• It’s still great to be a Florida Gator

    UF 84 OSU 75

    (Big sigh) I didn’t think Florida was as good in this tournament as it was last year, but ultimately it doesn’t matter one bit. Florida’s most valuable player was everyone that hit a shot outside the paint. Greg Oden was a man playing with boys; however, other than his fellow freshman point guard, he was the only one that showed up. He put OSU on his back and carried it all the way to the final minutes, but in the end 5 on 2 caught up to him.

  • Observations from the first half

    Florida is up on Ohio State by eleven. I kid you not, Greg Oden is a basketball stud. Florida has no inside game with Oden in the game, which will be a problem in the second half if the Florida shooters cool off… and they may if they start to get tired… and Cory Brewer is playing a lot of minutes. So is Oden, but the difference is tired legs don’t affect dunks as much as outside shots. If Ohio State finds the range outside they’ll be hard to stop… going inside-outside with Oden and a hot shooter.

    In short, being up eleven is better than being down eleven; but Florida isn’t exactly sitting pretty.

    I wonder if there’s a correlation between televised sports and the incidence of heart disease. Specifically, I wonder if there’s a corresponding increase in heart disease in the last forty years with the rise in the number of sports on TV. My fingers are way to jittery to do any serious googling this evening.

    **Note: this post was fully typed and in the process of final editing prior to the first half analysis on CBS. In short, it’s all me. Any similarities to comments by those in CBS employ is purely coincidental.

  • Rays’ spending

    On this, the opening day of baseball season (for the Rays anyway), talk of hope, expectation, and payroll makes the rounds. Once again, many are questioning the spending habits of Rays’ ownership – particularly in light of the revenue sharing money ($35 million?) coming in, and the Rays’ payroll ($25-26 million?).

    Here’s the thing (that occured to me only just now): when the good folks running the Rays talk of spending wisely for the future, I believe them. When you consider how much mediocre/old pitching goes for nowadays, how much do you suppose it’s going to cost to keep the services of a promising young south-paw in a couple of years? (Kazmir’s a left-hander, right? Some fan I am.) If the current trends hold, that could be the annual revenue sharing money right there – all by itself.