the Yankees anymore. I really, really, really, really don’t like the Yankees, but I don’t hate them the way I used to. From 1998 to 2000 the Yankees won three straight World Series. Now that was an easy team to hate. Not only did they get the better of every team I liked in that era, but every single call went their way. Today’s Yankees are a little tougher to hate. Their ever-bloated roster and payroll leads only to an enjoyable succession of playoff losses. While before the Yankees’ focus was deep pitching, the team now thinks World Series wins are awarded on the strength of total career All-Star selections. I still root for them to lose-that 2004 ALCS was amazing-but it’ll take a World Series win for me to really care again. And so, my rankings for Hole Punch Sports’ most hated teams. In the spirit of, um, Saturday and Sunday, we’ll make it an elite eight. 8. The Indianapolis Colts , NFL: The Colts, as a franchise, are tough to hate on the whole. They had Johnny Unita...

What is an upset? Webster’s defines upset as “emotionally disturbed or agitated”. Wait, wrong word. Okay, we don’t need no stinkin’ dictionary-especially not in March-to tell us what, in sports, an upset is. It’s easy. An upset is when the team that isn’t supposed to win a game does. But who decides who’s supposed to win the game? The media? The fans? Las Vegas? The most recent Rose Bowl, which was this year’s college football national championship game, pitted USC against Texas. Texas won-in an upset. Sort of. I still don’t see why the outcome of that game should have surprised anyone. Yes, USC had some championship history over the last few years, but if you looked at the numbers and the relative dominance of each team for just that season-which was the period we were finding a champion for, after all-it’s hard to say Texas wasn’t at least as good. O,r more accurately, it’s tough to say USC was really as good as Texas. Not to turn into Hines Ward here, but calling Texas’ win an upse...

March Madness, of course, was the topic of Hole Punch Sports’ first post a year ago. Every bracket contest I’m competing in includes at least some readers of this blog. I’m really tempted to lie a lot and try to throw everyone off. I guess you could say that’s what I did last year, when I picked two teams that couldn't escape the opening weekend to make the Final Four. This year, I’m going to write more of a general preview than any real specific regional predictions (except for the national champion). I am either doing to this to avoid giving up my research edge, or perhaps to avoid being wrong in so public a manner. Plus this gives all of you a chance to experiment and learn. As the old NFL commercials said: You make the call! I should point out that on ESPN.com’s tournament challenge last year, I started out 13-0 and was ranked No. 1 in the world, at least with one of my five charts (to be fair, I think I was tied for first with literally thousands of other brackets). So if I c...

I almost feel sorry for Barry Bonds. You can check out the latest steroid allegations in an article on the website of Sports Illustrated . Barry Bonds used steroids-that's still news? Really? Okay, I don't really feel bad for Barry-he's obviously responsible for his own steroid use and, as a grown man, was fully aware of what he was doing in taking illegal drugs. This is not a "blame society" piece, in which I show how the expectations of fans created pressures so severe that he just had to take steroids, making the man in the stands the true villian. And it's not a tale of how we build up stars just to tear them down, though that runs throughout the Bonds saga. Yet Bonds is an interesting case, because if the dates are correct in this story-which suggests Bonds started using steroids out of jealousy springing from the fame of Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa in 1998-he was very clearly an all-time great before he ever cheated. Somehow Bonds was left off one of bas...

I hope the NFL doesn’t lose its salary cap. I can’t say I’ve been following the CBA negotiations especially closely, and that’s good, because with all the delays, the suspense would be killing me at this point. Anyway, I hope the cap stays. I’m a Broncos fan and no cap would actually be pretty good for my favorite team. The Broncos make a lot of money, have pretty smart management, and feature an owner who is probably willing to outspend most of his colleagues. I imagine that with no cap, the Broncos would be able to move into the elite (if we’re not there already) and stay there for a long time. I don’t think we’d have to wait very long for the next Super Bowl win. But victories would always feel cheap. What do Yankees fans say to themselves when their team wins a World Series? (Or what did they used to tell themselves last millennium when they actually won the Series?) I’d always know the Broncos weren’t really playing the same game everyone else was. Of course, I’d still watch, but ...