Athletic Absurdities

Must be a Pro Tournament!

Having spent an inordinate number of hours this past weekend watching the Australian Open Tennis Tournament and the Torrey Pines golf tournament, I was reminded of the high level of silliness we viewers tolerate in televised sports.

• In Monday's final round of the Farmers Insurance Tournament at Torrey Pines, Tiger Woods and his group had to wait as long as ten minutes on many shots because of the slow play of the group ahead of them. And, this was not an isolated incident. Slow play has becomes a characteristic of professional golf. If I were playing at Ottawa Park and I left my ball in the middle of the fairway (not a likely location for my tee shot) and I walked up to the green to study the contour, one of my golfing partners would whack me on the side of the head with a three-iron. However, when Phil Mickelson does it in a pro tournament, no problem. Even chess players have a time limit. Pro golfers need to be penalized if they do not hit their next shot within an established reasonable time.
• Last week in the Australian Tennis Open in Melbourne, Victoria Azerenka was playing Sloane Stephens and had five match points that she lost. Upset and nervous (who wouldn't be? ) she called for a trainer and claimed to have two injuries. The doctor and trainer took her off the court for ten minutes or more to treat these injuries. Meanwhile, young Sloane Stephens had to wait for her opponent to return. Needless to say, Azerenka recovered the momentum and went on to win the match. This abuse of medical time-outs has been occurring for years now in both women's and men's tennis. It's time to eliminate it. If a player becomes injured, he or she should be given the choice of continuing to play injured or forfeiting the match. The integrity of tennis is threatened as much by "medical injury manipulation" as it is by drugs or "tanking."
• In college basketball, everyone seems to accept the the mysterious concept of "home-court advantage." Granted that there is a psychological boost in playing in a familiar setting in front of loyal fans, but those factors don't explain the lopsided statistics favoring the home team. One theory is that the home school fans influence the referees' decisions. It does appear that close calls -- charge or block -- tend to favor the home team.  Perhaps someone should study this.
• And then there is the National Football League. How do these guys become so large, strong and fast?  Are these gorillas just freaks of nature or are they assisting Mother Nature with chemistry? The NFL prohibits HGH (human growth hormone) but does not test for it. Do they expect us to believe these monsters are not using it simply because it is prohibited? If they take chances using drugs for which they will be tested, why would we think that they are not using HGH?  When performance-enhancing drugs are a problem in almost every other sport, does the NFL expect us to believe that their players are not using a substance that they do not bother testing for?

Speaking of sports and atrocities, I have few more items that irritate my back side:

• The names of the Big Ten divisions: the Leaders and Legends. The names are meaningless and most students and alumni don't know which teams are in which division. Perhaps with the addition of Maryland and Rutgers (another absurdity?), the league will develop more meaningful division names.
• While we are talking about names, permit me to say that the new name of the New Orleans NBA team, the New Orleans Pelicans, may be the worst team name of all time. I have nothing against pelicans, and I can appreciate the importance of pelicans to southern Louisiana, but it doesn't send the right image for an NBA team. I can understand the impulse to get rid of the "Hornets" name, but there must be something that says New Orleans better than "Pelicans."  Unfortunately, I do not have a better suggestion. It's too bad that the NBA team in Utah stole the name "Jazz."  That name belongs to New Orleans. Utah could find an historical Mormon name, perhaps "The Polygamists."

There are many other examples of silliness in sports, but I can't deal with them now. My imaginary girl friend is calling me. Gotta go.