Its true! Lets talk about sports!
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Upcoming events!:


ATP World Tour
Order in the court


Barclays Premier League Football (Soccer)
BPL League Table
Check Smerd's thing for more info!


NASCAR
2/26 Daytona 500


NBA Basketball
Kyrie Irving thinks the Earth is flat. And the aliens are behind it, or something to that extent..


NHL Hockey
Icing on the cake


PGA Golf
Rough times


UFC:
Octarockin


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Offseason:

Cricket:
Kangaroos are World Series Champs of the Universe

MLB Baseball
CUBS win the World Series

NFL Football
Patriots beat the Falcons in the first overtime Super Bowl


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Atlanta Braves- chrisbg99
Baltimore Orioles- Mr_Mustache, ludist210, DeputyVanHalen
Boston Bruins- TheOldManInZelda
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Detroit Red Wings- DrFinkelstein, GameDadGrant
Detroit Tigers- DrFinkelstein. mrbiggsly
Houston Astros- missypissy, kriswright
Houston Rockets- kriswright
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Philadelphia Phillies- PogueSquadron
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San Francisco Giants- Xbob42
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Texas Rangers- Snorlax, kriswright
Utah Jazz- vinniebrock
Vancouver Canucks- TheOldManFromZelda
Washington Capitals- Abdooooo, ludist210
Washington Nationals- ludist210
Washington Redskins- Abdooooo, ludist210, DeputyVanHalen
Washington Wizards- ludist210

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O's snuck one from Texas in Game 1 of their double header on Thursday. Scary!
1 out of 4 isn't that good though... But its the Rangers. The nasty, nasty Rangers.

@chrisbg99

Purple Jesus should be back and ready to go, too, right? He'll be bowling people over in no time!

Huge Devils fan here! Maybe it's my bias but I can't see Washington or New York being able to handle New Jersey and their forecheck. I think we'll be seeing this guys play for the Stanley Cup in a few weeks. Looking forward to it!

@MasterSandman II

Starts up tonight, buddy! Pretty good night of sports.

O's try to fend off the stupid Yankees, too. Do itttttt.

Saw the Mariners last Friday night lose to the Yankees. Was pretty exciting, really cool stadium and comparing the atmosphere of that place to Houston was like night and day. Thought going when King Felix was up against some nobody that we'd win, but he gave up a three run homer :(

@missypissy

You know, I think our very own Stephen08 was at the exact same game.

I will be in Toronto this Friday and Saturday to see the Mets play. Should be pretty fun, considering the Mets are playing well so far.

@TheOldManFromZelda

I'll be there Sunday lol Bobblehead day, only problem is getting up early

Smerd here with the Football (soccer) report (Barclays Premier League)..

The season is over and what a season it was!!

Manchester City, won the league (the regular season) by scoring at the last possible second to give them a win on the final day. This tied them with Manchester United on points but because of a bigger goal difference, they were crowned champions for the 1st time in over 40 years. Huge.

The FA cup (for people who don't know - every team in England, big and small, compete in the playoffs for the cup throughout the regular season with the final match played near the end of the season) was won by Chelsea - 4th time in 6 years!

The regular season was filled with close races both at the top and the bottom of the table - particularly between 1st and 2nd (as mentioned above) and 3rd-6th placed teams for a race to qualify for the Champions league (Top teams from Each European league qualify and in the BPL, it's the top 4 that get to play).

When the dust settled, Arsenal guaranteed them a spot by securing 3rd place while Tottenham reached 4th ahead of a wonderful Newcastle United Team. The main story here was Chelsea, who had struggled with management problems throughout the year and had the assistant Manager take over after the main one was fired in March because of Chelseas poor league performance. After he took over, they started winning again and confidence was high once more. They surprised many by progressing through the Champions League (as they qualified to play in it because of last years season - by finishing in the top 4 of the BPL) and made it to the final held in Munich on Saturday. They have never won this amazing cup before in their history..but guess what? They did it!!


So even though they finished 6th in the BPL (1st time in 10 years finishing outside of 3rd), they concentrated their efforts on the cup matches and it paid off. The Champions of this title automatically qualify to play it in next year so they bump Tottenham off so the race for 4th in the league proved moot for them in the end.

The teams that finished in the bottom 3 of the BPL get relegated to the league below while 3 new teams get promoted and will play in the BPL next year.

There you have it!! Yay!

S

I've always wondered something. This isn't a knock against European football or anything, but merely a question - Why are leaderboards determined with a point system, and not with wins/losses?

I would understand this mentality in a racing sport, as there can be over a dozen participants, so naturally you'd want to give people at the top more points than people at the bottom. I've just never understood the logic with soccer/football.

Is it merely just a case of "because this is the way it's always been done?" I'm just so used to sports having more of a tournament system, and not having ties at the end of matches.

Do people in Europe prefer this 'point' system over a wins/losses system, or are there football fans over there that wish things were more definitive?

@PogueSquadron
I get on a tangent here but you can skip to the last paragraph if you don't want to read other details

Football (european etc) is all based on points.. like Hockey (NHL) during the season...

3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw, and 0 for a loss. As you can see, there is a bigger difference between a loss and a win (as opposed to hockey) so it does give Soccer teams motivation to be aggressive and score more goals. You win more games, you get more points... it is very rare that a team with more wins then the other team ends up with less points in the end. In this very rare case, for the first time ever, the winner of the regular season had to be determined by Goal Difference. The more goals you scored and the less you let in the back of the net over the course of the year means a lot - another motivation for teams to be both offensive as well as defensive. The regular season itself in the world of European Soccer can almost be called a tournament. You play 38 games (each team twice - one home and one away) and when it's all over, it's over. Keeps every game in the season exciting because that's all they get (in the regular season of the BPL). No top 8/16 or something retarded qualifying for this big playoff among themselves at the end of the season to see who wins - the season would go on forever - not to mention make the other games during the season boring. Whoever is at the top, deserves to be at the top. And when you Suck? You get Relegated to the league below! The Maple Leafs should be playing in with the tim bits by now..

This is only during the regular season - Cup games (that are played througout the year) are all tournament based - and basically, if you win, you move on..and if you lose, you are done. The only time points come into play is when they are divided into groups of 4 etc (ie, like World Cup) and they play a round robin among themselves so points must be present. The better you perform in the regular season, the more cups your team can qualify for.

When it gets down to the final few teams of the champions league for instance, they play a 2 leg system. One game at home, One game away. This is exciting because there is no best out of 5 or 7 bullcrap and no points - just goals. And away goals means more if both teams score the same amount at the end of the 2 legs. This prevents the away team from playing pure defense (ie: boring) in hopes to play a good game at home. For instance if Real Madrid and Chelsea played together and Real Madrid beat Chelsea at home 2-1, and Chelsea won the next game in their London Stadium 1-0, then both teams would have scored 2 goals but Chelsea would move on because they scored 1 more away goal then Real Madrid. In the final, it's one game only.

Every league is different - the Championship league (one league below the Premier league) need to sort out who gets promoted at the end of the year (like I said, the bottom 3 of the BPL get relegated so 3 new teams have to be promoted). The top 2 teams qualify and get promoted, but the 3rd-6th place teams play a big tournament to see who gets the final 3rd promotion spot. The reward? Promotion, some silverware, and 132 Million Pounds reward to spend on new players to help keep the team competitive in the BPL. Sweet.

Getting back to your question though, I guess it's always been done that way because of the nature of the sport. You have at least 8 players playing all 90minutes of a soccer match. Playing Extra time (30minutes (2 - 15 min halfs) and then penelties later are only done when their has to be a winner at the end no matter what. It's very taxing on the players. Sure a draw kinda sucks and the system is not perfect by any means, but it is what it is - and for me, I don't mind the point system, there are 20 teams playing in the league so points is quick and easy to sort through, and there are at least tournaments going on within the season that care more about wins/losses then points to shake things up a bit.

S

@Smerd
@Smerd

Thanks for the reports as always, Smerd!

More from our local beat reporter to come..


EDIT- And the Bills first two home games are sold out already, ugh. It gets too cold in October and beyond!
I have dainty hands!

Stanley Cup finals start Wednesday!

Jimmie Johnson has won two straight races (including the All-Star Race) and is looking at 3.

Baseball is awesome!


Lets talk about stuffffff.


EDIT- Oh yeah, and the Indy 500 is tomorrow, too. Ever heard of that thing?

Just got back from Atlanta. How 'bout them Nationals?

When Harper lined that homerun out of the park, a guy a few seats down from me yelled, "F'n Bryce Harper! You suck!" Gold!

Devils! Raaaaaaah!

First No-No in history for the Mets. Yippee!

@Mr_Mustache

Yeah! Woooooooo

I got a foul ball at the Jays game today :)

@legoman1326

Cool beans, dude! Did you catch it on the fly?