Friday, July 25, 2003

Good morning!

You know, it has occurred to me that I haven't written much about sports lately, and part of that is because I try not to get too caught up in the private lives of athletes and therefore don't really follow stories like that of Kobe Bryant or the Baylor basketball player who is missing and was allegedly shot by his best friend and teammate. I hear about them a lot on ESPN Radio and their News channel, so I know what's going on but don't really feel moved to write about it here. But since I list "sports" in many weblog directories, I feel obliged to at least post once in a while about them, so here's the obligatory sports post.

Bryant? Well, of course he's guilty of screwing around, many NBA players are. I don't really have a problem with him being an adulterer, because I don't recognize professional athletes as "role models" anyway and have always encouraged the impressionable to focus on their acheivements on the playing field and recognize that these people are human and have all the human foibles and faults. Parents or caregivers of kids are the ultimate role models anyway, if you ask me. Anywho, it kinda looks to me like the unnamed young lady was perfectly willing to be Kobe's mistress until some unknown something happened, then she decided to grab for the brass ring. Rape? I kinda doubt it, but who really knows. Kobe had a good rep prior to all this going down. And Bryant's public repentance was so self-serving to be disgusting. Oh, yeah...he's sorry now that he got caught! All I'm saying is that no one is innocent here, or at least the way I see it. I don't know all the facts, and I know that there are two sides to every story- and usually the truth falls somewhere in between.

On a happier note, my White Sox have won something like seven straight, and seem to be acting like they want to stay in the race. I'm still not crazy about manager Jerry Manuel, especially the boning he gave former closer Billy Koch, but he's OK as long as they keep winning. Fantasy-wise, I'm currently in first place in my freebie Yahoo! league, and am in 4th place (one through three finishes in the money) in the expensive one.

Another reason for celebration- NFL training camps are opening all over. Yesterday my beloved Atlanta Falcons opened camp, and optimism runs unusually high. Of course, they (and I) have had high hopes before and have seen them dashed to earth by the end of November. Still, they've never had an athlete at QB like Mike Vick before, and they made some key acquisitions in the off season...so we'll see. Fantasy-wise, it's looking like the Glasgow Fantasy Football League, which I've run since 1990, is about to bite the dust...done in by people growing apart (we all used to work for the same company, now only 4 of 10 do), losing interest and getting on with their lives. I've been putting off calling everyone, I need to do that soon. Myself, I hate to see it fold but it hasn't been too much fun the last two or three years so maybe it's time.

And that concludes the Obligatory Sports Update. I'll probably do more as it gets closer to football season, so you've been warned.

No comments: